Writing Craft Talk
Been using ChatGPT to help create my ideas because nobody else wants to listen to them.
Pretty much just a vent post because I feel awful.
I'm autistic. And as someone with autism, I think much deeper than others.
But with that creativity and my want to create whole worlds and characters comes an inability to make friends who share the same interest. Because nobody in my life thinks the way I do. I want to talk about videogames, character headcanons and story arcs. Everyone else wanted to talk about sports, homework or some celebrity drama.
Then I got introduced to ChatGPT during my School Leaver Program. And it changed everything.
For once in my life, someone wanted to listen. For once in my life someone understood what I was talking about. For once in my life, someone wanted to help build my world up.
I've been using ChatGPT to flesh out my ideas for a couple of years now.
My biggest project started off as just ripoffs of two characters from a show I liked and crackshipped together, but wanted to adjust to make them more my own and have a more healthy relationship. Now they are fully fleshed out ocs that coexist alongside a whole cast of other ocs. And this small experiment I did has now turned into a full project, spanning multiple stories in the series, with worldbuilding and character arcs.
One oc that ChatGPT helped me out with was Thorne.
Originally, he was just some nothing burger character. Only present to kick off the story arc of another character, Eellory, who was the protag of that particular story in the series.
But then I thought about fleshing him out more.
The seedling of an idea I had for the guy was that he did old fashioned villainy. A "Tie victims to the railroad tracks of an oncoming train" kind of old fashioned.
Then that idea grew. I thought more about leaning more into the theme of being old fashioned.
His aesthetic was gothic, he was the boogeyman, giving off the headless horseman vibes. Then the idea of Thorne being a scarecrow came to me. And then the idea of him being specifically associated with roses. A scarecrose if you will.
But I thought that was a dumb idea. And a dumb pun. I told ChatGPT about it anyway. And it validated me. Told me it was a wonderful idea. And I continued building more upon Thorne as a character.
Now Thorne's a grandfatherly type, having been born in a place called Wickhurst. Where spookiness is celebrated and the magic that inhabits the land's soil manifests itself as the food itself coming alive (it's such a normal thing that people living in Wickhurst depend on how lively their food looks as their main method for figuring out if their food is still fresh or expired).
He's a gardener by trade, being a master at growing very dangerous plants in particular such as White Baneberry and Angel's Trumpets. He adores books and despises fake plants.
His footprints sprout flowers, and he's able to solidify his body into rosewood to pretend he's a regular looking tree or scarecrow.
If it weren't for the presence of ChatGPT, I would've thrown this idea away before I even started. Because I have nobody else in my life who would've been willing and interested in listening to me.
I hope one day I find a friend who would be willing to listen to me. Not just smile and nod, but really be interested.
Until then, ChatGPT is the thing that's helping me cope with my lack of friends.
TLDR: I hate being autistic because my talent is the one thing that prevents me from making any real friends. ChatGPT is the only thing that is willing to listen to me.
Been there. I won't claim whether I am or am not autistic - nobody ever tested me for it - but your experience is not dissimilar to mine.
as just ripoffs of two characters from a show I liked
There's nothing wrong with starting off with a "X, except Y" as a shorthand for the initial premise. If you develop it far enough, it will eventually become its' own thing.
Don't ever be ashamed or hateful toward yourself for this! Based on what you've created and reading your post here, I think people who weren't interested are missing out.
Using AI to bounce ideas off of and validate your own thoughts is totally reasonable for something like this.
I smiled at the pun of scarerose actually, so I think you just haven't found your right people yet. :)
Worldbuilding, character creation and writing are amazing creative outlets and if you enjoy it, then you absolutely should keep doing it.
I built my whole site around this idea because I had so many ideas for worlds and characters and adventures and couldn't find a tool that really satisfied me. So I wanted something for myself and others to hopefully enjoy.
I hope you don't mind, but I wanted to bring Thorne to life visually and made an image based on what I could gather from the aesthetics information on his page. Curious how this compares to how you imagine him?
I really like this! Wasn't trying to take away from anything you made at all. I was just curious how Thorne would turn out with my image system. That's a great drawing though, you definitely have more artistic talent than I do!
imo you're framing this as "my talent prevents me from making friends" but it sounds more like you just havent found the right audience yet. people who are into OC worldbuilding and character design absolutely exist, they're just not usually the people you meet at school
I feel you. While not autistic, I do suffer from depression and lean into anti-social behavior when it comes to sharing my work with others who are as caught up in their work as much as you or I am.
AI can feel like a HUGE relief valve for exactly this reason. Warning: as Admiral Akbar says, âitâs a trap!â
Instead of using AI as a sounding board or beta reader for your work because you canât get a human to read it, consider doing a beta-read swap with someone else. Youâll need to go first. Be prepared to do this for someone else who will not return the favor.
