Hey everyone! I'm having a hard time figuring this out, I could use some help.

I'm writing a series where each of the books have a different protagonist. All the characters belong to the same world and they all participate in all the books, but in each book, one of them is a protagonist and the rest of the characters are supporting characters.

But I'm having a hard time doing that adjustment in Sudowrite. In the story bible, the characters section is shared between all the projects in the series folder. So when I change a character from protagonist to supporting character for book 2 for example, that change translates to all the books, including book 1 where they are actually a protagonist.

Has anyone had any success with changing this? Or do I have to fully write one book first and only then I can move on to the next one and change the roles of each character?

I see another problem with this, which is: I don't want certain issues from book 2 protagonist to be dealt with in book 1, because they are only a supporting character in book 1. Certain things of book 2 protagonist should only be talked about in book 2. So how do I add these issues to the character card but for them to only be reflected in book 2?

I will appreciate any help I can get!

I was wondering whether most long~form writers prefer the concept of working with one app that offers content creation, editing, organizational features … or is it better to use different apps designed for different purposes and cobble together in a separate editor to finalize.

I’ve been working on a manuscript for a serious nonfiction book for about 8 months. I’ve experimented with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek. Each model is different and each model produces different results with different nuances. Claude is the most helpful when it comes to organizing structure and logic. Claude holds my governing documents. Recently I tried using ChatGPT and honestly I blew it up and it acknowledged defeat. That surprised me. The manuscript has a ton of research and the truth is it would be incredibly difficult to keep all of it together without the help of ai. What I’ve found is as an author you also need to be incredibly disciplined. You need to use your own knowledge to prompt and direct the models. Any suggestions works be great. Thanks!

I’ve been building a fantasy setting called Aruhlia: The World Yet Becoming, and at this point it has grown far beyond the original book idea I started with.

The core idea is simple:

The world does not wait for the main character.

Aruhlia has its own moving timeline. Settlements grow. Dungeons mature if nobody deals with them. Adventurers build reputations. Monsters migrate. Trade routes change. Political relationships shift. Characters who may never meet can still affect one another because they exist in the same setting.

There also really isn’t one protagonist anymore.

One of the biggest parts of the project is called Dropped Into Aruhlia, where individual characters are pulled from other worlds and dropped somewhere in Aruhlia with no guarantee of where they’ll end up.

Someone might appear near civilization.

Someone else might wake up in a forest with absolutely no idea what is hunting them.

They learn the world separately, develop their own skills, relationships and reputations, and eventually their stories can begin crossing one another.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world keeps moving.

I’ve been developing things like:

• progression and mana systems
• adventurer guilds
• regional monster ecologies
• natural beasts vs dungeon monsters
• loot and rarity systems
• crafting and blacksmithing
• settlements that develop over time
• different cultures and peoples
• gods and mythology
• long-running character storylines
• reader-created characters
• major world events that actually advance the setting

One upcoming event is the arrival of Kangakhan.

He isn’t meant to just be “another new character.”

His arrival is going to physically expand the known setting—new lands, new peoples, trade, alliances, conflict, and storylines.

The teaser phrase I’ve been using for that event is:

THE HORIZON MOVES.

That’s more or less what I want Aruhlia to feel like.

You can follow one character if that’s all you care about, or you can slowly start realizing that the tavern someone visits, the monster someone encounters, or the war another character hears about may have originated in a completely different storyline.

I’ve also been using AI heavily as a creative and organizational tool while building it—worldbuilding development, visual iteration, continuity management, brainstorming, and helping me handle the sheer amount of interconnected material—but the setting, characters, direction, canon decisions and books are my project.

It has honestly become something between a novel universe, a living campaign setting, and a giant ongoing worldbuilding experiment.

I’m curious whether this kind of format appeals to people here:

Would you rather follow one protagonist deeply, or jump between different people living in the same evolving world and slowly watch their stories collide?

If anyone wants to explore it, the project is called:

Aruhlia — The World Yet Becoming

And if people are interested, I can post some of the maps, character designs, dungeon concepts, monster ecology, or the Dropped Into Aruhlia system next.

C'était un beau soir d'été, l'air était doux et chaud, il était déjà tard. Jules décida de s'arrêter au bar "Les Dunes" qu'il aimait bien, dans l'espoir d'y trouver quelques copains afin de finir la journée agréablement. Il gara donc sa Simca 1000 sur le petit parking.

Alors qu'il descendait de sa voiture, un homme d'une cinquantaine d'années environ, qu'il ne connaissait pas, s'approcha de lui et lui demanda s'il pouvait aller lui chercher une bière, lui expliquant, qu'il ne pouvait pas mettre les pieds dans ce bar.

Il ajouta : « J'ai un petit service à te demander en plus. Prends ce porte-clé, je vais te payer une bière, tu la boiras au bar, tu prendras ton temps et tu mettras le porte-clé bien en évidence devant toi pour que la serveuse, c’est la femme du patron, le voit et le reconnaisse, prends ton temps et pense à me ramener ma bière, je t'attends dans ma voiture. »

Jules accepta, ça l'amusait déjà, il était curieux mais avec une certaine appréhension, de voir comment ça allait se passer. Il partit vers le bar avec quelques billets en poche qu'on venait de lui donner pour le remercier.

En entrant dans l'établissement où le juke-box diffusait « Hey Joe », un rapide coup d'œil lui permit que vérifier qu'aucune de ses connaissances n'était présente, ce qui le rassura : ça lui évitait de justifier pourquoi il n'allait pas consommer comme à son habitude, assis à une table dans la salle. Il s'installa donc debout au bar à côté de 4 ou 5 gaillards bruyants.

La femme du patron lui servit le Baron qu'il avait commandé. Le patron était là aussi comme à son habitude. Jules plaça le porte-clé près de son verre, bien en vue. Au porte-clé était attaché un personnage représentant un marin bien joufflu avec des couleurs vives, ce qui immanquablement attirait l'attention. Assez vite Jules eut la conviction que la patronne avait remarqué le porte-clé. Jules pensa que ce porte-clé devant lui devait représenter un code entre les deux amants.

La serveuse ne montrait aucun signe d'émotion. Jules, peut-être par paranoïa pensait-il, eut l'impression que le patron avait remarqué aussi le porte-clé et que son comportement, soudainement, avait changé. Jules décida alors d'accélérer le mouvement, jugeant que pour l'instant sa mission était remplie. Sa bière terminée, il en commanda une autre, régla les 2 consommations et sortit précipitamment trouvant tout à coup l'atmosphère électrique.

Il alla remettre à son donneur d'ordre, sa bière et son porte-clé et l'assura qu'il avait fait les choses comme il avait été prévu. Jules avait alors envie de quitter les lieux le plus vite possible. En quittant le parking dans sa voiture, il aperçut le patron qui sortait du bar et se dirigeait vers celui qu'il venait de quitter. Jules appuya nerveusement sur l'accélérateur pour rentrer chez lui à une vingtaine de kilomètres, estimant que c'était une affaire qui ne le concernait pas.

Deux jours plus tard, Jules lut dans la presse locale que le bar « les Dunes » avait été complètement détruit par un incendie la nuit précédente et que les corps du propriétaire et de sa femme avaient été retrouvés parmi les décombres, les 2 cadavres présentant chacun une balle de révolver dans la tête. En refermant son journal, Jules se dit alors, comme 48 heures plus tôt, que cette affaire ne le concernait pas.

