Cutting Corners

Several years ago one of my coworkers told me that she wrote fan fiction, but I was horrified because I felt that fan fiction was cutting corners, working off other people’s ideas, characters, plots, and world-building. Think of all the Star Trek-related books where you know Kirk’s and Spock’s characters, the nature of the Federation, etc., and you just take off from there. You have a whole universe built up for you so that you don’t have to invent any new background.

But I began to reconsider that whatever gets somebody writing might be a good way to develop. I also began thinking that I’m doing a similar thing with series fiction; am I not in essence writing my own fan fiction? The characters have been created, the world has been created, and I embark on a new novel with that secure foundation. I don’t necessarily have to invent new archetypes and new emotional resonance with characters I feel I already understand.

So is using artificial intelligence for writing fiction much different from fan fiction or series writing? You give a prompt for parameters to include and obtain a result.

I’m not desirous of entering the AI debate other than to say that I’ve decided that all my future novels will carry the disclaimer that no part was created with AI, and also the recent common boilerplate against AI scraping of the text.

It may be argued that the framing of the prompt is a human-created act, but going for the quick final result via superfast, computerized auto-complete means you’re basing your work on everything everyone has already said before.

It’s tempting to cut corners is, to take the unknowable aspect of creation and skip to the finished product that will complete a psychic gestalt or result in a marketable product. Although creation is a joy, it also comes with responsibility and it’s inherently messy and difficult, sometimes even impossible. Writers do encounter blocks. It’s certainly alluring to ask a computer: “What comes next?”

At least fan fiction and series fiction involve human courage and deep curiosity. Asking feedback from other people or participating in collaborative projects might be viewed as cutting corners, but this includes human resonance, emotional give and take, and opportunity for learning.

Cutting corners may give us an alluring product, but we’ve avoided the psychic work necessary to explore ourselves. It curdles my soul to think of giving my notes for my ongoing Supreme Commander Laurie Book Three (working title Exile and Renaissance) to a chatbot and having it churn out the finished merchandise in a few seconds.

I now look at my own series writing and wonder where I may be cutting corners. Am I adding just one more “okay” artwork to our Tower of Babel cultural pile? Am I pursuing what the core self needs to be doing?

I also need to reevaluate a point I often make, that my writing is fun. I repeat this a lot. But I know I’m not really looking for easy expression, for pleasant entertainment to pass the time. “Fun” is more like compelling, joyous investigation.

So … what sort of new storytelling is out there?