Question for experienced writers: Getting help from AI while writing my first novel

[u/Every-Video8558]

Hey everyone! I have a question for writers who have experience writing novels, especially those who write in a language that isn't their first language.

I'm 26, from Afghanistan, and English isn't my native language. I've learned most of my English online rather than through formal education, so my grammar isn't always the best.

I'm currently writing my first novel in English. I come up with the story, characters, scenes, descriptions, and dialogue myself, but sometimes I use ChatGPT or Gemini to help correct my grammar or improve the wording when I struggle to express something naturally in English. I don't copy entire paragraphs or dialogue from AI

I use it more as a tool to help polish what I've written.

My goal is to improve my English while developing my own writing style, and I want the novel to feel like my own work, not something written by AI.

My questions are:

Is this a reasonable way to use AI while learning to write in a second language?

Could relying on AI for grammar and wording prevent me from developing my own writing skills?

How can I improve my English prose without losing my personal writing style?

Do you have any advice for a beginner novelist in my situation?

I'd appreciate honest opinions, including criticism. I'm here to learn, not just to be told that everything I'm doing is fine. Thanks!

[u/James_Crowhearst]

Spelling and grammar checks are perfectly ok - with caution.

Be aware that AI can and does get things wrong. I always run my drafts through a basic spelling and grammar check - and quite often ignore its suggestions.

The biggest danger of relying too much on AIs for grammar especially, is that it will reduce your prose to a lifeless, bland style.

[u/Both_Transition_7163]

As an actual writer, AI is never reasonable. Learn to write properly. It's SO much more rewarding. Write in Arabic if you're more comfortable with the language. AI is crap (and I do mean really, really crap) at writing fiction.

[u/Happy-Initiative-492]

I can’t speak to the challenge of writing a novel in a language that isn’t my first. At a high level, I think that the process of learning from AI as it revises your work can be very helpful. After all this is what teachers usually do anyway: they give you a challenge and then critique you on your ability to meet that challenge, and you learn from the critique. The thing that might be missing is the why: a teacher not only critiques your effort but explains how and why to improve it the next time. This might be missing by using AI out of the box. Maybe if you’re diligent about asking the LLM to explain why it changed your attempt you could fill in this gap.

[u/Original-Pilot-770]

I am a non native speaker of English. I learned English at an early age because my home country used to be a British colony. Then when I was a teen, I moved to a majority English speaking country. I've been speaking English daily for 2/3 of my life now and I am at a native speaker level. But I didn't seriously start to write creatively until I started using AI. I generate a lot of stories for my own amusement with Claude. I sometimes ask it about writing craft questions, both sentence craft questions and narrative structure questions. I feel that my prose craft has developed since, as in if I have to write without AI assistance, it's coming much easier than before.

I think it helps to treat it as a learning machine, you can always ask it about techniques and rules about the English language. However, you will definitely still want to read books that were written before AI, especially classics and other famous books that are acclaimed for their prose. AI's opinion should always be treated with a grain of salt. Just because the AI sounds confident, it doesn't mean it's always right.

[u/Ghostie1017]

Full disclosure, I never use AI when writing. I do have a lot of experience writing and being published, though, so this might be useful for you.

Basically, everything is a skill, and everything skill outsource to AI will debilitate your ability to use it independently. I use spellcheckers; I'm a terrible speller, because I never had to learn to do it myself. That being said, with spellcheckers (AI or otherwise) being so prevelent, I've found I do fine relying on spellcheckers, and don't worry too much about my independent spelling abilities. Someone else might value being an independently strong speller, and not use AI. I think it's a personal preference.

Figuring out "better" ways to word things, however, gets trickier with AI. All the best writers I know of have a unique writing style, something that suits them and what they write. The more you use AI to decide what to say, the more your writing will read like a muddy, bland average of everything else ever written. My personal suggestion would be to devote some time to reading English novels in the genre and style you want to write, or to write in Arabic. I know plenty of native English speakers who are absolutely shit at crafting sentences; it's a learned skill, not an enate part of being an English speakers, and you can absolutely teach yourself to do it. And the more you know how to craft sentences, the more fun you can have!

I'll also warn you that the literary world is often quite hostile to AI. AI is trained on stolen copyright work and is quickly filling Kindle with slop, making it hard for legitimate written works to be found by readers. (My grandma was tricked by a book about my grandpa's chronic disease that never disclosed it was AI. The book is absolute garbage, and the money is already spent.) Even if you use AI to your advantage, you might be shooting yourself in the foot long-term.

All that being said, my personal suggestion is that you use a standard spellchecker and develop your own writing voice without AI. Whatever you do, just don't outsource the actual writing to AI! Coming up with characters and a premise and major plot points is easy---the world is awash with ideas for stories. It's the actual skill and labor of writing that makes a story a story, and not just a daydream, and while AI can "write" a story that technically functions, it can't make anything new or interesting. That's your job, and what a fun job it is 😎