We Are Sorry, Signed Bot

I subscribe to a number of writing platforms which sponsor a variety of competitions. I took little notice of one email until they sent a retraction almost immediately:

Did someone in the organization out-meta themselves? Did a bot take over their server? The possibilities are endless.

This is what ChatGPT came up from the prompt “Write a screenplay about a screenwriting organization having to retract their prompt ‘write an AI script’:

Unraveled Words Logline: When a prestigious writing contest announces the theme of “Write an AI Screenplay,” contestants around the world eagerly participate, but a shocking discovery forces the organizers to retract the prompt. As the truth about AI’s potential dangers emerges, one finalist struggles with her conscience, torn between the allure of fame and her moral responsibility to protect humanity.

Writing Tips from Great Writers

Writing advice is everywhere. The question is finding what works best for your craft. First, there is advice on the physical practice:

Jose Saramago: I do require a certain amount of written work per day, which usually corresponds to two pages. Two pages per day adds up to almost eight hundred per year.

Raymond Carver: Get in, get out. Don’t linger. Go on.

Ernest Hemingway: Always stop for the day while you still know what will happen next.

Writing Tips from Great Writers

And then there is advice on what you are writing.

Toni Morrison: Don’t record and editorialize on some event that you’ve already lived through.

Kurt Vonnegut: Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

Ian Fleming: Make sure that you don’t like your protagonist too much – or at all.

Writing Tips from Great Writers

Finally, there is the broader advice, how to understand exactly what you are doing.

Joan Didion: Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else’s dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream.

Alice Munro: There should be a point where you say, the way you would with a child, this isn’t mine anymore.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: I think honest feedback is very important. But it’s also hard to find. Other writers can be useful, also they can not, because they’re doing the same thing, and sometimes they want you to become like them.

Writing Tips from Great Writers

First Writing Contest: Owls in the Family

I entered my first writing competition in Grade 4, submitting “My Summer Holiday” story like everyone else. 20150812_110903I had implemented many of the key elements into my tale of hauling wood across the lake – a startled bat flying from the boat house foreshadowing doom, a boat overflowing with wood maintaining tension, my father hanging onto the motor as the boat sank for comic relief and my unbridled terror as I descended into the dark water for the voice – even if I had no idea what I was doing. still-blue-water I fell over backward in my chair when they announced my name as the winner in a school assembly and I was presented with an inscribed copy of Farley Mowat’s Owls in the Family. owlsinthefamilyIt remains the only contest I have won, except for a contest to describe the great taste of Hire Root Beer in which I used a nonsensical parade of ‘f’ words, including fizzy and fantastic. hiresrootbeerI earned an ‘Honorable Mention’ for that and a pair of radio headphones. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I might have peaked too soon.