For everybody except those hiding under a rock, it’s impossible to avoid AI these days. As I wrote recently, my first job in the morning entails clearing my inbox of a number of AI generated “offers” to promote my work, host me on a podcast, connect to me as a fellow writer (imagine Stephen King, Garrison Keillor or Frederik Backman reaching out to little old me), sponsor me at a book festival, feature me on book clubs with names like Boozy Book Club, Books Before Breakast and Women Love Books, etc. etc. All of these are written by AI and sent out to eager writers around the world in an effort to get them to pay for these fake services. Because I’ve published over sixty books for readers of all ages, I get more than my share of them.
One pay to play scheme I got this week really made me laugh. “Your memoir, “Daughter of Spies: Wartime Secrets, Family Lies,” crossed my radar for a very specific and compelling reason. You are not a debut author testing the waters. You are a literary institution.”
Wow. I’m a literary institution. Who would’ve thought? Little old me.
But what amused me the most about this particular email pitch was its length. This purported book promoter goes on for no less than 1245 words extolling my brilliance, the breadth of my work and my reach… all descriptions lifted directly from my website.
I recently read a piece entitled Stop Sloppy Pasta and in the section giving guidelines covering how to use AI properly, I noted this: LLMs are incentivized to use many words when few would do. This reminded me of a tough lesson I learned early on from my journalist father.
Because he died at the age of 60, he only read the first of my novels. Walking Away features a grandfather not too loosely based on him and his granddaughter, Emily, who brings a wildly unpredictable friend to their farm for a visit. This friend tempts Emily to disobey her beloved grandfather causing a rift between them. I gave my father the first draft of the book and got back a manuscript covered with his looping scrawl. The comment that really hit home was written in a margin next to a sentence that went something like this.
Emily crossed the room, grasped the doorknob, pulled it towards her and passed into the hallway.
My father wrote: Unless Emily crawls bleeding from the room, I suggest you say, Emily left the room. We all leave a room in approximately the same way.
For years afterward, I had a note posted above my desk that read in large block letters.
EMILY LEFT THE ROOM
More than anything, that comment taught me to hit the high points when writing a story. Other lessons my journalist father taught me still resonate. Get to the point. Enter a scene as late as possible. Rely on verbs more than adverbs, nouns more than adjectives. Use the active voice. Let the story tell itself. Don’t show off with big words. Choose the simpler one.
Apparently, the AI trained LLMs haven’t learned this lesson. Until they do, I shall simply call the program Chatty GPT.
Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop (www.elizabethwinthropalsop.com) is the author of over 50 works of fiction for adults and children under the pen name Elizabeth Winthrop. These include the award-winning fantasy series, The Castle in the Attic and The Battle for the Castle as well as the short story, The Golden Darters, read on the nationwide radio program, Selected Shorts, and included in Best American Short Story anthology, and Island Justice and In My Mother’s House, two novels now available as eBooks. She is the daughter of the acclaimed journalist, Stewart Alsop. Daughter of Spies: Wartime Secrets, Family Lies, a family history about her parents’ love affair during World War II and their marriage lived in the spotlight of Washington during the 1950s was published by Regal House, October 25, 2022.
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