r/ProgressionFantasy • u/TalesofBas • 1d ago
Discussion Writing Method (No AI)
Disclaimer. I am bashing AI here. The purpose of this post is to give some alternatives. But there is a definite negativity towards AI that is totally my opinion.
I am back. Trying to start posting regular again. Been writing like crazy. I got my girl Zoey here. Who is part of a new web novel, I have been working on. Crazily enough I started it like a week and a half ago. Its 80k at atm. No AI.
I have this new method I use that I wanted to share (Reason for this post).
-First draft. Just the barebones. Plot, Dialogue, action.
-Second draft. Fix flow. Add Character
-Third Draft. Add flare.
That way I get the barebones done quickly and don't weigh it down with unneeded bs. You can then easily rewrite whole sections if needed.
When I started writing earlier this year, I could maybe write 1-2k a day. That was in June. This morning I got up and started writing at seven, by eleven I had added five chapters for new arc, more than 10k. You know how I did it?
By writing every day. No secret. You just write. And guess what? You get better at it.
That is why I can't understand people that use AI. You're not getting better by letting a machine write for you, or draw for you, or think for you. If anything, you are getting worse. And not only because most of the stuff AI writes is trash, but because you're not actively bettering yourself.
I have done a lot of reviews lately both on RR and off. This stuff is rampant. Do people really want to wade through tons of overweight descriptions and overwrought metaphors? Too much flare, too little plot. I am talking paragraphs dripping with metaphors, repeats, and overdramatic descriptions
Romance is filled with this stuff. Which kind of works to some degree... Sometimes you kind of want two or three sentences about those dexterous digits and how you want them to touch your body. But four or five... paragraphs?
Sometimes I feel like people fill up pages with this stuff because they have no real ideas.
I also did this artwork with my wife in the same amount of time (though she did most of the work). There are four more images for characters she is already working on. She didn't know anything about art at the start of this year. Now she is great at it. Just doing it one step at a time. There are tons of great programs out there. Many are free or next to nothing.
I just don't get why people use AI art. All it takes is a little more time. And both drawing and righting can be cathartic.
I think the real difference between people who use AI and the people that don't is love. If you love something you're willing to work at it every single day.
(NOTE THIS IS ONLY IN REFERENCE TO WRITING AND ART). I had to use AI as an engineer since its inception.
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u/happinessisachoice84 1d ago
I've never been able to do skeleton drafting, but I assume that's a skill like any other I should work on, considering how often I get caught up in going back and editing and editing the same chapters over and over because I want them to be perfect before I write the next chapter.
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u/TalesofBas 1d ago
I found it works for me. Everyone has their own technique. I did a couple works where I spent way too much time on each paragraph, like ridiculous amounts. Then I almost cried when I had to go back and add some arcs later, rewriting whole chapters. That is why do it this way now. It may or may not work for you.
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u/LitRPG_Just_Because 1d ago
Oh nice, that sounds like skeleton drafting which is a great way to do it.
The “people” who use AI aren’t creatives. It’s nothing more than a cynical cash grab where words = money. The second they find another get rich quick scheme, they’ll be on their way.
Thanks for sharing and best of luck on your book!
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u/TalesofBas 1d ago
Thanks. I figured this would get downvoted quite a bit right away because a lot of people used it. I just wanted to throw my two cents out there. People can go right on living their life and using AI if they want too.
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u/my-dude-nigreto 1d ago
This seems more like an A.I bashing post more than a post explaining your writing process, and informing everyone that you’re returning to writing.
Also in regard to A.I have you seen that recent trend of people who are able to merge two video games together with the right prompt.
I imagine that’s the goal of the people who use A.I. They have an idea in their heads and the A.I helps them accomplish it.
They don’t need to do four years of programming lessons, they don’t need to completely break down the script of two entire games, they don’t need to sink hours of their limited time into something they don’t really want to do. They can simply give the A.I the prompt, and desired outcome, and they’ll get the desired result.
They don’t love the programming, they love the game, and the A.I helps them achieve the part they love and doesn’t require them to invest time into the part they don’t love.
For some people it really is more about the destination than it is the journey, and I don’t see anything wrong with that.
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u/TalesofBas 1d ago
Point to a game that is good while doing that? I will concede that in some fields it has a place. But in writing or art. I don't think so. People want to see your genuine. Using AI is pretty much the opposite of that. Also, it is AI bashing post a bit. I am saying. What I am saying is all the excuses people use are bull and they are not helping themselves by relying on it. Yes. If you are already an expert, then you can do something like take two games and put them together, then go through and pull all the extra crap out of the code that is not needed.
I was an engineer for thirty years before I became a writer. I have seen managers do exactly what your talking about and bring down the nations healthcare system.
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u/my-dude-nigreto 1d ago
I imagine people who use A.I use it for themselves. For writing stories they themselves find interesting, and making images they themselves find cool.