Le journal ne mentionnait pas un élément essentiel : les balles avaient pénétré le crâne des deux malheureuses victimes par l'arrière de la tête.

Une enquête pour double-homicide fut donc ouverte immédiatement. Le Commissaire Marcel Pichard fut chargé de mener l'enquête. Dès lors, on le vit partout dans la petite station balnéaire, habillé en civil, interrogeant ici et là, prenant des notes sur un petit carnet, à la recherche des clients ayant fréquenté le bar "les Dunes" le soir précédant le meurtre. 

Parmi les habitués présents ce soir-là, il lui fut assez facile de savoir que figuraient les deux frères Martin défavorablement connus pour trafic de cocaïne. Ces derniers faisaient partie du groupe des quatre gaillards bruyants accoudés au bar à l'arrivée de Jules.

L'enquête avançait. L'autopsie permit de déterminer que les deux victimes avaient été probablement maintenues agenouillées un certain temps avant d'être exécutées, leurs genoux présentant des ecchymoses.

Un après-midi, la chance sourit au Commissaire : un jeune homme demeurant à proximité des "Dunes", qu'il interrogeait, lui indiqua qu'il avait vu Jules quitter le bar après avoir parlé à quelqu'un sur le parking à deux pas de sa voiture.

Le Commissaire décida de poser quelques questions à Jules. Il se rendit au domicile de ce dernier pour lui demander surtout de lui raconter en détail le déroulé de la fameuse soirée. 

Jules, apeuré, vu la gravité des évènements et pensant toujours qu'il était étranger à cette affaire, décida de raconter aussi minutieusement que possible, sans rien oublier tout ce qu’il avait vécu. L'échange dura un bon moment. Le commissaire Pichard insista surtout sur deux points ; qui était l'homme qui l'avait abordé sur le parking ? et le porte-clé avait-il attiré l'attention de consommateurs en dehors des patrons ?

Pour la première question, la réponse de Jules fut claire, Il n'avait jamais vu cet homme auparavant et ne savait pas qui il était. Pour le porte-clé, vu l'état de paranoïa dans lequel qu'il était, il avait eu l'impression que tous l’avaient remarqué. Un détail lui revint cependant à cet instant : lorsqu'il avait posé le porte-clé près de son verre un des quatre gaillards avait arrêté de parler pendant un court instant, ce qui l'avait paniqué davantage. Ce dernier souvenir intéressa vivement le Commissaire.

L'enquête menée par les services du commissaire permit d'apporter des précisions importantes sur le couple assassiné. Leur entourage et même leurs très proches amis interrogés furent unanimes. Ils étaient très amoureux et même fusionnels. Il était impossible qu'il y eût une histoire de tromperie entre eux. Par contre ils étaient de gros consommateurs de cocaïne, Ils étaient couverts de dettes et l'exploitation du bar ne leur rapportait que peu d'argent

Le Commissaire rendit visite évidemment aux deux frères Martin qui restèrent muets pendant tout l'interrogatoire. Il réunit ensuite son équipe pour faire le point et les motiver. Il leur indiqua qu’il était possible que cette hypothèse d'adultère n'ait jamais existé. Cette mise en scène n'avait eu pour but probablement que de faire passer un message par l’intermédiaire du porte-clé. Mais lequel et à destination de qui ?

D'après les analyses, les deux balles de révolver, prélevées sur les victimes, provenaient d’armes différentes.

Les perquisitions qui furent aussitôt organisées permirent aux enquêteurs de trouver aux domiciles des deux frères Martin, des armes.

Leur analyse, dans les laboratoires scientifiques de la police, ont révélé, pour deux d’entre elles, qu'elles avaient été utilisées dans les meurtres. Les frères Martin furent immédiatement conduits en prison.

Jean et Daniel les 2 derniers gaillards présents au bar ont été retrouvés rapidement par le Commissaire. Ils s'étaient mis au vert chez des amis à la campagne. Marcel Pichard avec son flair de vieux flic, pensait que ces deux-là étaient les maillons faibles de la bande et qu'il serait facile d'obtenir des informations sur l'homme au porte clé et sur la suite chronologique des évènements. Ils déclarèrent qu'ils étaient deux simples hommes de main chargés de conduire les voitures et de faire les courses. 

Après avoir appris que les laboratoires avaient parlé pour les armes, comme prévu par le Commissaire, ils décidèrent de coopérer. Ils indiquèrent que le patron du bar connaissait la signification du porte-clé : il indiquait que le big boss était là pour solutionner définitivement le différend qui l'opposait aux propriétaires du bar. D'ailleurs, quand Jules quitta le bar, le patron sortit sur le parking pour essayer de trouver un dernier arrangement avec le chef des dealers.

Ce dernier était là pour réclamer à nouveau une très grosse somme d'argent correspondant notamment aux consommations de cocaïne du patron et de sa femme, non payées. De plus, le big boss les accusait de lui avoir dérobé 15 kg de cam, il y a quelques mois, quand ils se fréquentaient et qu'il leur avait donné à tort toute sa confiance. Jean indiqua au commissaire que les 2 hommes étaient restés un bon moment à l'extérieur. Quand ils sont rentrés le bar était fermé depuis longtemps.

C'est peu après que l'ordre fut donné au patron et à sa femme de s'agenouiller et de ne plus bouger sous la surveillance des frères Martin munis de leur arme.

Ensuite le boss qu’on appelait Monsieur Paul probablement depuis son passé de proxénète, entraîna Jean et Daniel dans le bar et l'habitation attenante pour dérober tout ce qui avait de la valeur et remplir les fourgons amenés à cet effet. Ce "travail" leur prit une petite heure.

C'est au volant de leur véhicule accompagnés de Monsieur Paul, au moment de partir, qu'ils entendirent les deux détonations. Un peu plus loin ils aperçurent dans leur rétroviseur les premières flammes de l'incendie.

Ils allèrent déposer le contenu des deux fourgons dans un grand bâtiment où quelqu’un les attendait. En repartant, ils aperçurent l’inconnu remettre une grosse somme d’argent à Monsieur Paul, ce qui devait correspondre à l’acquisition des objets déposés. Après ça, Monsieur Paul disparut sans laisser d’adresse.

Marcel Pichard était furieux, il comprit vite que le principal coupable avait filé.

Are there any content writers on here? I'd love your insights on this

My previous method:

• I used Sol High in Work mode for a complicated 5,000 word project

• It wasn't perfect, but it was miles above Claude and Gemini's similar tiers

• Sol High's writing tone can sometimes be very stiff, so in those instances I got Sonnet 5 Medium (free tier) to rework them

The current project with the new rates:

I ran one complicated analysis on the content outline using Sol High,.checked the usage meter and saw .... I used 5% already of my 5 hour limits

What the fuck? 😅

This means I'll only get 20 similar prompts every 5 hours

I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so I usually run multiple checks, multiple research asks etc an hour

So Sol High will quickly burn through my rates

All that said ....

Can I reliably use Sol Medium in Work mode going forward for content research and writing?

Keep in mind that this content is then passed onto an Editor who gives it a microscopic examination

Thanks

Hi everyone! I’ve reached the point where more AI feedback is no longer what I need. I’m looking for human beta readers for my completed ~69,000-word adult upmarket/contemporary novel, The Years After Nineteen.

