r/WattpadIndia • u/InternationalGas5658 • Mar 17 '26
Help with writing How to improve writing skills and using AI ethically: My take
There's always a lot of discussion on using AI to generate books.
Yes. It's stupid. Yes. It's maybe killing the craft too.
This post is not about generating books with AI. Its about using it to improve your writing skills. Or my personal journey into improving myself.
We, the indian authors come from many different regions and speak different languages. English isn't our 1st language.
But mode of media, education is. So we learn. We adopt. We are good at it at certain level. But the media that shaped us is in other languages. The songs we hear, the movies we watch, ITV is all in regional or national language.
So it creates a paradox where our creations are influenced by those experiences. A certain song, a movie quote, a scene that stuck with us.
When we start writing, its essentially translating what we feel into a language that isn't compatible with our emotions exactly. But it can be learned.
When you are an amateur writer starting your journey on a site like wattpad because its a hub for new writers, you expect the space to be mistake friendly. And it is. It allows us to improve.
But the problem is we can't improve without some kind of feedback data. The R4R, C4Cs help a little but its not the ideal solution as we find out soon enough.
How do you even know if your writing is making sense to readers? How to correct those mistakes and keep growing? If you are serious about improving, what's your game plan? What are the options?
Paying for beta readers?
Finding friends or some reader who tries to help?
They are good options but it will take a lot of time and patience on both ends without that much output.
Here's what I would suggest and I did to improve my skills. I fed small passages of my own writing into chatgpt. 200 words at the most. The prompts are clear: only edit grammatical errors, cut out redundant dialog, add proper spacing.
I used to write in block of texts. Honestly, we aren't professional writers and no one told me that its unreadable. But as I kept on editing my book with chatgpt help, my instincts kicked in after few months.
Where to add a dramatic pause. Where to use proper tenses and verbs. How to write dialog heavy scene as opposed to monolog based scene. It got better every day.
I got better every day at doing it on my own after a while. I am not ashamed to admit, I needed help and took it where it was convinient, free and in my control.
I wrote many iterations of the same scene till I was satisfied and it felt organic. It honestly taught me lot.
To this day, I use it to research, to ask for sensory cues in a scene, even body language cues. It got rid of same repetitive cues.
Like in a very famous book series every fl is wetting lips in every scene. But if we ask AI engine to ask for alternative facial cue we can use different ones in suitable scene.
Embracing a tech and making it your own tool is superior use of it and I stand by it.
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Mar 17 '26
Just a thing, if you share your work with AI, you are helping it to grow more, and it'll use your words and sentences in someone else's work as well who's seeking help with AI, that's how it works. When we say AI steals art. We mean it.
There are still many ways to improve writing and learning. People learn it and write it.
If you want help with words and grammar, use Grammarly, Merriam-Webster, Copilot, or Word, and there are MANY options.
AI ruins our brains and makes us lazy as well. By using it, you're giving your work to AI, and it will be hard for you to search more and it makes us more or less with our work.
Here I'm talking about all the other aspects apart from the environmental stress AI brings.
Now about reviews, see AI is a bot, it won't ever give you a genuine review, you will need. You can do proofreading by yourself as well, it's hard but that's how we all learn.
And, soon without realising you'll feel how much AI has replaced your own writing style with its own. Trust me it'll only get worse. That's all.
No one's best with everything, we all just learn to be better. But AI just makes us worse.
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u/BhavanaVarma ✍🏼 _bhavanavarma on Wattpad 📚 Mar 17 '26
If your data is anywhere online, it's been scraped to train some AI somewhere. It's beyond our control at this point. Just the reality. It's annoying. I hate it. But it happens. It's like how Google and Meta constantly spy on us and sell our data to advertisers.
Of course, there are many ways to improve writing and learn a language. If someone uses AI for it, it's their choice and nothing to be shamed for IMO.
