The future of writing will mirror the fashion industry, in the sense that fast-fashion will still have its audience, but it’s the handmade items that will stand out.
It’s a pretty fitting analogy, seeing how humankind can never compete with machine-made. But that’s only if you take these factors into account: speed, accuracy, low cost.
Yet it is the long production time and imperfections that give bespoke items their value. And I’m optimistic that I will belong in this segment of the market when that time comes.
A plastic world
I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon once ChatGPT went mainstream. All of a sudden, friends who spoke English as a second language began crafting immaculate Instagram captions and work e-mails.
It may seem like they’re putting their best foot forward, but all they’re doing is presenting a fake mask, because I know for a fact they don’t speak like that.
I’m reminded of my time learning Russian through Rosetta Stone CDs. ‘Zdravstvuyte’ was touted as one of the more important greetings, to which I quickly showed off to my Kazakh friends.
I expected slow claps, maybe a standing ovation to my mastery of their language. But all my audience had to say was, “Dude, say ‘privet’ instead. It’s weird to use that other word with friends.”
And that’s exactly how I feel about my friends’ purple prose describing their Tuesday lunch.
The problem with ‘enhanced’ writing
Look, I don’t care if your plural for ‘cyclists’ is ‘cyclers’, or if you use ‘than’ in the place of ‘then’. But hiding behind the veil of AI makes you look like a phoney, even if you’re self-conscious about your grammar.
This is especially true if English isn’t your first language. I want all your errors, performed in earnest. I want to know that you have a message, and that you’re trying to convey it through your utmost capabilities.
I understand your struggle, too. I speak Mandarin with the vocabulary of a third-grader. Yet I would rather my message be “we do this because important” than to have a machine speak on my behalf with: “Given the significance of this situation, it is imperative that we set aside any distractions and focus our efforts on addressing this issue with the urgency it demands.”
Which brings us to today’s post. If you’re going to use AI in your written tasks, then perhaps I could give you some pointers on how to do it properly. Because I might as well be part of the solution, amirite?
Why you shouldn’t use AI
But before we get into the meat of the matter, I want to first discourage you from delegating your writing entirely to AI.
The most important reason is that it robs you of your growth. Remember my third-grader’s Chinese? Well, I used to have kindergartener’s Chinese. And the only reason I can handle basic communication today is because I’ve actually spoken it badly for years.
If you let AI speak for you, you’ll miss out on getting laughed at. On being told that it’s ‘you’re’ instead of ‘your’. It’s these exact moments that improve your skills just that tiny bit more. And tiny improvements over time will bestow you with the mastery you seek.
Second, communication is one of the most important skills we can cultivate. And relying on AI only atrophies that part of your brain. You will do yourself a disservice by being a bad communicator, even if your cooking, coding, or drawing skills are top-notch.
And finally, life is about the process. Everything from making your bed to producing your magnum opus lies in the journey that you’ve taken to get there. Sure, you could get AI to produce a sick guitar riff for you, but how accomplished would you feel as a musician if you did exactly that?
Here are the AI tips you seek
Okay, fine. You still want to AI everything. You’re not bound by expectations and you just want to cast your voice out into the world. If the written word is your medium of choice, and you’re headed to ChatGPT for a draft, then the first thing you should do is to…
Be accurate
AI has a way of writing a whole lot of nothing. It has a way of ‘showcasing its testament to excellence through its meticulous dedication to the craft’.
So filter all that AI slop down to its most basic ideas. In other words, be concrete. A watch’s bright dial may draw looks due to the way it catches light. But saying that it “pulls you in, not with a loud, obnoxious flourish, but with a quiet, deliberate, undeniable magnetism, a whisper of sophistication” is a bit of a stretch.
Cut em (dashes)
Em dashes have existed since the beginning of literature, but only in recent days have people been associating them with AI. I myself love em dashes. In fact, here are three of them in a row for you — — —.
But these armchair editors have a point. AI really does crank the em dash knob to a gazillion units per paragraph. After being subjected to torrents of em dashes by my writers, I can safely say that a lack of punctuation, Cormac McCarthy style, is looking rather refreshing about now.
I’m not saying you should eschew all forms of punctuation. I just want you to know that anything beyond the comma, period, and hyphen detracts significantly from the reading experience.
Keep evolving
Here are some words commonly associated with AI:
- tapestry
- meticulous
- delve
- craftsmanship
- indelible
And here are phrases that do the same:
- testament to its dedication to…
- in a world of…
- it isn’t just (blank), it’s (blank)
This is the current zeitgeist, at least until the AI models improve. And you may resist with a common excuse I hear a lot from my colleagues: “But I personally use those phrases and words in my writing!”
Well, if you’re serious about being a writer, you’ll find another way to phrase a sentence. Because there are always other ways to say something.
Just know that we know
As a smoker, I find it hard to watch an actor try to pass off as someone who goes through one pack a day. You can tell by the way they hold the cigarette that they’ve never smoked a day in their life.
It’s the same for writing. Anyone in a position to rewrite articles has developed a keen eye (and ear) when it comes to the writing voice. So if you’re a budding writer trying to sneak a machine-made story past your editor, just know that they know.
Personally, I can guess your writing voice just by listening to you speak, a skill I’m sure my fellow wordsmiths can attest to. It becomes more apparent if we’ve exchanged text messages.
So why not send in your own work to be improved on? At least you’ll know where to improve. You can’t enhance a story that didn’t emerge from your own mind, yanno?
Your writing is for you
You know what the weird thing is about writing? After more than a decade of doing this, I’m starting to realise that writing is actually more for me than for you.
It is a way of navigating the turmoil in my mind, of crystallising the vague ideas and putting them out into the universe. All the blog posts I’ve written here have taught me more about myself than they have enlightened others. Because let’s face it, I’m no Tony Robbins.
But if I write enough, I have a vague feeling that I could be. And I don’t think any convenience offered by AI will ever outweigh that.
Stuart Danker 
I’d love to hear your thoughts!