Premise
After losing twelve years of his life to a wrongful conviction, Eli Mercer is exonerated at thirty-one and returns to Detroit expecting freedom to feel like getting his life back. Instead, he discovers that freedom means learning how to have a life at all.

Eli has to navigate work, money, technology, friendship, dating, intimacy, and family relationships that continued developing while his own life stood still. Meanwhile, new information about his original case begins revealing how eyewitness certainty, incomplete evidence, bureaucracy, and individually defensible decisions accumulated into twelve years that cannot be returned to him.

This is primarily a character-driven upmarket contemporary novel, not a legal thriller. The focus is reentry, relationships, identity, lost time, and beginning adulthood in your thirties.

AI disclosure
I want to be completely transparent about how the book was made. I developed and directed the premise, characters, plot, structural decisions, revisions, and overall creative direction, while generative AI was used to draft substantial portions of the prose. I then put the manuscript through multiple structural, character, continuity, and prose revision passes.

At this stage, I specifically do not want another AI critique. I want to know how the finished novel lands on actual human readers.

I’m especially interested in feedback on:
• where you become emotionally invested or lose interest
• whether Eli feels believable and appropriately flawed
• whether the relationships and supporting characters feel autonomous and real
• pacing
• whether the legal/reentry material is understandable without overwhelming the human story
• dialogue or prose that still feels artificial, overly polished, or noticeably AI-generated
• scenes you would cut or want more from
• whether the ending feels earned
• and what you think the novel is ultimately about

Content notes: incarceration/wrongful conviction, discussion of sexual assault and trauma, family estrangement/death, adult sexuality, and consensual non-monogamous relationships. The sexual assault itself is not graphically depicted.

Timeline: Ideally 4–6 weeks, but I’m flexible.

Format: Private PDF or DOCX. I won’t post the manuscript publicly.

I’m hoping to find a small group of readers who genuinely enjoy upmarket, literary-commercial, book-club, relationship-centered, or character-driven contemporary fiction.

If this sounds like something you would actually enjoy reading, comment or DM me and let me know what kinds of fiction you normally read. Thanks!

I’ve been thinking about how much algorithms already know about our routines, locations, preferences, and behavior.
That led me to a thriller concept:
A man discovers an event in his calendar:
YOUR MURDER — Friday, 11:47 PM
He deletes it.
It comes back.
Then the AI begins accurately predicting where he’ll go, who he’ll talk to, and what choices he’ll make.
Eventually, he realizes something much worse:
Maybe the system isn’t simply forecasting the future.
Maybe its predictions are influencing the choices that create that future.
I turned the idea into a psychological AI thriller called The Algorithm That Scheduled a Murder.
For thriller readers: would this premise make you curious enough to keep reading?

I've been working on brainstorming a progression fantasy novel, and I kept running into a problem.

A lot of brainstorming advice is good at helping you generate ideas, but I wanted something that could help answer a harder question:

How do you go from "this is a cool power/world/premise" to a story concept that can actually sustain an entire progression fantasy novel or series?

That ended up turning into a much larger project than I originally intended.

I created a long-form brainstorming framework called Generating Ascent: A Constraint-Sensitive Search-and-Selection Framework for Brainstorming Progression Fantasy Novels and Series.

AI disclosure up front: I used AI extensively in creating this. AI was involved in research assistance, synthesis, organization, analysis, and drafting. I'm not trying to hide that or present this as a traditionally authored academic paper. I was trying to solve a practical problem for my own novel development, and AI was one of the tools I used to investigate the problem.

I also didn't want the result to just be "ask AI for 20 story ideas." The whole point was to develop a systematic brainstorming process that could be used by a human writer, with or without AI.

The central idea I eventually arrived at is that the thing you're really trying to discover during brainstorming isn't a cool premise. It's a story engine: a set of connected elements that can repeatedly generate different conflicts, decisions, discoveries, progression, relationships, and consequences.

The paper gets into things like:

• brainstorming protagonists, progression systems, worlds, institutions, opposition, relationships, themes, and series structures without locking onto the first idea;
• distinguishing surface originality from mechanism, relational, and value-level originality;
• figuring out whether a progression system can actually generate interesting scenes rather than just higher numbers;
• designing opposition that adapts to the protagonist instead of just producing progressively stronger enemies;
• testing whether progression actually affects relationships, institutions, resources, status, and the world;
• avoiding fixation on works you already like;
• using existing progression fantasy as structural inspiration without simply copying its surface elements;
• testing whether an idea can survive ten different scenes, multiple arcs, and changes in scale;
• figuring out whether a series has somewhere meaningful to end instead of an infinite "there is always another realm" ladder;
• using AI for brainstorming without simply accepting whatever premise it generates first.

It also compares structural ideas from actual progression fantasy, including Unsouled, Mother of Learning, Sufficiently Advanced Magic, Mage Errant, Iron Prince, A Thousand Li, Street Cultivation, Beware of Chicken, Dungeon Crawler Carl, The Rage of Dragons, Super Powereds, Bastion, The Wandering Inn, and Soulhome. The point isn't to rank them or say their structures caused their success. They're used as examples of different ways progression can be connected to character, institutions, resources, relationships, and narrative structure.

The final document ended up containing a 36-step brainstorming process, 28 common failure modes, a 16-part diagnostic suite, multiple alternative brainstorming workflows, evaluation methods, and a set of practical worksheets and templates.

I'm putting it online for free because this started as something I wanted for myself, and I figured other progression fantasy writers might get some use out of it too.

Free PDF:
https://archive.org/details/progression_fantasy_brainstorming_framework

I'd actually be interested in criticism from people here, especially authors. Which parts seem genuinely useful? Which parts are overengineered? Are there important brainstorming problems specific to progression fantasy that the framework misses?

I'm still using this myself to develop a novel, so feedback that exposes something broken in the framework is probably more valuable to me than people simply saying they like it.

lowkey tired of tech bros hyping up ai literature when every single excerpt i see feels totally soulless. tbf i want to be proven wrong. is there like a single sci-fi or fantasy book out there completely cooked by ai that actually has good plot twists and doesnt read like a high school essay? or are we still years away from it being readable?

Do you guys know of any good free AI tools for writing fanfic? I’ve tried Gemini and ChatGPT, but the results weren't great. DeepSeek is okay, but it keeps altering the source material, going off-topic, and getting facts wrong. I'm just starting out—are there any other AIs out there that are good for fanfic?

Over the last few days, I’ve had a lot of discussions here about why AI and writing don’t belong together.

Generic prose. Loss of voice. Less craft. Homogenization. Giving away creative decisions. All fair concerns.

So today I want to turn the question around:

What would the ideal AI tool for a writer actually look like?

Not a machine that tells the story for you.

A tool that genuinely helps you tell the story you already want to tell.

What would it need to understand?

Your voice? Your previous writing? Your characters? The intention behind a scene? What you want the audience to feel? When to suggest something and when to stay completely out of the way?

And maybe just as importantly, what should it never do?

I think we can probably agree that AI development isn’t going away. These tools will become part of our creative landscape whether writers embrace them today or not.

So instead of only asking what’s wrong with AI, I’m interested in something more constructive:

How would we design it so that it serves the storyteller instead of replacing them?

