By Kelly
A long-time professional and recreational writer, I’ve dabbled in AI, but I have yet to use it beyond research, because I want whatever I write to be truly mine. I don’t want to put a disclaimer that parts of my story were AI-generated. I want the full credit for my genius. However, the Living Writer app now has the option to generate outlines using AI, which is not something I have a problem admitting using, since outlines are pretty formulaic. In fact, it’s a dream come true for me.
I’ve always hated building outlines. It conflicts with how my brain works. I don’t know what I’m going to write until I write it. But at school — and most of my full-time magazine jobs — outlines were always required as a first step. So I did what any other pantser would do: I wrote the entire story first, then reverse-built the outline from that. Yes that’s backwards, but to me, so are outlines.
But recently I’ve created a lot of stories that are beautifully written, but have no direction, so I realize outlining is a crucial step, even though it’s hard for me. So I gave the Living Writer’s AI Outline Creator a try, and it’s pretty impressive. Once you log into a paid Living Writer account, you just hit the “Create AI Outline” button in the top right, fill in the fields and then hit the “Create AI Outline” button at the bottom. Certain things aren’t available without a paid AI add-on, but I don’t need unlimited AI-generated outlines or AI-created images for each story element. Twenty-five, free AI-generated outlines a month is plenty.
So I typed a complete description and all the characters and story beats into the “elements” field and it spit out something pretty detailed and complete. It’s not perfect, but it’s a great launchpad that would’ve taken me days to build myself (instead of hours, which I mostly spent choosing character names and story beats. The outline generation took seconds.)
So I hit the “Looks good, let’s use it!” button, and it generated chapters in the Living Writer app that I can fill in. With the story’s structure now in place, I can easily type this story into my smartphone going forward, which I’ve found is the most convenient way for me to write, because I always have my phone. Maybe writing a new Christmas-movie script or NANO novel by the end of the year isn’t out-of-reach after all.
So what about you, readers? Are you using AI to create outlines or any other story element? Let me know in the comments. Happy outlining!
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