How I Use AI for Help with Writing

3 Tips You Can Use Too

I was in elementary school when word processors first became widespread. We had one at home on our Apple II+ computer. Kids in my class thought all you had to do was tell the word processor what you wanted and it would produce it for you. Homework would be vanquished forever.

Now something similar is happening with AI. And although AI truly can compose essays and answer complex questions, it’s still nowhere near being able to produce a satisfying novel or analytic essay. But I’ve discovered that it sure can help. Here are three ways that I’ve come to regularly use it. I hope these tips will also help you.

Details

In fiction there’s a constant need to pepper scenes with interesting, realistic detail. AI is often able to produce suggestions. For example, here are some questions I’ve recently asked Chat GPT when seeking detail to add to a scene:

What are the names of some drinks likely to be on the buffet table of a wedding at a fancy hotel?

What are some Washington neighborhoods where a wealthy politician who just got a plum job in government might seek to move?

Of course I could figure this stuff out in other ways, but Chat-GPT is a quick and easy way to get excellent results.

In non-fiction, I usually end up asking AI questions that are much less far afield. It’s excellent at summing up arguments to make sure I’m not missing anything important, and also to help see if there is enough substance to a topic to justify investigating further. It can also help delve into aspects of issues that I’m having trouble finding out. Here are examples of some questions I’ve recently asked Chat-GPT when researching essays that have resulted in useful information:

Why is Mexico’s president in favor of judicial reform, even though the reform lessens the president’s powers by transferring the President’s authority to appoint judges back to the people?

Would a very small country with high per capita carbon emissions but still low overall emissions in total be more likely to side with the developed or developing countries in the ICJ climate case?

Improving a Sentence

Of course you can use AI as a thesaurus or dictionary if you’re looking for help with a specific word. But you can also copy and paste an entire sentence and ask for suggestions to improve. It often does a surprisingly good job. And when Chat-GPT starts giving suggestions for only minor changes or suggestions that actually make the sentence worse it’s a good sign that you’re ready to stop editing and move on.

Of course, other writing plugins such as Grammarly do a similar function. But to me, Chat-GPT does a much more thorough job. One reason is that Chat generates a whole series of potential changes whereas Grammarly gives just one suggestion. Another is that Chat is far better at removing redundancy.

Consider this sentence: Joe walked slowly through the store, wandering around and idly looking at items on the shelves, until finally it was time for his appointment. Grammarly doesn’t flag anything. That’s because Grammarly tends to only catch redundancy when it’s grammatical, when multiple words fulfill the same function. Chat, however, catches that the content of this sentence is redundant and suggests this better alternative: Joe strolled through the store, casually browsing the shelves, killing time until his appointment.

Titles and Subjects

After spending hours writing an article or an email, it’s a hassle to come up with a good title or subject. But often for writing to be successful it needs a catchy subject line or title.

One way to get started on this task is to copy and paste the entire article or email into Chat and ask it to suggest a title or email subject line. It digests the whole thing in an instant, and then comes back with a list of suggested titles or subjects.

Of course many of these may miss the mark or not be what you’re looking for, but they get the creative juices going on what can be otherwise a difficult and dreary task. I might wind up combining a couple of Chat’s suggestions, or using something I come up with that takes one of Chat’s ideas in a different direction. If nothing else Chat can help me see what types of titles I don’t like. But the modest effort of copying, pasting, and pushing enter usually turns out to be well worthwhile.

In my opinion, the days when AI will be able to write novels, op-eds, or legal analysis on its own are still very far off. And we’re definitely better off that way, with AI only as a helper. But just a note with regard to elementary school homework assignments- these days if I was a teacher, I’d worry.

Photo by Dan Counsell on Unsplash