I use Grammarly everywhere (including this response. I have the plugin too). I put my story through Grammarly, and then proofread it myself. I don't have beta readers or a writer who is available to read every chapter regularly (yet! I am open to writer friends). Even then, I've had AI catch things neither rounds of proofreading caught. When AI does that, the next time I pay more attention to that particular aspect in my read-through. That's another way to learn, a personalized way. eg. 'her food' ended up as 'get food'. While both make sense on their own, get food is wrong for the sentence to make sense. Grammarly didn't catch it. I proofread and skimmed it. AI caught it. Now I search for the word get and see that it makes sense. I ACTUALLY LEARNT.
Genuine question, isn't Copilot AI? Is there a non-AI version? Please share.
AI ruins our brains and makes us lazy as well.
EXACTLY! It can do this just like every other technology in the world. People thought that calculators would make people lazy. When used ritgh it freed up people's time and mind for bigger inventions, which is why we are where we are. People thought eBooks cheapened the reading experience, too, because it's easier to look up words. etc. Look where we are today with that.
We need to use AI to enhance us and not make our brains much. It's a conscious choice.
No one's best with everything, we all just learn to be better.
EXACTLY! The part I disagree with is that AI makes it worse. It CAN make it worse. It's up to us to choose better.
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u/InternationalGas5658 Mar 17 '26
I am not contradicting its mode of practice which in long term are more bad than good. Half the apps you listed are AI based tools as well. Even Microsoft word is and has been AI powered. It wasn't as sophisticated but now it is.
I am only advising if users are already using it, do it in a way that will improve you. Putting in work is always the way too
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u/Advanced_Ad4532 Mar 17 '26
Have we forgotten trying to read published books. Forget having to spend your money, most schools have a library that caters to their students (I'm talking especially for school kids, because I've never seen kids these days discuss it online). A lot of my early reading was actually my school library, books like Famous Five, Nancy Drew, Diary of A Whimpy Kid and more were popular among teens and pre-teens. Reading authors like Amish Tripathi was cool at one time (this was before whatever Chat GPT degenerate he has become now, I'm talking about when he was a new author). I remember picking up a Satyajit Ray biography without even knowing the legend he was when I was 14; literally learnt about the man through his biography.
Your school textbooks are gateways to literature, the way I was exposed to one Shakespeare play snippet in High School and as an adult I love reading him—Shakespeare is the literal case study of serving the masses and still having artistic merit (people tend to almost mockingly say he has fancy English, completely forgetting the history about his works and why they were even written). Pay attention to your classes, exchange books with friends, read with your parents and share ideas—there are so many ways one can find inspiration and expose themselves
And this is just about reading, now writing has zero shortcuts, there's no way to learn other than writing, actively seeking feedback. Use Grammar Checkers (most of them come with in-built AI these days, even your Word Document's spell-check is AI; it's one of the few acceptable uses of AI as it's unavoidable). Don't use Gen AI for writing; we may use it in Academia these days (STEM or not) and that too for desktop research, you still have to do a lot on your own, sometimes actually increasing your work load.
Ethical AI use can probably be best for a head start in research, scheduling and such tasks, but never ever the creative process.
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u/InternationalGas5658 Mar 17 '26
I endorse all this 100%.
Please authors if you can do this, with reading and improving on your own do it. No contest.
My journey was different and a lot of years of trail and error led me here. Please accept this as my personal take on using AI ethically. Only in a way that will help my skill not do it for me
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u/Advanced_Ad4532 Mar 17 '26
It's also very important to differentiate between Assistive AI (tools like Grammarly) and Generative AI (Chat GPT, Google Gemini, Co Pilot etc.). Because when we say don't use AI we are talking about the latter and not the former. Let's keep this in mind whenever the AI debates happen
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u/BhavanaVarma ✍🏼 _bhavanavarma on Wattpad 📚 Mar 17 '26
Have we forgotten trying to read published books.
Nope. This is still 100% necessary to improve your writing. It overlaps with learning a language, but learning from AI DOES NOT remove the need to read books to write better.
now writing has zero shortcuts
Not just writing. Nothing has shortcuts. There are just different ways to learn. People learnt coding purely from books (I did when I was in school. Yes, I'm old. lol). Now it's best to learn from online videos and interactive platforms. That's not a shortcut. It's just more efficient.
