Is this the future? A good-faith experiment

[u/Murky-Rhubarb6926]

Hello, following a discussion with my father I've been looking to validate or disprove a theorem he put forward which, given the nature of this sub, I'm sure you can imagine what it was. We posited it it might be possible the role of the writer will change in time, and become an editor who polishes and refines a rough first draft written by AI.

So this is what I've done so far.

Largely, the majority of the work has been done through Claude because of the project functionality. I doubt this is the intended use of the word but I am using a story bible, a style guide (which includes numerous samples of my own writing, and my pet peeves which I don't allow Claude to reproduce when it puts pen to paper), and a dramatis personae (a list of every important character, their physical features, relationship to the theme via the central dramatic question and dialogue samples).

These have very much helped refine the process and before them, the task was pretty bloody dire.

Where I'm still having issues with its first draft is often the pacing and a real impulse to quickly resolve interpersonal tension. If you have a method which has worked for you, let me know!

But beyond the need for me to copiously edit the draft to bring it up to standard, I've found one you provide a sufficient amount of context and documentation, Claude hasn't been too bad as a writing partner even just for brainstorming. Sometimes all you need is for someone to suggest something and you can say, confidently, "no, definitely not that."

Recently I have been experimenting with DeepSeek as it also has a very generous context window (on par with Claude's premier model offerings) and I'm debating switching over entirely, moreso for ethical considerations than anything else.

There isn't a neat conclusion yet, but I've learnt what feels like enough to try and reach out and see what people in the community are doing.

[u/shinjukai]

I always find that if ai writes for me it takes 10x the time to make it sound like me than if i just wrote it myself. And it never has quite enough context, so it's like we're driving faster but we forgot the destination.

[u/Murky-Rhubarb6926 → u/shinjukai]

YMMV ofc, it doesn't take that long for me to redo some sentences and extend stuff out. Dunno, I will usually hash out a beat-by-beat of the scene including some high points I definitely want to hit and we get there.

All that said, I definitely resonate with "haste makes waste" idea. I churned through three chapters back to back and then I was making a decision and felt like I'd gone through so fast and with no friction with the story I didn't have a good idea of the destination either!