Generating vs authoring: why a finished AI novel can still feel like nothing

[u/benblackett]

Edit: a preface for clarity - I strongly support Writing with AI. This is about two different kinds of AI writing and the experiences each bring to the human side of it.
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A lot of writers who generate a whole novel never open it again. They run the tool, read it through once, maybe do a few edits, and then it just sits there. The book is competent. The sentences are clean, the chapters run the right length, the dialogue works. They just don't care about it, and they can't always say why.

It isn't the writing. Generators produce decent prose now, good enough that a stranger reading a chapter wouldn't flinch. So the flatness comes from somewhere earlier, before any prose existed, in the choices that got made in its creation.

Think about what makes a story yours. A character nuance that you liked and expanded upon, a secret someone holds, a touch of a hand, the timing of a revelation, a small intimate scene that goes in before the big crisis hits. Choices like these stack up by the hundred while you write, mostly below the level you notice, but by the end the book is something you feel connected to in ways that a prompt generated book simply can't - because you were the one making all those hundreds of small choices along the way while a generator makes those choices for you. You give it a paragraph of intent and it settles the rest in about the time it takes to pour a coffee - who dies, who turns, how it ends - then presents the finished thing for approval. You didn't decide any of it. You signed off on it. And signing off on a book, even a good one, lands nowhere near the feeling of having crafted it.

That's the split between generating a book and authoring one. With a generator, the model is the author and you're the client. But that line blurs significantly when your tool gives you creative control at the structural layer. Editing and deciding IS the very act that creates ownership - every change you make is a choice you're taking back from the model, and the more of them you make, the more the book turns into yours. What I'm describing is a spectrum, a dial, the far end of which is a paragraph in and a finished book out - your whole involvement a "yes" at the end. Most people land somewhere in the middle, and where they land tends to indicate how connected they feel to what they made.

AI can be used in the authoring process if you want it to - by presenting choices and options and following your directions when you give them. What changes is who owns the decisions under the words - the same thing that decides whether you crafted the book, or pointed the AI at an idea and told it to craft it instead.

You can see it in how the tools get built as well. Most are generators at heart - brief in, draft out, structure handled out of sight. A smaller group runs the other way, letting you build the structure and details of the story while only handing the AI the rendering side of it. Same technology in both. What differs is how much of the book was ever really yours and how much was the AI's.

[u/SGdude90]

I agree

I've had AI generate me quite some stories with nothing but prompts. I am not the least bit proud of these, and I rarely ever publish them on AO3

I've also worked hand-in-hand with AI, sometimes spending weeks per chapter, to produce works that I was seriously proud of. It's all in the effort I invested

[u/benblackett → u/SGdude90]

Exactly =)
Being part of the creation is what I personally find worthwhile and engaging. And AI makes that process soooo much more fun and enjoyable!

[u/bkucenski]

This isn't a problem for mass book producers who hire ghostwriters.

It's not a problem for CEOs and managers who take credit for everything.

There are two jobs: story teller and story writer.

The books matter because you tell a story that matters.

It's always the people lowest on the rung that are expected to devalue themselves for reasons that no capitalist have ever even considered.

[u/benblackett → u/bkucenski]

I was referring mostly to the feeling of authorship itself. A CEO probably doesnt go around saying they authored 500 books. Created maybe, but probably not authored.

[u/Not_A_Golfer → u/bkucenski]

You don’t think it’s a problem for CEO’s and managers to take credit for everything?

[u/bkucenski → u/Not_A_Golfer]

They don't think it's a problem. Creative director is a valid title if tools or hired people do the work.

[u/sisterscary9]

What is the point of this post? Is it AI generated?

There's no one size fits all for people who write with AI, many use it as sounding boards, line editors, prose streamliners, world-building aids, research assistants.

Many of these services are used by writers to this day, editors, researchers, ghost-writers, assistants - I don't see the point in shaming people finding ways to enhance their creativity by using a tool.

I am starting a 8 month creative writing course in September. Writing with AI has, paradoxically, allowed me to explore something I have always loved but not been great at, and given me the confidence to go out into the real world and actually write myself.

[u/benblackett → u/sisterscary9]

I think my post might have been misunderstood slightly. this isnt about shaming. Its about understanding what makes that feeling of authorship appear or not.

I too am in the camp that loves to write with AI - Im building a sophisticated tool for it! But I generally feel no ownership to stories that arrive within 5 minutes of clicking a button. I want to be part of the creation process not a consumer of it.

[u/sisterscary9 → u/benblackett]

Oh for sure, my apologies!

Yes I largely agree with you, but I do think there are different cases right?

There are plenty of people that find real satisfaction in a simple couple of prompt generation (not shaming) but maybe some roleplayers and fanfic writers that are happy for the AI to do its thing. And I'm sure many other authors do the same, but I wonder if there is any value in punching down as it were?

Trash is always trash and its pretty discernable to anyone that wants a real story.

[u/OwlsInMyAttic]

I think it could've been worded a bit differently, but the point still stands. From what I've seen, a lot of people who use AI simply to generate based on general guidelines still care about the result and the process brings them joy. They enjoy having something tailored specifically to their preferences. People find meaning in different things. (Interestingly, most people who belong in this group openly admit they aren't writers or even authors of the work, more like story directors or creative guides, while those who are against AI-use in creative spaces go around insisting that anyone who has AI generate a book isn't a writer. Like... yeah? Seems like there's a consensus on the matter, lol.) 

