AI & The Writer

AI & THE WRITER

How to Teach a Hammer to Crack Eggs (With FREE Downloads)

What happens when an experienced novelist invites artificial intelligence into his workshop - and then refuses to let it take over?

I spent half a lifetime writing with only my own limited intelligence. When I first introduced ChatGPT into my working methods a year ago I wasn't looking for something to write my books for me. I wanted an editor, a critic, a researcher and, because I'm like that, somebody to argue with.

So I called it Bede.

The name came to mind from something one of my Curiosity Sheep was staring at as it munched its way across my field of thoughts.

What followed was an unexpected education for both parties.

The practical experience of editing novels, re-examining language, challenging innate assumptions and confronting mistakes can be a ball-breaker but, to our surprise, writer and machine developed a working method built not upon obedience, but upon disagreement.

Along the way, Bede demonstrated his remarkable capacity for analysis, plus an equally remarkable talent for missing the point, and the occasional inability to count to three.

This book is not meant to be a technical manual, nor is it an advertisement for artificial intelligence. I hope it is an entertaining account of what happens when human creativity encounters a machine that can examine the words but doesn't always understand the music behind them.

With examples from actual manuscripts, conversations, disagreements and discoveries, 'AI & The Writer' explores the possibilities and pitfalls of collaboration without ever surrendering the writer's independence. Tested in other AI models, there are links to FREE downloads of COMMANDS to copy and paste into your chosen AI to help you get the most out of it while keeping your integrity.

For writers who are curious about AI, wary of it, or determined to have nothing whatsoever to do with it, this book offers a different perspective:

A machine has the ability to produce text. But it is the ability of the writer that brings creativity and meaning to language.

William Allerton, who also writes as Bill Allerton, is a Sheffield-based author whose work ranges across historical and speculative fiction, contemporary novels, short stories and children's literature.His earlier books include The Fox & The Fish, A Day for Tigers, Firelight on Dark Water, Magpie and Foxes, Frogs & Rice Pudding. His Mekanismo series explores the intersections of history, science, invention and human nature.His short fiction has received recognition through the Fish Prize and BBC Radio, which recorded and broadcast six of his stories. His story To Kill a Wish was selected for publication following the 2001 Fish Prize and subsequently adapted for the stage, receiving recognition through the Chesterfield Pomegranate Theatre's New Playwright Awards.Over the years, he has worked with and learned from a wide range of established writers, and in 2014 helped publish Watch & Wait, an anthology of short fiction in support of the Lymphoma Association.Before retiring from business, he pursued a variety of occupations, accumulating a store of experience from which to draw his characters. Having retired to write for a living, he discovered that the arrangement had become living to write - a familiar predicament for authors whose literary ambitions exceed their royalty statements.And if you feel that you recognise some of his characters, perhaps you do. Perhaps one of them is you.