My Line Editing Journey with ChatGPT

Patrickmil

Not exactly sure what you’re asking here. Do I agree that ChatGPT can be helpful in an editing sense? Yes, I do, as long as I’m not copy pasting ChatGPT’s entire sentences. There is some discussion worth having about the affect an AI prompt has on the output and the resulting copyright issues. Would ChatGPT respond in the same way if a different prompt had been used? Your blog has an example of that. It’s my opinion that copyright law will need to consider prompts and their effect on the outcome before AI vs author copyright laws are developed.

Dabellwrit

ChatGPT is perfect to help with editing, just like other software like ProWritingAid, Grammarly, Hemmingway Editor, etc.

Andy_jacob

That’s very true. Personally, I’m using ProWritingAid, and they do seem to have some sort of an AI allowing instant rewrites and even getting new ideas through something called Sparks. It can be helpful, sometimes, but requires a lot of filtering, because the suggestions are often worse than the original.

That being said, as English is my second language, my biggest fear is that if I listen to the AI a little too often, my writing will become bland and generic. Book agents supposedly started noticing that in prose that went through writing sites like CC, meaning some writers tend to lose their own voice along the way, listening to everything they hear. The more people will rely upon AI, the more it will show, I think, as the AI offers the ultimate mixture of blandness.

Jcgreen

Exactly. I accept that AI in its current form may be useful to detect actual punctuation/grammar mistakes. Reliance on anything else will make for bland writing at best, and dodgy, copyright-infringing material at worst. I think it is more than ever beholden upon us to write distinctively with our own voice to demonstrate that we are not an AI algorithm.

Patrickmil

That’s an interesting statement, and I’m not disagreeing with it. I would ask, though, what constitutes “our own voice”? Is it the words we choose? Is it the structure of a sentence? Is it the length of a passage?

I’ll give you an example. Addiction arises from the convergence of three ‘buckets’ of risk factors - genetics, psychology and environment. In order to recover, a person must address these
‘buckets’ or they will continue to turn to drugs. With that said, recovery communities rely heavily on personal stories to convey recovery messages. They rely on “our own voice” to carry the message to others. As a result, a lot of people fail to recover because the message being offered is so personalized (in “our own voice”) that the listener doesn’t hear or identify the most important take-aways.

Where does “our own voice” start to interfere with the story? Where does it make the reader (or listener) lose interest because the language is so personal to the storyteller that it can’t be translated into anything useful, or understandable?

Shotgun

The idea of a writer’s voice is an old one, this article may be helpful. “Finding your voice” is the ultimate pursuit of many a writer.

A writer’s voice is also what draws in readers. Of course it will both draw and repel; you can’t win over everyone.

ChatGPT has its own voice, a very obvious one to anyone who’s read what it generates.

As an AI language model, I don’t possess personal experiences or a consistent “voice” like a human writer. However, I can adapt my responses based on different writing styles, tones, or personas to suit the context or requirements of the content I’m producing. I strive to meet the requirements, be it a formal, technical, or conversational style, and tailor my responses accordingly to best suit your needs.

(It’s not very honest.)

Patrickmil

The question was rhetorical, and posed in response to @Jcgreen’s statement that it’s the writer’s task to use “our own voice.” The example I gave in my comment to him suggests that our own voice can be as unhelpful and misleading as we are saying AI can be.

I think many writers mistake style for voice, and as a result the story gets lost in the style while the writer claims that’s their voice. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. Are we writing to convey a story, or are we writing to express our style/voice? Who is the audience? Are we interested in the audience understanding what we’re saying, or are we just interested in expressing ourselves?

For me, storytelling is the act of conveying an event so that the reader understands what’s going on and can follow along. Aside from its occasional factual errors, there’s an argument for AI’s style/voice because it doesn’t have the baggage of a personal point of view. Sometimes stories need that as well.

Shotgun

I’m not sure where “unhelpful” and “misleading” fits into fiction writing. Addiction literature and storytelling don’t have the same goals. Someone writing a fantasy novel doesn’t need to use clear language so that they can help their reader. Pick up any popular novel in a bookstore, you’ll notice the writer’s voice. And of course style and voice overlap. As for audiences, sometimes a writer’s voice challenges the audience and is hard to follow. There’s nothing wrong with that. Would Toni Morrison’s Beloved be easier to understand, written in plain language without her unique voice? Perhaps, but it would lose its poetic and literary power.

Which reader? Any reader? A 10-year-old? An English professor? In any case, writing isn’t just about storytelling.

That’s a misunderstanding of AI. AI has a ton of baggage and it has the personal POVs of its creators and ‘guardians.’ And it has a unique, specific voice that is instantly identifiable to those who are familiar with it, which gives a certain feeling and colour to its generated text which, in my opinion, is sterile and uninteresting.

I mean the whole purpose of this website revolves around voice, at the end of the day. Everyone here can tell a story that clearly conveys an event. How we tell stories is the question.

Jcgreen

An interesting article, which saved me having to fudge an answer to @Patrickmil.

I suppose our style is the way we naturally write. As the article says, it can evolve, but the more you write the more settled it is likely to become. It may even be difficult for the author to fully identify all the aspects of their own style. To them it is just the logical way one word follows another.

I can see that argument for non fiction, certainly for standardised form filling. But fiction benefits from the way a voice can bring the writing alive and make us imagine a real human being is directly talking to us.