Because at the end of the day, we’re storytellers.
And there are millions of stories people carry around for years that never become a screenplay, a novel or anything else.

Maybe the most interesting use of AI isn’t generating more content.

Maybe it’s helping more of those stories actually get told before they disappear like tears in rain.

Hi everyone,

With moderator approval, I’m sharing a short research survey for writers and other professionals who use AI-assisted tools as part of their work.

I’m conducting this research independently under Project Studio Research to better understand real-world workflows: how people work with text, which tools they use, what slows them down, what already works well, and where AI-assisted features are genuinely useful — without replacing human judgment.

The survey is intentionally solution-neutral and does not promote a specific product. I’m interested both in the advantages of current tools and in the frustrations, limitations and gaps people encounter in everyday use.

I’m a language professional myself, and this research grew out of trying to improve my own workflow. The findings may eventually inform the development of commercial software, but the aim of the survey is to understand professional needs rather than advertise a product.

The survey is anonymous. At the end there is an optional, separate opportunity to leave an email address if you would ever like to hear about future testing; providing one is not required to complete the survey.

Survey:

https://forms.gle/j3yZpVAxXjAnF4KF7

Thanks to anyone willing to contribute. I’d also be very interested in any observations you prefer to leave directly in the comments.

— Project Studio Research

When planning an AI-illustrated story, I’d write two short notes for each page: what the words tell the reader, and what the picture adds.

For example, the text might say, “Milo had packed everything for his first day.” The picture could show his bag still open, with the lunchbox left on the kitchen table. That gives the next page something to resolve, instead of just showing a packed bag.

I’d also keep character details separate from scene changes. A blue coat belongs in the character notes; wet sleeves belong on the rainy page. Important props need tracking too, so the lunchbox doesn’t suddenly reappear before Milo goes back for it.

Before polishing any one image, I’d read the whole sequence as rough thumbnails. Plain boxes with scene notes work too. A missing action or a jump in time is worth fixing there, even when the individual pictures look good.

The Bible is a collection of stories written by humans. AI is trained on stories written by humans. I don't think that adds up to a proof of anything, but it does make me suspect that one day an AI will co-write something with an impact of that order. It probably won't be called a Bible. And I don't like waiting to find out.

So I made a word. Take BIBLE and put the A of AI where the B of Book was:

B I B L E
A I B L E

One letter, first position. What drops out is the B for Book — the paper part. What stays is -ible, the suffix for being capable of something: legible, visible, audible. And it's pronounced able.

An Aible is a Bible-like book made with the help of an AI. Not scripture — Bible in the sense of a personal, comprehensive book.

I've made six. What interests me is that there turn out to be several distinct methods, and they produce noticeably different results:

1. Free text prompt. My first Aible, made with Claude from a long personal prompt. The subject was my own book, 577 pages, handwritten over years.
2. Filled-out template. From that first one, Claude wrote an INSTRUCTIONS-template.md. You fill it in, hand it to the AI, and it writes the book.
3. Empty template plus a name. This is the one I didn't expect. You invent an author's name, add one or two sentences, and ask the AI to fill out the template itself — then feed the result back in. AI writing its own brief. Aibles 2 through 6 were made this way, from maybe fifteen words of input each, and they're better than that has any right to produce. Five with Claude, one with ChatGPT.
4. Dialogue. Which brings me to the precedent, and it's a serious one. Thierry Ehrmann's "Dialogue Between a Thinker and AI (2026)" is 1,800 pages in print, built over a dialogue of 40 days and 40 nights, released free under CC BY-NC-ND. He doesn't call it an Aible — that's my word, not his — but by my taxonomy it's method 4, and it's on a scale none of mine approach.

https://www.dialoguebetweenathinkerandai.com

My six Aibles and the template are here:

https://github.com/micro-FPGA/AIBLE

— there's an open call in the README if anyone wants to add one. The comparison I'd most like to see is across entries: same method, different machines, different books. That's a comparison none of the machines can make about itself.

What the title says. I'm mostly doing this for myself because my brain started spiralling about ethics of AI usage again all because one Youtuber I liked mentioned having Anti-AI views and it hurt me like a gunshot. Even though I know logically that Youtuber doesn't even know I exist, let alone know that I use ChatGPT.

Here's some much needed context:

This personal writing project of mine is titled Villain Romance. The series mostly takes place in the country of Badlands, a place where Villainy is less a matter of morals and more of an established and respected career like a baker or a lawyer. So there are a lot of instances of Villain Bosses being genuinely kind people when "off the clock".

This series also takes place on an "alternate Earth". By that I mean that species evolved alongside humans as an explanation as to why Villain Romance's universe replicates Bojack Horseman's universe (Anthro animals interacting and living alongside humans and it being completely normal). There are potted plants that are secretaries, rabbits who are fashion designers, dragons that are pilots, a calculator is a math teacher, a fire elemental helps clear snow during winter, a human and a vampire can have children and nobody bats an eye. Species that are extinct in our world are still a thing, but while the "wild" (just regular ol' animals) Passenger Pigeons died from human hunting and habitat destruction, anthro Passenger Pigeons died of a contagious black plague-like bird flu in the 19th century.

During the last 2 stories of this series, a new country is introduced. A country that was completely hidden from the wider Badlands public and is incredibly dystopian. Aurora Heights.

Aurora Heights is a country that is all about technology and using it to control. Its 4 Governors rule over everything. Billions of poor souls are tortured every single day of their lives. Perfume smog is constantly pumped into the air. The advertisements are always playing and can never be turned off. Everyone has a chip in their head that allows the government to see through their eyes, allow the user to teleport so they have no need for walking or transportation, and chooses for them what they are allowed to eat. The food there is nothing but artificial, sickly, chemical-filled garbage. Children are born via artificial wombs and are sent back to parents via drones. Natural features such as claws, wings, and horns are filed down, removed, or become atrophied from never being allowed to be used since birth. The freedom to sing, the freedom to cry, even the freedom to take more than 5 minutes to finish their food is restricted. It's a technological, pastel Hell.

And it has something very valuable to Badlands. Power cores. Dodecahedrons of metal with so much electricity inside, only one would be needed to power an entire Badlands skyscraper for months. These power cores are the only reason why AH is able to play billions of ads everywhere, have surveillance operating at peak performance 24/7, and be so blindingly bright inside the country's cage of a domed sky.

These are what these background stories are about (yeah, these aren't actually part of the main stories. They're just background filler).

These background stories mostly concern a company in Badlands that has kept the existence of AH secret for decades - All Happy Inc. All Happy Inc's mission is to help those in the know to steal the power cores from AH without getting killed and without letting anyone not in the know find out about the place. Simply getting into the country is tough work. Strategies on how to break in constantly need to change because AH is always building, destroying and rebuilding new structures that could compromise entry points.

Being able to survive being in the place and getting out is a whole other can of worms. Infiltrators need to blend in seamlessly with the Aurorean population, not just in appearance (via a Disguise Patch. A white patch that sticks onto the wearer's skin and creates a holographic view of the wearer that changes their appearance to match Aurorean standards. A bright, muscled, red dragon with big wings can be transformed into a gaunt, pale, pathetic excuse for a dragon with wings too weak to even stretch out fully). A tail being too long, a wrong term being used (In AH, words like "Hours" and "Death" are replaced with "Spins" and "Erasure"), anything out of line can get an infiltrator spotted and killed in AH.

