A lot of digital ink has been spilled in regards to whether, why or why not, and how artificial intelligence fits into our daily lives. Others have also written about the ethical concerns of AI, and we highly encourage you to do your own research, so you can be an informed user.
AI has made leaps and bounds in improvements in recent years, and the technology is more accessible now than ever before. If you’re interested in learning how AI could change your writing and your writing habits, read on!
Idea Generation
Have you ever gone looking for a specific kind of writing prompt and come up short? AI can generate writing prompts based on the genre, characters, and plot you input. You can use these ideas as a jumping-off point for your story, or take them in a different direction.
The following suggested prompt will give you more broad ideas to base a book or story on, the more specific you can be in your prompt, the better results you’ll get.
Suggested Prompt: Give me twenty specific writing prompts for a [sub-genre] [length of work] about [a description of your main character, a setting, or the tropes you want to employ].
Planning
Scheduling Writing Time
We lead busy lives, and I don’t know a single writer who hasn’t lamented how difficult it can be to find the time to get the book done.
When modern life’s demands cram your days seemingly too full to pick up the pen, let AI tell you the smartest time to write in a given day. Even better, if your weeks mostly look the same, you can feed your schedule to the AI and have it recommend the best times to set up a writing habit. Consistency is key, as we talk about all the time in The Write Gym!
Suggested Prompt: Act as though you are my productivity expert. I wake up at [time] and go to bed at [time], and I have the following obligations in a given week: [list your schedule, and be as thorough as possible, including mealtimes]. Please list all of the available times I have for integrating a writing habit into my week without changing the times I get up or go to bed. Please allow for time dedicated to filling my creative well.
Calculating Word Counts
I often fall victim to thinking I can write thousands of words just because I managed to do it one time. While 4thewords and being in The Write Gym has helped me tremendously in recognizing what I should and shouldn’t expect of myself, I can’t help being optimistic!
When it comes to setting realistic goals, AI can help. By first setting a timer to go off the next handful of times you sit down to write (I like to put two backslashes down first, so I know where I started), you can get an estimate of how many words you can comfortably write in a short burst. Feed this information into an AI along with the schedule you just figured out above, and you’ll be surprised at what you could achieve if all goes well!
Need to hit a deadline? Tell the AI what your desired word count is, when you need to be finished, and about how many words you can write per hour. It will spit out a schedule, so you can have a better idea of what kind of pressure you’re under.
Suggested Prompt: Act as though you are my productivity expert. I wake up at [time] and go to bed at [time], and I have the following obligations in a given week: [list your schedule, and be as thorough as possible, including mealtimes]. Given these parameters and the fact that I write [WPH] words an hour, what is a realistic goal for the number of words I can write in a week? I’d like to write [number of days a week, or list your preferred writing days]. Please allow for time dedicated to filling my creative well.
Word Choice
How many times do you open up a new tab to ask Google for a synonym, antonym, or the word that’s not quite like the word you’re thinking of, but it’s kinda close…
This is where AI can step in as a better substitute for a Google search. It can suggest alternatives to words you’re stuck on, and even help you fill in a blank in a sentence!
Suggested Prompt: Please give me ten suggestions for replacing ____ in the following sentence: [Write your sentence with a blank for the AI to fill in.]
Research
Even if a writer exclusively writes what they know, questions will arise. Sometimes, these questions are so vast or require such niche knowledge that the usual methods of looking things up fall short. But have you tried asking AI?
A word of warning: I can’t recommend that you use this technique as a complete substitute for doing your own research. AI also can’t replace the testimony of an expert, an eyewitness, or someone who has personally lived through a particular situation. AI can also pull from outdated or simply incorrect sources, so use this technique with extreme caution, and always fact-check. But this can at least give you a direction to start your research.
Suggested Prompt: [Ask your question like you would ask a human.] Explain it to me like I’m nine years old.
