I’ve been writing for years before GenAI and ChatGPT became a thing, so I definitely don’t use AI to write my books. But I do think it’s a great tool for certain aspects of writing and publishing and shouldn’t be dismissed.

After all, if you’ve ever used Word’s Editor (which I use to spellcheck) or Grammarly (which I don’t use, but know many writers who do) then you’re already using AI.

These are five applications where I think GenAI can be a fantastic writing support:

• Ideation – if you’re suffering from Writer’s Block, just asking ChatGPT for ideas can get the juices flowing. “Give me three ways that someone might lose a love letter” or “What would be a good title for a Regency Romance hero?” or “Three ways someone could escape a locked room” (this might be useful in real life one day!)
• Inspiration images – if you use an inspo or mood board, it can be fun to create private images of characters or scenes in your book. This can also help prompt you writing better descriptions, particularly for writers who suffer from aphantasia and can’t visualise images and scenes in their head
• Proofreading – as well as Word, it’s helpful to run manuscripts through ChatGPT or similar for another editing pass. The key with any spellchecker or grammar checker is being proficient enough with grammar to recognise if it’s adding errors. Generally I find it quite robust but Word sometimes stumbles on more complex sentences and singular vs plural verbs
• Beta-reading & critique – I’ve only tried this with short stories, but it’s fascinating to see what ChatGPT thinks of a story and if it understands it and how the characters are supposed to be. It can also make interesting suggestions. I’ve compared this with human critique and it’s surprising how similar its feedback can be to that of a real person
• Cleaning up transcripts – many authors, such as Agatha Christie and Barbara Cartland have dictated novels. Speech-t0-text apps can speed up your writing process but most transcripts end up as a garbled mess of repetitions and run-on sentences. ChatGPT can clean these up into readable paragraphs, even identifying and formatting dialogue, ready for your human edits and re-writes

These are just a few examples – there are myriad ways that GenAI can assist, particularly in later stages of the publishing process.