I’m going to regret this.

Before anyone accuses me of anything I am making it clear that I’m NOT advocating for the use of ai to help with writing down stories. I don’t flow that way. Rather it is about using ai to create ideas/prompts that stage a platform for making stories. I’m not going to sugarcoat it here but do you honestly think using ai could help with overcoming writer’s block by creating ideas that (in theory) could make storytelling more interesting?

If this doesn’t work then well, I tried. At least I was honest with my opinion instead of trying to hide it away. I just know for a fact this thread will get locked.

7966944

do you honestly think using ai could help with overcoming writer’s block by creating ideas that (in theory) could make storytelling more interesting?

There's no single way of overcoming writer's block, so different people take different approaches that may or may not help them, depending on the particular situation they are in. People who like to unblock themselves by discussing various story ideas with others, but currently have nobody around, may benefit from having a similar discussion with some chatbot. On the other hand, some people that are stuck may need genuine human contact or human creativity rather than just a bunch of generated ideas. So, yes, AI is out there, and it may be a viable tool for some, but it's definitely not a one-size-fits-all solution.

7966944 For those who don't want to use AI, these free ideas are human-generated:
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/854045/free-story-ideas-for-you

7966944
(sigh) We don't lock threads simply because someone stated something that might be edgy or controversial. AI is a tool like any other, and like a tool, it can be misused to ill effect. There are no rules stating one cannot use it for inspiration, only that one cannot use it and post the output whole-cloth as if it was one's own creation.

I have no doubt there are members here who are still trying to pass off such as their own, but with the exception of a few who have been caught outright (and then ragequit), those "stories" are relatively easy to spot.

7966951
Exactly. I’m not saying that ai should be always be used as a foolproof solution to writer’s block, just as a small tool to help with spurring creativity. My intention isn’t to say that we shouldn’t fully use ai to generate story prompts, just when we think it should be necessary. I mean one of my stories I actually made by using inspiration from a character.ai RP, and I borrowed some of those ideas and expanded upon them to make it more fleshed out.

7966954
I get it. I was being cautious because the last thing I want to do is shoot my self in the foot.

7966944

I'm still queasy about this. It's not story writing, but I am worried it could be used by AI prompters to make AI-generated stories become accepted, by making everyone used to the idea of using AI for something. When they have a hoof in the door with that, it might be easier for them to talk people into accepting AI-generated stories too. It sounds too risky.

Besides that, it would still be AI replacing something that people could do before without it. Writer's block exists for hundreds of years, probably thousands. People always found ways to deal with it. Inspiration is everywhere. Play a video game with an intriguing story, read an exciting book, watch a captivating TV show or a suspenseful movie. Go out in nature and watch animals. Sit down on a bench inside an amusement park or any other crowded place and observe the people passing by.
Think about the things you're seeing and try to imagine how the situations could continue, what the people could do next, what their motivations are, where they're coming from, what their home life is like, what struggles and problems they might have, ect. There's always a way. You don't need an AI for that.

7966944
You could use AI this way, sure.

You could also just as easily browse for prompts, read a book, go for a walk, journal, let the project sit for a while...

This all depends also on whether you believe in "writer's block." I don't. At least, not in the conventional sense. I think it's more of a writer's "fear" than a block, and overcoming that requires a kind of disciplined approach, a philosophy, a belief - not necessarily a "tool" that you can prompt for answers.

7966944
You're dancing with the devil every time you involve AI in any step in the creative process. It can be used responsibly, and there's nothing inherently wrong with using it in a purely conceptual role like you describe. But you are in fact psychologically conditioning yourself to rely on that help, and overuse of it can make your problems even worse over time.

Be extremely careful with it and only use it extremely sparingly if at all. If you get in the habit of running to the AI every time you hit difficulties, you'll find yourself more and more reliant on it until it's as deeply ingrained into your process as opening up your word processor and creating a new document.

7966944
I think that if it helps you and makes you happy go for it. I think artists myself included need to worry more about their own base instead of worrying about how others choose how to do things.

7966990
Maybe in the short term, but in a longer term it’s bound to cause significant problems.

7966944
If the creativity of said ideas, the meat if you will I think its ok.
Just make sure you are the one that gives the story life.

