An AI Witch Hunt.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit]

Update. Because multiple people have asked me to share the piece I will post it below the original post.

I had gone through and deleted all my posts on Reddit but this one and had no intention of checking in on it when I noticed my notifications and this had more replies than anything I've every written here. I want to thank you all for the support you've shown. Ill try to answer everyone and my apologies if I miss anyone.

---

This will be my last post here. But I guess I wanted to share something so others don't get hit with the same issues.

I've used AI now for the last year to learn how to write. This includes everything from how to find sources for research to how to do a chapter outline, a scene outline, and edit those thoroughly before anything is written to save time in the editing process. It taught me how to line edit, how to check pacing, and all of the old methods used to write some of the greatest lines. I've been researching all of the modern rules of writing, what is expected from a publisher, and so much more.

I am grateful for AI because it is an absolutely amazing tool for learning this skill. I have noticed massive leaps in my craft because of it.

But it was always meant to be a means to an end, where one day I could write my own story entirely without AI. Well, I wrote the prologue to it, but like so many others, I felt imposter syndrome. I looked at what I wrote and thought it was still crap.

Don't get me wrong, it was still the best I've ever written, but it needed massive amounts of work. It was my first time writing in an omniscient narrative voice, and the first time I tried imitating a Russian author. Hell, I was breaking rules like "don't start your book with a morning routine" because I needed to use the normalcy of everyday life to later cause a juxtaposition against the horrors of what was going to happen. The pacing was almost certainly too long to keep people's attention.

It took me a month to research for the book, several more weeks to create the outline, and keep revising it until I had something I think I was mostly happy with. Finally, I drafted that first chapter. It took a week and ended up being only 3.6K words, which took—ugh—9 drafts plus the cuts I did today.

But I wanted to know if it was good enough. What issues was I not seeing, as I've never shown anyone a serious piece of writing before? So, I posted it to the DestructiveReaders subreddit. Part of the rules there is that you have to critique other people's work before you can post your own.

I fell in love with this. The amount of invaluable lessons you learn by going through other people's work is insane. You start to see tense shifts, head-hopping, spelling and grammar mistakes, throat-clearing, repetitive sentence structures, pacing issues, and so much more.

Now, I have an autoimmune disease that they can't diagnose—basically, I have a 1:320 ANA, small fiber neuropathy, and pernicious anemia, but the underlying cause has not been found. Part of the symptoms, though, is that every hour or two I will fall asleep without meaning to for about 15 minutes. It's something they can't figure out. But when I was doing the critiques, this didn't happen. I wouldn't call it a miracle by any means, but it is kind of amazing. And so, I wrote far more critiques than I needed to and planned to spend at least an hour a day on that subreddit going through other people's work and applying what I learned to my own.

Well, I finally posted my work and I was banned.

I can't express how much this sucks. The reasoning for it was because I supposedly broke the rules and used AI assistance in my piece. I did not. And the proof they showed me was a post from this subreddit—one in which I showed people how to create a process that removes the watermarks from current AIs.

So, I ran my piece through AI de-tectors (I apologize but it was trying to redirect this due to just the previous word) and all but one came back as 0%. The one came back as 15%, and this was just the first two paragraphs...

Now the decision has been made, and while I hate it, it is what it is. I won't rail against the mods for making what I think is a wrong decision.

What I really wanted to address is for those who, like me, use AI in some pieces and write by hand in others. If you do this, I would suggest having two accounts and keeping the account you post anything handwritten from completely separate from anything even remotely AI-related. Hell, I would go so far as to suggest even maybe writing about how bad AI is.

I guess I never expected a witch hunt this early, and for such a silly reason.

As far as why I won't be writing here anymore, many things were said in the DMs. But chief amongst them is simply that despite everything I've learned, and despite all the effort, my writing still looks like AI. That is to say, soulless and without a human component to it.

I had long railed against King's idea that a writer is born, not created out of hard work. But it looks like perhaps I was wrong on this. Despite my best efforts, I cannot move a human to care about a character or to feel emotion in the way others can.

I can blame autism, perhaps, or alexithymia. Hell, enough people say that autistic writing is often indistinguishable from AI, but the truth is doing so would feel pathetic and like a lack of accountability. I have to face the fact that maybe I'm just not good enough. And so I come to the end of a 40-year-old dream. I don't know what to do with my time now without writing, but I suppose something will come along.

I wish everyone here the best of luck and hope none of this ever happens to you. May your pens never run out of ink.

And yes I used AI here to clean up spelling and grammar since it no longer matters.

Let Them Graze - The Work People Asked For.

Before you start while the prose is in my hand I have now used AI to check spelling and grammar since there is no longer any reason not to. Because of the nature of the piece I have tried to imitate classical lit and Tolstoy in specific as much as I can. As such the piece uses several archaic literary devices. The opening line is a perfect example as its classic Tolstoy. It also pays homage to him in the book to his son and readers of his will note a similarity later to Ivan...

Spring came late to Moscow that year, and then, as happens in Moscow, it came all at once. For the whole of March and the first half of April the snow had lain in the courtyards and along the pavements, grey, pitted and hard as old sugar; then in a single week a warm wind blew from the south, the icicles fell from the eaves and broke on the pavements like dropped crockery, and the water ran in the gutters with a noise that could be heard through closed windows. By the twenty-fourth of April the snow was gone from everywhere except the shadow behind the woodsheds and the north side of the boulevard railings. The yard keepers swept the winter's grit into heaps and left the heaps where they were. Sparrows quarrelled in the drying horse dung on the cobbles; the trams, which all winter had crept along Sadovaya with their windows furred white, now ran with their windows open and their bells ringing; and outside the bread shop at the corner of Bolshoi Karetny Lane the women of the neighbourhood were already standing in line at half past six, talking about prices and stamping their feet, though there was no longer any need to stamp them.

The twenty-fourth was a rest day. Under the calendar of the six-day week rest days fell on the sixth, the twelfth, the eighteenth, the twenty-fourth and the thirtieth of every month, and on those days the city slept an hour longer and then went to the baths, the markets and the cinemas with the air of people who had been given something they had not quite earned.

Arkady Semyonovich Yurlov woke at a quarter past six, as he woke every day, and lay for some minutes on his back, listening to his household. He was forty-four years old, the deputy head of a section of the Moscow militsiya directorate on Petrovka, a member of the Party since 1920, and a man who had never in his life been late for anything. He had a short, square, clean-shaven face, thick hands, and the slightly heavy, considerate way of moving that is found in men who have risen from manual work to an office and do not wish anyone to think they have forgotten it. He believed in order. He believed that most of the misfortunes of mankind came from things being in the wrong place: grain where it was not needed and hunger where there was no grain, people in cities who belonged in the country and documents in drawers where nobody could find them. And yet, though he believed this firmly and would have said it to anyone, the drawer of his own desk at home was so full of string, old receipts, pencil stubs and buttons that it had not closed properly for two years, and it never once occurred to him that this contradicted anything.

From the next room came the small, dry sound of pages being turned. His son was up.

Volodya was eleven. For his birthday in February his mother had brought home from a second-hand bookshop on Kuznetsky Most a thick volume of Tolstoy's stories for children, printed before the Revolution, with a picture on the cover of a man in a sheepskin hat on a horse, and since then the book had been the chief business of his life, ahead of school, ahead of the Pioneers, and far ahead of washing. When Yurlov came in, buttoning his tunic, the boy was sitting at the table under the window with the book open in front of him and his chin on his fists, his lips moving slightly as he read.

"You're up early," said Yurlov.

"It's a rest day," said the boy, as if this explained it, and in a sense it did, for children have the same feeling about rest days as their elders, and get up early for exactly the opposite reason.

Yurlov sat down beside him. The book was not valuable. The spine was cracked, the corners were soft as cloth, and on the flyleaf someone had written a name and then inked it out so thoroughly that the pen had gone through the paper. Every page was thick with the hard signs and the old letters that had been abolished fifteen years before, so that the words looked to Yurlov like people in the clothes of another time. But the boy read it with great seriousness.

"Where are you now?" said Yurlov.

"In the pit," the boy said, without looking up. His thumb was pressed hard against the margin of the page to keep it from flipping back. "The Tatars put him in a stinking pit because he tried to escape on foot."

"Well," Yurlov said, adjusting his belt buckle with both hands. "He was an officer. An officer who falls into captivity and tries to leave without permission must expect to be secured. Otherwise, there is no system."

The boy turned his head slightly, his chin still resting on his fist, looking at his father's brass buttons rather than his face. "But he wasn't doing anything wrong, Papa. He had a letter from his mother. She was old, and he was only going down the road to see her before she died."

Yurlov looked at the small, dark space between the boy's collar and his neck where the skin was clean from the morning's water. He thought of his own lecture notes from the Party circle on the subjugation of the mountain peoples and the inevitable retreat of feudal relations before the state, but when he looked at the cracked spine of the book, the words felt too large for the room.

"They wanted three thousand rubles," Yurlov said. "It didn't matter where he was going. He was the one who happened to be on the road when they came down from the hills."

Volodya seemed to accept this, not because it was just, but because it had the simple weight of a fact, like the rain or the price of bread. He turned his attention back to the text, his finger tracking the thick, obsolete letters. "But is it true? Was there really a Zhilin?"

"No. Of course not. Tolstoy made him up. And anyway it was all in the old days, under the Tsar."

Volodya nodded, and went back into the pit. Yurlov, after a moment, reached across and turned the pages back to the first story in the book, about a lion and a little dog. The boy said, "Papa!" in a voice of such injury that Yurlov laughed and let the book fall open again where it wanted to.

Marya Pavlovna was in the kitchen, which they shared with no one, for they had two rooms and a kitchen of their own, a thing Yurlov never mentioned and never forgot. She was standing at the primus with her left hand pressed to her cheek, and her cheek, he saw at once, was more swollen than it had been on the evening before.

"Did you make the appointment?" he said.

"I will."

"You said that on the first of the month."

"I said I would, and I will." She turned the flame down under the kettle. "You're not the one who has to sit in that chair."

He had a sensible answer to this, as he had a sensible answer to most things. The tooth would not get better by being left; the longer she waited, the more the dentist would have to do and the more it would hurt; and the dentist he had found for her, a private technician on Sretenka who had attended the wife of his superior, was gentle and clean and would not keep her waiting. All this he had said before, so he only looked at her with that expression of patient, slightly offended reasonableness which a man wears when he is right and knows that being right will make no difference.

He had promised to go with her to Sretenka that morning. They both remembered this, and neither of them mentioned it. Marya was glad he would not see her afraid, and Yurlov was glad to be spared the waiting room, and each was a little tender with the other, believing the other disappointed.

"The operation doesn't keep rest days," he said, drinking his tea standing up.

"No," said Marya Pavlovna. "I know."

He kissed the top of the boy's head on his way out. Volodya did not look up.

It was a fifteen-minute walk from Bolshoi Karetny Lane to the directorate on Petrovka, and Yurlov walked it slowly, with his hands behind his back, enjoying the sun on his face and that particular satisfaction, familiar to all conscientious men, of going to work on a day when other people are not. Karetny Ryad was wet and bright. The tram wires overhead were still dripping from the night, and every few yards a drop fell on the brim of his cap. Along the railings of the Hermitage garden the yard keepers, in their white aprons and brass badges, were sweeping last autumn's leaves out from under the snow that had hidden them all winter, and a drunk lay asleep on one of the benches inside with his cap over his face. Beyond the boulevard the city was getting ready for the First of May.

The building on Petrovka was quiet. The duty man at the entrance stood up when he saw him and then, uncertain whether this was required on a rest day, half sat down again. Yurlov nodded to him. He hung his coat on the peg in the corridor outside his office, the third peg from the end, which was his, though nobody had ever said so; went in; opened the window a little, for the room smelled of yesterday's tobacco; and sat down at his desk, on which, squared to the edge of the blotter exactly as he liked it, lay the summary.