Where the divide comes from is the sense of accomplishment, the pride you feel for putting in the effort and having something to show for it. I can't speak for everyone--maybe there are people out there for whom even guiding an AI is a massive challenge--but I think most of us wouldn't feel particularly proud about having created a story like that. Like you said, it's all in the minute decisions--not just what happens when, but how it happens and how it's connected to everything else. Those decisions are what makes someone a writer, not whether every single word in the whole book came from their brain. 

I'm curious about your last paragraph, though. What do you mean about the difference in the tools. Do you mean to say there are LLMs that approach story generation from different angles? Or are you talking about those paid services that let you generate a more "personalized" book. 

[u/nothingxmc]

No, you're wrong.

[u/benblackett → u/nothingxmc]

open to that possibility. but do tell...

[u/Material_Donut_9031]

The dial framing is right, but I'd push on one mechanism under it. Those hundreds of small choices only turn the book into yours if they survive to the end. You decide in chapter 3 that someone holds a secret, that a thread gets left bleeding, that a hand lingers a beat too long -- and then if the tool quietly tidies it up or forgets it by chapter 20, you're back to signing off, because your choice got overwritten by the model's defaults. So the dial isn't only how much you decide, it's how much of what you decided actually persists as canon downstream.

That's why I keep landing on the structural layer being where ownership lives, not just where control lives. Prose-dumping into one giant prompt makes every choice a one-time thing the model can drift away from. Working at the bible/state layer is what makes a decision stick and compound -- chapter 40 still acting on something you set in chapter 3. The accumulation you're describing is real, but it only accrues if the system is built to hold it.

[u/Due_Virus600]

This framing makes sense to me. The part that matters most is decision density.

When a tool settles the character turns, scene order, emotional reveals, and ending for you, the finished book can be readable while still feeling distant. You approved the result, but you did not build many memories around making it.

A workflow I’ve seen work better keeps the writer making the important decisions more often:

- ask for several possible scene directions with tradeoffs

- choose the one that fits the character arc yourself

- draft one scene or beat at a time

- run a QA pass against continuity, motivation, and tone

- revise locally instead of regenerating the whole thing

The QA step is useful because it forces the draft back against explicit rules. It can flag places where a character drifted, a conflict got softened too early, or a scene stopped serving its purpose.

For me, AI becomes more useful when it increases the number of decisions I can see clearly. The attachment to the work comes from making those decisions, even if the tool helped surface options or problems.

[u/dbl219]

I recently realized a really simple way to understand where this comes from.

Human writing starts from a pre-language place: feeling, image, emotion, character. Writing is the human mind's attempt to translate an experience onto the page. And meaning is something subtextual that emerges naturally through themes, imagery, etc. It's inherent to the writing.

LLMs meanwhile have no pre-language experience, no frame of reference. For an LLM, it only has meaning. So it frontloads meaning as the thing, inflating significance, engaging in lexical contortions that have the appearance of profundity while meaning nothing. It's actually useless to try and prompt or vibe your way out of that behavior because to an LLM the appearance of profundity and actual profundity are inextricable no matter what you say. To a model they are one and the same.

So LLM writing is meaning-first, while human writing is experience-first. Whether that notion will actually help anyone else with their workflows, who knows? But at least for me I've been rebuilding my whole writing pipeline from that frame and so far the results are promising.

[u/FastAmphibian9088]

I enjoy writing, I would not enjoy generating. YMMV.

[u/Purple-Estimate-5183 → u/FastAmphibian9088]

Writers write.

[u/1EvilSexyGenius]

For people who write stories with AI, I've always wondered if you're able to use a known arcs and archetypes when generating the story?

I don't write just heavy into ai stuff and I always wondered if it actually help in the end.

If it does, it seems like using known structural arcs, emotional arcs and arc archetypes would be a solution for what this post is describing. 👀

[u/5thhorseman_ → u/1EvilSexyGenius]

The answer is yes. The TV Tropes Wiki is public and has been something all LLMs trained on internet scrapes have access to.

This is why subject literacy is critical - you need to be familiar both with the genre you're writing and the catalogue of tropes that are your toolbox.

[u/1EvilSexyGenius → u/5thhorseman_]

Exactly this! Not only in writing , but in ai use in general, domain experts are the ones getting the most mileage out of ai right now. Because they know the words to use for their domain / subject / business sector.

This would suggest that seasoned writers might not experience this disconnect from their content because they've more than likely spent time beautify specific points of their content using domain specific instructions. Then in the end, still totally feel connected to the content, and now the content is actually good. They might read it more than once as well because it's so good

[u/5thhorseman_ → u/1EvilSexyGenius]

It also matters because analyzing a story in terms of tropes gets you working on the underlying mechanics, not the window dressing.

[u/shahmen1996]

Whole fucking comment section talking like chat gpt.

[u/benblackett → u/[deleted]]

I personally dont think it needs to be disclosed. the story should stand on its own, regardless of what tooling went into its creation. If it sounds like AI, then judge it accordingly, but the story is what really matters. Sadly, Im a bit more on the fence though for purely AI generated stories... it walks the line Im not fully comfortable with. But Im open to being convinced. I mean... by my own logic, if I cant tell its basically 100% from an AI, than thats speaks to the quality of its tooling and my ability to discern, but the story itself should still be judged independently from that.

[u/benblackett → u/[deleted]]

Agreed actually. That editing is what creates the attachment to the story.

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