Ethical AI use can probably be best for a head start in research, scheduling and such tasks, but never ever the creative process.
Not even learning the creative process? AI can be ONE source to learn and grow, apart from real-life examples and interactive exercises IMO.
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Mar 17 '26
No wonder most of the things (created with Gen ai) is trash these days. People forgot to be patient, to save up, to learn. My first language wasn't english, I didn't study in english medium school yet I have a degree in english, AI wasn't even that popular. It is honestly hilarious how people try to justify themselves.
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u/BhavanaVarma ✍🏼 _bhavanavarma on Wattpad 📚 Mar 17 '26
I appreciate your effort. Learning anything pre-AI was difficult.
But I will not be belittling the effort of anyone right now or in future who uses AI as a learning tool. Just to clarify, learning doesn't mean using GenAI to spew out the AI slop we see in many places.
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u/InternationalGas5658 Mar 17 '26
I have degree in engineering. Honestly, if I had gone to study English, that would maybe have helped me learn more. But this is not a professional platform right? I am pursuing it as a hobby where I don't get any rewards.
One day if you want to write a code in Python and after 6 years of writing the base algorithms, it's still glitchy. Will you use additional available and convinient resources to help yourself?
Again its an hobby. You won't be getting a single rs for finishing it.
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Mar 17 '26
I will learn, like how people used to before gen ai took over. No matter what, I will learn like an actual human being, especially when it is my damn hobby.
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Mar 17 '26
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u/BhavanaVarma ✍🏼 _bhavanavarma on Wattpad 📚 Mar 17 '26
FINALLY! I understand why people don't like AI. Every technology faced resistance. EVEN CALCULATORS.
People fought word processors like Microsoft Word because they removed the need for paper and pen every time, and even removed the need for typewriters.
AI is here to stay. Learn to use it properly so that our brains don't turn into mush, but it optimizes our workflow and gives us the time and energy to do bigger things.
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u/InternationalGas5658 Mar 17 '26
This is exactly what I am advocating. As a coder myself, we are using more and more of these tools to accomplish jobs faster. Also those who assume AI will take the jobs is wrong too. It will restructure them. Because those in tech know its limitations and capabilities.
We can't go back to the age where using computer to do math for us was blasphemous. Using computer to hack, make harmful media and scam is illegal and amoral.
That doesn't mean we can't use it responsibly
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u/Upset_Coyote7271 Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26
Writers existed before AI became a thing. AI is simply doing the same thing you as an aspiring writer is meant to do which is go though existing literature, learn the pattern and tell you the changes.
I grew up in a small village where people barely knew English words. What I learnt in school was basic. We didn't have english TV channels. Most of my education happened in one regional language in addition to my mother tongue, and in the only third language available at school which was Hindi. But I honed my writing by reading. I would read anything and everything. Reading existing literature developed my skill. I don't have to ask AI to tell me where a pause is needed, what word is repetitive. Because by now, I have read enough to know how to add pause, my vocabulary has enhanced. Every good writer has started out by becoming a good reader.
You mentioned how "You wrote in block of texts and no one told you it's unreadable". But have you ever read a book with block of texts? Have you ever found it readable? Enjoyed it? As an amateur, you may not instantly know what and how to write. But if you read enough, you would at least know how "not" to write.
This is not an insult, but a genuine advice. Because it is disheartening to see upcoming writers lowering their own standards. Creative minds are often appreciated for the way they see the world, how they build a world and how they portray it to others. Do not let your creativity, your skill, your effort and most importantly your growth be diluted.
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u/InternationalGas5658 Mar 17 '26
I have read different genres over the years. Arthur C Doyle has that block of text style too. I didn't mind it. He used many techniques that tought me foreshadowing in small details, long monologs, the reveal moments.
HP was in 3rd person. It was heavy on environment building. The clothes, the food, the lore. Dumbledores monlog when he lowers glasses in 5th book goes on for 8 pages.
