{"id":27175,"date":"2023-05-30T03:00:38","date_gmt":"2023-05-30T10:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/?p=27175"},"modified":"2023-05-26T11:08:22","modified_gmt":"2023-05-26T18:08:22","slug":"how-ai-can-help-strengthen-your-writing-by-keri-kruspe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/30\/how-ai-can-help-strengthen-your-writing-by-keri-kruspe\/","title":{"rendered":"How AI Can Help Strengthen Your Writing by Keri Kruspe"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"How<\/a>Let\u2019s welcome back monthly columnist Keri Kruspe<\/a> as she shares with us \u201cHow AI Can Help Strengthen Your Writing\u201d Enjoy!<\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a lot of controversy out there about Artificial Intelligence (AI)<\/strong> \u2013 especially for those of us in the creative arts. Some view it as the end of civilization, some view it as a much-needed boost to productivity.<\/p>\n

I first heard about the two AI\u2019s I\u2019ll outline in the article from Joanna Penn\u2019s podcast<\/a>. She\u2019s big into AI and even has a course in it.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t decided if I\u2019ll take the course yet<\/strong>, but I like knowing it\u2019s there if I need it.<\/p>\n

Whatever you view about AI, I\u2019m not here to persuade you either way. What I am going to do is confess the three new AI programs I\u2019ve started using this year:<\/p>\n

Midjourney, ChatGPT, and Sudowrite.<\/p>\n

Midjourney<\/h2>\n

What is Midjourney you may ask?<\/p>\n

According to designboom<\/a>,<\/p>\n

\u201cMidjourney is a chat-powered, artificial intelligence (AI) image-generating tool that can produce realistic images and artworks based on given text prompts\u201d.<\/p>\n

For someone like me who can\u2019t draw a straight line<\/strong>, it\u2019s like playing in a candy store.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a very visual person who loves to look at pictures when I write.<\/p>\n

When I write in Scrivener (which can also be considered having AI tendencies), I like having a picture on the page about whatever or whomever I\u2019m writing about.<\/p>\n

\"Scrivener<\/a><\/p>\n

By the time I\u2019m done with my complete novel<\/strong>, I have several pictures I\u2019ve created that I can include into the finished book.<\/p>\n

I did that in my latest release, Alien Legacy: The Mage.<\/i> With each chapter I included two pictures that I made with Midjourney.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say it all goes off without a hitch.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m finding that the AI has a hard time with different color tints (one of my aliens has bright yellow skin and neon eyes with no pupils).<\/p>\n

So, I fall down the rabbit-hole trying to get as close as possible to what I\u2019m looking for. Sometimes the prompt is so bad, I get nothing like I\u2019ve asked for.<\/p>\n

When that happens<\/strong>, I\u2019ve got to be careful. It\u2019s so easy for me to tumble down the rabbit hole. Hours can go by without me realizing it.<\/p>\n

Here is an example of what I\u2019m talking about.<\/p>\n

The prompt I used was,\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cfull body shot of a cyclops man with a huge belly with a small head in proportion to the rest of him with only one large orange eye in the middle of his forehead, yellow feathers instead of hair, pale yellow skin wearing a kilt\u2013v 4\u201d<\/p>\n

and this is what I got.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bird beak? Where did that come from? Needless to say, it\u2019s not perfect.<\/p>\n

\"Flygir<\/a><\/p>\n

How do you know what to put in?<\/p>\n

Never fear, my friend<\/strong>. Like everything else, just put in the question on your favorite search engine and a ton of video tutorials pop up.<\/p>\n

Because I\u2019m not very computer savvy, I have to find the ones that go step by step.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been doing this for a couple of months now and am getting better<\/strong>. I build on what I know and query what I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Midjorney offers a free trial for you to play with. Just know you must sign up for Discord chat in order to access it.<\/p>\n

My advice is to do that first and see if you even like it before you shell out the dough.<\/p>\n

ChatGPT<\/h2>\n

Now here\u2019s an AI I can wrap my writer\u2019s brain around.<\/p>\n

My first attempt at using something like this was ChatGPT.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

This AI is another chatbot launched in November of 2022. It was built on top of a program called OpenAI\u2019s GPT-3, a large language model that interacts in a conversational way.<\/p>\n

The dialogue format made it easy for the program to answer follow up questions and admit its mistakes. It also rejects inappropriate requests.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s great in creating summaries for new novels as well as a way to have an interactiv<\/strong>e \u201cfriend\u201d read what you wrote and give suggestions on how to make it \u201cbetter\u201d \u2013 depending on what your definition of \u201cbetter\u201d is.<\/p>\n

\"ChatGPT\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I was happy using ChatGPT for free\u2026 but the biggest downside became all too clear.<\/p>\n

More often than not I\u2019d get an error message saying it was at capacity (the room was too full) and to try again later.<\/p>\n

At that time<\/strong>, I looked into subscribing, but it was over $40 a month! Ack!<\/p>\n

From what I understand now, you can subscribe as low as $20 a month. They state they are inviting folks to go on the ChatGPT API waitlist while they develop lower-cost plans.<\/p>\n

Because I\u2019m an impatient soul<\/strong>, I looked into another such chatroom and found Sudowrite (again, courtesy of Joanna Penn).<\/p>\n

Sudowrite<\/h2>\n

One of the best things I like about Sudowrite is how it came about.<\/p>\n

It was developed by writers for writers.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Apparently, the founders were sci-fi writers and fine-tuned the GPT-3 program by using high-quality narrative training data.<\/p>\n

Writers can use Sudowrite to create new stories or tweak any existing work.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pros:<\/i><\/p>\n