By Lisabet Sarai

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

It happens to all of us. You’re tooling along with your new novel, banging out a chapters as a regular pace, when all of a sudden your creativity hits a brick wall. You generate a sentence; you edit the sentence; you put it back the way it was; you delete it and start over. Hours, days, weeks, go by, and your word count remains stuck. Before long, you’re avoiding your WIP altogether, because it’s so aversive to sit there staring at the screen or the page and not be able to write.

There are many causes for writer’s block, including stress. Indeed, since the experience of being blocked is in itself stressful, the situation can degenerate into a downward spiral. Of course, sometimes inspiration simply expires, for no particular reason. Sometimes a period away from the work can rekindle your ideas or your enthusiasm. Ultimately, authors learn that writer’s block is a somewhat mysterious experience we simply have to live through and deal with, however we can.

Now, however, computer scientists at Pennsylvania State University claim to have built an artificial-intelligence-based system to help conquer writer’s block. You can read about this research here: https://news.psu.edu/story/666920/2021/08/24/research/new-tool-could-help-authors-bust-writers-block-novel-length-works

The essence of their approach is to break up the work into units of (for instance) 100 sentences, analyze the concepts in those sentences, then map the concepts to common narrative units called semantic frames, basically categorizing their content. Given a set of semantic frames from what has already been written, their system then predicts the semantic frames likely to follow. The researchers claim that translating these forecast frames back into word clouds and showing them to authors could kick-start the writer’s creativity by suggesting how the next part of the book might develop.

The system has been trained with existing novels. It has learned what semantic frames tend to follow what other semantic frames. Basically, the system has abstracted common plot arcs and tropes, as well as the sequential patterns in which they tend to occur. Given what you’ve written so far, it will suggest likely following frames based on these patterns.

Alas, I think these computer scientists live in a totally different universe from us authors. Or at least from me! In my writing, I’m constantly striving for originality. I want to surprise and delight my readers with character and plot developments they do not expect. Indeed, when I get stuck, it’s often because I don’t seem to be able to rise to the challenge of creating something new and exciting. I feel like I’m rehashing my own previous books – or someone else’s.

The last thing I need is a set of suggestions that will make my book more predictable, or more like other books on the market.

Of course, as I’ve lamented in previous posts, erotica and erotic romance have become disturbingly homogeneous and stereotyped. The books on offer may mix and match tropes and kinks, but their narrative repertoire is limited. It’s becoming more and more difficult to find stories that generate the amazement I seek in my reading – the “Oh, wow – how did the author ever think of that?” experience.

If these scientists come around offering their system to me, I’ll say no thanks. However, the longer term implications of this research are even more chilling. How long will it be before AI-based systems can generate an entire novel, with no author involved? No more than a couple of years, by my estimate. What will happen when Amazon is flooded with hundreds of alpha billionaire daddy shifter hotwife reverse harem books, composed by the computer?

I’m willing to bet that readers will buy those books, too, because the stories will predictably arouse them, pushing the buttons promised by the tropes.

Will this be the final demise of indie authors? After all, computers don’t get writer’s block.

I’m not optimistic. On the other hand, I know there are some readers who, like me, reject all the sameness, working hard to find creative and original books, books that could not have been composed by a computer because they break the rules.

All I have to do is find those readers.

Can someone create me an AI system to do that?

Image by Steve Johnson from Pixabay

There’s a popular belief that we writers are tortured souls. A bit of Googling will produce long lists of authors who committed suicide. Meanwhile, the process of writing is often portrayed as a painful, never-ending struggle to capture elusive ideas in the imperfect medium of language. Who is unfamiliar with the portrait of the author hunched over his scribbles in the chill hours between midnight and dawn, flanked by a smoldering cigarette on one side, the dregs of a whiskey on the other, the floor strewn the crumpled remains of discarded pages?

Aldous Huxley wrote: “Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?”

I really wonder about this stereotype, though. Most of the writers I know seem to be moderately stable and well-adjusted individuals. Of course they’re sometimes stressed by deadlines or frustrated by the difficulty of getting their ideas out of their heads and onto the page. Like me, though, they seem to write mostly for the joy of it, the thrill that comes from creating characters and their stories and sharing them with the world.

