This post originally appeared on LinkedIn on 12/8/2023.

2023 has been a busy year. Life and death reminded me to get on with this author stuff and I rose to the challenge, publishing three novels and a novella, as well as an audiobook. And I might finish another before the year ends.

But I couldn’t have done it all without AI.

Let me clarify that not one word of my books came from AI, though it did suggest some edits. No, what AI did for me was improve my workflow, reduce my costs, and help me function at higher levels of quality and productivity.

Here are a few of the most profound ways I used AI to accelerate novel creation in 2023, and a couple new things I’ll do with it in 2024.

Book Covers

In March 2023, I created covers for my first two books without AI. I spent several days searching the web for assets I could use, and a few more stitching them together into covers I liked. The results were satisfying, but time-consuming and not quite pro quality:

By November, I had a subscription to ChatGPT, and within less than a day, including adding text and barcodes to the designs, I had another pair of book covers that I like much better than the first:

Instead of characters in silhouette, I was able to produce covers with faces and details. Part of the way I did that was to get ChatGPT’s GPT-4 model to help me write effective prompts for the DALL-E 3 model. Then I kept refining my ask as DALL-E 3 got closer and closer.

Going forward, I’ll improve my own prompt engineering skills to develop images that more closely align with my vision. I’ll also leverage AI to analyze the content of my novel (or a VERY detailed outline) and suggest several cover options. By doing this early in the process, I can get a better feel for my characters as I write them into the story. I’ve already leveraged AI to conceptualize characters for my next novel, which follows a couple of kids from early childhood through young adulthood.

Cover design via AI isn’t my A-Game though. I hope my books eventually get popular enough to support contracting with real human authors. If that happens, I’ll use AI to create reference images and then I’ll have conversations with talented pros. Right now, it’s just an economic necessity.

Grammar Edits and Style

I use a few tools that incorporate AI for editing: MS Word and ProWritingAid. Word gives basic suggestions, while ProWritingAid analyzes my work, line by line, providing me with basic editorial suggestions that I might otherwise miss. It works alongside the tools I use to write (Word and Scrivener), directly evaluating and updating those files.

I have decades of writing and editing experience, having been a learning designer and professional writer, as well as having managed those roles. But without these tools and their AI, I’d still miss a lot of errors in my own writing (which I’m too close to evaluate independently). And it would take waaaaaay more time.

Another trick is to distance myself from the writing for days, weeks, and months, and then come back for a slow-paced read/review. Time heals many wounds that are otherwise overlooked.

While I haven’t used it for my currently published work, I have found that generative AI tools like ChatGPT can provide solid suggestions for rewriting individual sentences.

Voice to Text and Back Again

I’ve been leveraging voice-to-text and text-to-voice tools for nearly a decade, and it can be a game changer from almost every writer. My approach is very rudimentary and could be improved significantly with a little thought. I’d love to hear your suggestions. With advances in generative AI, these tools are getting frighteningly accurate and we’re sure to see advanced, integrated solutions!

Since I’m not always tethered to a desk when I write, I taught myself to articulate with “punctuation” into a hand-held digital recorder.

that is comma that I speak clearly and comma to boot comma I specifically say the punctuation I want translated exclamation mark new line new line

I later play this text into my computer with MS Word’s voice to text translator activated. I wind up needing to do a few corrections here and there, but it saves hours upon hours of transcription, and lets me “write” on the go, in little snippets that I can capture on a ferry, in a car, or even while I wait in line for coffee. 🙂

The other thing I’ll do is record Word reading my in-progress work back to me, and then I listen to this away from my computer (usually through my phone). I’ll use my voice recorder to make notes for things that need to change. This kind of self-editing seems to help me “hear” the developing story through a reader’s ears. Getting away from the computer for the listening session helps frame the right mindset.

Audiobooks

I created my audiobook the old-fashioned way: I produced a script and hired a narrator; then worked through the revision process with her. Decades of producing digital learning helped make the journey less painful. It would have been easier to work through it solo, if I had her voice.

And really, we’re probably not that far from that capability.

Very recently, some audiobook distributors have begun accepting voice narrated audiobooks from Google Play Books. They sound close to human, but not quite. Close to good. In some cases, good enough.

The real wake-up call is the trend. Text to voice has taken enormous strides in the last decade, and it’s very close to deep fake quality now. It’s only a matter of time before it will be more effective in terms of cost and quality to produce audiobooks through AI than through traditional means. When that arrives, you’ll start seeing more independent books show up with multiple character voices. AND you’ll see it on every platform. (The Google Play audiobooks can be distributed through Spotify already.)

If you decide to try producing audiobooks through Google’s tools, you’ll need to make sure your e-book is available on Google Play (that is, not in Kindle Unlimited), and then you can convert it using Google tools. These books can’t be distributed on Audible and many other platforms, but they can get you quickly to an audiobook if you can’t otherwise afford to hire a pro and spend the time polishing the product.

I haven’t produced an audiobook through Google Play yet, but I suspect there is still quite a bit of production work to make sure pronunciations and inflections are right, and there is a limited set of voices.

Fact Finding and Meaning Making

I write about sciency things in dozens of domains through the eyes of all kinds of characters. One of my favorite approaches is to ask AI to “think like” a person and then ask a specific question.

Right now, for example, I’m writing about a skilled mathematician. I prompted ChatGPT to:

Think like an accomplished mathematician who has encountered a very gifted, young pupil.

Then I asked it to suggest a challenging mathematical word problem for a six year-old who is functioning with the mathematical skill of a thirteen year-old. The answer I got was a perfect fit for the fictional scenario I had in mind. It would have taken me days of study to come up with something similar.

Another fun approach is to ask your favorite AI to ingest an article and summarize key insight and areas of further inquiry. This leads you down rabbit trails jaguar-fast. And chasing rabbits is one of the best ways to find new and interesting story threads. Especially in science fiction writing!

Plausibility Validation

In the kind of writing I do, details don’t need to be facts. But smart people read my books, and if something is entirely implausible, I’ll hear about it–not in a good way. Again, one way to temper the risk sounding like an idiot is to tell AI to “think like” an expert and then ask it to evaluate the plausibility of a concept.

You won’t always get the answer you want, and it’s not a fool-proof approach, but it can help refine ideas to the point that you can mitigate at least the most likely reader objections. AI can be your sounding board for all kinds of things, and you don’t look dumb when you ask it rudimentary questions.

More to Come

As I continue on this journey, I’ll keep posting thoughts and findings. Upcoming topics will include the kinds of things I’m encountering on my writer journey:

• Marketing
• More Advanced Editing (Style, Tone, Voice)
• Audiobook Production
• Robotic Process Automation for Authors

I’ve been dabbling with each of these and the implications are at once exciting and frightening.