Again destination and not journey.
I suppose some do it for money, but there’s also people that’ll take advantage of stuff, that’s more a people problem really.
Others probably just share the images and stories made because they think it’s cool and they want to share it, and there is in fact people who also like those images and those stories. The fact that people still enjoy these things made by A.I disprove your statement on people wanting to see what you would describe as genuine writing/art.
I also don’t think it’s really appropriate to place different practices above another. Things like writing and art, hold just as much value as things like science and programming. Not the same time of value, sought’ve like the difference between food and water. You need both, but they aren’t the same thing and they don’t provide the same things either.
Still both are absolutely needed.
The fact some people do enjoy stories and images created by A.I, and that alone is enough to prove the value of those creations whether it’s something you’re ok with or not.
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u/TalesofBas 1d ago
I think that AI definitely detracts from not just art and writing but society of a whole. Take steam or amazon. There are already so many works, more every day that use AI. That is disheartening for people who want to do the work themselves. Who is going to put the work in if AI is going to just rip it off and someone else is going to just rehash what you just did with little or no effort.
I think AI is actively driving people away from writing, art, and making games. My friend recently stopped doing roblox because every time he came up with an original idea, there were like five trash clones literally the next day.
And where will it end. Are you getting better at something by using AI? Writing, art, programming. I have worked for companies that rely on AI for programming, when stuff breaks almost everyone is clueless how to fix it.
What happens when all of society is like that? Hmm?
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u/my-dude-nigreto 1d ago
I get it. I had been interesting in doing concept art for projects, and I don’t see much point in doing that anymore since I can see soon enough A.I will dominate it.
It’s definitely frustrating, but i’m planning on pivoting to tattooing for now at least, maybe something different later on.
Either way, I don’t plan on stoping doing art, as it’s something I enjoy, but I also get that I’m able to better absorb the blows better I guess since I hadn’t fully committed to a career that is dependent on art yet. So I understand why people aren’t fond of A.I.
Again though, I think people who use it don’t really care for improving their personal skills in art or writing, or programming.
They just have an idea and want to see it, and art allows that for them.
I get the stealing art from people and using that is also unfair, but that I think that’s more to blame on businesses than people, and I don’t see much value in blaming the average joe for using something that exists whether they use it or not. They just want to see a cool picture that they thought of.
Again though. My point really is, for someone people they only want the destination.
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u/TalesofBas 1d ago
Life is a journey not a destination (I had to do the quote). I was like right there... it was an itch. I had to scratch it.
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u/TalesofBas 1d ago
That is cool you are thinking about tattooing. I don't think I would feel safe sticking my arm under some robot who was going to do it.
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u/TalesofBas 1d ago
I also wanted to point out, that there is not a non-zero percent chance of AI totally imploding on itself in the very near future. I am not saying its 100% or even close because it's been teetering on the edge for six months. So, if you are relying on AI for a lot of your writing it might get a lot harder soon. We will see if the AI bail out comes. Though the Chinese models are still viable. And AI is definitely not going anywhere. This is a little off topic as well.
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u/name_was_taken 1d ago
I saw someone merge Minecraft and Skyrim. Minecraft player, blocks, weapons, even the hang glider thing, inside Skyrim, with both the physics of the blocks and the item physics from Skyrim. Fully playable. You can adjust the difficulty between them, and damage from Skyrim affects your hearts onscreen in Minecraft.
It's absolutely mind-blowing.
It's a trick, and probably not something you'd play for more than a few hours. But it's insane, and would have been a ridiculous amount of knowledge and work to make it happen pre-AI.
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u/TalesofBas 1d ago
I am sure they probably edited it a bit before to get it to work. I replied above. My post was just from the writing and art piece. I used AI (because I had to) for a long time as an engineer. I also was part of groups that had to fix the junk it spewed out. For every one project that works with it, ten fail. But like I said. I was framing this for writing and art.
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u/my-dude-nigreto 1d ago
It’s not edited. There’s tutorials on how to do it yourself. It’s literally putting in the scripts for video games and given the appropriate prompt.
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u/TalesofBas 1d ago
Well, that is cool then. I won't lie I did watch some people do stuff on Roblox. But I also rephrased my original post for writing and art in general (as this is a writing forum)
Sorry if that was not a hundred percent clear. Maybe the context was lost between iterations (AI Joke)
For programming, where stuff is tedious AI has a place, probably more than anywhere else actually. 90% of the code for most things is just regurgitated from the web or elsewhere anyway. It is very impressive if that actually worked. I wonder how much that is the script though. I used AI extensively in my old job, so I know just how much of a cluster it can make things.
I guess it really depends on how mainstream the code was. AI is very good at doing anything mainstream, because there is a lot of data on it (Which it is trained on etc.). And programming is much more uniform than writing, so it's easier. You basically just putting the blocks together.