7966991
I think there will always be fans of traditional art. I think we just should stop focusing on what others are doing and focus more on our own stuff.

The only thing I've used AI for is Story titles or Chapter titles if I can't think of something. The rest of all of my writing is me.

7966944
The only time I use AI is fixing my grammar and spelling but I say using it to fix your grammar is needed

7966944
I am not sure I quite follow. Maybe it's just me but coming up with ideas is the easiest part, there's a reason why there are way more people with ideas than those that can actually turn those ideas into reality.

I can understand clicking random prompt generator as a challenge or just being bored. But I don't quite get how would it help with overcoming writer's block.

If it's inspiration you are craving then I would instead suggest a whole finished work. Reading, watching, listening stuff. There's no shortage of things to experience.

7966995
My spelling is horrendous. Every time I think I got them all, I always find more.

In ten years Ai will be more widely accepted and this conversation would fizzle out to bar only completely generated stories, which of course do not have any artistic merit

Use with caution. It's far better to develop author voice through reading books and getting more first hand experiences

7966944
mm, if you're interested, do it. However, the general idea is ambiguous. Use AI? exactly what do you mean by using AI. Perhaps some visual examples will help clarify this point.

To me, this is sort of a slippery slope scenario. Yes, you theoretically could get a good idea from it. But then, you might even go back to prompt it for the next scene if you write yourself into a corner. You can accidentally create a dependency, though. Which is more and more likely when factoring in writer’s block.

More often than not, writer’s block is caused by external stressors that limit internal creativity. A shortcut to get rid of it is simply that— a shortcut, and it will often lead to you fizzling out unless the root of the problem fades first. If you lack the creative spark, reading other stories or intaking other media is a good idea. If those don’t seem to captivate you, you’re in dire need of a break.

7967014

exactly what do you mean by using AI.

It doesn't even work for me.

You

Can you give me a list of ideas for MLP fanfiction involving tentacles?

Copilot

I apologize, but I cannot provide ideas for that specific topic. If you have any other requests, feel free to ask! 🙏

7966944
Lately I've been letting people just throw requests at me, mostly shipping related. Some missing, but some manage to land me on the featured page. You don't need an AI prompt when there are a massive amount of people on here that are either too lazy to write their ideas or lack the skill to do so.

7966944
In my opinion, AI is an incredibly powerful tool, but a tool is only as good as the person using it. Sure, ChatGPT can generate a string of text that resembles fanfiction, but it's never going to be able to do what a human writer can in terms of emotional impact, turn of phrase, etc. Remember: ChatGPT can only spit back what's already out there. It isn't creative, it's just giving you a composite average of whatever it finds related to your prompt.

That said, there are LOADS of times when "composite average" is a super helpful thing to have! I recently had ChatGPT write me an outline of "a generic Lovecraftian horror short story"—this is totally within its capabilities to do, and it managed very well! It gave me a series of seven plot beats that are common in Lovecraft's stories, as well as some notes on style and theme. If I wasn't a writer, I'd need to keep plugging in prompts until it eventually spat out an entire story, but this was more than enough for my needs. I had neither the time nor the desire to read enough of Lovecraft's work that I could develop this sort of outline on my own, but being given the basic shape of the story let me jump ahead to the creative part - filling in characters, monsters, setting, arcs, and all that other good stuff.

It can also be good for little details that I tend to get stuck on: I've used it to generate pony names on a specific theme (another task it's very good at - ask for a lot, then use your writer brain to pick the best option) and to generate snippets of professional/technical writing for a story (it is phenomenal at this. I am terrible at it). These are small, inconsequential tasks for an AI, but used to stop me dead in my tracks and break my flow. On the other hand, I've tried asking it for prompts many times (mostly as a method of procrastination), but this has never once led to anything I would consider usable.

I've been sharing this piece with a lot of people lately because I think it's a brilliant example of how ChatGPT can be used in creative writing, while also spotlighting the ability of the human writer to edit, expand, or remove the AI's contributions to the piece. Again, AI is an incredible tool - we all just need to be a little more aware of how it can support us. It's never going to give you a story prompt that blows your mind, but it can help fill in the gaps that used to take me hours of research - and that is an amazing thing!

