Driving test for AI in fiction writing

​​​​

Writing fiction with AI, Anyone?

Can AI be used in fiction writing? AI is getting more commonly used in fiction writing, and better tools such as Sudowrite has come on the market. 

How would you like to see how I play around with simple generative AI to write sentences in fiction. This article describes my experience playing around with AI. Let's be clear: I am not trying to use AI to develop a story concept, to get a synopsis, an outline, then the beats in a certain section of an outline. A tool like Story Engine in Sudowrite is beginning to help writers do that. Here, I am just using AI to continue beats.

Here's what I started with: I extracted two sentences from the start of my story, uploaded to the laika AI writer, and selected the "Poirot Collection" brain for this exercise. The three suggestions from the AI are reproduced in italics below.

Original passage

Sergeant Lily Wong sniffed the metallic smell of blood in the room. The pool of thick scarlet fluid had congealed on the blue Persian carpet, beneath the body of a young blonde woman.

Suggestion 1

Sergeant Lily Wong sniffed the metallic smell of blood in the room. The pool of thick scarlet fluid had congealed on the blue Persian carpet, beneath the body of a young blonde woman. The sound of a heavy fall startled the two detectives. They turned to the man. Who is that? he asked, and the detective hesitated. Who is the man in the green coat? cried Poirot.

Suggestion 2

Sergeant Lily Wong sniffed the metallic smell of blood in the room. The pool of thick scarlet fluid had congealed on the blue Persian carpet, beneath the body of a young blonde woman. The dead woman's head was slightly dislocated from the head. She had fallen at least twenty paces.

Suggestion 3

Sergeant Lily Wong sniffed the metallic smell of blood in the room. The pool of thick scarlet fluid had congealed on the blue Persian carpet, beneath the body of a young blonde woman. The woman had been stabbed in the back, and the dagger had been pulled from the wound.

My interpretation

The first suggestion uses a distraction passage. It assumes there were two detectives in the scene, and seems to change the gender of Lily Wong to the he pronoun.

The second suggestion introduces the mechanism of the death: a fall.

The third suggestion is the simplest and most logical, so I use that as the template for further writing by the AI, using the same brain. I obtain:

Suggestion 1

Sergeant Lily Wong sniffed the metallic smell of blood in the room. The pool of thick scarlet fluid had congealed on the blue Persian carpet, beneath the body of a young blonde woman. The woman had been stabbed in the back, and the dagger had been pulled from the wound. She lay face downwards, and the dagger was still in its sheath. She had been lying on the floor for some time, and the blood had been spattered all over her white clothes.

Suggestion 2

Sergeant Lily Wong sniffed the metallic smell of blood in the room. The pool of thick scarlet fluid had congealed on the blue Persian carpet, beneath the body of a young blonde woman. The woman had been stabbed in the back, and the dagger had been pulled from the wound. The man, standing by the bed, had not moved a muscle. His face was buried in a thick band of dark hair.

Suggestion 3

Sergeant Lily Wong sniffed the metallic smell of blood in the room. The pool of thick scarlet fluid had congealed on the blue Persian carpet, beneath the body of a young blonde woman. The woman had been stabbed in the back, and the dagger had been pulled from the wound. The blood was so thick that the dagger was almost impossible to see. The man had been standing over the body, his face and hands blackened, but the dagger was unmistakable.

My interpretation and conclusion

The first suggestion elaborates on the scene. The second suggestion introduced a second character, which could be a hook, leading to a new direction in the writing. The third suggestion is problematic, as it isn't clear who the man was. The dagger was almost impossible to see seems to contradict the dagger was unmistakable.

Based on this short exercise, I think AI for crime writing has a role: to stimulate ideas and new directions. But AI is not going to replace a human author anytime soon.

Next, I will evaluate AI site called rytr.me.

This tool is not specialised for writing fiction, but it has a function called "story plot." This is meant to generate a story outline based on story ideas. What I discover is that it is actually generating three story beats from a concept, with each beat described in a paragraph. This may be useful if one is developing a part of a scene, to increase meat in it.

Let's see what it can do. I typed the following into the Story Idea input box: "This story is about a young girl who travelled to Florida to undergo training in mental health. She has a schizophrenic mother and an autistic sister in Singapore. She is full of guilt." The maximum length of input in this box is 200 characters. In the other selection boxes, I chose "3 variants" and "high" for creativity.

