November 2023 | A.S. Akkalon

How writers can distinguish themselves from AI

AI writing is spreading, but generative AI will never have your power. Do this to lean in to your humanity and distinguish yourself from AI.

Generative AI is here. If you tell ChatGPT to write a 300 word story about a hedgehog with hiccups, it will happily do so at least as well as a ten-year-old writing their first Harry Potter fan fiction.

The bad fan fiction doesn’t seem like a big problem, but give that ten-year-old time to grow up and the fear of many writers–that their beautiful stories will be replaced with soulless AI-generated tales–becomes a lot more plausible.

However, some aspects of human writing may never be replicable by AI. Each person brings their unique soul and experiences to their writing in a way AI can’t (we hope).

If you want to distinguish your writing from AI-generated writing, play up your humanity.

Not sure how? Here are some ideas.

Fantasy maps, publishing, editing, and writing: an interview with Dewi Hargreaves

I interviewed Dewi Hargreaves about his freelance work making maps for fantasy books, working at an independent press, and much more.

I’m here today with Dewi Hargreaves–writer, artist, editor, and all-around fantastic human being.

Picture us sitting in front of a crackling log fire, in a room with dark wood panelling and a wall covered in bookshelves. On the rug before the fire sleeps a unicorn.

We’re actually doing this by email, but I think it’s more fun if you picture the room with the unicorn.

I asked Dewi to keep his responses PG rated, and he almost entirely succeeded. I only had to bleep out one word. Otherwise Dewi’s responses are entirely his own, except for a few additional paragraph breaks.

What colour are your characters’ eyes?

I tweeted the other day to ask writers if anyone else had no idea the colour of their characters’ eyes. Responses were enthusiastic.

A few days ago when I was playing on Twitter*, I made the mistake of tweeting this:

* I know it’s not called Twitter any more, and I probably shouldn’t be there. But I call it that and I’m there, so… hedgehogs.

A tweet by A.S. Akkalon that reads:
Please tell me there are some other writers who don't know the colours of their characters' eyes. — It’s not kidding. I am editing.

I expected one or two chirps from the void and then silence.

Instead I spent a good portion of the next day responding to a plethora of writers who felt this was an important point. (Is 147 a plethora? I think it is.)