I am a curious person, so after hearing about some of the AI tools popping up for writers, I decided to check one out for myself. Here’s what I discovered in a little over an hour with Sudowrite.
First, I took a story I had that I hadn’t worked on in about ten years. I have no preconceived ideas about where I want the story to go because I am a discovery writer through and through, and I hadn’t worked on this one in so long that it isn’t even a mote in the sky of my mind.
I followed the recommended tips for generating text, wrote an open-ended sentence and let Sudowrite compose some variations of next sections.
I tried the default number of words of 150 (I think that’s right) all the way down to 50, trying to get it to stop offering this one particular option, but that didn’t work out. It seemed determined for my story to go a certain way, no matter how many sentences I added to try to change the direction before I clicked “write” again.
Obviously, it and I don’t share the same ideas when it comes to plot developments. :D
However, these things did spark creativity in my own mind, if only because I was busy saying, “This is stupid! Stop having someone show up at the damn door! Do this instead.”
It suggested at the end of too many bits of generated text that someone had suddenly appeared at the door and was going to tell him his brother was miraculously alive. This must be something that happens all the time in fiction for it to have it trained so firmly into its system. Or maybe it was just stumped for ideas based on my partial manuscript of half a chapter.
I admit my story is cross-genre. That made it difficult for Sudowrite.
Because my hero was on a horse and talked about a palace, it wanted to give him a sword. He does not have a sword. It’s a science fiction story, not a fantasy story. In fact, it will become a romance, some day, if and when I ever get back to it, but there’s nowhere near enough material in there now for Sudowrite to predict that, so I can’t hold that against the AI tool. The fact that it wanted so badly to give him a sword was funny to me, though, so at least I enjoyed a laugh there.
Also, I tried the “describe” features but found most of the output verbose. That’s saying something, because I’m not exactly known to be reticent with my thoughts or words. ;D
But if you look at it from the angle of idea generation, having all that suggested text might not be so bad. Just, too many people will probably try to add in a little of everything, and end up with a bloated mess.
I could be wrong.
I can see how this tool will be useful to some people. I can also see how it could hurt the stories of less confident writers.
Taking plot advice from an AI tool might send some new authors down some very uninteresting or overdone paths that they might have avoided if they’d let their own imaginations run free. Of course, the opposite could be true if someone wants to write a story but feels like they can’t generate ideas of their own.
Something I’d be afraid of, too, is that there is an element in my writing that I don’t recognize as a draw for my fans, something I think of as a weakness, that I then go and use an AI tool like this to fix.
Bad at descriptions, say, or choppy narrative? Sudowrite can make it all better. It can definitely give you more to fill in your descriptions, and it can probably smooth out your sentences (I didn’t get into anything like that during my one hour, but I imagine it is possible since most AI tools can do it). But will that change your authorial voice so much that your fans won’t be as happy as they might have been otherwise?
It’s hard to say. It might not even matter. But it might. There are some authors I read specifically because they don’t waste a lot of time with describing things. Some that I read because the pacing is breakneck. Some I read because they meander a bit and I like the way they write. There’s just no way to know objectively what something like this would do to change a person’s writing style.
Anyway, I enjoyed my little experiment with Sudowrite. I might even try it again at some point. But first, for me, I think learning how to prompt images (or just learning how to use any of the image generators out there!) is going to have to take priority. ;D If you have suggestions, I would love them.
During my one hour of fun, I did add about 171 words to my old manuscript. Sadly, they were all human written as I attempted to get Sudowrite to write me something I could use. :)
My final comment is that, for me, I’m not sure it would speed up my process at all. In fact, I’m afraid it would slow it down. Maybe it would get better as time goes on. I’m just not sure. I already spend too much time thinking while I write, and being presented with things I have to read, then make choices about or decide on, just seems like it would add to the time it takes to get something out of my head and onto the page.
There will definitely be people ready and willing to accept anything Sudowrite generates for them and use it with minimal changes. The text it generated for me wasn’t bad. There was a nice flow and clarity to it, but it was bland. I don’t think that’s going to help anyone stand out.
I’ll end this here. This post turned out a lot longer than I meant it to, but I hope you got something out of it! :D