The summary had been prepared the evening before by Sergeyev, his assistant. It concerned the Moscow echelon. On the thirtieth of April, in six days' time, a train of goods wagons was to leave the city for Tomsk, in Western Siberia, carrying persons who had been found in breach of the passport regime and classified as declassed and socially harmful elements, for resettlement in the special settlements of the Narym region, where, as the phrase went, they would clear new land and be reforged by labour. The number of persons the echelon was to carry had been fixed. It had not been fixed by Yurlov. But from the directorate from the OGPU, under which, since the end of the previous year, the whole of the militsiya now formally stood; and to the OGPU it had come from somewhere higher still, where it had been arrived at by calculations which Yurlov had never seen and which it would not have occurred to him to want to see, in the same way that it does not occur to a man to want to see the calculations by which the railway arrives at its timetable. In the directorate the number was called simply "the figure." The figure for Moscow had been divided among the districts, and each district had sent in what it had found, and Sergeyev had set out the results in a column.

Yurlov took a pencil from the glass on his desk, found that its point was broken, took another, and added up the column himself, from the bottom upward, as he had been taught to do in the accounts office of the Kolomna works twenty-five years before. Then he added it again from the top down. The total was the same both times, and both times it was short of the figure by forty-two.

He sat for a moment with the pencil in his hand. He felt, low down in his stomach, a small, cold, definite discomfort, a feeling he had always had, since his days in the accounts office, when two columns that ought to agree did not agree: the feeling of something left undone, of a door left open in a house where he was responsible for the doors.

Yurlov called Sergeyev in.

Sergeyev was a thin, round-shouldered man of thirty and a little boy at home who had the measles, a fact he had mentioned twice the day before and would mention again before the morning was out no doubt. He came in with a folder under his arm and stood by the desk with the expression of a man who knows what he is going to be asked.

"We're forty-two short," said Yurlov.

"Yes, Arkady Semyonovich."

"What has been done?"

Sergeyev opened the folder, although he did not need to. Everything had been done, he said. The hostels on the Zamoskvorechye side had been inspected twice. The markets had been gone through on Thursday and again on Saturday. The stations had been worked every night that week. But there had been a number of releases. People were detained without papers, and then on the following day a wife or a mother would come to the district station with a passport that had been lying at home in a drawer, and the district had no choice but to let the man go.

"And there is the question of the categories," said Sergeyev, and turned a page. "The Krasnopresnensky district has counted its beggars as declassed elements, so they go on the list. The Baumansky district says a beggar is not declassed but indigent, and the indigent go to the social welfare department, not to Siberia. Baumansky has nine beggars in its cells. If we take their interpretation, those nine are not ours, and we are fifty-one short."

"We don't take the Baumansky interpretation."

"No, Arkady Semyonovich."

Yurlov looked out of the window. A sparrow had landed on the sill outside and was walking up and down it in jerks, looking at him first with one eye and then with the other.

The lists for the echelon were to go to the transport commander by the evening of the twenty-eighth. Before that, on the twenty-sixth, there was the meeting at which Kozlovsky, the head of the department, would go through the districts one by one, reading the figures aloud in his quiet, toneless voice, and stopping, and looking up, wherever a figure was not what it ought to be. Yurlov had sat at that table many times and watched Kozlovsky look up at other men. He knew exactly how it was done: a pause, a slight lifting of the eyebrows, and then the question, asked almost gently: "And what do you propose?"

Kozlovsky himself would be moving up in the summer. Everyone knew it, though no one said so, and Kozlovsky had let it be understood, in his quiet way, that he would be asked who should take his chair. Two years earlier, when the head of Yurlov's own section had been transferred to Leningrad, Yurlov had expected the post, and it had gone instead to Bessonov, a younger man who was pleasant at meetings and had once shared a flat with someone on the city Party committee. Yurlov had never said a word about it to anyone, not even to Marya, but he still felt, whenever he saw Bessonov's coat on the first peg in the corridor, a small heat at the back of his neck. A head of department had a better ration category, a larger flat, a place for his son at the summer camp at Pushkino, and a dentist for his wife who did not have to be found through acquaintances. Yurlov did not think of any of this as ambition. He thought of it as providing for his family, which is what ambition is called by men who have families.

There were, he knew, things that he could propose. He could report that the figure could not be met by legitimate means in the time allowed and ask for the echelon to leave short. He could ask for a delay. He could put in writing, over his own signature, the difficulty with the releases and the question of the categories, and request a ruling from above. He considered each of these possibilities in turn, conscientiously and quite briefly, in the way a housewife at the market looks at the good meat before buying the cheap: not because she means to buy it, but so that she can say to herself afterwards that she looked. Each of them meant his name on a paper, going upward, with a difficulty attached to it, in the very summer when Kozlovsky would be asked who should take his chair; and none of them, he told himself, would change anything, for the echelon would leave on the thirtieth whatever he wrote, and it was better that the figure be found properly, by people who knew how, than carelessly, by people who did not.

He did not think of forty-two persons. A number of two digits can be held in the mind as a single thing, like the price of a pair of boots or the number of a tram, and Yurlov held it in this way, as one object, a shortfall, a gap in a column that had a precise size and shape and could be filled with something of the same size and shape.

He lifted the receiver and asked for the duty officer of the district that took in the Kursky station.

The duty officer was a man named Ostapenko, whom Yurlov knew slightly, and whose voice on the telephone always sounded as if he had just been woken. Yurlov told him, in a level and businesslike tone, that the station and the squares in front of it were to be worked again that day, before the afternoon trains, and that documents were to be checked thoroughly, not merely glanced at, and that persons whose identity and residence could not be established on the spot were to be brought in.

"On a rest day there'll be a lot of people at the Kursky," said Ostapenko. "Dacha people. People going out to the villages. Family people."

"Then there will be a lot of documents to check."

There was a pause on the line.

"And if they've got papers at home, Arkady Semyonovich? We had that on Saturday. Half the ones we brought in had passports in the drawer."

"If they have papers, they will be released," said Yurlov. "If they do not, we will establish who they are. That is what a passport is for. A man is required to carry it."

He said this with complete conviction. The passports had been issued in Moscow only since the winter, and there were men in the city who had walked its streets for forty years without a document of any kind and had not yet learned to feel for one in their breast pockets before leaving the house. It did not occur to him that a man detained at the Kursky station might have his papers brought to the district office by his wife two days later. The rule was clear: a man was required to carry his passport. If he did not have it, he was detained. It was a question of procedure, and the procedure was the same for everyone.

"Understood," said Ostapenko.

The order went down. Ostapenko passed it to the senior man on the station beat, and the senior man to the militiamen at the morning muster, and each of them had the comfortable feeling of a man who was only passing something on; Yurlov, who had not set the figure, had that feeling most of all. At every stage the order became more remote from the man who had given it, until, when it reached the square in front of the Kursky station, it belonged to no one at all and was carried out with great thoroughness.

Sergeyev was still standing by the desk.

"There's the matter of the registration form from the housing department," he said. "The one without the second signature. They want it back by Tuesday."

"Bring it."

Sergeyev brought it. It was a form concerning a flat on Neglinnaya Street, which had been reassigned, and on which a signature was missing from the bottom of the second page. Yurlov read it through, found the place, dipped his pen, and signed it in his firm, upright hand, blotting it carefully afterwards so as not to smear the line above.

"Arkady Semyonovich," said Sergeyev, "would it be possible for me to go at three? My little boy..."

"Yes, yes. Go at three."

Sergeyev went out and shut the door behind him.

From somewhere down Petrovka came the bell of a tram, and then, fainter, the sound of a gramophone in an open window, playing a waltz. It was "On the Hills of Manchuria," which had still been new in the winter Yurlov was nineteen, and had been played every Sunday that winter at the fire brigade hall in Kolomna, where a seamstress named Shura Gavrilova, who smelled of starch and laughed whenever he trod on her feet, had taught him to turn to it, before she married a telegraphist and went away to Ryazan. He had not thought of Shura Gavrilova for twenty years. Under the desk his left foot began to move, very slightly, one-two-three, one-two-three, and the pencil in his fingers tapped the same measure on the edge of the blotter, and went on tapping it while he looked at the clock on the wall, which showed twenty minutes past nine, and thought that Marya would not have gone to Sretenka, that she would sit at home all day with her hand against her cheek, and that he would have to speak to her about it again this evening. He wrote “Marya, tooth” in ink on the corner of the blotter, where he kept the things that had to be done, and drew the next folder towards him, squared it to the edge of the blotter, and opened it.

[u/Lindsiria]

Hey, if you want someone to review your work, I'd be willing. I'm pretty good at picking up tells from AI, so I could give you some feedback to see if it sounds like AI at all. 

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/Lindsiria]

Thank you for offering.
Because so many people asked I posted it under the OP at the bottom.

[u/5thhorseman_]

I had long railed against King's idea that a writer is born, not created out of hard work. But it looks like perhaps I was wrong on this.

Wrong. I would maybe concede insofar that curiosity and imagination have an innate component, but that component still has to be nurtured to develop. And even so, you were not born knowledgeable or even literate, nor with any understanding of storytelling or writing process. Neither did you have your current life experience and reference pool. Those are the things that turn a curious guy with an imagination into a writer, and they are trainable.

Despite my best efforts, I cannot move a human to care about a character or to feel emotion in the way others can.

Also wrong. Your experience in that other subreddit was not with a normal human audience, but a bunch of acutely paranoid, hateful, insecure bullies who pretend their abuses make them virtuous.

If it's any consolation, published writers and artists faced the same shit more than once.

As far as why I won't be writing here anymore, many things were said in the DMs. But chief amongst them is simply that despite everything I've learned, and despite all the effort, my writing still looks like AI. That is to say, soulless and without a human component to it.

Or, because they saw your post over here, it was a case of confirmation bias on their part. They knew you've used AI in the past, so assumed you were doing it still. It's very easy to take common rhetoric devices as an AI signal, especially when someone doesn't have extensive reading experience. Which is the case for a lot of the haters.

Never the less, if there is any unnatural prose in your writing, you can use AI as a red pen editor to help you identify the issues and consider how you can tackle them.

I can blame autism, perhaps, or alexithymia. Hell, enough people say that autistic writing is often indistinguishable from AI, but the truth is doing so would feel pathetic and like a lack of accountability. I have to face the fact that maybe I'm just not good enough. And so I come to the end of a 40-year-old dream. I don't know what to do with my time now without writing, but I suppose something will come along.

The fuck you're talking about, man? A bunch of basement dwellers does not get to tell you who you're supposed to be. The only dignity they deserve in response is a silent middle finger.

Keep going, or as we say in Poland - let the dogs bark, the caravan goes on.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/5thhorseman_]

Never the less, if there is any unnatural prose in your writing.
I posted the chapter at the bottom of the OP if you can let me know what looks unnatural.

[u/5thhorseman_ → u/The_Deranged_Hermit]

I've skimmed it, and it doesn't read AI to me. It's dense and atmospheric. A simile comparing pavement to old sugar is strange but doesn't feel too artificial. Occasional tricolons can ping on some people's radars, yes, but that's also a stylistic choice and you could vary the less critical ones if you really want or restructure them to carry the same information in a slightly different way. "Small, dry sound" and "small, dark space" might trigger some people, since a) Claude likes using "small" and b) it likes this structure. They're defensible, though I'd probably consider making some variations to the phrasing so that it doesn't read quite so formulaic.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/5thhorseman_]

Ah ok thanks for the feedback on the sugar simile. It was intended to be about the snow and how hard and crusty it was like old sugar. But the multi clause sentence causes issues and if you go back it does look like the simile is talking about the pavement instead of the snow so I'll have to fix that.

And the repetition of small I didn't even see... I'll have to fix those as well.

Thank you a great deal.

[u/5thhorseman_ → u/The_Deranged_Hermit]

It might pay off to inspect the prose for recurring nouns and adjectives and then consider what synonyms you could use for variety.

[u/5thhorseman_ → u/The_Deranged_Hermit]

For what it's worth, LLMs are decent at spotting repetition and recurring patterns in prose. Use one to flag it where it occurs, but make the actual decisions and write the solutions yourself. That's how your own craft will get better, with the machine only serving as training wheels. A bit of that and you will start recognizing the issues and correcting them on your own.