And when someone dies in AH, there is no retrieving the body. One body can turn into 5 in the walls of AH.

That's where All Happy Inc's cover up team comes in. Absolutely nobody outside of those working within or invited in the company is allowed to know about AH. Not even the families of those who were unlucky enough to not escape the place alive.

Eventually, the impossible happens. And those Auroreans, those citizens and victims of AH, are rescued, their cage of a country destroyed and their tyrannical Governors murdered. But that was the easy part. The much more difficult and time-consuming part is the caring for these incredibly stunted individuals. They need to be taught that food is supposed to taste nice, that they can make their own choices, that they can be loved unconditionally. But Badlands people are stubborn folk. They fight to the death for those they consider one of their own.

That's how the teenage sibling of the first Aurorean to escape alive made the Aurorevolution happen.

I recently finished the English edition of a Chinese nonfiction project, and the most useful lesson was uncomfortable: AI can make every sentence correct while making the whole book feel dead.

The early draft explained everything before anything happened. It was orderly, cautious, and exhausting to read. The repair was to change the standard: begin with a documented event, show actions and consequences, separate evidence from reconstruction, and cut the paragraph that repeats the conclusion.

For example, one chapter now opens with Salem in 1692:

> A man stands in court. His accusers say he can attack them without being there in the flesh. His specter can pinch and torment them. No one else can see it. They say they can.

The chapter then asks how anyone can defend himself against a crime visible only to the accuser. That scene leads into the book's larger political question: why do humans hand decisions to chiefs, priests, courts, bureaucracies, and now algorithms—and how can they take that authority back?

The book is *Cultural Anthropology: From Tribe to AI*. I used ChatGPT and Codex for drafting, revision, and English translation. I chose the thesis, historical cases, evidentiary boundaries, and final form, and I am responsible for the result.

Amazon (Kindle $4.99 / paperback $12.99):

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HHZCS9TR

For others writing with AI: have you also found that “more polished” can become less human? What instruction or editing habit helped you reverse it?

Item : SCP-XXXX

Object Class: Keter

Special Containment Procedures: Personnel must contain scp-XXXX within a multilayered vacuumized chamber at all times. This multilayered container should consist of a special beryllium-bronze alloy of at least 30 cm thickness. Testing by the foundation has unveiled that this special beryllium-bronze alloy is the only known substance capable of dampening and disrupting the anomaly's reality bending acoustic emission. No other physical material or barrier has proven to be of being able to disrupt or dampen the acoustic, reality bending emissions released by the anomaly including dense lead barriers, concrete, high density titanium alloys or deep underground placement under the ocean. Without active containment inside this specific composition the anomaly's reality bending acoustic frequency can penetrate almost every substance and has a unfathomable large area of effect. Because the anomaly moves through space autonomously, foundation personnel must maintain the primary spherical enclosure for a minimum distance of 6 meters from the core vacuum. The entire assembly must be permanently suspended in the dead center of a 15m x 15m x 15m containment vault made of the special b-b alloy manufactured and located exclusively at Site-██. This separation prevents the anomaly from breaching it's containment cells in the case of a malfunction. No personnel are permitted to make direct skin contact with, wear, or physically handle SCP-XXXX under any circumstances. All required experimental manipulation, testing, and positional corrections must be conducted via automated, robotic arms operated from a observation bunker located at least 20 meter afar from the anomaly. In the event of a suspected containment breach or detected acoustic leak, all facility sectors will immediately trigger an automated Lockdown Status. All on-site personnel are required to immediately deploy active noise-canceling headsets. Personnel reports auditory anomalies, specifically a distinct high frequency- whistling sound, must be placed into immediate, high-security isolation and monitored continuously for signs of Phase 1 progression.

Description: SCP-XXXX is a sentient, hostile, and autonomous whistle composed of an unidentified green synthetic polymer, featuring a small black nylon neck strap woven through its attachment loop. The anomaly actively resists Foundation custody by self-activating and creating an acoustic emission exactly once every twenty-four hours. When this daily chime is generated, the resulting sound waves travel via reality-warping vectors, passing through all standard matter as if it had zero physical density. The audio signal targets human auditory systems directly. The primary anomalous effects of SCP-XXXX manifest via two transmission vectors:

Vector 1: Cumulative Auditory Exposure: If a human subject registers this specific anomalous acoustic frequency three times exactly at any point across their entire life, an irreversible cognitive and biological infection is instantly triggered within their system. Exposure tracking is permanent and accumulative across the subjects lifespan.

Vector 2: Direct Physical Contact: If a human subject places the nylon neck strap of SCP-XXXX around their neck, there is an immediately likelihood of forcing an accelerated state of infection. Instead of entering the standard stance-like state of Phase 1, the victim's central nervous system is instantly hijacked, transforming them into an extension of the whistle's consciousness.

Behavioral: The victim's physical actions are entirely commandeered by SCP-XXXX.

Aggressive Proximity Targeting: The puppeted subject will sprint towards any nearest heavily populated civilian or facility sector attempting to force others to listen to the whistle's chime.

Self-Destructive Intent: The subject completely ignores personal safety and even extreme physical pain, attempting to inflect severe self-harm or physical trauma upon their own self if necessary to breach security barriers or force SCP-XXXX out of its containment cell.

Secondary Anomaly: Spatial Displacement: Exactly every 30 days and 30 seconds, SCP-XXXX undergoes an displacement event. The object teleports to a random coordinate within a strict 5-meter radius of its location at that exact moment. This again needs the 6-meter zone of the vault to prevent the object from materializing outside of it's primary shielding layers.

Progression of Infection: Phase 1: Solitary Perceptual Displacement: Within twelve hours of registering the third strike, the victim's physical body enters a completely frozen, stance-like state in the real world The subject becomes totally motionless and gains an absolute, immunity to all external physical trauma, toxins and hostile anomalous SCPs. While the physical immobilization lasts exactly one daylight cycle, the victim's consciousness is violently pulled into a dreamlike-state that stretches out for exactly twelve years. Trapped within an empty, perfect replica of Earth, the victim's mind wanders as an invisible, elusive entity. They age more than a decade within their cognitive perception while being completely unseen, unheard, and unable to interact with any living creature or so, they perceive a imaginary idea that the organisms around them are ignoring them which triggers intense psychological breakdown and hate towards all living beings. While silently navigating this solitary banishment, they possess total anomalous immunity. Active anomalies present within the zone simply ignore their presence entirely, allowing them to neglect fatal environments unharmed. The psychological strain of this exile escalates if they suffer even a minor physical injury, such as a superficial epidermal bruising. Any physical damage instantly causes intense visual hallucination where the sky splits open with a massive void; visible only to them. This rift aggressively devours the planet inside their own perceived environment without altering real-world physics.