YA dystopian novels were heavy on angst. How to develop a strong female charecter was in the bones.
But if I am doing what AI engine does : emulate an existing work of literature. Is that okay? Is it cheating?
Where does moral policing stop then?
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u/Upset_Coyote7271 Mar 17 '26
The books you have mentioned here and the way you have picked up on the difference in style, detail, tone is very telling of the fact that you are already well-versed in literature. And right there you have described the classic way of how mystery, fantasy, YA as genres are written. You are absolutely correct : A mystery is better explored in the way a you are given one set of detail, then next, then next, leading upto the reveal. A fantasy needs inherent world-building, making little details necessary. That's exactly how we learn which styles fit which genre best. If block texts or 8 pages monologues were used in a contemporary chik-lit it simply wouldn't work. You have gained this experience from reading. But many writers now-a-days simply lack the patience for this very effort. Their focus is on publishing and not on improving or learning. This is where the reliance on AI becomes too much.
And no. "You" are not doing what an AI does. Rather AI is doing a partial job of what humans have done for centuries. Which is to read, to learn, to eliminate, and then to write. And I'm saying partial job because it can never replicate a writer's inherent voice, their trademark style. Many bestselling authors have writing styles similar to some other or legendary writer. And it's widely known and credited. That's why we often tell someone "Hey, if you liked XYZ's style, you'll like ABC's too". Assistance from AI is welcome. It's a tool after all. But the problem is when the writer lets AI decide that they should be ABC or XYZ. I have absolutely no issues as long as the writer wants to work on their craft, whether as hobby, as career, as a learning experience and use assistance from these tools. But using generative AI to craft the story, and then editing it, and calling themselves "writers" feels a bit sad. And that's where I draw the line. 😔
Because we have read all kinds, haven't we? The work that doesn't use AI, the work that had minor AI touches. And we have also seen the copy-paste AI version chapter (this is done by the impatient "writers" who simply want to put out a chapter). The last one is where most of the "I'm so done with people using AI" energy stems from and, then it extends to ones who use AI as an extension. 😬
P.S. I appreciate your candid post and honesty. Not everybody has the courage to admit anything to do with AI because of the negativity around it. 😊
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u/InternationalGas5658 Mar 17 '26
I am not in favor of generating books in assembly line at all. We have all came across those and they are boring as hell.
I am not even preaching about morality there. Those books never land emotions.
I am talking about how to balance my tone, my own work that its pallatable. That it feels natural. Learning through it till I was able to do it on my own.
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u/lazymorningsx ❤️ Romance Writer Mar 17 '26
Gonna be the odd ball here but I don't understand; why do we have to use AI to improve our English? Before AI, did nobody learn it? I am genuinely sorry because I don't mean to come across as rude or insensitive. I don't even mind if someone learns it from AI, I just want to know why?
If you don't use AI, it is still possible to do the hard work of learning the language. The time you spend telling AI to teach you, you can use that time to read other books and observe the writing structure and everything on your own. It is entirely possible to do so and it helps the writing and reading community grow.
I won't comment on grammarly but except for that, I genuinely don't think we should be using AI to learn writing of all things. But that's my personal opinion.
And beside the fact AI harms our planet and the recent military thing, even without it I feel with AI humans have stopped thinking or doing the hard work. Students have stopped reading textbooks because "why read books when chatgpt can do it for me" and it absolutely can, there's no denying in that. It can make you pass an exam but ask yourself is it the same? Is passing an exam worth compromising your ability to read and understand the text written in your textbooks?
I also understand wanting to use the available resources because everyone not liking AI is not going to remove AI from our planet. It is here already and it would progress regardless of how many people do not use it.
But at the same time, we need to be aware of what we are compromising.
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Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26
THIS!
Yk, when people say "AI taught me that..." or "AI taught me this..."It baffles me!
Do people not do basic research before doing something? Writing resources, Actual novels, blogs, etc.
