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Virtually all of my fiction writing advice focuses on art: It’s quality writing I care about, not marketing or how to make money with one’s fiction. Nonetheless, my posts still (even if indirectly) also explore marketing repercussions. Today’s topic, revolving around how to be a fiction writer in the AI era, is no exception.

At the same time, however, there is a subtle but important difference.

Whereas in other posts – see, for instance, my post on fantasy fiction – I basically argue that one should write for the art and forget about monetary concerns, when it comes to fiction writing and AI there is a different argument I will be presenting, which boils down to this:

Write well (also) because of marketing considerations.

In other words, in this brave new world where one can “write” a “narrative” (quotation marks necessary) in a matter of an hour or two, publishing an entire series in a single day, it becomes more important than ever to focus on the quality – and above all, the authenticity – of what you write.

Being a Fiction Writer in the AI Era: Using it or Being Used by It?

I’m not a person to demonize tools; almost every tool can be useful. Artificial intelligence (which is an astoundingly misleading term for large language models such as what is colloquially referred to as AI) can be a great help for a fiction author – just not in the ways most people imagine and use, as I’ve explained before.

At the same time, however, we must acknowledge that certain tools carry a greater ideological weight than others. Although, at their respective eras, tools and inventions like the radio, TV, or
computers were demonized to various extents, it’s hard not to discern the greater scope (and depth) of damage involved.

To put it bluntly, radio, TV, and computers are deep down just cables and transistors/chips; AI is just software. But their intended purposes are vastly different in terms of what they can do to one’s agency. The way radio (or even TV) could temporarily hijack your thought processes cannot be compared to the way AI can literally modify your mind.

There’s a difference between, on the one hand, using AI to spellcheck your text or generate images to help you with imagining a scene and, on the other, outsourcing your own intellect to dumb code that lacks consciousness.

Focusing on Quality

Any writer with an iota of self-respect would flatly refuse to let dumb code write on their behalf. Not only is AI-generated text literally, literally a regurgitation of average, unoriginal material, it is also – indeed for this very purpose – far from artistic.

You want art? Understand it, feel it, write it. To recall the matchless Bill Hicks, play write from your fucking heart.

But there is more.

If you care about the marketing side of things as a writer in the AI era, you can’t compete on quantity. You can’t write as fast, as massively, as similarly to existing authors (which ought to have been your goal even before AI, but I digress).

So you might as well write for yourself, for your art, for the goddamn sake of it.

A Fiction Writer in the AI Era Has no Guarantees

Well, not that you had any guarantees before, either, but once again I digress. The crux of the matter is that in an era characterized by even greater mindless repetition, imitation, quantification, and pornography (in the Castoriadian sense; sometimes in the literal as well), focusing on art might gradually become the differing factor; what might allow your writing to stand out.

Of course, the key terms here are “might” and “gradually”.

There is a high probability the world will descend into even further repetition, mediocrity, mindlessness. Artistic quality is already now, in the era of celebrated ignorance, something of a curiosity. Reading audiences have lost the criteria by which they can gauge art. This might become even worse.

Or, it might become better, and (again, gradually; perhaps “too gradually”) people thirsty for some precious humanity in an ocean of pointless pastiche and noise will seek this quality.

There are no guarantees when it comes to how others will react (if at all) to your writing. But there is one guarantee: Focusing on art, you get to keep your soul which, in this context, means you can go to sleep at night knowing you haven’t prostituted your artistic vision.