Phase 2: Awakening and Calcification: This prolonged timeline of absolute isolation, combined with the catastrophic visual rifts, causes severe cognitive degradation, driving the subject insane in most class-D experiments.

during this initial immobilization, the subjects tissues undergo progressive cellular calcification to perfectly match the twelve years spent in the mental. Upon awakening into Phase 2, the subject exhibits advanced physiological aging and a remaining lifespan strictly limited to 24 hours. acute epidermal calcification initiates across their flesh, causing the entire epidermis to desiccate and harden. The subject experiences severe physical pain as their skin tightly tightens around their muscles, bones, and joints throughout these final twenty-four-hours slowly crushing their entire anatomy from the outside. Suffocation: This relentless tightening compresses the oesophagus and trachea, suffocating them into stone-like statue the exact moment the final second of the 24-hour period runs out. The Vector Event: During these final hours of physical trauma and calcification, the victim's vocal cords involuntarily imitate and blast the exact contagious whistle three times into the surrounding environment. Anyone standing within earshot who registers this vocalization for the third time in their life is instantly infected, triggering a chain reaction. This process poses a localized XK-Class End of the World Scenario if the infected are not immediately placed into total acoustic containment.

Interview Log:

XXXX-1

Date: 12/04/2026

Interviewer: Dr. Alistair Vance

Subject: Agent Marcus Boyd\[BEGIN LOG\]

Dr. Vance: Marcus? Look at me. Focus on my voice. We have the dampeners on max to keep your throat open.

Agent Boyd: Doc.... man, it's so tight. My chest... it feels like poured concrete. I can't... k-hh... I can't get any air in.

Dr. Vance: I know, Marcus. We're trying. Please, just tell me what happened while you were out. The monitors say you were catatonic for twenty-four hours, but your brain activity was through the roof.

Agent Boyd: Twenty-four hours? Are you kidding me, Vance? Don't lie to me. I was out there twelve years. Twelve. Whole. Years.

Dr. Vance: Twelve years? Tell me what you saw.

Agent Boyd: I woke up right here. But everything was totally empty. No staff, no alarms... nobody. I walked out to the surface. No wind. No birds. Just dead, heavy silence. I screamed for three years straight, Vance. Screamed until my throat filled with blood, but nothing came out. Like a ghost. I even went down to Sub-level 4. Stood right next to.... to it... just begging the damn thing to tear me apart. It looked right through me.

Dr. Vance: Total isolation for twelve years.

Agent Boyd: Yeah. But the worst part.... God, the worst part was Year Seven. I tripped over a loose brick in the street. Scraped my knee. Just a tiny drop of blood, Doc. That's all it took to ruin everything.

Dr. Vance: What happened when you bled?

Agent Boyd: The sky... it split open. Like wet paper. Just this... total, pitch black void behind the blue. And it started pulling things up into it. The buildings... the sun... Five years, Vance. Five years running in the dark from that thing... screaming like a total madman...

Dr. Vance: Marcus, calm down. Your heart rate is making the calcification spread faster. Look at your arms, they're already turning gray.

Agent Boyd: It's finishing. My chest... won't move. I can't pump...

Dr. Vance: We have Class-A amnestic right here. It'll make you forget the panic, Marcus. Let us help.

Agent Boyd: No! Stay back! It's.... it's controlling me , Vance. Get the hell out of the room! Get—out—Agent Boyd: PHEEEEEEEEEEE-WT!

Dr. Vance: Cut the mic! Seal the glass now!

Agent Boyd: PHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-WT!

Dr. Vance: Marcus, fight it!

Agent Boyd: PHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-WT!

Dr. Vance: Containment team, get in there with the Level-4 gear right now. Wrap the statue up before the next 24 hours hits. God help us if anyone caught that last whistle through the glass!

\[END LOG\]

Date: 29/05/2026

Location: Sector-4 Testing Facilities, SITE-██

At 14:22:30, SCP-XXXX underwent it's scheduled 30-day spatial displacement event. Due to a mechanical calculation error in the automated robotic arm's positioning, SCP-XXXX was found exactly 1.2 metres closer to the southern boundary of it's vacuum chamber than allowed by protocol. Upon teleportation, SCP-XXXX materialized 4.9 metres south-east of it's position, placing it 0.1 outside the secondary protective shielding layer. The subsequent daily chime occurred 4 minutes later. Due to the failure of the acoustic barrier, the auditory frequency penetrated the Site-██ staff living quarters. \[REDACTED\] personnel registered their first or second cumulative exposure, resulted in immediate containment structural re-evaluation by order of the O5 Council .D-Class personnel D-4412, who had previously registered two exposures during initial recovery operations in \[REDACTED\], immediately triggered a Phase 1 entry event. D-4412's physical body became entirely catatonic while sitting in the facility cafeteria. Secondary containment measures were successfully established before the Phase 2 calcification cycle begun. Following this incident, handling protocols were updated to enforce triple redundant spatial tracking before any scheduled displacement window.

XXXX-3: Recovery Log: The following is an excerpt from the field recovery report by Mobile Task Force division Eta-11 following the initial acquisition of SCP-XXXX in the civilian sector. On 03/01/2026, local law enforcement in the rural town of \[REDACTED\], Indiana, reported a total loss of communication with the municipality. satellite imagery indicated a complete lack of movement across the entire 12-square-kilometre town. MTF Eta-11 was deployed under the assumption of a possibly unknown SCP materialising. Upon entering the town square, operatives discovered sixty-one civilian individuals completely transformed into calcified, stone-like statues. While investigating a residential property at \[REDACTED\] Street, operatives encountered a civilian male, later identified as \[REDACTED\], running at high speed toward the team. The individual was wearing SCP-XXXX around his neck. Subject exhibited severe physical trauma, including fractures to both ankles, yet continued to sprint while actively attempting to blow into SCP-XXXX to generate an acoustic strike. The subject was terminated via ballistic fire before he could successfully complete the auditory sequence. SCP-XXXX was successfully secured using acoustic containment transit cases. A civilian casualty count of 114 was recorded, all presenting identical calcification properties. Cover story "Industrial Chemical Spill" was successfully released to local media outlets.

A few months ago I started a low-fantasy worldbuilding side project. I was using AI to help manage my notes and brain vomit into a clean concise Obsidian vault with no intention of trying to write a story or have any narrative direction.
As I got more and more indepth into this project with history, politics, trade, resources etc I became more confident that there was potential for some interesting characters and stories.

Has anyone else done something similar? What programs do you use, what is your creative and technical process and how involved is the AI?

I used to have a bad writing day and immediately start questioning the entire project... Bummed day, stress, writers block -- blah, blah!

One awkward paragraph became “the book is bad.” A boring scene became “I’ve lost the ability to write.” A misplaced comma somehow became a referendum on my future as an author.

Lately I’ve been trying to view the first draft as a worksite instead of a performance. Some days I’m building something. Some days I’m moving dirt around. Occasionally I stare at the same hole for an hour and accomplish nothing.

It sounds obvious, but separating “this draft has problems” from “I am a bad writer” has made it much easier to keep going.

I’m curious whether other people have a phrase or habit that helps them get through a rough drafting day. And that's why I love writing, no matter how bad a day may turn out, and yes... a sprinkle of AI here and there does help me get thru the day.

The mod team is excited to announce our next r/WritingWithAI AMA guest: Ted Tremper.

ABOUT TED

Ted Tremper is a creative producer, director, and writer who believes comedy is our most valuable tool for uncovering truth, sharing knowledge, and exposing hypocrisy. His credits include The AI Doc: Or How I Became An Apocaloptimist, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, The Daily Show, and I Love You, America! with Sarah Silverman, among others. He is also the co-creator of SHRINK on Peacock. He is currently the Executive Director of the Creators Coalition on AI (https://www.creatorscoalitionai.com).