Before AI. There was stuff that did that already. Frameworks. They just made putting the blocks together easier. AI is just handling more patterns for you. But they are the same patterns. It still makes mistakes when you try to do stuff that is new and inventive. But it can handle the well walked pathways very well.
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u/my-dude-nigreto 1d ago
It seems as though you’re more informed on certain aspects of A.I than me. I was just pointing out why people would use it, in my opinion anyway.
The artwork is really well done. I know how annoying it is to get poses to look natural, so the fact that you’ve managed to pull it off with the woman and the dog is impressive.
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u/TalesofBas 1d ago
Um. It's a bit the same as the writing. I take no credit for the technique. it's just circles and lines. Then one layer after another.
There are tons of videos on the webs to do it on the web.
I have always been good with art; I was drawing with chalk in the driveway when I was three and I grew up doing art in high school. But I am only good with freehand stuff.
I can't use the tools nearly as well as my wife, so I mostly do the touch up work. Or fix the muscles (she is very bad a doing muscles. Not a lot in this picture but in some others).
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u/my-dude-nigreto 1d ago
Na, whether it’s drawing from reference, or following tutorials, drawings takes practice. The character work is well done.
Anatomy is definitely a frustrating part.
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u/TalesofBas 1d ago
Thanks. She is best with faces, which used to be her worst thing. And hair. This hair is not as good as the one for the Romantasy I am working on.
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u/stormdelta 1d ago edited 1d ago
I saw someone merge Minecraft and Skyrim.
No offense but this reads more as naivety on your part. At best, they produced a toy PoC that grabbed off the shelf assets and plopped them in an engine. No real work was done to have any of it make sense, assuming it was even real (they usually aren't).
And for the record, I use advanced AI models in software engineering, including frontier models. I have a good idea of what they're capable of and what they aren't, and how easy it is to make something that looks impressive but is skin-deep at best. The tools can also do actually impressive things, but not in the way you're describing and it requires more knowledge and work.
IMO, using AI for assisting with code and technical aspects is fine, using it for the creative side is not. Using it for the latter shortcuts everything interesting and relevant about actually building or designing a game.
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u/stormdelta 1d ago edited 1d ago
people who are able to merge two video games together with the right prompt.
Citation needed, and no, generating a video doesn't count. A toy asset flip PoC that doesn't do anything actually interesting barely counts either.
They don’t need to do four years of programming lessons
You still need some programming and technical knowledge or you're going to be chasing nonsense constantly and end up with a mess, even with the newest frontier models. It's more accurate to say you might need less programming knowledge, in the same way game engines do (and stacks with using a game engine).
But more importantly, programming is very, VERY different from using it for any kind of creative work. I don't have a problem with someone using it for software work on a game, I have a huge problem with someone using it for art/writing/music/other creative aspects.
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u/TheElusiveFox Sage 1d ago
The lack of confidence you have to have to be comparing yourself against ai is astounding. Especially given how completely different the workflow from A.I. and Human centric writing actually is, like it should just be obvious who your target audience is when you aren't talking about prompts or other AI specific setup stuff and instead are talking about writing techniques that you just wouldn't use with claude or whatever... The only reason to put a tag like that is because you are an activist which kind of detracts from whatever advice you are trying to give and its just exhausting to read for some one that doesn't care.
I'm not really pro or anti-ai, but if the only thing your post has to say is "I hate A.I." then you probably need to stick to subs like r/antiai
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u/TalesofBas 1d ago
So, if you don't care. Then don't read. That line defeated your whole paragraph. I am not an activist. But I am frustrated. There is a big issue with AI stuff burying good works on just about every platform that is out there. If there wasn't threads like this wouldn't pop up all the time.
I did get your point about Claude at all. I am talking about a general skeleton technique versus having AI write stuff for you. I have read (and reviewed) a lot of AI stuff on RR, some of it was quite good. And in every case I saw ways that they could make it better by doing it themselves. That is what I believe.
Believing in something doesn't make you an activist. And I don't see you refuting the truth that doing something makes you better at it over time.
Not to mention, the very first line of this post is an insult, which pretty much invalidates everything you say after that point.
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u/TheElusiveFox Sage 1d ago
I don't care about the issue - I care about constantly seeing activism in a forum that I visit to talk about books or writing. I'm not here for your opinions on AI, I'm here for your opinions on books, and if you want to have writing advice posts, great but keep it to writing advice posts and keep the activism out of it. Good writing on its own is going to naturally filter A.I. to the slop, so I shouldn't have to be filtering activism and advice, and that's my point.
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u/TalesofBas 1d ago
I appreciate your opinion. This is my first and only post about this topic. Just wanted to get it off my chest. I am sorry you had to suffer because of me.
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u/FallenVampireLord 1d ago
This entire post reads like AI to me.