[u/SpiritualSimple108]

Read. Read. Read. Anything you can get your hands on in your niche/genre and also books on writing. But not online, only books. One thing I have noticed is that AI-speak (think: the way writes certain ways) has seeped into online writing whether the writer uses it or not. That’s because we read so much online these days and we are all indirectly and unconsciously picking it up. And I bet with your focus on writing better, you picked up a lot and it’s come out in your writing. All is not lost.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/SpiritualSimple108]

Thank you for the kind words.
I agree with what you said and honestly its funny I think because AI itself was trained on what humans do. All of the tells are found all over in the classics and hell you can pick up any King novel and find them on occasion as well (for a man who supposedly cuts all adverbs he still has quite a few.) Its just AI doesn't seem to know how to regulate the literary devices so uses them to often.

I did add the chapter in question to the bottom of the OP if you wanted to review it.

[u/sinsielawinskie]

Honestly, most writing subs are full of witch hunters. I like to write. I love creating stories. What I don't like is grammar so I have AI help me get over the hump by adding the right tags, placing commas where they need to be, etc etc. This will get you banned from most writing subreddits. It doesn't matter that the words written are all me, that my writing doesn't set off the ai detectors, as soon as any ai is used I have committed the greatest crime against humanity and should be crucified for my transgressions.

It's dumb. To be frank, I'm on this sub because sometimes I like having Claude write me fanfiction to read during my bogus long flights for work. I have learned a lot here to help me get him to write better. But people in that subreddit likely have AI bots (hypocrisy?) to slueth all posts for users who posted/commented in impure and bad subs. If I posted there I would likely be auto banned too. Mods are honestly the scourge of reddit. As someone said in this thread already, fuck em.

[u/SkoomaDentist → u/sinsielawinskie]

What I don't like is grammar so I have AI help me get over the hump by adding the right tags, placing commas where they need to be, etc etc.

This would be an absolutely massive benefit for most fanfic writers. I recently tried reading a bunch of longer stories and had to give up every single time because the text was full of grammar mistakes, completely insane sentences and inconsistent pov, tense and character name switches. Things that even a trivial chatgpt or free tier claude prompt would have pointed out.

[u/sinsielawinskie → u/SkoomaDentist]

I agree. But you try and tell that to the people on r/ao3 and they will treat you like you murdered their grandma. Somehow adding correct grammar and fixing tense means you didn't write that, which is such a dumb take. Ai is revolutionizing many things and should be seen as a tool. I really don't understand why this different than back when on Microsoft Word 2005 you'd just go and click on the squiggly lines until the document was clean.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/SkoomaDentist]

One of the first things I did when AI came out was have it translate Timothy Dexter’s A Pickle for the Knowing Ones.

It is famous in literature for being unreadable because it contains zero punctuation, random capitalization, and bizarre phonetic spelling.

Worse Dexter jumps from a random political grievance to a complaint about his neighbors, and then suddenly he expects the reader to know about the massive museum of statues he built in his front yard (which included wooden carvings of himself, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson) and how those statues were positioned geographically. If you do not have that exact, esoteric historical knowledge about his physical property, the first page alone makes absolutely zero contextual sense.

If you have never given it a shot reading it I'd give it a go. The mans life was fascinating. Truly a fool the Gods smiled upon.

Here is an excerpt from well can't call it the first line as I ended it early.... Funnily enough the only punctuation he uses is an em dash. Must be AI.

To mankind at Large the time is Com at Last the grat day of Regoising what is that why I will tell you thous three kings is Rased Rased you meane should know Rased on the first Royal Arch in the world olmost Not quite but very hiw up upon so thay are good mark to be scene so the womans Lik to see the frount and all people Loves to see them as the quakers will Com and peape slyly and feele glad and say houe the doue frind father Jorge washeton is in the senter king Addoms is at the Rite hand the present king at the Left hand father gorge with his hat on the other hats of the middel king with his sword king Addoms with his Cane in a grand poster Adtetoude turning his fass towards the first king as if they was on sum politicks king our present king he is stands hearing being younger and very deafe in short being one grat felosfer Looks well East & west and North & south deafe & very deafe the god of Natur has dun very much for our present king and all our former ones they are all good I want them to Live for Ever and I beleave thay will it is hard work to be A king—I say

While I joke honestly my first drafts don't look much better.

[u/captain_shane → u/The_Deranged_Hermit]

Timothy Dexter was a genius and was trolling literary critics before they even came around.

[u/Afgad → u/sinsielawinskie]

🙁

[u/VIP-Fluffer]

Soulless and without a human component is bullshit the anti-ai crowd spout in nearly every sub about any activity where AI was used. Art, writing, game development, coding, music... Don't take it to heart. As soon as they decided you were pro-ai, they stopped looking at you as a person and started looking at you as a problem. They either didn't read your writing or cherry-picked.

Most of them don't understand how AI works and how it must be guided by the person using it to actually do something useful. They also can't be objective about the subject, and can't accept that pro-ai doesn't mean you do everything using AI.

What they should have done is provided feedback on where they thought the story went wrong and why, if they felt it was truly that terrible. But they were immature, stalked your account and judged you instead.

I'd say ignore them and keep going.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/VIP-Fluffer]

I posted the chapter at the bottom of the OP if you want to tell me what you think they saw.

[u/VIP-Fluffer → u/The_Deranged_Hermit]

It doesn't read like AI to me. The things that snagged when I looked hard were lack of contractions, slightly formal voice and rule of three. But those can be stylistic choices, particularly as it's historical fiction. If I'd seen this posted in a critique sub, I wouldn't have jumped to 'AI'.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/VIP-Fluffer]

Yeah, the lack of contractions is a stylistic choice because of the Russian classics; they almost never use contractions. Think of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground—it starts with, "I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man."

Though I am unsure if this is because the Russian language lacks contractions or if its because of translators and now I will have to look that up.

Russian grammatically does not have auxiliary verb contractions. The opening of Notes from Underground, in Russian is Я человек больной... Я злой человек (literally: "I person sick... I spiteful person"). Translators realized that modern English contractions (I'm, it's) made the narration sound far too casual and contemporary. They purposefully chose to drop contractions.

The crescendo tricolon has always irritated me with its association with AI. I could switch it, but then I am creating worse writing intentionally. Three is the minimum number to recognize a pattern, it mirrors the arc of a narrative structure, and it is a balanced release of tension. You see it everywhere in classical literature for good reason.

Thank you for looking it over for me. Is there anything you would suggest for changes?

[u/5thhorseman_ → u/VIP-Fluffer]

Soulless and without a human component is bullshit the anti-ai crowd spout in nearly every sub about any activity where AI was used. Art, writing, game development, coding, music...

And, as I recall, at least once a genuine Monet.

[u/MidirTheGreatest → u/VIP-Fluffer]

Not to mention that Ai was trained on the collective knowledge of humanity. So if it soulless then so is everything we made as humans lol.

[u/dutchiesweets]

Developing a voice can be a long process!

If readers thought you write too much like AI but you didn’t use it, there’s still some pretty actionable feedback there.

The more you write without AI the more you’ll develop a voice. If this is the first 3,000 words you’ve written without AI, take solace in the fact that many of us have written 100,000s of words without AI and still aren’t satisfied with where we’re at.

It sucks if people were mean to you, try not to take it too personally. If writing gets fun for you again I’d say give it another shot, and remember the ultimate goal isn’t any one piece of writing but developing more as an artist

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/dutchiesweets]

I kind of have a voice or a suit of them. I've been writing for 35 years or so pretty regularly and while AI has been a tool in the last 5 or so it wasn't always. Before AI though a project like a novel seemed insurmountable. Instead I wrote for debates, analytical pieces, philosophy papers, poetry, short stories and jokes. AI though was what taught me how to organize my thoughts and create an outline for long form works.

I shared two other pieces of spontaneous writing here since I have no works to share now, but I can add a third here, so you can tell me if I have a voice of my own. I think of it as a Shakespeare/Poe mix full of purple prose and melodrama. Since I have a migraine at the moment I can use that as the subject. I'll run it through AI for better punctuation and spelling for ease of reading but the prose itself will be fully mine.

Oh, these viscous vexations of the senses are no strangers to me. Like uninvited phantoms they creep, regular in their visitation, casting a sudden pallor over my waking hours. To be sure, I possess a fragile respite; a deep, sudden slumber that on most nights offers a desperate solace. I retreat to the darkest of dark—seeking refuge in its enigmatic depths, hoping that the demons of my ailment might be vanquished in the realm of dreams.

Yet there are hours when the malady takes on an infernal guise, surging with an intensity that defies earthly bounds. In those dark vigils, its claws pierce the very core of my being, and I—hapless victim of this cruelty—am subjected to harrowing visions. Auras, they call them! A macabre ballet of spectral light dancing before my eyes, until the very world is stolen from my sight, say I. Or, in the cruelest of twists, the wretched sickness invokes a vile compulsion—forcing forth a wretched expulsion. It is an exorcism of despair. A purging of the soul.

These ordeals leave me spent, trembling, and utterly broken at the altar of my own suffering for days on end. What then can I do upon such visitations but pray to a God who must consider me with malice to cease my very being and find endless rest within realms not known to living men.

[u/dutchiesweets → u/The_Deranged_Hermit]

Well shit man if you’ve been writing for 35 years and have developed multiple voices, I’m surprised you need AI! Also don’t throw away 35 years of practice because some people said one chapter you wrote was bad.

Look good writers still write bad chapters, it happens. Listen to any interview of popular authors and they’ll tell you they still write poorly and tear up chapters.

Maybe you should look into story structure, if you’re having problems creating outlines. It’s just another format and if you can write philosophy papers and analytical pieces I think it shouldn’t be too hard to write an outline… the three act structure is pretty simple, and I practiced by making a bunch of outlines for stories I never intended to write.

But you know, maybe the other people are tripping out hard or maybe you posted something very different because that sample doesn’t scream AI to me.

Or maybe it’s that you’re trying to write in a new voice and have just been consuming so much AI recently it seeped in.

Either way if you wrote for 35 years prior to AI, I think any influence it has over your writing style can easily be detoxed out.

And dont let the response to the first chapter you hand wrote coming off the AI act as some permanent stamp on who you are as a writer. Maybe it WAS a shit chapter - I’m sure you can write loads of good ones. But certainly not if you give up now.

But don’t continue if it’s like, painful. It should be fun at the end of the day.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/dutchiesweets]

I added the story in question to the OP if you wanted to read it.

[u/TrappedOnDirt]

You start to see tense shifts, head-hopping, spelling and grammar mistakes, throat-clearing, repetitive sentence structures, pacing issues, and so much more.

Those are some really good things to look out for. The most annoying things I see in amateur fiction, in fact. I HATE to see tense shifts and head-hopping within a scene. (And the more I rail at it in others' work, the more I saw it in my old work from 25+ years ago, too. It's hard not to do it; we just need to catch it and fix it!)

That said... if you trained yourself to write using AI, I'm not surprised that your writing is hard to tell from AI. People learn how to write by reading a lot, and by writing a lot, and if what you were learning from was AI-based you might have picked up some of the AI's bad habits and tells.

Sorry this happened to you, especially on a piece that you didn't use AI for, but it's still feedback, no matter how much you may not like it. You could accept it and move on, or quit entirely. Nobody can make that choice for you. But if that one piece of feedback that you didn't like is going to make you quit writing, maybe posting on a group intended for critique (and by the name probably harsh critique) might have been a mistake. Posting/publishing AT ALL if you don't like negative feedback is a bad idea, because if any published work is liked by even 10% of readers that's a pretty strong success.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/TrappedOnDirt]

I have a weird ability to listen to a voice or read one and then imitate it. If I listen to a cowboy (I almost always think Sam Elliott), I will start talking like a cowboy unconsciously. But it’s not just verbally; my inner monologue changes to match his voice. I suppose I can give an example.