7966944
Counterpoint to many other comments here: AI is not so much a tool. AI is a service. You are not plying a skill by using it. Really you are delegating your work to another entity. Any work surrendered to AI is work that you're not doing, and experience that you're not gaining.

Maybe this will be the norm in the future - AI replacing significant parts of creative work in the same way that search engines replaced significant parts of library and archive work - but that isn't a future I'd like to help build, and I think most people would probably agree with that. Whether it comes to pass or not, writing is supposed to be art, something people enjoy - and endure.

Whether good or bad, it's worth it.

7966944
The thing that I mostly use AI for is feedback on what I've already written. I give ChatGPT my written progress and ask specific questions about what it thinks, very often using it as a beta reader more so than as an actual critic. My general idea is "if the AI gets it, the humans likely will too." (This is very basic feedback I should mention, as whether a reader 'gets it' is usually only the bare minimum of what I'm striving for.) Although I have to be careful with this because it doesn't necessarily go the other way. Just because an AI doesn't get something doesn't mean a human won't. All it's ever doing with feedback is making note of the patterns it recognizes. It might be a helpful, learning experience though, to interrogate the AI about why exactly it got or didn't get something.

When I ask it to help me generate ideas for a story I haven't completely worked out, I'd say it's a way of talking to myself more than anything else. It almost always tells me basic things I could have easily thought of on my own, but actively having the back and forth conversation is just a way to make my thought process linear and directed. It's easier to get somewhere and make progress when you can actually see your thought process written out and given a specific task to move forward with.

Anyway the point is the 'creative' aid of AI is on a very basic level.

My dad is a huge AI enthusiast computer programmer whose also a writer, and something he said once is "If you are using AI well, you end up with more work to do, not less." He has amended, now that I've asked him, that this may not be a bulletproof saying considering the plethora of ways AI can be used and has specified that it's helpful in that it can force you to use your brain more; forces you to define what you want more clearly. Which, I think, is helpful particularly in the context of creative writing.

7967044
*nods very enthusiastically*

7966944 I frankly don't see the appeal.

It's one of those instances where, I mean, I guess you could, but I'm genuinely not sure what the added value would be. If I want to write my own piece, then let's be real, it's actually fairly natural to reference or be inspired by not a few but multiple other works and ideas, and I don't think it's controversial to say that a lot of things we write are often riffs on other ideas with new ones mixed in, or re-contextualised, or reimagined, or any mixture of the above and more.

AI as a prompt kinda just seems like losing a lot of the personal input of what to be inspired by by agglomerating a bunch of other pieces drawn from who-knows-where. The appeal of AI always seemed to me like it was just being able to get a quick and somewhat lifelike composite average result, or alternatively to be impressed with how the AI interprets what we do (which is kind of like looking at our own content in a very unfiltered mirror, which admittedly can be kinda fun; wacky AI stories aren't just funny because they're unpredictable, but because they're like a weird uncanny reflection of what we write).

I guess I'm old fashioned, and like plagiarizing referencing and drawing inspiration from other stories and media the old-fashioned way; by reading and viewing them myself and deciding what I think is cool or uncool about it. The way I write may not be perfect, but it demands me being in control of everything during the drafting stage, because that's kind of the rawest version of the story I want to tell. I'm not interested in editing a sort of gross average of lots of other pieces; if I want to draw inspiration from stuff, I want to pick which, specifically, and in the manner I want. And if I really do just want to see a quick agglomeration for inspiration because I don't have anything else to draw from, I mean, is it really a story I want to tell?

What's interesting here is that a year or two back the large majority of people were replying to questions like this with some version of "AI doesn't belong in the creative arts, full stop". That's no longer the case -- while almost all of us I think do support Fimfiction's "only stuff you wrote" rule, there's rather more variety in the nuances of what AI can fairly be used for. Look at mushroompone's thoughtful and interesting comment, for example. That's not someone who doesn't know how to write and is leaving it all to machines!