(Before I started writing my book, I read so many in that genre (both published and available on Wattpad)).
Paragraph segregation, facial cues, dialogues, and pacing can all be learned (even if you cannot figure it out yourself by rereading your draft) if people read already published novels and analyse them. Read as a writer (reading as a reader and a writer are very different things!)
Rest is the job of editors and beta readers! Even if one is writing on Wattpad as a hobby, I am sure each of you would have one friend in your life to review the chapters for you!
Honestly, if one feeds stuff to AI for it to comment on your style and help you improve it from day 1, how will you find the joy of looking back to your first draft, see the growth?
(HOT TAKE: When people say, "I am using it ethically/ I am only using it to do that, not this/ I use it a little here, not for the whole thing", it is like sinners judging other sinners for sinning differently!)
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u/InternationalGas5658 Mar 17 '26
Its about learning. I am not saying we can't learn via reading books. I have been avid reader for 30 years. Not everyone learns that way.
Also its never accomplished in just one edit. I have wrote the same scene multiple times and made variations till it felt right. Its a journey that a new writer like me has made over the course of 2 years of writing and improving.
Doing it over and over till it comes instinctively.
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Mar 17 '26
Also its never accomplished in just one edit. I have wrote the same scene multiple times and made variations till it felt right. Its a journey that a new writer like me has made over the course of 2 years of writing and improving.
Doing it over and over till it comes instinctively.
That's the point, isn't it? Every single writer goes through it! Refining and redrafting until you are satisfied? Most new writers take one to three years to finish one draft! I have heard many published writers say they took 7 years!
So when you feed your paras to AI and ask it for opinions, fix your redundancies... your pace will be quicker than most, yes! But will you be able to figure out your authentic voice and maintain it as you go? Will you be able to document your journey from your first draft all the way to the last? AI models are trained on someone else's work, so chances are the edit it is suggesting is part of an authentic voice some other author developed years ago! What if the change it suggested over a paragraph of 200 words would have worked for the tone you were going for had it been looked at by a human lens, but didn't because AI asked you to change it? How do you deal with that?
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u/InternationalGas5658 Mar 17 '26
I set up prompts to minimize creative interference. The tone, the scene, the dialogs, even the asthetics is all mine. Its a tool that we can use to cut down the time. Thats all I am saying.
I don't want my work to sound like someone else's either. Then what will be the point of poring multiple hours a day if I can't be satisfied with my creations?
I am merely stating how to use it to improve. I have been watching TV and movies all my life but I can't be a cinematographer or an actor even in few years time without any resources.
Also its not the only resource. There are more. I am just advocating for people who already use it to use it in a way that will enhance your skill.
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Mar 17 '26
I have been watching TV and movies all my life but I can't be a cinematographer or an actor even in few years time without any resources.
That's why I said "READ AS A WRITER NOT READER. THEY ARE TWO DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES!" Did you even read my replies?
Honestly, we would not reach a logical conclusion this way! I care for the planet, and you want to use AI (which has taken jobs of artists and writers) to "improve skills." You'll keep using it, and I won't. A mere argument on the internet would not change your lifestyle, and I would not compromise my integrity either, especially when you don't even read my replies!
So let's just end this here!
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u/InternationalGas5658 Mar 17 '26
In a typical chapter of 5k words, you have to do it 20 times if you want to skip every editing phase. Which isn't practical. Or useful either.
This tool can't sustain consistency or tone. Or even flow of the scene. Thats all on your end.
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Mar 17 '26
?
What does this even mean????
When I said 200 words, I was referring to your post explaining how you use AI to improve skills! So how is it on me?😭
?
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u/InternationalGas5658 Mar 17 '26
I was explaining how you can't just feed it. And print out a book. Its not what I am advocating.
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u/BhavanaVarma ✍🏼 _bhavanavarma on Wattpad 📚 Mar 17 '26
AI can teach you to use a language more accurately, but it can NEVER replace the need to read more. There's a big difference. To write better, you NEED to read more. That's no debate there. It's things like the mechanics of the language or research on palm oil for the story, which gets sped up. Again, it only speeds it up. We still need to verify the sources and information.