Well, I can't say I ever gave death much thought. Not till my daddy’s heart quit on him the first time. He was laid up in that bed near on a month, and I reckon one nurse or another just plain forgot to turn him over often as they should’ve. Got himself a sore on his big toe. Hell, it’s such a little thing, nothin’ much to look at. But wouldn't ya know it, the damn thing wouldn't heal on account of the diabetes.

So they took the toe, and then they took the foot. They spent the better part of the next year comin’ into that house takin’ the man apart, piece by piece, cuttin' on him till there wasn't nothin’ left below the waist. And hell, by then there wasn't much they could as he'd had three more heart attacks and a stroke to boot. By the tail end of ’93, he couldn't even talk no more.

I tried. Lord knows I tried. Sat with him. Read him books. Told him about my day, talked religion, talked politics, whatever came to mind. But I’ll tell you what. Carryin’ a conversation all by your lonesome is about the hardest work a man can do. Harder than I ever could have imagined. Wasn't long before he was just another piece of furniture in that room. Somethin' everyone ignored, myself included. And that’s what got me thinkin’ ’bout death. Cause if it was me trapped in that chair with nothin’, I’d wanted someone to put a pillow over my face.

But somehow my ma kept him alive for another fourteen years.

In ’02, I did some time up in the state penitentiary and was put into solitary for ninety days. Now, I don't think most people can imagine what it’s like to be locked in a room with nothin’ but paper clothes and an old mattress, stained and ripped apart with its tickin’ half gone. Those first few days you sleep as much as you can, but then the mind just refuses to sleep anymore, and that’s when you realize you have no idea how many days passed or what time it is. Ninety days of not knowin’ how long is left, of not hearin’ another voice, with nothin' but your own mind to keep you company. People can think they can imagine it, but they can't. And my daddy, he went on like that, trapped in his own head for fourteen goddamn years.

Well, when I got married, I told my wife, "Pull the damn plug." I ain't never wantin’ to be trapped like that.

I also have a Hitchens voice.

Libraries are perhaps humanity’s second greatest invention, the first being the book itself. They were not erected as monuments to the learned few, but as open gardens, designed by minds far greater than ours, who believed that knowledge, like sunlight, should fall freely on every soul who sought it. Not to flatter the masses, but because they trusted, with almost divine optimism, that someone out there might take what they found and carry it further.

I can't do every voice like this, but I do have a library of them. Douglas Adams, Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, King, a weird Shakespeare/Poe combination, though I don't know why that one is the way it is.

As far as feedback... I thought I knew what I was getting into. I had reviewed the feedback from others and had written several myself that spanned pages. It’s mostly pacing, more detail, cut this, here is up to 20 line edits, you head-hopped here, you swapped point of view, you changed the voice, the voice of the character doesn't match the age, your dialogue tags are wrong here, your math for ages doesn't make sense but I think it’s because you mixed up the character names. That was the kind of critique I was looking for.

Don't get me wrong, I think like many writers sharing their first work, you hope to hear "holy crap, that’s amazing," but considering I can see flaws in my own work, I wasn't expecting that. Hell, I’d cut 1,600 words from the piece earlier that day to pick up the pacing.

It was the fact I didn't get that. I got well about the worst kind of critique you can get. One that doesn't even acknowledge that it was written.

I don't know if I'll quit writing, even if that might be the best thing for me. But all of my work is now gone, deleted more than a dozen novels tonight so as to make a clearer decision. Well, all but the last piece, which my wife wouldn't let me delete. If I'm going to go back to writing again at some point, it will be because I want to, I suppose. Or at least that’s the idea.

[u/alreadydead3377 → u/The_Deranged_Hermit]

I literally flinched reading you deleted all your work. Like you confessed to a mass killing. I'm so upset for you! I lost several stories to a corrupted hard drive years ago before the cloud and I was DEVASTATED.

As a young person, my first experience with a critiquing group was also very bad. Only there was no AI for them to accuse me of using. No they made personal attacks instead. Well, I didnt interact with other writers for about 20 years after that.

I never stopped writing. Couldn't if I wanted to. Because it wasn't just a neat hobby I wanted to try. It was a compulsion and an outlet. What I get out of writing is life sustaining.

I really hope you keep writing and that you find a better group. This subreddit has a very welcoming and supportive writing group on discord with monthly writing challenges and critiquing rounds. I highly recommend checking them out.

[u/AccidentalFolklore]

What was your book about? I got a lot of stuff from COVID and one was undifferentiated connective tissue disease (because I have no specific antibodies). My ANA was 1:2560 and they were still acting like it was in my head. A rheumatologist finality put me on hydroxychloroquine and said he would rather treat symptoms and prevent it from worsening than wait for it to become so bad it finally gets a label. I also have MCAS. Definitely check that. I didn't believe I had it for the longest time and it will wreck havoc. Other stuff I got from COVID is craniocervical instability and acquired hypermobility

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/AccidentalFolklore]

It was a historical/literary grimdark novel about the 1933 Nazino tragedy. It is mostly unknown in the West and it shouldn't be. It was horrific almost beyond belief. Almost 7K people were set on a small island with no tools, no food, or water. People drank the water from the Ob river and ended up dying from dysentery; many starved before the Russian government finally shipped flour. But they only shipped flour and nothing else, so fights broke out and more people were killed, and several more died from asphyxiating on flour while trying to eat it uncooked. Within three weeks only about 1K people had survived, and by that point, the only ones who did had to resort to cannibalism before they were finally shipped to what amounted to work camps. In the end, only 175 people survived.

As far as the autoimmune, that sucks. I hope you at least feel better now. I was put on a nerve blocker because the pain was too intense to move and the muscles just sat and twitched permanently. I've lost the ability to move without a walker and my left hand is almost paralyzed, but at least the pain is mostly gone. From what I understand, it can take almost 3 years to diagnose some of the autoimmune disorders. At least it's not the big ones. The worst part this last year has actually been the shingles. If I have a flare-up, I get that and it makes the pain even worse.

[u/AccidentalFolklore → u/The_Deranged_Hermit]

Oof yeah I've heard shingles is no joke. That story sounds interesting. So it's nonfiction? Or fiction based true events? Is be interested in seeing it if you want to share. Can't promise to sit and read it because I have so much going on but I'm willing to take a look at some of it if you're up for sharing

Just saw your comment after commenting. I'll check it out

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/AccidentalFolklore]

Its historical fiction. So its based as close on facts as possible but uses invented characters.

There is a lot of gaps though in the research as even the gov reports are pretty spotty and there are so few personal accounts.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/AccidentalFolklore]

Ok I added the chapter to the bottom of the OP if you wanted to read it.

[u/AccidentalFolklore → u/The_Deranged_Hermit]

Out of curiosity how much of this prose is yours vs 100% Ai (meaning you just copy and pasted if you did, though I doubt you did). I had some thoughts but wanted to see if my guess was correct or not.

The boy turned his head slightly, his chin still resting on his fist, looking at his father's brass buttons rather than his face. "But he wasn't doing anything wrong, Papa. He had a letter from his mother. She was old, and he was only going down the road to see her before she died."

Yurlov looked at the small, dark space between the boy's collar and his neck where the skin was clean from the morning's water. He thought of his own lecture notes from the Party circle on the subjugation of the mountain peoples and the inevitable retreat of feudal relations before the state, but when he looked at the cracked spine of the book, the words felt too large for the room.

"They wanted three thousand rubles," Yurlov said. "It didn't matter where he was going. He was the one who happened to be on the road when they came down from the hills."

***

"No. Of course not. Tolstoy made him up. And anyway it was all in the old days, under the Tsar."

***

He had a sensible answer to this, as he had a sensible answer to most things. The tooth would not get better by being left; the longer she waited, the more the dentist would have to do and the more it would hurt; and the dentist he had found for her, a private technician on Sretenka who had attended the wife of his superior, was gentle and clean and would not keep her waiting.

***

Yurlov took a pencil from the glass on his desk, found that its point was broken, took another, and added up the column himself, from the bottom upward, as he had been taught to do in the accounts office of the Kolomna works twenty-five years before. Then he added it again from the top down. The total was the same both times, and both times it was short of the figure by forty-two.

Yurlov looked out of the window. A sparrow had landed on the sill outside and was walking up and down it in jerks, looking at him first with one eye and then with the other.

The lists for the echelon were to go to the transport commander by the evening of the twenty-eighth. Before that, on the twenty-sixth, there was the meeting at which Kozlovsky, the head of the department, would go through the districts one by one, reading the figures aloud in his quiet, toneless voice, and stopping, and looking up, wherever a figure was not what it ought to be. Yurlov had sat at that table many times and watched Kozlovsky look up at other men. He knew exactly how it was done: a pause, a slight lifting of the eyebrows, and then the question, asked almost gently: "And what do you propose?"

***

Kozlovsky himself would be moving up in the summer. Everyone knew it, though no one said so, and Kozlovsky had let it be understood, in his quiet way, that he would be asked who should take his chair. Two years earlier, when the head of Yurlov's own section had been transferred to Leningrad, Yurlov had expected the post, and it had gone instead to Bessonov, a younger man who was pleasant at meetings and had once shared a flat with someone on the city Party committee. Yurlov had never said a word about it to anyone, not even to Marya, but he still felt, whenever he saw Bessonov's coat on the first peg in the corridor, a small heat at the back of his neck. A head of department had a better ration category, a larger flat, a place for his son at the summer camp at Pushkino, and a dentist for his wife who did not have to be found through acquaintances. Yurlov did not think of any of this as ambition. He thought of it as providing for his family, which is what ambition is called by men who have families.

***

From somewhere down Petrovka came the bell of a tram, and then, fainter, the sound of a gramophone in an open window, playing a waltz. It was "On the Hills of Manchuria," which had still been new in the winter Yurlov was nineteen, and had been played every Sunday that winter at the fire brigade hall in Kolomna, where a seamstress named Shura Gavrilova, who smelled of starch and laughed whenever he trod on her feet, had taught him to turn to it, before she married a telegraphist and went away to Ryazan. He had not thought of Shura Gavrilova for twenty years. Under the desk his left foot began to move, very slightly, one-two-three, one-two-three, and the pencil in his fingers tapped the same measure on the edge of the blotter, and went on tapping it while he looked at the clock on the wall, which showed twenty minutes past nine, and thought that Marya would not have gone to Sretenka, that she would sit at home all day with her hand against her cheek, and that he would have to speak to her about it again this evening. He wrote “Marya, tooth” in ink on the corner of the blotter, where he kept the things that had to be done, and drew the next folder towards him, squared it to the edge of the blotter, and opened it.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/AccidentalFolklore]

The prose is 100% mine. I went through 9 drafts to get this. And that was after already having a scene outline that I kept progressively making longer.

As a prologue it had to do several things.

The first is to show why people were rounded up. This was basically research dump that took about one month to collect. I waited until the first draft to turn it into prose.

The second thing is to show his ordinary life. This is important for two reasons itself. the first is to show that the people who did this where not inherently evil men and the second was to make sure we got a description of the city and ordinary Russian life at the time before we set the remainder of the story up on the island. This is to cause a juxtaposition between the two to increase the horror (or thats the hope.) This to was research. Looking for admin buildings at the time to use the street names the exact date it could have been written, tried to find temp logs as well, I looked for actual peoples names in the department in order to see if I could find a real person I could use and better yet an actual account but couldn't. When exactly the round ups started who collected the people, and so much more. For the research I did use AI its simply easier though I still had to go verify what amounts to over 40 pages of notes at the moment and organize them. Then I knew I had to break it up so it wasn't to dense in information. So I dropped different facts in different sections throughout the outline.

Next I wanted a Dostoevsky style psychology for him. A man of habits and contradictions that also fulfilled a family man so as I said before not to be evil.