A snide reader might remark that erotica doesn’t count, because it’s not “art”. I’m not going to split hairs trying to specify what does and does not qualify for that label. That would be an endless argument (akin to the bottomless pit of distinguishing “erotica” from “porn”). I choose to categorize my work as art. I believe my tales reflect both creative inspiration and literary craft. The fact that I’m drawn to exploring the many varieties of desire, as opposed to other themes, is not relevant to either the quality or the value of what I create.

Do I sound defensive? It’s true that the world offers us erotica authors very little in the way of respect. But honestly, I don’t care most of the time. I love writing. I need to write, almost as much as I need to breathe. When I’m away from my WIP for too long, my spirit sags. I miss the magic of spinning fiction.

I’m proud of my writing, too. I’ve had a fair bit of success in my nearly seven decades. I have a lengthy professional resume. Still, my books (not listed on the official CV of course!) may well be my most prized personal accomplishments – even though most people in my life aren’t even aware they exist.

During the past month I haven’t been able to write, due to an injury. In some ways, that has been the most difficult part of the experience. When I couldn’t write – not just my WIP but also emails, blog posts, book reviews and critiques – I felt terribly cut off from my community of authors as well as from my creative self. I had to struggle to remember, and hold on to, the joy of being a writer.

Now I am finally starting to regain the ability for two-handed typing. I’m eager to get back to my poor, temporarily abandoned novel. Indeed, I wrote a page or so last weekend. Alas, this wasn’t easy. My right arm is healing, but typing tends to increase the pain quite a lot.

So at present, I am in fact temporarily suffering for my art. And I’m willing to do that, for now, in return for the excitement of feeling the story take shape and the satisfaction of seeing the words unfurl on the page.

As we write, we learn.

When I compare my recent work with my early books, I see major changes. My dialogue no longer sounds so wooden and unrealistic. My characters have a depth and complexity missing in my first couple of novels. My sentences, in general, have become less wordy and academic, more varied in their length and structure.

I’m sure that if you’ve been writing for a while, you can discern the same types of positive developments in your own work. One common pattern for authors is to shift from an intuitive, chaotic process of following one’s imagination to a more systematic and disciplined approach – a transition from being a “pantser” to a “plotter”.

Early books often reflect personal passions. New authors are so excited that they really don’t need to think. The words just pour out onto the page, almost without conscious effort. As authors become more aware of craft issues, however, they often move in a direction of more conscious control.

Writing my first novel, Raw Silk, was like that – a breathless rush of feeling. At the same time, my progression in terms of plot has followed a contrary trend. When I began writing, I was a “plotter”. I had a clear mental outline for each book. I knew what main events would occur. I had sketches for most of the important scenes and a plan for the ending. Sometimes I’d experience “Aha” moments along the way – I was never so enamored of my outline that I’d reject an unanticipated but brilliant insight! – but I’d already worked out sixty to seventy percent of the plot when I sat down to create the first chapter.

Nowadays, that’s all changed. I’ve become far more comfortable allowing the story to lead me along unanticipated paths, rather than forcing it to stick to my planned route. And to be honest, I believe this has improved the result. I think my recent books are far more spontaneous, original and surprising than my early stories. In addition, they’re more fun to write, less like the term papers I was so adept at churning out in graduate school, more like my poems.

When I open my mind, ideas flood in. While this makes the writing process intense and dynamic, it does create problems, especially when I’m penning a longer piece. As plot twists occur to me, I’ll often throw them in, just to see what happens. I like to keep different possibilities alive – for me, writing a predictable book is almost as bad as writing an ungrammatical one! I want to keep my readers guessing. Eventually, of course, I have to figure out how to resolve all these notions. In general, readers don’t appreciate loose ends.

I’m more than three quarters of the way through my new novel right now, and I’m juggling half a dozen intriguing plot threads. Which of these should I follow? Which should I drop? I have to decide pretty soon. There are only four and a half chapters left!

The dramatic, climactic scene is fairly clear in my mind. I’m not entirely winging it. But I’m still not certain about the last chapter. Should it include sex? Revelations? Should I drop in a teaser for the next book? Should the romance with which I’ve been flirting become more serious, or does that conflict with the gleeful pansexuality of the series?

So many questions! Right now, they’re all just dangling, unanswered, all potential shapes for my story. Like the famous quantum cat, these different, potentially conflicting alternatives exist simultaneously in my mind. And as confusing as that is, it’s also exhilarating.

Sometimes, it seems, I like to keep myself guessing.

Eventually, I’ll have to open the box to discover which ones will survive.

But not quite yet.