This is the output:

Variant 1:

The young girl, Elly, travelled to Florida for training in mental health. She was eager to learn as much as she can about taking care of her schizophrenic mother and autistic sister back in Singapore.

Elly was plagued with guilt that she was unable to provide the care her family needed while she was away and missing them dearly. She read up on different methods of mental health care, spoke to professionals and took notes during lectures, hoping the information would make her a better caregiver when she returned home.

One day during a lecture, Elly's professor asked students to share real-life experiences. Elly hesitated but soon opened up about her own story - how she had taken on the responsibility of caring for her family back home yet felt guilty for being away for so long. The rest of the class listened attentively and soon enough Elly received an overwhelming amount of support from people who understood what she was going through.

The newfound support inspired

—

This is interesting because it focused on her activities in her mental health training and elaborated on the process of learning, and the passage can potentially can be continued using other AI tools like Laika above.

Variant 2:

The young girl, Rose, is a college student from Singapore who has come to Florida for training in mental health. She is motivated by her schizophrenic mother and autistic sister back home. She carries a heavy burden of guilt for leaving them behind as she feels that if she had stayed, maybe she could have helped them more.

When Rose arrives in Florida, she is overwhelmed by the sheer number of people who are in need of mental health care. Her mentor is an old man named Henry who has been working with patients for decades and he helps her to understand the complexities of mental illness.

Soon, Rose starts to develop a bond with one of her patients - a young girl named Sarah who suffers from severe depression and anxiety. As they talk, Rose finds out that Sarah also comes from Singapore and shares a similar background to her own.

Rose begins to realize that while training can help with understanding mental illness, it's not enough to be able to truly

—

This is interesting because the AI introduced a new character, a mentor called Henry.

Variant 3:

A young girl named Sally had always wanted to be a mental health professional, but never knew how to help her own family. Her mother was schizophrenic and her sister autistic. She felt guilty that she couldn’t do anything to help them and couldn’t understand why they couldn’t be helped.

So when Sally heard about a training program in Florida for mental health professionals, she jumped at the chance to try and make a difference. She left Singapore with nothing but hope in her heart and a determination to learn all she could.

The program was filled with lectures, case studies, role play and workshops that taught Sally about the different psychological disorders, how to diagnose them, and provide treatment for them. But the most helpful part of the class was hearing from those who lived with these disorders every day.

Sally got to meet other people like her mother and sister, who were struggling with schizophrenia and autism. For the first time in

—

This pasage focused on the motivation of the main character, and that she never knew how to help the family. There is quite a lot of passive form of the sentence being used: her mother was schizophrenic...program was filled with...

Let us consider another example using rytr:

This is the input into StoryIdea: "professor, 30-year marriage, an affair with his colleague. tries to hide amoral behaviour in a hypocritical academia and righteous family. Bullied. Murdered. Escape. Speaks. Emphasis on smell"

Variant one

It had been Horatio’s favourite smell since his very first days in China. Something vaguely je ne sais quoi, a mix of the savoury, fragrant and sweet. He found it in his home, in the markets and even on his colleagues when he was introduced to them upon being employed as a professor at a local university.

Aroma reminded him of his marriage to Xiuling, his faithful wife for thirty years who greeted him with her delicious meals every day as soon as he returned from work. The smell was around him every day. Everywhere and in everyone; but it was never so strong until he met Liangyu.

Liangyu was a colleague of Horatio; the same one who suggested the two of them become more than teachers of Chinese language to their students. That is when that speical smell seemed to take over their conversations, invading Horatio’s thoughts every day as they indulged themselves into an affair

Variant 2

Horatio, a Chinese professor, is happily married to his wife Mei Li for 30 years and they have two children together. However, not long after their anniversary celebration, Horatio begins a passionate affair with his colleague Elizabeth, an attractive young woman who charms him with her intelligence.

Horatio struggles to keep the affair hidden from Mei Li and the rest of his family who would be disgusted by his amoral behaviour in a hypocritical academia and seemingly righteous family. Horatio begins to fear for what would happen if this secret were discovered and worries about the harm it could cause to his family and reputation.

But soon Horatio can't resist spending more time with Elizabeth at the university and smells of their passionate interactions linger in the air. Unfortunately for Horatio, Mei Li is very observant and notices he's been acting strangely lately, so she begins to investigate.