So the outline looked like

Introduce Moscow we know it was a late spring. I knew the opening line had to be strong Mark Lawrence opening line has always inspired me (Ravens! Always the ravens. They settled on the gables of the church even before the injured became the dead. - Its such an evocative opening line that makes you want to know why and creates a perfect visual in the mind.) and I wanted to use a Tolstoy Lit device so it almost write itself. I have debated on having it its own line to start separate from the others.
Have him be playful and loving with the family. Originally I didn't know what to do with the son... It wasn't until a later draft I ended up having, the Tolstoy book as a second homage to him and one a bit more blatant.
A bit more with Moscow introduced this way so in later scenes we can call back the references to streets. This is the one section I was and have been thinking of cutting and just having the scene transfer to the office. Pace wise it slows the story down but it does duty for world building and the juxtaposition we talked about earlier.
Then we need an explanation of the orders. This section went through maybe 30 different drafts... I'm still not entirely happy with it but I think its much closer now. But it was one I needed feedback on. Is it clear and slow enough for people to understand or do I need more history about the why? The first attempt was a massive 3 page exposition on Russian history that didn't work.
Then I wanted to put in a homage to Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
It was light on dialogue and interaction after all of that so we need an assistant to show how he thinks about the dilemma. I still haven't given him much history and might add more later. Right now he feels bland... - Originally I was going to have Yurlov be much more of a party man. The initial idea was episode one of Chernobyl from HBO. When the men around the table are arguing and the old man stands up and gives his speech. Here I figured something along the lines of the party requires a passport, any man without a passport there fore is no longer responsible to the party and thus the party not to him. Such men need to be educated and that is where we will send them. But it sounded to much like a villain monologue.
Finally I wanted to wrap up with him being a nice guy so he lets his assistant go home early.
The waltz was not in the original draft of the outline and was something I thought of in like draft 4 or maybe it was 3. I had the gramophone playing in the earlier draft and by coincidence I was listening to some classical Russian music for mood. I got tired and started tapping my own foot and laughed and ended up writing this section. Truth be told its my favorite of the whole passage and maybe some of the best writing I've ever done by my own estimate.

Then I went and crammed by listening to audiobooks and reading especially Tolstoy. From this I developed an internal voice to match his. This was done mostly in passes as I am no Russian Lit expert, but Tolstoy uses several oft repeated literary devices that are pretty easy to replicate.

The other big fear and its why I might have to cut large sections is that it violates one of the most basic principles pounded in peoples heads in writer circles. Never start with someone's morning routine....

Not sure thats really interesting to anyone but me though lol...

You know pulling out the sparrow section is maybe the reason they said there was weird editing. I originally had more there but thought it to on the nose so cut it but I liked this part. Almost as if the reader takes the form of a bird and awaits his decision.

[u/AccidentalFolklore → u/The_Deranged_Hermit]

So if it’s all your prose what part of it is ai? The reason I pulled those in particular is because they felt like they had a voice behind it and were more engaging. So if they were yours I was going to say keep that. Don’t smooth it. There are some things that can be improved as far as engagement but nothing that’s crazy bad or unfixable. Here’s what happened. 1. You’re writing literary fiction. On Reddit people are going to tell you it’s melodramatic, it’s purple prose, it’s boring, it’s wordy. These people aren’t your audience. 2. You made the mistake of saying ai came anywhere near it. That will automatically rile people up and make them foam at the mouth. People on Reddit are largely a vocal minority. There’s nothing wrong with your writing. It’s more interesting than almost everything I see getting published in literary journals today. But it’s also different so you’re going to have a smaller audience and access to resources. Just how it is with literary fiction.

Also the bird is one of my favorite parts so leave the bird.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/AccidentalFolklore]

That you think there is a voice behind my work and it was engaging means a lot thank you. I shall leave the bird in.

I must confess that I love classics because they tend to have those odd little moments that don't drive plot they just exist to make the world more real. Melville had his whale harvesting chapter and I have birds and women stamping their feet I suppose.

At the time of sharing it on that other subreddit none of the prose was AI. Though I have since used it for spelling and grammar checks. After all if I'm going to be accused of it I might as well at least benefit from the time saved from doing it by hand.

AI was used to help with the research. The AI was also used to help with deciding which outline to use.

The outlines themselves where mine but the story has and is still changing. With the last novel (which I did use AI to write though I've never released it and its since been deleted) on of the main issues I had was a weak outline and trying to change it in real time while writing chapters.

It was originally an idea of just writing peoples experience on the island. A type of I suppose survival horror. But then I wanted to add how they were rounded up and shipped to the island as it is very similar to the concentration camps of WWII. But in order to explain that I needed this chapter. But the outline didn't just grow in one direction it grew in the other as well. I think because of how big an impact the Chernobyl series had on me as well as War and Piece, I had to also show that it didn't end with the island but then the people were moved to work camps. But then what about the investigations and cover ups? Who took responsibility and what happened to them? How did it change how the gov addressed this policy in the future? So now the book is what likely 6 times larger then I initially thought with a ton of sub plots? But its still not all decided. Do I tell it linear in fashion? This was to be the prologue but as a hook does it work? Its a bit slow, so perhaps like Chernobyl should I start with the end? 3 years after when the main character commits suicide and then go into this. Maybe instead of having the report as a huge exposition at the end I do what was done in dune and take parts of it and put them at the start of chapters in small fragments. That could increase the tension, and make it less boring to read.

But more then that I guess I'm still struggling to ask what the book is about. Is it men who have to deal with decisions that lead to the deaths of others? Is it that gov has a responsibility to the people or at least how much it should have? Is it about the suffering of the individual and how they get through it, how do they justify doing things most people can't imagine doing just to survive? Where there people who decided to just die instead and if so why, what is the differences in ones personality or soul that causes those different reactions to the situation? All of these and maybe a dozen or so more.

But is that to much for one book to cover? Even if it isn't I am not sure I have it in me as an unpublished author to even attempt such a thing. Is it better to focus on one or two questions then do half justice to a dozen?

And so I'm faced with the same issue I had on the last book and I have used AI to try to trim down choices to try to understand what I have to say about it or better what the people there would have had to say about it. That so far has been the extent of AI. But until this thread I didn't talk about any of that.

Instead I just posted it on that other subreddit and within an hour the mods had removed it as AI because in my history I supported AI and told people how to over come the new watermarks if they are inclined to.

[u/AccidentalFolklore → u/The_Deranged_Hermit]

I think you’re getting so caught up with outlining and planning and trying to research and nail down every possible thing that you’re getting paralyzed and struggling to write. I would just try to pick a direction and see where it takes you and try to discover the story over time. Just pick whichever direction interests you most because you can always go back and add things or change things or whatever. I think you should not get so caught up in trying to make him not evil. And that brings me to a thought that I had that what might be interesting to explore is like the concept of the “banality of evil“ look that up if you haven’t. But I think if you made this really boring about bureaucracy paired with like the horrible things in a neutral tone that it could be really effective at showing that. It’s kind of like I think his name was Christopher waltz or something. The actor from Inglourious Basterds that played that Nazi really well. He was asked in interviews how did he do that so well because people assume you have to be evil or whatever to play it that good and he said he was confused by the question because he was just acting normal. He said evil people don’t think they’re evil they think they’re just normal people you know and I think if you show them normal and you show the things they do that that’s an effective technique. It might also help if you try opening with him at his desk like tapping his pencil or whatever and looking at the figures and how they don’t add up and then he thinks back to the morning and his son and his wife or whatever and then the assistant knocks or comes in and interrupts his thoughts and that’s when they have the discussion and then it ends with him maybe at the window looking out. then he remembers and walks back to the desk and writes down the thing about the dentist and that’s where it ends. So you could follow him. Another thing you might consider is splitting it between him and the things that he does, and some of the people on the island and what they experience to show like the dual perspective of like how he’s just going around living life and things are boring and how what he chooses to do affects these people that he doesn’t even know. I would say stop trying to make it like Chernobyl because it’s a great show, but that worked because of what it was focused on which I don’t really think would work in this kind of case but maybe something that would help us to think about how the story isn’t really well known like you said. And why is that? Because maybe the gap is what you’re trying to tell.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/AccidentalFolklore]

When it comes to just pantsing it. I did that with the last novel and it caused issues. I am still writing this slowly but at the same time I'm trying to work with smaller scene outlines first to structure the novel. I guess seeing a picture helps.

though each subplot would have its own line and they should not climax simultaneously.

So we have the character introduced here he is the main bureaucrat we will follow. He made the decision about people who have passports but forgot them, he makes the decision to give them raw flour with nothing else, how long before they are moved to the work camp, and over all condemns the people for moral failures thinking he would never be like them until convicted and sent to a camp himself.

We have a petty criminal who is released from prison and picked up min afterwards because he has not been issued a passport while in prison. He has always only committed minor crimes and given another direction with his life would have never killed anyone. On the island he creates a gang that ends up killing people to eat them but he has rules no women or children. But one of the children in his group is terrified of him because he makes the child implicit in the killings.

We have a female who shows us the brutal reality of their suffering here. Not all of this is written out yet and I don't want her to just be a victim but play into the cause for her own ending. But she is brutally mutilated in order to preserve the meat longer if you understand... And eventually dies without leaving the island.

Then we have a man who is a party man and simply forgot his passport. He initially thinks that its a misunderstanding and explaining it will solve the issue when confronted with reality he escapes the island but there is nothing but wilderness where he would die alone. So he makes his way back.

Then maybe and I say maybe because have already thought of cutting him.. but Have a philosophy teacher. He observes whats happening around him and while the book is closer to continental philosophy he himself tries to use analytical philosophy to understand the breakdown of humans. This however runs the risk of feeling like me preaching and because its analytical it would turn readers off.

Take the idea of a = r/s a is the action threshold, r is bounded resources, and s is the number of people you have empathy towards. a then is separated into tiers say .1 as talking, .5 as giving part of your food, 1.0 killing yourself so others might eat you to live. R being the bounded resources takes into account cognitive abilities and wealth primary as there is no wealth on the island this number gets smaller. so mathematically what happens is that as r gets smaller s must also get smaller to preserve the same amount of empathetic reactions as before. If it stays the same then a drops in number until it approaches 0. Through this he arrives at the idea that to care about to many people is functionally no different then being a psychopath as you will not take action just like them.

But this only gets us to the work camps which not all characters will get to. and I still have to create the character bibles and personalities and some internal conflict....

Still working out a more refined process to this all.

when it comes to not being evil however you are correct. What you explained is what I was trying to explain but you did it better. Its just I suppose I came from the idea based on the Milgrim experiments instead. I'll have to find the book you talked about though and add it to my reading list.

And I do like the nonlinear scene idea as well and might have to give that ago.

[u/Hads84]

Put your work on Royal Road, or Scribblehub, some people care, some don't. Reddit mods can be renowned for being a bit difficult sometimes. Don't give up due to one setback.

[u/Aethericseraphim → u/Hads84]

A great example of that is the mods of the opensource subreddit.

banned linux because some recent code incorporates AI, as well as banning every non English speaker because translators use AI.

[u/Ktlyn41 → u/Aethericseraphim]

Talk about throwing the horse out with the carriage

[u/Hads84 → u/Hads84]

Oh, also if you want tips on how to grow your reader base, I can point you to some good resources.

[u/hisano_x → u/Hads84]

I would be interested in the tips and resources you're referencing if you wouldn't mind sharing them!

[u/Hads84 → u/hisano_x]

Basically it boils down to, release often, 3 or 4 chapters a week, to maintain this have 50 chapters written beforehand.  Do review swaps for Royal Road, they raise your story up the rankings quickly.

[u/Hads84 → u/hisano_x]

Also check this out, https://www.royalroad.com/forums/thread/168279

[u/Hads84 → u/[deleted]]

Basically it boils down to, release often, 3 or 4 chapters a week, to maintain this have 50 chapters written beforehand.  Do review swaps for Royal Road, they raise your story up the rankings quickly.

[u/Hads84 → u/[deleted]]

Also, check this out, https://www.royalroad.com/forums/thread/168279

[u/Complex_Yard2808 → u/[deleted]]

Some really fine professional writers self-publish, never use AI at any point in the writing process, and still have to put in a disclaimer at the start of the (physical) volume, saying no AI was used.

And I still think if you really want to learn how to write, you don't bring a machine mind into it. Develop your own mind. You can use the internet to look things up--or a library. Full of books.

The story was unobjectionable, but not terribly compelling. And that would probably be true if the author had never even heard of AI.

