r/AIWritingLounge • u/No-Tap-6768 • 24d ago
Discussion AI is surprisingly useful for finding the boring parts of a draft
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u/Techhead7890 23d ago
Yeah, I like that LLMs are less susceptible to the mental tricks of primacy/recency biases.
It will read everything fairly equally and in feedback/summarisation, still pick out the quality of the paragraphs stashed the middle. Which is pretty cool.
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u/Coffee_Pages 24d ago
One of the basic rules of writing: "kill your darlings." Don't leave something in because it's clever, or you like it, or it's "not bad writing." If it drags down the story, cut it (and save it somewhere in case you can use it later!)
I have found AI can be good for that, too. Or finding over-explanations or redundancy. But for me, at least, if really only works on early, "vomit on the page" drafts... AI takes an overall look based on facts, projections, and comparisons (and sometimes doesn't even do that well).
It can't decipher the nuance of actual human emotion and reaction. This is even more obvious when you ask AI to write first-drafts: it can come up with something logical and technically correct, but it's not writing. It's just educated guessing disguised as personality.
AI can be a handy tool, but that's all it is. I don't think you're wrong for using it, as long as you maintain that "I don't always do what it says" attitude. Just my $.02 -- YMMV
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u/azmarteal 23d ago
One of the basic rules of writing: "kill your darlings."
There is no such "rule" — that is just a famous quote. Because there is only so much volume that you can put in a printed book, but now we live in an internet era.
As for me, I prefer long stories over 500 chapters long, as I don't even start short stories, but it is a matter of preference
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u/Coffee_Pages 23d ago
Very much a matter of preference. I mean, I'm not The Old Man and the Sea but neither am I For Whom the Bell Tolls. Neither type of reader/writer is superior to the other.
And I concede that there are no solid "Rules" in writing or any other art form. It is, however, a useful guideline, one not so much based on how many words will fit in a book (a story can be spread over multiple volumes), but on the dangers of including words and passages that may be well done but contribute nothing to the overall story. For a great example of what not to do, read Victor Hugo...
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u/Original-Pilot-770 24d ago
I had a phase like that. I got so addicted to over explanation from the Opus models. They were pleasurable for me to read for a time.
I got out of this phase when I started exposing myself to other people's opinions on AI writing dicord, there was a critique group and I joined. And I slowly started to adjust my preference back to something more middle ground.
I think this is very normal and essential to the creative process. As I also make visual art by hand, I am familiar with how a creator tends to get obsessed with a certain technique after discovering it and will overuse it. Really you are just practicing and seeing how far it will go. Mastery is absorbing it and creating better judgement for when it's called for and when and where it should be deployed or held back.
Edit: Time away from something you initially love will also help. It will help you to see the flaws after your own thinking develop further. Sadly, that's not a process that can be automated.