How you can use AI when writing – differently than you think

Artificial intelligence can write any book itself. It’s already happening! Many creators consider AI to be a huge threat to their work. Perhaps rightly so, but today I will tell you how you can use algorithms to support your creativity.

The material may contain minor spoilers regarding the location!!!
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I won’t hide the fact that I am too little known to the creators to be supported in marketing by any department of the publishing house. I create all materials, such as advertisements, myself using SI tools. One of the Internet users, seeing them, asked maliciously whether books are also written by artificial intelligence and not me?

Of course, all of my material is created only by my fingers pounding on a mechanical keyboard. But I use various AI tools to help me create. Here are some ideas that you may also use!

The main thing is to see THIS

Like every creator, my work is based on two elements. Conscientiousness and inspiration. Interestingly, both of these things can be stimulated in some way. I can always support the first one, for example with coffee (which gives me strength when I lack it), and this allows me to add another page when I really don’t feel like it anymore.

What about inspiration? It is, after all, very fleeting and everyone who has ever struggled with writing, for example, a master’s thesis or a bachelor’s thesis knows this. There is knowledge and a problem to solve, but this “creative flair” is missing. Of course, inspiration can be stimulated with alcohol, but this is a short-term game.

Moodboard for lazy people

Music works great here (especially the kind without words), but sometimes I need something more. And here I come to the aid of something that I could roughly call a “moodboard”, i.e. an inspiration board.

However, I do not create boards like many other creators, but I ask the AI ​​to generate an inspiring sunset or to show me a given character, e.g. in an anime style. Sometimes such a 3-minute break from writing and seeing the effects of artificial intelligence can give you a boost for the next few pages.

A classic mood board is a set of elements that a creator can base on when creating something new. These may be photos of buildings, photographs of characters, souvenirs or items of high personal value. I create such mood boards with the help of graphic generators. It takes literally seconds and can support your writing creativity.

Control the chaos

People who only write and create something all the time have it a little easier. They create on an ongoing basis. Unfortunately, I create after work. As I have explained many times, I wrote my first novel over 2 years after hours. Is it easy to get lost in the tangled plot when you sit down to write once every few days? Yes. Is it easy to forget what a given character or setting should look like when the creation process drags on for two years? YES!

Fortunately, these elements are caught by the proofreader who checks a given novel (big thanks to my EmpikGO supervisor – Artur!). But fiddling with the appearance of a given character or constantly changing what a given place looks like doesn’t make writing any easier. Many times I found myself taking precious minutes to go back to a place earlier to see what something looked like.

I don’t do that now. I ask the AI ​​to generate a given character according to my ideas. And I keep generating it until I am fully satisfied. Then I put the photo into the “Characters” or “Places” folder. And when I start writing a given fragment and I’m not sure whether my memory is failing me, I pull out the generated graphics and I’m sure. Easy!

Fortunately or unfortunately. My writing mind works much better when I have the opportunity to see or feel something. Smells cannot be written down, but images can. And various generators make it very easy for me to stay inspired and simply help me control the creative chaos .

Not just a picture

Okay, but the most “writing” controversy concerns the use of tools that create text. Do I use these? Yes! Although I don’t use them to create content. So what do I use them for?

When you create novels in an environment that is not entirely familiar to you, you must first do extensive research. Get to know, for example, a given culture, appropriate words and phrases, history or legends . This often involves browsing Wikipedia, forums and social media in search of specific information or descriptions.

When I face such a dilemma, in recent months I simply use AI. I’m asking. If I set a story in space and “try” to make the story at least a little realistic, instead of searching the Internet for the answer to the question “how many kilometers separate the Earth from Saturn”, I ask it to artificial intelligence. I receive the answer in a few seconds and I don’t waste time on unnecessary searches.

Believe it or not, how many evenings have I lost because my inspiration disappeared after searching the Internet for several minutes to find one piece of information? Asking questions to the AI ​​is much more intuitive and does not take up the free space in your head, which can quickly be filled with another search task.

What AI do I use?

I’m not original. In my creative work I use basic AI tools. When generating graphics, I use Midjourney in the basic subscription (approx. PLN 50 per month). However, to ask questions, I choose ChatGPT in the free version 3.5.

Is there anything else I do with the help of AI that I haven’t written about? As I mentioned, thanks to Midjourney plus Canva, I prepare promotional materials for my stories on Wattpad or ads for Facebook.

For example, for my stories from the series “Meetings beyond Saturn always end with a shooting”, I create illustrations for each chapter stylized in a retro anime style. So everything depends on your creative needs and imagination.

If you liked my post and would like to somehow appreciate the effort I put into preparing this text, feel free to buy me a coffee 🙂