Tag Archives: Short Stories

AI As a Fiction Writing Tool

by Audrey Driscoll

As an experiment, I wrote a short story I called “The Green Flash” and then presented its basic elements to ChatGPT and asked it to produce a short story incorporating them. You can read the results in this post on my personal blog.

It took the AI a few seconds to produce its 755-word story. It took me the equivalent of 2.5 standard working days, spread over several weeks.

I did not refine the ChatGPT story in any way. But I reduced mine by a third to make it more comparable to the AI version.

I have to admit, the AI’s version of the story, which it titled “Run for Janey,” isn’t bad. It has an arc, it hangs together, it’s even mildly exciting and ends with an “aww” moment. Many would say it’s a perfectly good story.

A few observations:

  • My prompt didn’t say it was the couple’s 50th anniversary. ChatGPT added that detail independently.
  • I did not specify that either of the photographers took photos of anyone, but I guess ChatGPT knows about Chekhov’s gun.
  • ChatGPT seems to have a positive, sentimental outlook, as well as a sense of humour.
  • ChatGPT doesn’t always show rather than tell, and it doesn’t mind using adverbs or stock phrases (i.e., clichés).
  • The green flash is more dramatic in the AI version.

Based on this rather superficial test, I conclude that AI may be a useful tool for fiction writers, especially those under pressure to produce text quickly. It would probably be a good idea for those writers to work on creating effective prompts and refining their inputs.

Have I done that? No. Do I intend to? I’m not sure. I have admitted that crossing the gap from story idea to a first draft is my toughest writing challenge. It’s obvious that AI can do that easily, but I don’t know how much effort would be needed on my part to revise prompts and repeat the AI’s text generating routines before the results would match my intentions for a specific story. It could be I’d rather stick to using my aging brain.

Take the story in my “experiment.” I think “The Green Flash,” written 100% by me, is a better short story than “Run for Janey” by ChatGPT. If I had started by prompting the AI and working with the resulting text, I don’t know what sort of story I would have ended up writing, or how much time and effort would have been required to produce something I thought worthwhile.

Logically, the next experiment would be to prompt an AI with elements from one of the many story ideas in my notebook, and see if I could turn the results into a real story more efficiently than my current process.

The real question is which method of producing written fiction is more congenial and effective for any individual writer. Some may have no interest in engaging with AI; others may be motivated to try different AIs and learn how to use them effectively.

In the latter case, should the human writer credit whatever AI they use as a co-writer? Or is the AI analogous to all the mental inputs a writer has had over their lifetime, from everything they’ve ever experienced, read, and learned, all the movies they’ve watched, all the conversations overheard. Because really, our minds are repositories of all this stuff, and it’s from these wells we draw the ideas for stories and the words in which we embody them. It could be argued that AIs do the same, only more efficiently.

Writers, what do you think of artificial intelligence as a fiction writing tool? What sorts of writing projects have you used it for?

Feature image photo by Audrey Driscoll enhanced with Canva.

An Interesting Idea

When I (Mark) approached the others with the idea for this blog, I made sure of one caveat. We would not use this site to promote our own writing/publishing efforts. Other than some references to those efforts in our bios, I hope to stick to that principle.

However, I want to discuss a collection of short stories I’m reading, not to promote the book itself, but to promote the idea behind it.

Audrey Driscoll recently published Tales From the Annexe, a collection of short stories, half of which derive from her Herbert West series of novels and half of which come from somewhere else.

I’m still in the first half, the ones that come out of her Herbert West work, and I think it’s a fascinating idea. To write short stories that flesh out some of the characters and incidents from her novels. In these stories, we learn more about the characters and the tales also reveal a darker, grittier side of things.

With some of my completed fictional work, I’ve occasionally thought of going further, but I typically resist that impulse. When I’m done with the story, I want to be done with it. I want to find new characters and a new tale to tell. After reading the first few of Audrey’s stories, I’m thinking I may go back to some of my older stories and see if there are side tracks I can take some of the characters down.

I made a commitment to myself for 2021. I want to write a short story each month this year, to try to get back into the habit of short story writing. Something I don’t do much of anymore. This may be the way to open the door to those stories.

I know that there are writers out there who do a lot of prep work for their stories, including character sketches and bios for their characters, outlines and all sorts of other things. Does anybody else do what Audrey has done with Tales From The Annexe — write stand alone short stories based on the characters and settings of your longer pieces? If not, and you’re struggling like I am, maybe this is a way to re-launch.