Patrickmil

I’ve read many stories here that are not among those you claim clearly convey an event. Whether you call it style or voice, whatever it is gets in the way of clearly conveying the story.

“Someone writing a fantasy novel doesn’t need to use clear language so that they can help their reader.” I’d argue the opposite. The further one goes from the baseline (call it reality for lack of a better word) the more careful the writer needs to be to convey the story. I’ve started and stopped a crit in some cases where there are so many words strung together that have no contextual definition that I lose track of what’s going on. Is this the writer’s voice? Their style?

To be fair, if you’re point is assuming correct grammar, punctuation and other “conventions” that are used in the English language then some of the confusion I’m talking about is due to a lack of same. But short of those “technical” errors, voice/style can impede comprehension on the part of the reader. The story may make us happy (that we’ve expressed ourselves) but if no one else knows what the hell is going on then what was the point?

Patrickmil

Agreed. Non-fiction has a voice of its writers, too. Where it breaks down, for me, in fiction is when the voice (or style - not sure some of this isn’t a style issue) makes it harder to understand what’s going on. A real human being with mental health challenges is welcome to write a story in their voice but that voice may not be understood by someone without the same mental health challenges. I have an autistic relative. Their voice is very unique, and also very easily misunderstood by someone who isn’t on the spectrum.

A story by definition is a sequence of events. In addition, it’s the character’s experience of those events. If the writer forgets the first part and focuses solely on the second part, the story will suffer. It will become something that only very few other people will understand - those whose experience mirrors that of the writer.

So, yes a voice/style can “bring the writing alive and make us imagine a real human being is directly talking to us,” and it can also make the story unintelligible.

Shotgun

I think you’ve misunderstood me. I didn’t say all the writers here do clearly convey stories, but that they can. Everyone can write

Bob went to the park. His wife was there. He hugged her. They saw a dog with a broken leg. They brought the dog to the animal shelter. A veterinarian at the shelter helped the dog. Bob and his wife adopted the dog.

But nobody is interested in reading that. So writers make attempts at style and voice, and they don’t always succeed. That’s what the purpose of CC is, to help writers craft fiction. Otherwise, we’re all using the same plain language that anyone can use. Yes, style can be difficult, it doesn’t come for free. It can obscure meaning and fail completely. But that’s no argument against it, it’s the reason for practice and criticism. Every published writer has style, and the most successful writers have voice. Borrowing someone else’s voice, especially the voice of an AI, is a path to failure, because it’s something you don’t have any control over.

Jcgreen

Not scientific papers or government reports. I’ve had to write enough of them to know how dry and boring that style of writing is

Deareliza

lol, I’m probably taking you too literally but: I’d say that the author’s voice interferes with the story when they rely on their voice over storytelling to convey what’s happening instead of storytelling building blocks

Like if all you’re going for is stylized prose, then you want poetry (maybe)

lol I literally wrote a blog that touches on this

Patrickmil

No, I wasn’t referring to either, though I did spend a few years writing government proposals so I feel ya about that.

Billykazis

I’ve always found ChatGPT helpful for helping me structure essays, I’ve honestly never considered using it for any creative endeavours. I think it’s awesome that it helps you as a non-native English speaker, though I noticed in your example it took quite a few prompts for it to give you something that didn’t sound overly-technical/wordy.

For me personally, I would use ChatGPT for some writing prompts if I was struggling to think of ideas, but I wouldn’t use it to help me edit unless I really wanted a second opinion and I had no one to ask.

Jcgreen

I’ve just seen this note on an agent’s website: “Please do not submit any material that has been generated wholly or partially by AI.”

I don’t know whether that would exclude line editing as discussed here. However, it’s the first evidence I’ve seen to cut out AI from the industry.

Awriter

There’s no fun in writing if you’re relying on AI for line edits.
I use Microsoft Word to write and I make very few grammar mistakes. Sure MS Word catches my mistakes, but I don’t rely on it. I rely on myself for it during 2nd or 3rd round of editing. Or I rely on beta readers

It would be boring if I ignore grammar rules and write:

i woke morning had breakfast switched on laptop boss figth

right click → smoothen using AI.

I’d rather write:
A broom brushed past my face, but I chose to keep my eyes shut and rest my body from the swimming competition last night. I grabbed the blanket and pulled it over me. Something moved. It felt like a ball of pillow. It expanded, as if resisting my squeeze. I pressed it harder and bam… a voice shrieked that reminded me of my wailing mother-in-law after I had pushed her a flight of stairs.

Stinging pain took root in my left arm that had grabbed the pillow. There were three slash marks on it. I got up and scratched all sleep from my eyes. Sitting on the bed at my feet was a cat, growling at me with narrow eyes. I growled back.

My laptop beeped. I flipped it open, then looked back at the cat, then at the three gashes.

The laptop beeped again. It was my boss writing to me about some work.

Pulling up imaginary sleeves, I replied: Can’t come to work. my cat died after falling down a flight of stairs.

The output from chatgpt may be better, more aesthetic, flow more smoothly, but I wouldn’t enjoy it as a writer.

Maybe publishers or agents can use Chatgpt to write short stories or genre novels.

Trevose

A month or so ago I saw that Amazon is now asking when you submit if you used AI (I don’t remember the exact wording). It’s not clear what happens if you answer “yes” to this question.

More to the broader discussion that everyone keeps going around in circles about: What is AI?