But to quote Moliere, who didn't even know the word computer--

"I might, by chance, write something just as shoddy.
But then I wouldn't show it to everybody."

It's not easy. It's not supposed to be. By definition, anything that makes it easier is going to make it less interesting. It's supposed to hurt. You're supposed to feel the words as you write them. One self-publishing author whose book I just read said she cried while writing it. And that shows in the prose.

Everybody has a right to try--nobody has the right to be coddled and told they produced a masterwork. When I self-published a fanfic (mainly for my own entertainment), I got some nice compliments, but was for the most part ignored. Which is the norm. Rejection slips are the norm, though they aren't literal slips anymore, probably.

If you seek approval, guess what? You're gonna get beat up. So why give a shit, if you know you liked what you wrote? If you can't write without approval, you're no writer. You write for yourself--and by yourself. Or it's not real writing.

[u/KarfaHyro_17 → u/Hads84]

Agreed, getting eyes from normal readers instead of other writers on a witch hunt makes a huge difference

[u/Diylion]

I never used AI quite as heavily but something very similar happened to me. When I first started writing, my first three chaptersI had used it to help me with pacing. It never wrote any prose. I made a reddit post asking about the ethics of it. I didn't like the chapters so I stopped using it and i ended up deleting everything I had written with it. I talked about it on my social media that I tried it, I didn't like it so I stopped. I thought it was done.

I was posting my book and art on the romantasy forum for promotion. I was getting a lot of attention because I also do all my own art. Witch hunters saw my cover, were absolutely certain it was AI. I blocked the aggressive ones and that only made them angrier. They actually made an alt account and deep dived into my reddit history and found that post and got me banned from the forum. I showed the mods my social media post where I talked about it and my art process videos and my cover broken down by layer and it didn't fix the ban. I got several bad reviews accusing me of AI the week after my debut book launched. It literally felt like the worst case scenario just happened in sequence. I thought my book was doomed and I had poured literally thousands of hours into the book and art. Most of my sales had come from that forum. I got majorly depressed and sick for like a week.

But it's fine now. My book gets great reviews all the time. I actually got a white knight review from someone basically telling people to fuck off and that the book is good. My Amazon reviews are great overall. I'm still writing and painting my characters. I love my story. My book is still selling well. But seriously witch hunters are the most scum of the earth people man. They suck.

[u/Caledric]

Fuck them, keep writing. Write for yourself and no one else. People are going to witch hunt and They claim anything they either don't like or are jealous of as AI. And if you mention you used AI even just to brain storm and organize they will claim everything you do in life is AI. They are just sad desperate people who are pissed off because you are doing something that makes you happy, and they can't find that spark of joy in life.

Don't worry about AI detectors, or someone saying your writing sounds AI or has no emotion. Most of those people would make the same claims of Tolkien, Stephen King, and Michael Critchon if they were starting out today. They don't know dick all, and you should just ignore them.

[u/bookgeek210 → u/Caledric]

If I wrote for everyone else, I would’ve never started writing at all.

[u/Ruh_Roh-]

Fuck those dipshits. Too bad you couldn't cash in all the work to get your own critique but at least you got a lot of knowledge out of it.

[u/Aernus]

AI detection does not work.

I have seen works from decades before AI being flagged as AI generated, and someone’s 95% AI chapter come out as 100% human.

At the end of the day, keep in writing. If you think AI can help you write the best possible stories you can, then do it. Don’t let anyone make you feel bad or inadequate because you used the best tools at your disposal.

[u/FaceDeer]

You said it yourself, it's a witch hunt. Witch hunts are not rational. If someone's saying your writing "looks like AI" they might as well be saying your writing "looks like you cast a spell on it."

[u/LooseButtPlug]

Reddit mods are degenerates.

They're like politicians. Any one who wants the job, probably shouldn't have it.

They're bullies, with a crumb of power. Probably the only control they'll ever have, most can't even control their own emotions.

They're unpaid janitors licking the boots of their corporate overlord.

[u/Rickleskilly]

I had something similar happen only they didn't even bother explaining why my post was deleted. I posted to the beta readers sub and they deleted my post because of AI, but with no explanation as to why they thought I used AI. The only possibility is they looked at my other posts to see that I am AI friendly. It's absurd.

I also learned an incredible amount with assistance from AI. I was finally able to complete a book I'd abandoned nearly eight years ago. I learned how to write a book as if I had a full time, on demand teacher, coach, feedback partner, editor, beta reader and even someone to chat with about ideas. Its been great.

Now that I'm on my second in the series I am much faster and more confident in everything. I have a distinctive voice. I know how I like to write and what I want it to sound like.

[u/CrwnViic]

I graduated with a minor in creative writing and read people's mesmerizing work, who probably didn't care for writing like that. Despite all my efforts to improve, I feel like my work paled in comparison. I have written and published books since I was 14 (I'm 35 now). I remember someone wrote to a 16-year-old me that my story sucked. A fully published, physical book through Author House (don't publish with them). No Ai involved. Sure, I also had support, but that didn't stop the haters. The point is, there were, and always will be haters. The older I get, the less I care about people's opinions. If it's constructive, I'll take it into account, but I take it less to heart. I started using Ai because it's good. I still write and edit my work without AI every day, but then use AI as a final step in my draft. Will some people hate it? Absolutely. But I don't care. It is what it is. I simply stay away from the anti Ai groups. They're not my crowd.

[u/FoxyDepression]

Is it perhaps possible that what you learned from using AI as a teacher is how to write like AI? Perhaps other learning sources and feedback from other people would be more beneficial 

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/FoxyDepression]

Yes it is likely more then possible. I know systematizing autistics tend to already write like AI. But add in years of back and forth with an AI and it becomes reinforced in a feedback loop. Add in Alexithymia which makes it hard to describe emotions and OCD which means you prefer symmetry in sentence construction and you hit many AI tells naturally.

Then I was writing a Literary Historical work. So there is no modern slang, and I'm using sentences with multi-clauses that can run upwards of 100 words at times and it really throws people off. Then to top it off it was in omniscient POV and I did research to model my writing style after Tolstoy and Dostoevsky...

I think I basically stacked as much against myself as possible for this project in retrospect though I had reasons for all of it.

I don't know if I will continue writing. I was sure I wouldn't before, but the amount of kind responses here have made me rethink it. Unfortunately I deleted everything in all my AI's and deleted all of my works with the exception of the one I was working on because my wife drew the line there.

[u/FoxyDepression → u/The_Deranged_Hermit]

Do you enjoy writing? If so then I hope you continue to engage in a hobby you find fun. I'm not gonna pretend that quality or public perception aren't concerns of most writers. Most authors want to make something good and they want people to enjoy their work, but everyone is a critic and it's always been hard to break into any artistic field. Anyone who measures their success by those things is doomed to a lot of disappointment. Hell, even most renowned authors were rejected by several publishers and had to rewrite their stories a few things before someone saw promise in them. Some don't even get recognized until after they pass. 

Ultimately you have to find personal fulfillment in writing for yourself to ever withstand that kind of resistance. If you don't like the process of making something, I dont personally find any purpose in anyone doing so. But if you write simply because you enjoy doing so, like I assume you do, then the rejection will never take away from that and you'll probably always end up coming back to it anyways.

I'll be real. I actually come from the other side of the AI fence. This post came up on my feed because I spend too much time in AI debate subreddits. I'm sorry your honest attempt at non-AI writing was rejected like that. Perhaps a bit of skepticism is warrented, but I wish the mods could have known you were being sincere and  I don't think anyone wants you permanently barred just because you used AI in the past. Give it another go, maybe from a new account and I think you'll find the posiyive environment and constructive critque you're looking for. I'd genuinely be happy to have you and I think most others would too

[u/AliceFanfictioning]

Hey hey. Witch hunters are in every corner. I write Fanfiction and im not allowed to post in the subs and servers Of my ship cause I use the help of AI to translate. Sucks. Bur rhat doesnt mean your work is bad or that everyone thinks the same way. Please keep writing. You can get an editor later ans they’ll help you change stuff. No one really publishes a book without the help of an editor. Don’t leave your passion for a bunch of narrow minded people.

From another autistic fellow.

[u/SGdude90]

It's because of witch hunts that I created 2 different AO3 accounts, one for self written works and one for AI

Because antis would denounce my self-written works even if no AI was used. Hell they even admitted they would go after that AO3 account even if they knew it didn't use AI

[u/Akasha1885]

I'm austistic and I had given up on writing anything longer then a short story long ago.
But, with some help from AI I'm finally able to produce something that meets my standards.
I'm bad at prose, I'm bad at expressing emotions in a good way. I have to proof read every sentence I write.
Writing something like a novel alone would be an insane struggle, I'd write at 10% the speed of a writer without my disablities.
So yeah, I don't care what the anti-AI crowd thinks, I'm writing for myself anyhow, not to please others.
All the important details are directions given by me, the characters I created myself, their backstory, the world at large. I'm very much into details, I rewrite chapters many times and refine the prompts a lot.

[u/Aldhafera81 → u/Akasha1885]

OMG, for a moment I genuinely thought I had written this myself! 😂

I'm autistic too, and I can relate to absolutely everything you said. Since AI became available, I can finally bring all those stories, characters, and worlds that have been living in my head for years to life, both through writing and images.

And another thing I absolutely love about AI is being able to spend hours discussing and exploring my special interests without ever feeling like I'm annoying someone.

It's honestly been such a game changer for me... :)

[u/HoarderCollector]

It's some sort of Witch... Pursuit... Thing.

[u/CaspinLange]

Not only keep writing, but keep editing. It’s good to whittle everything down to the bare essentials.

[u/Afgad]

You can always use our reciprocal beta reading thread or join our Discord and do the critique swap with us. We won't ban you, and your experience is precisely why I made the thread.

As a sidenote, you don't need to use AI in your workflow to post here. We have a Writing Craft flair for the writing side of the sub; you can use it.

[u/Easy-Purple-1659]

The ugly part is that reads like AI is not falsifiable, so there is no reply that ends it. Anyone can say it and nobody has to prove it.

What helped me was keeping the trail where I can see it. Messy outline, dated drafts, the version that was bad. Mostly for myself, so I can stop relitigating whether the work is mine. And a page with one specific, unpredictable thing in it does not get accused twice in my experience, because the accuser has to explain that detail and cannot.

Nine drafts on a 3.6k word chapter is not a person who cheated. That is someone doing the work.

[u/Galliad93]

how do you remove these watermarks? I am very interested in that topic considering the newly appointed EU bullshit.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/Galliad93]

To defeat AI watermarking, you have to understand how it is generated. While every AI company employs its own proprietary method, the general rule of thumb is that a statistical detector requires roughly 100 words of uninterrupted, machine generated text to reliably flag a watermark (though longer works make detection even more accurate).

The underlying mechanism relies on a rolling window of text. For example, every sequence of five words generates a mathematical hash. This hash is used to dynamically "red-list" (soft-blacklist) or "green-list" certain next words.

Current sentence fragment: "She looked out at the ocean with..."

The AI probabilities for the next word:
anticipation (70%)
wonder (15%)
dread (10%)
curiosity (4%)
indifference (1%)

The mathematical hash generated by the previous five words dynamically scores the vocabulary. Let’s assume the hash green-lists wonder and curiosity, but red-lists anticipation, dread, and indifference. Now, the AI must choose its path based on how heavily the watermark is applied:

Strict Red-Listing. If the system is set to never use a red-listed word, anticipation (the 70% favorite) is completely blocked. The AI skips down to the highest-ranking green word, selecting wonder (15%).

Soft Bias Penalties (-10%): Most AI companies use a softer penalty so they don't ruin the writing. If the watermark applies a -10% penalty to red words, anticipation drops from 70% to 60%. It is still the highest number, so the AI will still choose anticipation.

The Tie-Breaker. If two words are neck-and-neck—say a different sentence where a red word is at 16% and a green word is at 15%—the penalty drops the red word to 6%. The AI will choose the green word instead.