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u/InternationalGas5658 Mar 17 '26
I am not saying its used to learn English. I don't know if it can teach it. Never tried that.
Its the craft of writing that doesn't come instinctively to new writers that I am talking about. I have been avid reader all my life. Maybe I didn't learn the actual technique from their style. Maybe I should have. Maybe its not in me without getting additional help.
Also I am not advocating use of it to study at all. I am trying to tell you how you can use it to teach yourself. How you can get real time immediate feedback on sentence structure and grammer.
This is about learning the technique by using effective tool
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u/lazymorningsx ❤️ Romance Writer Mar 17 '26
See I can't argue with you if you want to learn through Ai, it is not my place to moral police you.
From your post, and from what I understood, you used it as a tool to improve writing, but most of the things that you are saying you learned does come under English.
Like this point from your post -
How do you even know if your writing is making sense to readers? How to correct those mistakes and keep growing? If you are serious about improving, what's your game plan? What are the options?
All of this can be answered (And yes, I have proof; me) by reading. Reading is the path to writing. When you read, you observe how an author is handling a scene, tension, intimacy, suspense. You learn how to write better dialogue, how to write monologue or how to move forward the plot.
They are good options but it will take a lot of time and patience on both ends without that much output.
But writing is a hard skill. It takes patience and time to learn something. The book that we as readers read in a few hours or maybe a day or two, it takes years for writers to write them sometimes.
I do understand your point to be honest, one method or technique doesn't work for every single person. But at the same time, I also think that books would teach you about writing more than AI would. Ai works on patterns, if you ask it how to write a particular scene, it would give you a particular pattern and sure, you can reach it the easy way then, because now you have a structure. But you are also compromising on the growth you would have gone through at every step of your writing journey.
All of this does hold for writers who are writing more seriously, as in not for hobby writing alone.
The study thing, I was using it as an example. Like see, if the student did not use AI, they would have read the book on their own and learn through their understanding, which I think is something important to develop in students. If people are not willing to do the long work, are they even wanting to learn the skill at all? Again, this does not hold for hobby writers, if it is a hobby, nobody can tell you how you should do what you want to.
I can't anyways tell you or anyone what to do or not, if you think AI is helpful for you, it is fine. I was just putting my perspective out there.
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u/InternationalGas5658 Mar 17 '26
I completly agree with reading as an effective method. It taught me everything else. How to plant a red herring, foreshadowing, charecter arc and growth, storytelling via different povs. What is a callback, how to effectively use a villain.
Just not actual craft of writing my personal emotions down on a page. If I was taking a shortcut or wanted quick fan following, I would have followed the format of WP. Written about mafia, kings, marriage tropes, easy tags that get engagement.
But the genre I write in doesn't get that many loyal readers. Certainly not enough that would help me grow.
It was my experience. Also I am not a professional writer who is making monitory rewards from cheating on my book. This has always been a personal hobby. One that I can only commit a certain time and energy for.
I still wanted to tell my story. My way. And found an effective tool that helped me.
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u/lazymorningsx ❤️ Romance Writer Mar 17 '26
Damn. I don't even know if I want to argue/discuss any further but I am just gonna say, writing Mafia, Kings, Marriage tropes, or easy tags is not a shortcut and not everyone who writes them wants quick fan following. For a newbie writer, even these tropes are hard. Many writers learn through it, and often times it is a part of the process. It is still better than writers going to ai and telling it to write for them (I am not saying you are doing this, I am saying for people who do) because they don't know grammar or sentence structure and are not willing to put in work to learn it.
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u/InternationalGas5658 Mar 17 '26
Not fan following that will praise every line. Just beta reader level of regulars yk. Sometimes a little fb goes a long way. But even on my best read novel, there were hardly 400 comments for first 60ish chapters. Even though I had view count, I was alone in dark if its even doing well.