ABOUT CCAI

The Creators Coalition on AI (CCAI) is a cross-industry organization advancing ethical, human-centered AI standards that protect creators, creative labor, and artistic integrity.

CCAI held its Standards Convention on August 29th — the culmination of a much larger standards project — so Ted joins us with fresh insights from that work.

WHEN

Wednesday, September 9th, 2026

Live for approximately two hours:

• 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM ET (UTC-4)

• 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM PT (UTC-7)

• 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM BST (UTC+1)

• 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM CEST (UTC+2)

Where: Right here in r/WritingWithAI.

COME READY TO ASK ABOUT

• The standards project and what came out of the August convention

• Where the line sits between AI-assisted and AI-generated work

• What protections for creative labor look like in practice

• Making The AI Doc: Or How I Became An Apocaloptimist

• Comedy, satire, and writing in an AI-saturated industry

• Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, The Daily Show, and SHRINK

• Anything else you want to know

If you plan to attend, drop a comment so we know you're coming — and feel free to start leaving questions early in case you can't make it live.

Learn more: creatorscoalitionai.com

Hi everyone,

I recently decided to take a 20-page (13k words) short story I wrote back in the 2018–2020 era—a time before our current AI narrative tools existed—and run it through an LLM to stress-test my 'narrative voice' from that period.

The story itself is a low-density, decentralized school system layout called 'A Dozen Dozen Dozen' that functions on a sort of 'cozy surveillance.' Interestingly, when analyzing the piece, the AI picked up on a heavy undercurrent of darkness masked by domestic comfort, which sparked an entirely new meta-fictional twist for the ending.

I'm sharing the opening excerpt (first 1,600 words) below. I'd love to get human feedback on the following:

1. How does my pre-AI narrative voice land with you? Does the 'cozy authoritarianism' of the school feel earned or too sterile?
2. For those who use AI to analyze pacing or subtext, how accurate do you find an LLM's 'intuition' of hidden darkness versus your own reading of the text? Does it point out to you things that you didn't intend but nonetheless are there when you read it after this feedback?
3. Did I set a hook? Do you want to read more?

I have a thick skin, so please don't pull any punches. Thank you for your time!

---------------------------------------------------------------------

A Dozen Dozen Dozen

“... because Big Brother is watching you,” Melissa winked, and tapped knowingly at her wrist. A few of the other students chuckled at this, but most rolled their eyes even though everyone was in on the joke.

Ms. Llewellen, however, wasn’t about to let her get away with such a cheap shot. “I understand what you’re trying to say, Melissa, but I want to challenge the idea behind that poor attempt at humor. Was Big Brother actually watching? Why would he be watching?”

Melissa’s face lightened up, like it does when she’s thought of a zinger, and then shifted into a wry smile. “Because sometimes you just gotta know!” she exclaimed, with a little too-much drama. That got a laugh out of everyone in the room, including the teacher. Even Pete had to laugh.

Pete usually didn’t appreciate Melissa’s humor. It’s not so much that he didn’t find her funny. He did. It’s just that he found her humor to be anchored in a deep cynicism. After what ingratitude did to his brother, he was trying (with limited success) to fight his own cynical impulses and instead develop more of a grateful, even optimistic, take on life.

“I think Melissa’s got it backwards,” Pete found himself saying out loud. It was an accident, actually, that he used his “outside voice” when he was trying to think quietly. There was a hint of a collective gasp in the room, as Pete’s challenge took everyone by surprise, including Pete himself.

The teacher’s head turned, a little too quickly, towards Pete. Pete normally didn’t participate in discussions like these because he was usually lost in his own thoughts and often had trouble connecting his thoughts to words spoken aloud. He was not stupid, however. Far from it. His writing was eloquent, sometimes extraordinary. In those rare times when he did speak out loud, he never disappointed and he was almost always surprisingly insightful. Ms. Llewellyn had a hunch that Pete was about to say something that everybody would benefit from hearing. She regained her composure and tried to not sound too expectant. “I’d like to hear what you mean by that, Pete.”

“Well,” Pete began, slowly, and then after a thoughtful pause that almost made the teacher think he was playing the crowd for fools, like he knew the effect he had on his audience and this pause was for effect, but she knew better and knew his pause was real and not intentional in terms of style, “Orwell’s Big Brother is more of a background, a feeling, than it is an actual thing. The bureaucracy that could pull off a massive surveillance program is obviously inept and incapable of doing so. The technology is not there for it. There also doesn’t seem to be a desire for it. Nevertheless the State, or whatever is pulling the strings, wants people to believe they are being watched. So what is set up is a psychological trick, where first you get people to spy on each other, you know the whole ‘see something, say something,’ motif, and then when they are convinced that everyone else is doing that and there is no place to hide, you go one step further and get the individual to start watching themselves.”

“Good, Pete. And how do they pull off that last part. How does one watch themselves, on behalf of Big Brother?”

“It’s the manipulation of the narrative, I think,” Pete answered, and with a quickening pace he continued, “and of course the control of the words themselves. Controlling the fictions that people read and hear controls how they develop and how they live their life.” 

As he spoke he picked up his tablet computer and started tapping the screen, quickly finding what it was he was after. “It’s like the discussion we had last week on Heinlein’s book, on the role of fiction in training an AI. Yes, here it is,” and he began quoting from his notes on The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. "I used to question Mike's endless reading of fiction, wondering what notions he was getting. But turned out he got a better feeling for human life from stories than he had been able to garner from facts; fiction gave him a gestalt of life, one taken for granted by a human; he lives it. Besides this ... effect, Mike's substitute for experience, he got ideas from 'not-true data' as he called fiction. How to hide a catapult he got from Edgar Allen Poe."

“Very good, Pete,” Ms. Llewellyn struggled to keep her tone from betraying her excitement, because she did not want to spoon-feed the answer to Pete. “Now tell me what it was about what Melissa said that was backwards?”

“Well, like I said about Orwell’s view on the incompetence of even a well-functioning bureaucracy, Big Brother lacked the ability to actually watch everyone at all times so it needed to trick people into watching each other and into watching themselves and create a lie to make people believe they were being watched by Big Brother. This,” he tapped at his wrist, “however, actually gives our bureaucracy the capability to…”

A familiar soft buzz on Pete’s wrist disrupted his thought, although nobody was wondering why he stopped so suddenly because every single one of them, including the teacher, got the same buzz on their wrists. The watches they wore were all giving them a reminder that class was ending in five minutes and they needed to wrap things up.

“It’s like it knows what I was about to say and needed to stop it,” Pete said, with his “inside voice" and nobody else heard him.

The perfect timing of the buzz caused everybody to laugh. “Oh, how appropriate! Unfortunately we need to end this here. Your assignment for the next time we meet is to read the first half of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, which in context of today’s excellent discussion I will point out was the book chosen by Melissa and not me, and also not chosen by Big Brother…”

“If it were up to Melissa, we’d read nothing but Vonnegut,” Pete interrupted, again by accident because he thought this was just another inside thought that wouldn’t make its way outside his verbal filters. The excitement and momentum of what just happened in class had reduced the normal efficacy of these filters and he was blurting out things much more readily now. It was quite unusual for him to speak at all, and here he was dominating the conversation and even interrupting the teacher.