As Forcalor says, things will continue to evolve. In terms of meaning AI will take over some of what humans now do, I think that's almost inevitable. As an imperfect analogy, consider how automation has changed photography. Outside a relatively tiny core of hardcore enthusiasts and specialists, how many people would now choose to set their cameras to manual focus the whole time? Not many.

7966944

using ai to create ideas/prompts that stage a platform for making stories. I’m not going to sugarcoat it here but do you honestly think using ai could help with overcoming writer’s block by creating ideas that (in theory) could make storytelling more interesting?

AI is a tool made to help you, so using it to help with writer's block should, in theory, help. However, as others said, it depends on what kind of writer's block you have, and even then, it might not help, but everyone is different.
Nevertheless, it is an option to pick from other options. just don't abuse it and rely on it when you don't have writer's block.

7967075

7967073

They are good thoughts in general. Perhaps at the dawn of humanity, when fire was discovered, the oldest members of the tribe thought the same way. I think we can get an idea of what risks we will face in the future.

Returning to the original topic. I think using AI for recreational matters is the best we can do for now. Whether art or not. Above all, sharing information helps create beneficial experiences and a common basis of understanding.

7967079
On the other hand. good avatar

7967086
Lol thx found it on google

7967086 To be clear, I'm not a luddite. I use technology every day and I'm very hopeful for the diverse applications of AI, particularly in biomedical engineering and medical device development, which is my chosen field and a field I've very much fallen in love with. I personally have high expectations of what it could entail for programming devices to learn and adapt to complex and unpredictable biological functions that'll make people's lives better. AI isn't my specialist by any stretch, but I'm genuinely hopeful it can be used as a force for good in people's lives.

I've just been unimpressed by it as an artistic tool.

7967068
This.
AI is a deal with the devil. You're asking the devil to do the work for you. That is a service rendered, not a "just a tool" situation, as the AI bros like to misrepresent it as.
The price you will pay for accepting the services of a non-human agent in creative work is that you concede, by degrees, your level of actual creative input and human expressiveness into the product that results.

In a way, you really are selling your soul - or perhaps more precisely, your ability to express and infuse your soul into your creative work - little pieces at a time by using AI in ever-increasing amounts.

Usually I'm wary of the slippery-slope fallacy but this is absolutely one of those occasional times when it's important to realize that there actually is a very real slippery slope here.

7967086

They are good thoughts in general. Perhaps at the dawn of humanity, when fire was discovered, the oldest members of the tribe thought the same way.

I can imagine the tribe sitting around the campfire some seventy thousand years ago, talking to each other.
"Artificial Intelligence is all good and fine, but AI can't hunt woolly mammoth. We must do it ourselves. We shouldn't rely on AI to start our fire and drag our catch home."

As for the topic:
Statistical Language models may seem like a good help to polish ideas you have for a great story, but from what I've seen so far it's been nothing but a disappointment. Give it a few years and maybe they will have figured it out. Currently I doubt it can create the coherency of a good story just because it's not a single persons mind but millions of downloads it has analyzed, and it will result in something average - in the mathematical sense of the word.

So the suggestions it gives may be popular, statistically speaking, but it risk being a mismatch that doesn't keep the whole story glued together. I'm thinking of the movie Sixth Sense I didn't quite get when I saw it, until the final minutes when all the scenes suddenly made sense (my first).

7966944
I'll go against the flow, and just say: use it. Use it for the actual writing too. There are probably multiple, currently better-known writers on this site who used it to create stories quickly, and you couldn't tell the difference, because human-created trite and standard AI writing don't have that much difference. In many cases, you couldn't tell, and unless you parade the fact around, no one would ever find it out.
The only question is if you want only the end result, or creating every piece of the story yourself is your desire.

7967408 Human created trite can be pretty abysmal, but I suspect most writers here aim a little higher than trite.

If the topic of conversation is 'is AI a good tool for writing', and the bar is 'equivalent to below average' then I don't find that a terribly compelling endorsement of it as a tool.

I think AI is useful in the sense of asking it, “is this sentence grammatically correct,” or, “what’s the word for when someone smiles but with a mote of contempt behind their expression.”

Asking it for complex things such as help with story structure will lead to failure. “AI” is a misnomer. Stuff like chatGPT is just a personalized search engine and it is best used keeping that in mind.