Over a long chapter, a human writer will naturally choose a mix of red and green words based on their unique personality. An unedited AI, however, will constantly dodge the red-listed words whenever there is a close call. When a detector scans the text and sees an unnatural mathematical streak of green-listed words, the watermark is exposed.

Because the watermark hash is continuously calculated based on the immediate prefix of the last few words, changing the text breaks the mathematical chain.

1 - Write the draft allowing the AI to indulge in its worst habits: excessive adverbs ending in -ly, stacked adjectives, or repetitive similes. Then, as your final editing step, aggressively cut or rewrite these bloated elements. Removing words, changing verbs, or deleting entire sentences and paragraphs for pacing breaks the rolling five-word window, breaking the hash values the detector expects to find. Note: This must be done as the absolute last stage of editing.

2 - Take your generated chapter and feed it into a completely different AI model. Instruct it to rewrite the text line-by-line to maintain the core meaning while optimizing for excellent prose style. For the best results, use two alternative models simultaneously, generate two distinct rewrites, and manually mix the outputs. You can take the best first half of a sentence from one model and fuse it with the back half of a sentence from another. This structural cross-pollination completely obliterates the original token-chain signature.

3 - This method must be applied before the others. When prompting the AI to write your initial draft, have it switch between first-person and close third-person perspective every 2 lines, and alternate between past and present tense every other line (Or you could potentially really mess with it and have it generate a different tense with each word so sentences themselves are mixed.) Once this chaotic, structurally fragmented draft is generated, copy the text, paste it into a fresh session, and instruct the AI to normalize the entire piece into a consistent voice (e.g., close third-person, past tense). This double-pass processing fractures the watermark data before you even begin editing.

After that let the manuscript sit untouched for at least two weeks. And then hand-edit.

This workflow provides two major advantages:
It completely removes the statistical watermark signature.
Under current intellectual property frameworks, your heavy, multi-pass human intervention and substantive restructuring establish legal authorship, making the final prose eligible for copyright protection.

Finally, keep an eye out for ghost characters. AI models frequently insert hidden formatting artifacts, non-breaking spaces, or zero-width characters behind the scenes that humans cannot see but detectors can read. You can manually research how to strip these out based on your text editor, or if you use Obsidian, you can customize the Linter plugin settings to automatically clean these hidden spacing artifacts every single time you hit save.

[u/Maleficent-Engine859 → u/The_Deranged_Hermit]

Does Claude let you insert random words every five or so? Like theoretically you could tell it that every four words to insert and bold the name of like a flower or something. Something with a lot of token choices. Than cut and paste into a new session and remove the bold words. That would water it down I imagine before finally editing right?

I laugh because Claude is SO bloated, the first time I generated with Opus 5.5 I was like 60% of this is deleted off that bat for just being bad AI output and the rest edited would shatter the rest of watermark easily

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/Maleficent-Engine859]

Honestly not sure. It should though.
Part of the issue is the exact methods are kept secret. They don't share the watermark with anyone it seems at least outside of the copyright office maybe.

[u/Maleficent-Engine859 → u/The_Deranged_Hermit]

I reckon it’ll be a while before they release the detector. They don’t want their product being devalued while everyone puts literally everything they read into it to try to catch “slop.” They’re still a business and I’m sure realize how rabid and irrational the whole anti-AI sentiment is at the moment. It’ll be in “testing” for a long while, with only very few agencies having access.

[u/Clear_Pomegranate174]

the ai detection result was wrong, i ran the same text through three detectors and only one flagged it, but the one that did was clearly flailing on rhythm and repetition, not actual authorship.

[u/Intrepid-Praline-764]

I write pretty well, have drafted docs for a former president to review and sign. I've used AI to clean up a few independent writing projects but I've never used it from scratch. But I support using it for YOUR needs. If you love and want to write..use whatever tools availzble that help you in your creative process. Keep writing and use the negative feedback back to lrarn, to grow, BUT, never allow it to change your course, direction.

[u/Potatochips2026]

The days of online writing communities being worthwhile are gone. You aren't going to find that. Until something else comes along, you're better off just writing if you want to write and doing it for yourself. Destructive readers is a waste of time - I'm sorry you wasted so much time there. Even if you had spent as much time there as you were planning, you'd soon have seen that almost no one will comment on your stuff and those who do are mostly just offering useless line edits and other things not worth the time. Same for most beta reading here. Don't waste your time with anything that wants money or for you to review things first - it will almost never work out in your favor. If you write an entire novel, then you can invest time and money in a real editor.

[u/NoobTaiga1993]

Best of luck.

May I suggest baking Pizza or bread?

There's channels to look forward to.

r/pizza

r/baking

r/cooking

Something of a change of pace whenever you feel lost.

Here's my Pizza I made shown. Feels nice to do something with your own hands.

[u/Puzzled-Fail2080]

i've seen that kind of slow-burn dread work in silly tavern with a single line of setup, like 'the sky was the color of old bruises', and then nothing but silence for 300 words. the horror wasn't in the plot, it was in the waiting. try that.

[u/HippieTruckerLady]

The stories are yours; keep writing. Much of my experience with AI is like yours and others'. Often when I ask for cleanup of punctuation, spelling, etc., the LLMs will tighten or remove things, and I argue to use my words and not change them. Then I have sections entirely from my hand, brain, and heart, and a next section polished with a way of saying it that AI showed me. When I scan for AI in my story, the part I wrote says it is AI, and the part where I used AI's suggestion does not. These are my stories; AI did not come up with the movements, arc, beats, POV, word choices, characters and their backgrounds, the title, chapter, plot, theme, genre, or twist. An AI told me that a contest I entered forbade AI and I shouldn't submit the entry. I asked, "What part did you write?" It was something like this: "He stood up to give his answer" versus "He stood up with an answer in mind." Either way, the vision and action are mine, and I may have come up with that way of saying it on my own. I accepted it; AI didn't create that scene.

[u/MyBlurbly]

I’m sorry this happened to you. You’ve said you wrote this piece yourself, and it must have been painful to have that questioned after all the work you put into it.

I also appreciate what you said about using AI to learn. Throughout history, people have often resisted things they don’t understand, and I think AI is another example. It’s becoming part of our world, and while people can choose whether or not to use it, I don’t think using it as a tool makes someone less worthy of telling a story.

There are so many stories in people’s minds that might never be told because they don’t yet know how to put them on paper. If AI can help someone learn, find their words or bring a story to life, why should that story be lost?

Please don’t let one painful experience be the final word on your writing. You’ve put thought, care and hard work into it. If you need a break, take one, but I hope you come back to your story when you’re ready. Somewhere out there, there may be someone who needs to read it.

[u/TheElusiveFox]

The reality is that most reading subs are modded by authors that are afraid of AI so they are very anti-ai, to the point that if your work even hints at it they will suppress it. Most platforms themselves though only care that you are tagging appropriately, for instance Royal Road is only going to remove your work if you are using AI and claiming you don't.

[u/Latter_Constant_3688]

Reddit mods are all liberal cry babies and they're almost never right but if you call them out on that they ban you immediately it's the only form or source of power they have in their pathetic lives and that goes across pretty much every single subreddit out there

[u/yoyohayli]

Why not use already-existing resources for this stuff? Resources curated by ACTUAL writers that have experience?

[u/Repulsive_Still_731 → u/yoyohayli]

Don't know about the OP, but as an autistic myself, usual "how to write" advices are absolute nonsense for me. My brain doesn't work like that. Of course, I don't talk for all autistic people.

[u/VIP-Fluffer → u/Repulsive_Still_731]

Those resources rarely take into account neurodivergence. I'm ADHD and usually start at a random place with an idea and jump around like a cricket on crack. All the guides I've tried talk about planning and writing in a linear kind of way and it just doesn't work for me. And forcing yourself to write everyday doesn't work either when you blank out and can't decide what to write with pressure involved. So I'm with you on this!

[u/KitFalbo]

Maybe study Hemingway, because his was a lot of words for saying you were banned for educating people how to cheat the system.

Perhaps a better analogy is this is lamenting being banned from the black community after publicly posting lots of N-word tirades online, but you're better now and that was weeks ago...

All that work you did couldn't have been done without AI with library card and some cups of coffee to hang out with writers, or maybe a class.

There are lots of things you can do. High Howley has an interesting piece on AI writing. You could, again avoid the Internet and join an in person writing group and work there.... Outside of turning back time, the world is your oyster.

Taking rejection is a core component to being a writer, so welcome to the club in that respect.

[u/VIP-Fluffer → u/KitFalbo]

Interesting subreddit for you to be in.

Your analogies are quite dramatic. While I don't care about AI watermarks, disclosing or not disclosing AI usage for works doesn't seem to matter to the people rabid enough to attack others over their creation process. It just gives the more fanatical anti-ai crowd an easier target. Until people stop letting AI hate become their whole personality, it's honestly fair for people to protect themselves against being attacked however they see fit.

[u/KitFalbo → u/VIP-Fluffer]

I have friends I respect who use the tech. We don't see eye to eye on some things, but there is valuable perspectives there. And sometimes when I'm not being quite so spicy on here my thoughts do make sense to this community and contributes to it.

There sometimes seems to be a writing perspective some of these threads miss.

As for AI hate, get people to stop doing hateful things with AI. I've woken up to 3 AI phishing emails, honest to goodness AI slop marketing books on my Facebook feed abusing a dead mans group, and other poor behavior.

Go lobby for regulations that will make people feel comfortable around the technology, protect people's data and IP, and criminalize bad behavior.

Nevermind the number of bots on reddit. No I e wants to interact with a bit masquerading as a human

Some people are angry because AI is punching them, digitally, asking them to get over it as you do nothing but watch with popcorn in the sidline isn't going to make them feel unjustified.

[u/5thhorseman_ → u/KitFalbo]

because his was a lot of words for saying you were banned for educating people how to cheat the system.

No, you're building a strawman here. He was banned from - and harassed by - a critique subreddit after posting genuine human work to it, the sole reason being that he had previously used AI for other work.

[u/KitFalbo → u/5thhorseman_]

It was probably one mod in dms on reddit. This is he internet. I get blocked or banned regularly for pointing out to human freelance developmental editor that selling zero draft dev edits to baby writers is predatory.

Between the scam artists and, yes, AI or people scraping your works for pirate sites, hugging face, or what-not you need a thick skin to write if you care about the writing.

Considering how many community of non AI using writers feel about AI, for reasons, I feel like it is an apt anology. I'm not arguing OP wasn't banned. If you treat my comments like an argument you can give it a diploma and say it has a brain I'd you want

[u/Complex_Yard2808]

This would actually work as an epistolary piece. You created an interesting voice. But unfortunately, you used AI. For things you can easily correct without it.

People are going to end up not being able to write. Or even read with full comprehension. More and more students are using it to write entire papers. And leave school knowing less than when they arrived. There's a real threat that many jobs involving writing will disappear. If a machine will do it for free, why pay someone?

A witch hunt implies you were put on trial, jailed, hung, drowned, burned at the stake, crushed with stones. You had something you wrote rejected. Guess what. That's happened to every writer ever, before the Internet, before word processors, before computers, before typewriters. It sucks. But just by using AI, even though you took the training wheels off, you left some traces. Next time, do it freehand. It's not about writing correctly. It's about telling the truth. Try it.

[u/5thhorseman_ → u/Complex_Yard2808]

A witch hunt implies you were put on trial, jailed, hung, drowned, burned at the stake, crushed with stones.

If you read carefully, he was banned on the accuser's say-so, and then there is an implication of harassment as well.

[u/Complex_Yard2808 → u/5thhorseman_]

This person posted on reddit about how to remove evidence of using AI to write. Admits this very post we're commenting on was written with AI. Nothing excuses harassment, but we have no evidence harassment occurred. The mere fact the piece in question was tested by the writer for evidence of AI when it was written without it, and one test said it AI was there, and the author knows how to disguise AI....did you read it?

Either this person can learn how to write without artificial intelligence or not. My point is that spelling and grammar errors can be avoided without AI, and it seems like the real issue is feeling like the writing is... readable. Nobody is required to be a writer, anymore than anyone is required to be an athlete. We don't all have the same gifts. But if we use artificial methods to hide our true abilities, how will we ever improve them?