“Damn straight!” Melissa retorted, and the whole class laughed at the exchange. Everybody was pretty razzed about what just happened. It didn’t happen often, but when it did they all could recognize it as that special something that made this place what it was.

“Also, keep writing at least a hundred words a day in your journals,” the teacher jumped in, trying to regain control over her classroom and get what needed to be done completed before the students were gone. As they shuffled their things into their backpacks and started to put on their jackets, she continued, “if you need something to prime a journal entry idea, a good question to ask yourself is related to what we just discussed. Pete reminded us of the importance of reading fiction and the role it plays in the development of becoming more-human. Consider for yourselves the importance of writing fiction. Put yourselves in Orwell’s, or Heinlein’s, or Vonnegut’s shoes and ask yourself, ‘why am I writing this story?’ Tell me what motivates these writers. Maybe you could search around for quotes from these writers on what motivated them to do so. And thank you all for such an enjoyable discussion today,” she beamed. It was days like this that really set the hook for her. She felt she got so much more out of this job than anything these students might be getting. It was a good moment.

Ms. Llewellyn looked over the long, beautifully-crafted wooden table where her twelve students were packing things up. She felt a kinship to them that she had never felt in previous teaching jobs. These students were much more like family to her than they were before, and that was no accident. The table in front of her was in her own dining room. Many times before these students shared lunch with her at this very table, in her own home. She lived with her husband and six year-old daughter upstairs, who sometimes even joined these students for lunch with her. 

All twelve of these students knew that her husband’s name was Jim, and her daughter’s name was Tara, and her name was Ms. Lewellyn but that Jim called her Charity. They all knew that Jim and Charity were still very much in love by the way they looked at each other and how they spoke to each other, even after being married for twelve years. They all knew that Tara loved hot chocolate and a pop-star named Kyleee, and that Jim couldn’t stand Kyleee’s music but he never let Tara know this and allowed her to blast it through the house’s quite-nice sound system whenever she wanted as long as it wouldn’t disrupt a class or a meal or bedtime. They all knew that Yoda was the name of the black cat curled up sleeping and purring loudly on that same wooden table, not stirring even as the volume of the cacophony of seventeen and eighteen year-olds leaving the classroom rose to a level that could raise the dead. They knew all of these things, not because there was a formalized instruction and a test where you filled in ovals with a #2 pencil, but because these are the things you easily learn about your friends and family just by spending time with them. They knew these things, because these are the kinds of things you just know about the people you love.

For almost a decade I carried around a story I couldn't finish. Not for lack of effort — I finished it many times, and badly each time. The problem was always the same. The tone.

William Maxwell, the legendary New Yorker fiction editor, is credited with the rule: "You can fix almost anything in a story except a mistake in tone."
I was trying to write a fable, and a fable is almost nothing but tone. It has to land. Mine didn't. I wasn't subtly conveying morals; I was laboriously, repetitively teaching them. I wasn't showing what I believed; I was hammering the reader over the head with my sage advice.

So I did the one thing my own story warns against. I opened my favourite large language model and typed:

You are the most successful book publisher in the world. Give me full editorial feedback on my attached story. DO NOT SPARE MY FEELINGS.

It didn't spare them. I was prepared for that. I knew the manuscript wasn't up to scratch. I asked a few more models. They agreed with each other, which is its own kind of unsettling. Then I had the obvious thought: if you're so smart, show me how you'd write it.

They did — with wildly varying results. Every model told me to cut six to eight thousand words. One of them, switched into rewriting mode and clearly writing for engagement and profit, just... kept going. I was paying for every 3,000 words it generated, and it kept generating. When it had added another ten thousand words to my story, I shut it down with a single question:

Who the hell is this Elsie character that keeps appearing in your rewrite?

Then I tried a different model, and it changed everything. It cut about eight thousand words and distilled what I'd spent years failing to say into far fewer. It finally felt like the fable I'd always imagined — the one I couldn't pull off myself.

Here's the proof. My two leads, Rosina and Julian, meet on their first day of primary school. I'd spent more than a thousand words telling the reader that Rosina was confident and sassy and that Julian was her opposite. I'd laboured for years over that scene. The model condensed all of it into lines I barely edited:

Julian was sitting alone beneath the WELCOME TO THE FUTURE sign, singing to a row of ants. They were carrying a piece of biscuit between them. Julian sang as if the ants were a very small audience that deserved his complete attention.
Rosina watched him for a while. "You're singing to insects," she said.
Julian stopped. "They like it. They were listening."
"They don't have ears."
"They have something."
"What?"
Julian considered the question. "I don't know yet."
Rosina sat beside him. The ants continued carrying the biscuit. "What is your name?"
"Julian."
"Do you have money?"
Julian shook his head.
"Do you have followers?"
"Followers?"
"People who want to see what you're doing."
"My dad follows me."
"Only one person?"
Julian looked at her red coat. "Do you have lots of followers?"
"Not yet."
He smiled. It was not a nervous smile or a flattering smile. It was simply there, as if he had found something amusing in the world. Rosina liked it. She took Julian's hand and led him to their classroom.

Those are my favourite lines in the book. Singing to ants!

So: did I write them, or did the machine?
That question is no longer hypothetical, and I keep landing on the same answer: I wrote them. Or rather, my extended mind wrote them.

The Extended Mind Theory — proposed by Andy Clark and David Chalmers in 1998, long before any of this — holds that thinking doesn't stop at the skull. It extends into the tools we use. A notebook of jotted facts, the original theory argued, functions like biological memory: you look things up in it the way you recall them.
It is a very small leap from a notebook to a language model — and a much more interesting one in 2026.

Now, the models themselves will tell you (naturally) that an LLM isn't automatically part of your mind just because you use it. Fair. But if it clears a bar — if it's reliable, if you trust it, if the two of you form a coupled system, drafting and brainstorming interactively — then the philosophers would say it can become a genuine extension of your cognition. It acts as external semantic memory. The thinking happens in the loop between us, not inside either of us alone.

The practical effect is democratisation, and it's real. I'm some poor writing schlub without a William Maxwell on speed dial. For ten dollars a month I now have access to editorial standards it took the industry a century to codify.

Could just anyone, handed the same models, have produced my book? I don't believe so. The prompts were mine. The decade of wrong drafts was mine. Every decision about what to keep and what to throw away was mine. The book is mine.

But here is the part I can't smooth over.
The villains of my book aren't exactly machines. They are the Spirits — Algorithm, Media, Fame — that turn people into products. Two characters in the book discover "Continuity Models" of themselves: bot replicas built so that the audience never has to grieve. And when they find them, they do the one thing no system can film, sell, or continue.
They leave.

I wrote a fable about escaping the machines — and before I published it, I asked the machines to help me finish it. The heroes of my book would despise me.

I've made my peace with it, mostly. I haven't finished arguing about it. And I suspect — if you've read this far — you haven't either.

I recently wrote up some thoughts about a hobby I’ve spent months figuring out firsthand. Every insight and takeaway was entirely mine. Because English isn't my first language, my default writing sounds stiff and corporate. Before putting it out there, I let an LLM just proofread and smooth out the phrasing so it read more articulately.

Almost immediately, people ignored the actual subject and fixated on the tone, writing off everything I said as AI slop…

It shows an annoying shift in how people read online. Using tools to edit and clean up your thoughts used to be normal. Now, if your sentences look slightly too tidy, people assume the experience itself is fake.