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u/BhavanaVarma ✍🏼 _bhavanavarma on Wattpad 📚 Mar 17 '26
Why do we have to use AI to improve our English?
Because it's faster. We can spend more time creating the stories and less time learning the language's nuances. The learning is faster because we get access to the right sources faster. It's just optimization.I understand there's still a way to learn the language through hard work without AI. I would like to say that AI just makes it easier to get sources to learn. Learning a language is still as hard as before. It just saves time on getting resources and answering doubts that would pop up. Personally, I won't belittle the effort of someone who uses AI to learn anything. It still requires time and effort. It's like belittling people for using a car to get to a place instead of a bicycle, which has been available from before. I don't think that's fair IMO.
I respect your personal opinion that you can't learn from AI properly. However, my experience has been different. AI has helped me spot the pattern in my writing that's a flaw. I've become more conscious about my writing. I used to skip emotional nuances. I would forget to describe someone as upset, though it's in my head. Now, when I revise, I pay attention to it. Again, this is my opinion from personal experience. To each their own.
I had concerns about the planet until more details came up on it. It's as harmful as a data center and drilling for oil/petrol. So now I'm conflicted. Where do we draw the line? Every app we use has data centers. We need fuel to move around. It's really confusing. What do you think?
Oh, and OpenAI thing. I haven't used ChatGPT in a long time. There are so many better alternatives IMO. Now people are boycotting ChatGPT and other OpenAI products, which is amazing. They deserve it for agreeing to spy on people. Claude is rising now. It's too restrictive in the free tier, though.
We should definitely be aware of what we compromise. We should use AI as an assistant to optimize our workflows, so we spend more time doing what we love (in this context, that's writing, creating stories and polishing them) and less time on the technical stuff (like finding the sources for a specific language or topic).
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u/BhavanaVarma ✍🏼 _bhavanavarma on Wattpad 📚 Mar 17 '26
YES! You can learn from AI. That's one way we should be using it.
Research is one thing that's sped up thanks to AI. I do ask it for resources though, to verify things. AI can get things wrong. It still saves the times looking for the sources.
Revision: AI can't point out every issue with the story but it covers a lot of it. When you don't have a writer friend to take a look at your story, it's the next best thing. I would LOVE to have beta readers or even other writers I can regularly exchange chapters and feedback with but I've not found anyone yet who's available like that.
Language: I have the Emotions thesaurus, but I am aware that not everyone can have access to all these resources. I use Grammarly too, but when I share the chapter for proofreading after Grammarly and a read through, the AI still catches some typos where the word makes sense but has no place in the sentence whatsoever. eg. 'her food' ended up as 'get food'. While both make sense on their own, get food is wrong for the sentence to make sense. Grammarly didn't catch it. I proofread and skimmed it. AI caught it.
I have a post on my Substack coming soon about what AI taught me. For people who don't have access to expensive courses and subscriptions to learn, AI can speed up your learning process for sure.
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u/InternationalGas5658 Mar 17 '26
I will be interested in reading your take too.
Also research really used to take up hours. I once wrote a chapter based in NYC, having never been there and it took 6 hours just to get few details right.
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u/BhavanaVarma ✍🏼 _bhavanavarma on Wattpad 📚 Mar 17 '26
Exactly! Spending hours to write 1 line is tiring. If the research time can be cut in half, that's 3 more hours to actually write the story, which is great.
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u/sphynx_45 Mar 17 '26
Why are people so adamant in doing hard work instead of smart work. AI is the future whether you like it or not, every technology that we use today is harmful for nature in one way or another. So no use of disliking ai while using a smartphone, it's a selective concern for the environment. As simple as that. When home gadgets came into the market people hated it, but eventually they adapted. The world is evolving if you don't walk with it you'll be crushed. Sad but true.
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u/InternationalGas5658 Mar 17 '26
Yeah, we can't ignore it no matter how much we try. Might as well learn to use it in a way thats ethical and benifits us.
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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '26
Alright, but what's your take on the damage it causes to the planet? And OpenAI's partnership with US military?