That’s a broad question, man. People dedicate years of their lives learning to write. I don’t know if anybody on lemmy is going to be able to answer ‘what should I do to write?’ Stephen King said in his book ‘On Writing’: “If you don’t have time to read, then you don’t have time to write.” I would start with reading books, some of which could be about writing, and maybe taking some classes at your local community college. Khan Academy also has some free courses for writing, I think.
According to an MIT study, relying on ChatGPT for stuff like essays and creativity leads to cognitive atrophy and such. What should I do when writing stories without ChatGPT and other AI chatbots?
Submitted 23 hours ago by DylanMc6@lemmy.dbzer0.com to [deleted]
https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/
Comments
Nosavingthrow@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
benignintervention@piefed.social 22 hours ago
Octavia Butler has an essay that makes the same key point as Stephen King: read and write. It’s the same as any other skill. If you’re a musician, you listen to music and play your instrument. If you want to draw, you watch people draw, observe their process, and you draw. If you’re a welder, you watch people weld, study the process, and you weld.
Storytelling, however, is very broad. You see it on tv, in movies, in books, and you practice in daily conversation. There are loads of books and videos discussing different aspects of storytelling structure, form, and best practices. The Great Courses even has a lecture series on storytelling. But the best thing you can do is read and write. And ask for feedback.
Nosavingthrow@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
I’ve read that one! Her advice on not relying on inspiration but, instead, relying on habit is good advice for any skill.
okwhateverdude@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Bro, just tell the damn story you want to tell. Robots will drift toward the most common attractors (aka, tropes and cliches and repetitive phrases) in the language space for whatever genre, tone, style, etc. you prompt for. It will all sound the same and it will suck. You can’t tell a good story with that kind of mine field waiting for you to monkey’s paw your story. Now, that isn’t to say you can use a chatbot as a sounding board for ideas and ways to development them, kind of using it as an anti-oracle. But you have to realize these models are trained on every book they can possibly find. How many of those books are actually any good? And imagine averaging all of those shitty books you would never read together into one distilled, sad mediocrity. That is what the chatbot is going to give you when you ask it to write stories for you.
fireweed@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
This is the second unhelpfully vague question you’ve posed today about writing.
So it would seem the first thing you need to do is to look up resources on effective communication and on accurately identifying problems/goals. Because I’m unclear as to whether the problem is that you don’t know what you’re looking for when asking these questions, or that you do know and for some reason assume that we can read your mind and know it too even without your properly describing it.
tiredofsametab@fedia.io 11 hours ago
... as someone in his 40s, this post makes me irrationally angry. Write. Don't know what to write? Write something, anything, anyway until it starts to go somewhere. Read more, both authors you like/admire and maybe something you don't to see what else is around.
phonics@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Read the book storyworthy by Matthew dicks. Set up a framework for a 3 act structure or heroes journey. Fill in the framework to find your story everything else is gravy. I do this professionally. The steps are simple. But the inward searching of your soul, that’s the hard part.
MissesAutumnRains@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 hours ago
I would get into fanfiction, both reading and writing. Places like Ao3 are so batshit insane, that they sort of force you to recalibrate creativity for yourself.
Just write for fun, don’t carry any baggage about turning it into something serious or long term. You’ll randomly get feedback to improve (some good and some bad) and soon you’ll recognize what you value in feedback and what you don’t.
You’ll also start recognizing stories that you like and that you don’t like. Use those moments as opportunities to really sit and figure out why you like and don’t like those stories. Imagine how you would improve them or write them differently.
Eventually, you’ll find that you have your own ideas, your own voice, and opinions on what makes a piece good or bad.
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
If you wabt help training yourself to not rely on chatgpt, you can use youtube’s search bar and type things like “how to deprogram chatGPT usage” or “how to write without AI”
FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 hours ago
Just start writing whatever you want.
YoFrodo@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
I am not a writer myself, so take this with a grain of salt, but it might be better to just start writing things down in a short framework, even if elements of the story are missing or incomplete. Like you may think about a specific scene/situation so you can jot that down, then you might write something like “there would be a problem that caused X character to be here” just to have a placeholder so later you can come back and replace it with something.
Also consider that studies have shown physical activity can help stimulate your mind. So maybe go for a walk to think about your story or what you want from it
msokiovt@lemmy.today 22 hours ago
Now writing with LLMs is a bad idea. However, if you set it up right, you can use an LLM locally downloaded as a tool to point out errors, mistakes, and other quirks, to help with your writing style.
DonPiano@feddit.org 21 hours ago
Or you could pour river water down your socks, it’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s free!
THB@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Weird to frame this in a way where using LLMs is the default way to write. Is this what we’ve come to as a species?
Elting@piefed.social 21 hours ago
The whole point of writing is that im engaging internally with the process. Words are just words if Im not writing or reading them, completely vapid and inane. Anybody with half a brain who reads can tell writing from output. It has no soul because none was lent it.
LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz 18 hours ago
The VAST majority of the world do not use AI for anything.
It’s not where we are as a species, it’s where a small subset of people are.