Using AI to improve your writing

Welcome to the literary gym. This is where we're going to build up your writing muscles until you're the Schwarzenegger of wordsmithery. Obviously, the best way to improve anything is by doing it repeatedly. It's like playing the guitar. The more you do it, the more enjoyable you are to listen to. Unless, of course, you get into free-form jazz. So the key to becoming a great writer is just to keep writing. It's as simple as that. So let me introduce you to Pilates for your pen or calisthenics for your keyboard, if you prefer to rattle the keys. Just add your preferred genre or writing style to the prompt, and you'll get the initial paragraph of a masterpiece. It's then up to you to take all the way through to its thrilling conclusion. Once you're done, you'll get feedback on your writing so that you know what to work on next time. Right. Let's see how I got on. Okay, we're back in ChatGPT. Let's paste in our story writing prompt and read it out. "You're a highly accomplished storyteller with the ability to come up with imaginative tales and the knowledge to judge writing for its different attributes. I want you to help me practice my writing by supplying me with the first paragraph of a {genre} story. Your suggestion should be imaginative, introducing the reader to a scenario and situation. Give me your paragraph and then stop. I will then complete your story in a few paragraphs. Once I give you my response, I want you to give me feedback on my writing, giving me pointers on how I can improve it. Use the criteria of: Descriptiveness; the clarity of writing, and use of adjectives. Structure; the logical flow and how easy the story is to follow. Imagination; how surprising the story was. Spelling and grammar; general accuracy of written language. Supply your feedback in a table with the columns: "attribute", "feedback", "improvement". Right. {genre}." Let's pick a genre. How about here, time-travel, comedy, we're really going for it here, based in a cheese factory. Right. That's our genre. You know, it's a popular genre. So tap into that. Let's see what it comes up with for the first paragraph here. Okay. Let us read this first paragraph here. "Harold, the cheese factory's chief janitor, discovered something peculiar one evening. As he was cleaning up a spill of vintage gouda, he stumbled upon a hidden lever behind a massive wheel of cheddar. With a mischievous glint in his eye, he pulled it. A great mechanical whirl echoed through the factory, followed by a series of clinks and clanks. Suddenly, a trapdoor opened and Harold found himself face-to-face with an ancient time-travel machine, covered in cheese dust. And this was just the beginning of what promised to be an un-brie-lievable adventure." I apologize, right away. It's come in with an absolutely stinking pun. Right. Now it's over to me. I need to continue with this story. So we're going to be doing this in fast-forward, because this is not going to be a pleasant experience to watch or do. Here we go. Okay. I quite enjoyed that experience. So I've written a little bit more here about this dimwit Harold. Let's see what it says as it's feedback to what I've pasted in here. Again, if you want to read what I've done, then just go back, pause the video, have a look. It's not really much for you to pay attention to, but let's see the feedback that I've got now. "What delightful continuation. You've spun the tale into a fantastical direction. Here's the feedback: Descriptiveness: Vivid imagery and unique details like smearing Wensleydale into his eyelashes. Improvement: Continue to experiment with metaphors and similes to bring the scene alive." Good. "Structure: Clear and logical progression from discovering the machine to arriving in the future. Consider adding more transition between his actions to smooth the flow." Okay. "Imagination: The futuristic floating city was unexpected and adds an exciting twist to the story. Keep pushing boundaries, perhaps by including unexpected reactions or events. Spelling and grammar: Mostly well-written." Okay, mostly. "But be cautious with run-on sentences and comma use. Review your sentences to ensure they are concise." Yes, when I'm writing books, I do have to get them spell-checked afterwards. I am dyslexic, it makes it a little bit more challenging, but there we go. I quite enjoy this exercise. The more that you do this, the better you get. So I think I'm going to be doing this quite regularly myself. Hmm. Well, that's unlikely to end up on a Bestseller list, but hey, not everything's a masterpiece in the first try. There's not much of the first draft left in any of these books. However, none of these books involve a time-traveling cheesemonger. I think I might need to include one in my next book. It's going to be a hit.