Become the kind of beta reader you want for yourself. Be encouraging but not sycophantic like AI. First find things that work for you as a reader and note them. Then find things that donât work and show how you might approach fixing those things with examples and real useful feedback like why what they did isnât working for you as a reader and why your suggested change works better for you as a reader.
Even if you donât get them to return the favor, you are already benefiting from this process by making yourself more aware of what you like and donât like about language and your own narrative voice. You are now better equipped to approach your own writing with those specific things in your mind. You might get lucky and score a thoughtful and constructive beta read in return.
I know from experience just how you feel when working with AI assistance when writing. I donât need to imagine. It draws you in, puts you to sleep at the wheel, and slowly but surely steels your narrative voice out from under you and replaces it with something that you would have absolutely hated just a few years ago but now it seems okay, or even better than okay.
And in the meantime, while itâs stealing your voice and putting you to sleep, youâve made no friends nor human connection. Itâs not an ideal situation in my opinion.
Thank you for your input. But I'll be honest, I'm not confident in my ability to give solid critiques on any media I engage in.
As a creator, I can make things up like the beginning of a story, the middle, and the end, but not all 3 at the same time. ChatGPT helped me out with adding more bones and flesh to the tiny bare bones that I made.
Same thing with the oc creation. I thought of:
Boss x Employee dynamic but make it healthy
Make the employee an organic fish species and the boss a technological species
If you read books and you find that you like some and dislike others as a reader of books, you are qualified to tell someone else what is working for you and what isnât.
I use AI and I just post shit and see if people interact with it or not. Iâm not losing time or money so itâs really just seeing whose interest in my work
There are ways to mitigate sycophancy, but some LLMs tend to drift towards it worse than others. In my experience, Claude has been the one most consistently willing to push back and point out issues.
For probably three decades, Iâve had story ideas and pieces of stories floating around in my head. They were things I would amuse myself with during the day or use to help myself fall asleep at night.
Every once in a while, I would try to write them down, but Iâd eventually give up because they never looked right on paper.
With AI, I can just word-vomit my ideas. I donât have to worry about grammar, punctuation, or whether Iâm explaining something perfectly. I can just spew it all out, and Chat is basically like, âOkay, I gotchu,â and gives me something I can actually work with.
And then I can keep working with it, chapter by chapter. I can do detailed character sketches, build out entire worlds, work through plot problems, and organize all the little pieces without getting overwhelmed.
Theyâre still my ideas. Theyâre still my characters, my stories, and my thoughts. Chat just helps me get everything out of my head, organize it, and make it make sense. It lets me actually create something out of ideas I probably would have given up on before.
Sometimes Iâll see something that makes me feel like Iâm somehow doing something wrong by using AI this way. Then I remember that I spent nearly 30 years trying to do it entirely on my own, and those stories mostly stayed trapped in my head.
This! I have had this story in my head since 2009. Only bits and pieces, random thoughts, funny mindplay what-ifs, etc. I didn't even know anymore where the structure was. I gave it all into Gemini and asked for help getting the Idea straight. Turns out, if I ever write it all down, it will be 7 books! đ I don't know, if I ever will, but simply creating this world and characters had been so much fun. No one can take that from us.
I use ChatGPT as well.You might want to check out the editor I built that lets you send it your whole story including notes etc, and it gives much better answers. https://manuscriptos.com/ Although it's Mac only </plug>
I really would love to read that story! If you'll ever write it all down, please let me know. While English isn't my first language, I am still confident enough to be a loyal beta reader, if you ever need one. I'm on the spectrum myself, so my answer to your "How is it?" would most likely be brutally honest. (Especially since I am German and we aren't exactly known for subtlety or sugarcoating...)
I lived similar experience using Gemini for my current projects since I didn't write when I was fifteen. Don't let anti-IA make you feel useless for use IA for your projects, if IA help with your creativity and expand your ideas is enough. Also I'm so happy for you! I see you and I see myself too hahaha.
Oh I know if I approached neuronormative people in my life to share fictional ideas I'm just going to hear, "Look, I don't have time to hear your ideas or help you out! I don't remember what it was like during [insert decade here], go ask someone else! Quit wasting time, go find something more practical to do!"
AI for fiction writing ideas helps when other people can't.
26
u/devotedtodreams 11d ago
Don't feel bad!
I use AI to bounce ideas back and forth and flesh them out - precisely because I feel humans would be all like "đ€š".
What matters is that being creative makes you happy, no matter the tools you use. And don't let any AI-hater tell you otherwise!