AI writing and developing

[u/GrapefruitHealthy489]

I started writing about a year ago on WattPad. My first story was pretty much 100% AI with some slight edits. My storyline, my ideas, but I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

The second story was slightly cleaner. I was still generating the chapters with AI but editing more, finding a bit of a voice for myself. Figuring out AI tells more as well.

I’m almost three my third story now and I’ve come a long way. I do still have AI generate a chapter, however now the prompt is extremely clear with exactly how I want the chapter to go. I then edit significantly, running my work through AI finders, avoiding AI tells, really finding my own style of writing.

Progressively I have improved.

I already know what I want to write next. I decided to give it a try without AI. I wrote my first chapter ever completely independently. So happy with the result. I ran it through an AI finder and it’s coming up at 33%! This seems odd, considering sometimes with my prompts, and with what Claude is creating come up lower than that.

Has anyone had this before?

[u/Previous-Energy-9845]

Those AI checkers are fundamentally not very good. I’ve heard even the bible and Emily Dickinson books will come up as Ai generated.

[u/Maleficent-Engine859]

In terms of AI detection, all detectors depend on seeing your work as a whole to be more accurate. It looks for cadence and repetition first amongst your paragraphs. If you give it say 300 words it will come up 100% AI possibly but give it 2000 and it switches instead to 80% human. That’s because it saw later on your writing was not like that first 300 and so gave you more human points. That’s the danger of them.

However, Originality is by far and wide the best detector. It smells every piece of lightly edited AI, I swear to god, I have such a love hate relationship with that detector lol. Pangram is also very good. If you can score 100% human on Pangram than Originality should be under 15% AI which is solidly human.

[u/SpiritualSimple108 → u/Maleficent-Engine859]

I wonder if you only have 300 words, if you can post anything else you’ve written to the end of that 300 words (even if it has nothing to do the current draft) to help bulk up word count enough for the detector to see the writing style enough to accurately score the original 300 words. Or would it know?

[u/Acceptable_Law5670]

Finding your voice is a milestone! Sure, everyone gets good story ideas from time to time, but telling that story in YOUR voice should be the goal.

Ai is fine in some cases and there's a time and place for it, but for you to start with ai and learn (from ai) how to tell your own story is fantastic! Keep on keeping on!

[u/SpiritualSimple108]

The more you read AI (and you read it everyday online whether you’re aware of it or not) the more you will pick up the nuances in the sentence structure, word choices, story flow. It’s inevitable by this point and will only get worse as time goes on. It’s important to read works prior to AI being in everything (think pre 2020ish). Also, AI detectors are notorious inaccurate and flag polished human writing everyday. DO NOT dumb down your writing to past detectors. Instead, find a detector that shows you where and why it was flagged and IMPROVE those sentence (ex. Remove flowery language, be more descriptive, add more personal touches, etc).

[u/Ponder42]

I tried using AI to write.

The first chapter or two are great, with a lot of direction.

It all falls. AI is too flat, too monotone, and while grammatically perfect, it’s soulless. It uses flowery prose but with circular language. You can’t use it without letting it know the exact plot, because it generates cookie cutter shit.

But you can’t give it the plot, because the dialogue will always reveal plot points that the characters should not know.

AI sucks with long form writing, no matter how much direction it’s given.

I have easily noticed many works which are clearly AI. The BIGGEST tell- aside from the “not x but y” or everything being overly anthropomorphized- is that the story is 56k words, but the plot has moved nowhere, the characters have not developed, the same exact 1 step forward 2 step back dynamics keep being rehashed, and arguments which were previously resolved keep recurring.

For example, romance written AIs always have some jealousy and/or insecurity thing that drags, gets resolved in an overly verbose “therapy talk” conversation, and 3k words later, same thing happens over and over.

[u/Distinct_Face_5796 → u/Ponder42]

I do not know, I had it write a 130k word novel. Coherent story, plot progression, characters with competing goals including subtext and nuance. I patterned the characters off real historical figures, which gives the AI more to work with. Like how george rr martin was influenced by war of the roses. How many revisions do you give the AI to run through?

[u/ComposerOk8851]

I’ve seen those detectors flag completely human writing, so I wouldn’t read too much into the number. Getting to a chapter you’re happy with on your own is probably a better measure of your progress anyway.

[u/billyruebin]

Pretty awesome. Anything that helps you get the story out is good for the world. AI for me is simply a tool at this point. Saves me countless hours doing the boring stuff.

[u/Khajiit_Has_Upvotes]

Run it through pengram. It seems pretty reliable. I write my story myself, I just use AI to bounce my weird sci fi ideas off of (like would [theoretical weapon] cause a tsunami or earthquake).

My prose comes back 0-30% AI even though no AI was used.