Meanwhile, Horatio's faculty colleagues have also picked up on the scent of Elizabeth, leading

Variant 3

HORATIO, a professor of Chinese literature and culture at the university, had been married to his lovely wife SARAH for thirty years. They had two children together, JESSICA and BRANDON. Despite their long years together, Sarah had grown distant with Horatio and felt unfulfilled in their marriage.

One day, while doing research at his university library, HORATIO found himself entranced by a colleague of his ANGELA. He couldn't help but be drawn to her beauty and fragrances of her perfumes that accompanied her wherever she went. When Angela’s workload got too overwhelming one day Horatio offered to help her out which eventually lead to the two of them spending more and more time together until an affair bloomed between them.

Horatio was torn between wanting to remain faithful to Sarah but feeling so happy with his new relationship with Angela that he couldn't let go either. He had managed to hide the affair

Discussion:

There seems to be no need for complete sentences to be typed into the StoryIdea box.

The length of each generated passage is about 5 times the length of what is typed into the StoryIdea.

Other methods of AI writing or rytr itself can be used to extend the passage.

It is interesting how the instruction "emphasis on smell" is interpreted in different ways by the AI. In variant 1, we have a special smell that takes over...conversation, which does not really make any sense. In variant 2, the characters picked up the scent of Elisabeth, thus using smell in a metaphorical sense. In variant 3, the fragrances come from a character. 

Next, I evaluated this tool called Ghostwriter. The interesting thing about this tool is that one can optionally summon a spirit to do your bidding: for example, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, etc, and the AI will write in the style of the spirit. Too bad there isn't some contemporary spirit we can call on.

I entered this prompt: "Rewrite this with sensory input in the style of crime novels: The smell of lavendar reached his nose. In a half-dazed state, Lin localised the source of the sound. His hand stretched to the bedside, and his fumbling fingers found the phone. 'This had better be good.' "

I choose not to summon any of these spirits. 

This is the output:           

The smell of lavender wafted into the bedroom, its sweet aroma permeating the air. Lin stirred, dragged from his slumber by an unfamiliar sound. His hand stretched to the bedside, fumbling fingers finding their way to a vibrating phone. He brought it to his ear, brows furrowing in confusion at the unknown number illuminating on the screen. There was a pause as he considered whether or not to answer it. Curiosity won out and he finally spoke, his voice gruff with indignation "This had better be good."

Lin's question was met with silence for what felt like eternity before a raspy voice filled his ear in response. "It could be," it said cryptically. This cryptic statement sent shivers down Lin's spine but also made him more determined than ever to find out who was on the other end of this mysterious call.

He pressed for answers but each one he asked seemed to only prompt evasive responses that left him even more confused than before. Questions about where they were calling from and why they'd chosen to disturb him at such an hour were answered only by vague musings and eerie laughter that echoed through the line like ghostly whispers in an abandoned house.

Finally, when Lin thought he would make no further progress whatsoever, something unexpected happened; the caller mentioned a name - one he recognised all too well: 'Isabelle'. Instantly alert and suddenly sure of whom he was speaking with, Lin demanded proof of identity - knowing full well that this person could easily be spoofing him - but the line had already gone dead leaving him alone with some unanswered questions...and just as many suspicions bubbling away beneath his skin as if someone had lit a fuse inside his mind that threatened to explode any second now

The output ended mid sentence. Isn't this crazy? Well, there is something sinister and creative, especially with the mention of 'Isabelle'. I could ask the tool to 'refine' the output but I think you get the idea.

Have fun playing with these tools. At the current moment, the three tools I used are free to register and use, with some limitations.

Conclusion

One of the conclusions I get is that to use these tools efficiently, one has to be very skilled at constructing the correct prompt. And often, the limitation is on the length of the prompt, and the time needed to optimise the prompt. In other cases, the limitation is on the length of the output.

These examples in contemporary writing (in various genres), show that AI can elaborate and expand on story ideas. But I don't find new story beats being generated. In this sense, I don't think rytr generate story outlines, but instead it takes a short story idea and expands on it. AI has a role to elaborate on story ideas in various genres. However, only a human writer can assess how he wants to use these ideas and what to expand on.

There are other specific areas where AI can potentially shine but not explored in this article. This include the writing of a good synopsis and a blurp.

If you want to read an article on the ways where AI can help a novelist, go here.

Do you agree with me? Tell me what you think by emailing me.

Go to Louis Tong's Website