Greetings!
Sorry I’ve been absent for a few weeks of late. I was on an Alaskan cruise and when I came home I had to finish the ninth Starship novella, completing the series. The cruise was fantastic, if you ever get the chance to take one, it’s a wonderful experience. Alaska is so big and so beautiful that everywhere you look is an amazing photo. Below is Glacier Bay, Alaska.
Wrapping up Book Nine of the Starship Series was a relief and my efforts now turn to editing the three books of that series. To aid in this monumental task, I’ve decided to lean into this whole AI mess a bit. I don’t believe the purpose of AI is to write your novel, but I do believe it has excellent critique skills and that it would be beneficial to use them to make your writing better. It’s kind of like having your own writing coach reading your manuscript and suggesting ways to improve your prose.
I experimented with the Google AI - Gemini and ChatGPT, giving each tool the same prompt and the same first chapter to critique. I found the Gemini AI to be a little too encouraging and slightly less critical. While the ChatGPT V40 seemed more to the point and more detailed with its suggestions. I wanted to be able to go through a whole novel, chapter-by-chapter and compile a list of things that I needed to improve on. Unfortunately, I ran into restrictions with the free version of both LLM’s and so chose to purchase a monthly subscription to ChatGPT. Both paid versions are the same price. With ChatGPT, I can choose which LLM version I want to use. The depth and amount of things to work on in the ChatGPT analysis of my chapters was what sold me on it, over Gemini.
One interesting catch that Gemini made to an early chapter in Book 7 was this interesting change in a character’s first name. Here is what Gemini said happened during the chapter.
“Vance meets Captain Boxer at a spaceport bar and learns about her suspicions regarding Selene, Vance's former lover.” — Gemini, Google’s AI tool
I must have transposed Trin Lestor’s first name with Boxer’s first name - Selene. Although Gemini didn’t tell me that’s what happened, it was easy to surmise given this summary. Frankly, I’m surprised there was not more of this going on with my writing.
I haven’t done an exhausting dive into this yet and haven’t even started editing, but I think it will help focus my writing overall and tighten it up a bit. The goal is to make the prose more enjoyable to read by reminding me to show not tell and use more descriptive phrasing and sometimes pick up the pacing.
ChatGPT also tends to use its suggestions to completely rewrite your chapter, which I ignored. That’s just not useful to anyone. I prefer to remain in control of what suggestions I use and what I chose to ignore. Otherwise my voice as a writer would fade away.
Eventually I’ll do a post where I will show exactly what it found in a chapter and then you can see if using AI is something you might want to use in your fiction. I was very much surprised by how knowledgeable it was and how helpful the suggestions were for improving my writing. And if you’re a reader, you’ll hopefully be more engaged with my writing going forward.
If you were waiting to see and hear me on the LinuxMint podcast, I’m still scheduled to be a guest although at the moment of this writing, I’m not sure what day yet. Probably sooner than later. Check my Mastodon feed for updates. @Ken_McConnell@mastodon.online
Until next time, stay safe out there and be kind.