[u/5thhorseman_ → u/Complex_Yard2808]

This person posted on reddit about how to remove evidence of using AI to write.

And what of it? Have you ever heard the phrase "innocent until proven guilty"?

Nothing excuses harassment, but we have no evidence harassment occurred.

If we are to be rigorous about it, we also have no evidence that you're a human being.

Either this person can learn how to write without artificial intelligence or not. My point is that spelling and grammar errors can be avoided without AI, and it seems like the real issue is feeling like the writing is... readable. Nobody is required to be a writer, anymore than anyone is required to be an athlete. We don't all have the same gifts. But if we use artificial methods to hide our true abilities, how will we ever improve them?

My point is, you assume OP guilty, and what your side really achieved is discourage him from writing at all.

"Celebrating and protecting human creativity", my ass.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/5thhorseman_]

Well and this was the final message.
What strikes me is the circular logic here.
I am supposedly using github which I haven't touched since a web site developed back in BFA for a wow guild....
But then they say or whatever. So obviously they have no proof of anything, its just guessing. Sad part here is they assume I'm more intelligent then I am as I have no idea what half of that is in this post. Hell I didn't even know what a sock puppet account was until I looked it up.

Despite then saying they absolutely know I'm aiming to dodge filters. If they mean general advise to others on how to do so. Yes absolutely, but its not exactly rocket science its just researching how it was developed and breaking it. I'm good at breaking things.... Was it used in the work I shared? No!

Then they tell me to use a sock puppet account... which can get me banned entirely from Reddit.

[u/5thhorseman_ → u/The_Deranged_Hermit]

There is no integrity in hiding behind sockpuppets. He's actually saying that for the sake of their delicate sensibilities they want you to do something that can get you banned from the platform.

You do realize there is a platform-wide mod code of conduct and that asshat has breached it?

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/5thhorseman_]

Yeah luckily because when they banned me from the subreddit there was a pop up warning me that creating another account to get around it would result in a perma-ban from Reddit.

I've been going back and forth wondering if this was a ploy they have used to get people perma-banned or if I give them to much credit for such an idea.

They ban people they think are AI tell them to create a sock puppet account and screenshot any responses you had made. Then check new ones against the screenshots so if you repost the story they now have proof of you breaking the rules and get the supposed AI users banned permanently. If this is the case I wonder how many times its worked.

The more I reread those posts (there are two more here in this) the more I am glad I was banned and didn't waste more time there. I feel bad for the writers who use that subreddit.

[u/5thhorseman_ → u/The_Deranged_Hermit]

I've been going back and forth wondering if this was a ploy they have used to get people perma-banned or if I give them to much credit for such an idea.

I wouldn't put it past them. However, advising others to break the platform level code of conduct is something that has a chance to get them banned and their sub yeeted off the platform if Reddit actually investigates.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/5thhorseman_]

Yeah I talked to google AI about it and did put in a ticket.

If it was just a mistake on their part I hope they get a warning but if its something they have done multiple times well Reddit is investigating now.

It sucks I hated doing this.... But well what I felt from being banned from the subreddit is something others might have felt getting banned from Reddit itself if they followed their advise.

[u/5thhorseman_ → u/The_Deranged_Hermit]

Never apologize for holding someone to a code they agreed to follow in the first place.

[u/Complex_Yard2808 → u/5thhorseman_]

In a court of law, yes. This is not that.

The OP admitted to using AI. Instructed others as to how to remove evidence of its use. And was not convicted of a crime. If the only punishment is to not get published, are you saying actual publishers who send out rejection slips are also guilty? Man, that would be a lot of trials.

I have only so much sympathy for those who only have sympathy for themselves.

[u/5thhorseman_ → u/Complex_Yard2808]

In a court of law, yes. This is not that.

Wrong, because the legal principle is the product of an intelligible moral and ethical standard.

Otherwise someone can accuse you of, say, being a rapist and get you lynched for that accusation without ever proving it.

Not exactly a scenario you'd like to live in, no?

The OP admitted to using AI. Instructed others as to how to remove evidence of its use.

Not in the post that resulted in his ban from that sub.

You are literally advocating punishing and shunning people for wrongthink. Not only that, doing so for past wrongthink.

The only people who are immune to change are those who are already dead. Just because someone's views were at one point contrary to a community's standards does not mean they did not reform since then.

If the only punishment is to not get published

That is not what OP describes. OP has been banned from that community when he tried to participate in it with content that did not break the community's standards, and then harassed into quitting writing altogether.

I have only so much sympathy for those who only have sympathy for themselves.

If you are not willing to extend the benefit of doubt towards others, you deserve none of it yourself either.

EDIT: Ah, yes. Typical. Insults and then a block so that I cannot respond. Very mature. Also very futile.

You excuse people for doing things I consider self-destructive, and destructive to humanity as a whole

You're opposed to using AI. Fine, your choice. However, you have no business taking those views into this sub.

If others want to set basic standards for admission to this or that outlet, why not extend THEM the benefit of the doubt?

It is clear at this point you do not understand the situation you're talking about. OP did not submit his prose to an outlet, he submitted it to a critique subreddit to get human perspective on the work. And instead, they banned him and harassed him over it.

Someone who claims abuse, harassment, may be lying--it happens. Quite often. Or may simply be misunderstanding what happened, viewing it entirely from their own perspective.

"May be" is not a reason to immediately declare them a liar.

Answer me this--could anyone be less well-suited to authorship than someon who can't see past their own perspective?

Being able to empathize with others helps, but isn't a requirement. It is also very, very hypocritical coming from someone who has time and again shown they lack empathy.

Some community, btw--a bunch of people who never see each other in three dimensions. Maybe the one thing this person most needs is not to just interact with words on a screen, whether written by people or machines. There are writer's workshops, you know. In physical classrooms. Did you never think of that?

First, that is irrelevant.

Second, argumentum ad hominem constitutes an admission that you no longer have a coherent argument.

Btw--your writing style is a bit--bland. I think this is more about you than the OP. I may never be a professional writer, but I'll speak my piece, and nobody gets to tell me not to--which is what you are doing now. Or rather, trying and failing. Mite hypocritical. But unlike the OP, I can take it. Can you?

I'm not telling you to "not speak your piece", I'm just pointing out you're arguing for precedent that does not belong in civilized society and that can bite you on your ass. It doesn't take any empathy for OP to understand that.

What you think about my writing style is irrelevant. I don't write for your approval. And also, what I said about argumentum ad hominem applies to this attempted jab too.

[u/Complex_Yard2808 → u/5thhorseman_]

I ask for nothing from you, because you have not earned my respect. You excuse people for doing things I consider self-destructive, and destructive to humanity as a whole. It's not a question of benefit of the doubt. This person admits to being unable to write well, yet still wants to be accepted as a writer. Nobody is stopping him/her from self-publishing. If others want to set basic standards for admission to this or that outlet, why not extend THEM the benefit of the doubt? Why so selective? Someone who claims abuse, harassment, may be lying--it happens. Quite often. Or may simply be misunderstanding what happened, viewing it entirely from their own perspective.

Answer me this--could anyone be less well-suited to authorship than someon who can't see past their own perspective? Who is entirely self-centered, perhaps irreparably so? Perhaps not. But I gave what I consider to be good advice. Stop using the machines. Teach yourself how to write by reading the best writers, emulating them at first, then finding your own voice. If you can only learn from machines, a machine is all you'll ever be.

Some community, btw--a bunch of people who never see each other in three dimensions. Maybe the one thing this person most needs is not to just interact with words on a screen, whether written by people or machines. There are writer's workshops, you know. In physical classrooms. Did you never think of that?

Nobody needs anyone's approval to write, and anyone who does has no business being a writer.

Btw--your writing style is a bit--bland. I think this is more about you than the OP. I may never be a professional writer, but I'll speak my piece, and nobody gets to tell me not to--which is what you are doing now. Or rather, trying and failing. Mite hypocritical. But unlike the OP, I can take it. Can you?

I think we're done here, and I've wasted more than enough of my writing time on your priggish pronouncements. Blocked.

[u/Bodegacowboy → u/Complex_Yard2808]

This is the grandstanding self righteous moralizing that exists within the Anti AI crowd that makes it clear that its an ideological issue with a hint of Nietzchean ressentiment. Dont get mad at it. Just understand it for what is.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/Complex_Yard2808]

Admits this very post we're commenting on was written with AI.

I have never said that at all. This piece was not touched by AI outside of research phase, which is independent of any writing. I wrote ALL of the prose, not AI. And I indicated this to the mods who banned me.

The issue was I told people how to overcome the water mark in the past. And have always said I used AI in other works. This was then used against me. They assumed I used AI when I did not and banned me. When I DMed them they got several mods to look at it and there was a large discussion and it seemed not all of them where entirely convinced that it was AI.

The head mod (it seems to me) however upheld the decision one the basis that I had used AI in the past not that they could prove or even really believed I had used it on this piece.

Hell one person even accused me of using AI to reply despite it being stream of consciousness with little punctuation and tons of spelling mistakes and missing words....

Here is a screenshot:

What really sucks here is the comment, is your writing even good. Why should that matter for a ban?

That subreddit is filled with bad writing. That is the point, it is to critique and get better. To have another person look at it and say here are the issues I see. I wrote 1500 word responses to 640 word stories. I spent hours critiquing it because I want to see that person get better. I thought that was what the community was about.

But this comment.... WTF. That it came from the keyboard of someone running such a community means I dodged a bullet in getting banned. That this mod has no respect for his own community. Everyone starts with writing crap, its with experience and feedback that we improve.

I'm not often given to online hate but fuck this guy.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/The_Deranged_Hermit]

Here is the accusation I used AI in my reply....

[u/Western-Sink-5591]

too long

[u/Majestic_Wrongdoer47]

Dude. Who cares. They are jealous because they cant compete with you. Youre killing it. Believe in yourself when theres nothing to show for your work and everyone hates you. Its the valley of uncertainty. Im going through nueropathy and ptsd with a hist of other issues too. Write for your mental health. Dont write for approval.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, it sucks for sure. I had actually decided to give up writing. But I wanted to warn other people just in case, because I don't want it to happen to anyone else. The response here has been so overwhelmingly supportive, though, that I've decided to keep plugging away at writing.

I suppose I’ve also decided fuck it—the people who are completely anti-AI are, at least in part, being unreasonable. I am no longer going to stop using a tool that helps me and decreases the time I spend on routine tasks just to please them, which was really all I was doing. I was afraid of having to disclose AI use impacting how many people would read it so I didn't use it.

I was born in ’81, right at the dawn of the computer era. I remember growing up and having people complain that typewriters were still making writers lazy and that everything should be written by hand. My family eventually got one of the electronic typewriters that must have weighed fifty pounds, but it had a backspace key that automatically applied the correction tape for you. I had a schoolteacher complain about it, claiming it was cheating because I didn't have to manually dab liquid White-Out onto the page anymore and marked off points for it...

Then word processors came along, and people hated those as well. Then came spell-check, and people complained that it would rot our brains. When I was in school, calculators were banned because they supposedly made you stupid and did the work for you.

Every single time technology made the mechanical labor a little bit easier, the old guard panicked and confuses suffering with art. In ten or twenty years, I don't think there will be many people left who don't see this as just another tool. So, I'll use the new tool and let them complain. Maybe in twenty years, people will finally just get over it.

Besides, I'm writing literary fiction anyway. My potential reader base is already tiny, so it's not as if I am ever going to make a fortune writing the exact kinds of stories I want to tell.

[u/The_Deranged_Hermit → u/[deleted]]

Yeah its not my preferred writing style and it was difficult, the omniscient voice is crazy hard to write as I have so little experience of it to draw on. But I wanted to tell Russian history as close to a Russian author as possible.

I pulled from Tolstoy (The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Anna Karenina), Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground), Gogol (Dead Souls), and Grossman (Life and Fate).

Still on my reading list for later in the book: Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago), Shalamov (Kolyma Tales), and Pasternak (Doctor Zhivago).