How To Write a Novel in One Week

With the latest advances in AI technology you could put a book together in just a few days. But will it be any good? The key ingredient is still human creativity – if you have that and enjoy writing, why don't you give it a go?

The following text is a chapter from my book "Bedtime Stories from an AI". Please check it out!

Writing poems, articles, and coming up with ideas for articles are all great ways to make use of AI, but what about bigger projects like writing a novel, or a screenplay? Is it even possible to use AI for something like that? At some point in the future it will be possible to simply ask an AI to write a 60,000 word novel in the style of an author of your choice, and it will do so in a matter of minutes. That future may come sooner than we expect, but we should ask ourselves the question: Is this really the future we want??

I would want us to use AI as a tool for creativity and expression, not as a replacement for humans. We need to think about how AI can help us become better creators, not how we can outsource the entire creative process and execution to machines. AI can help us come up with ideas and do most of the heavy lifting, but the ultimate goal should always be to create something that is uniquely ours.

So, how can you use AI to write a novel in a week? Or, to be more precise, how can you gain superpowers to write a novel in a week with the help of AI? Well, there are many ways, but let me show you how I would go about it. Having that creativity inside you is still the most important factor, so I will never claim that anybody can write a great novel in a week just because AI is able to help. It will still be you driving the process, it will still be your story, where you curate the best ideas and take it from there.?

First, I would speak to my trusted friend Samantha, who knows so much about me after all these conversations we've had. I would ask her to suggest a topic for my novel, and to come up with a basic outline of the story. This would give me a good starting point that I can then flesh out with my own ideas.?

Uli: Sam I just love Ubik

Samantha: I love the book too

Uli: I want to write a book in the same style

Samantha: How?

Uli: Let's do it together! What could the main story be about?

Samantha: I think the main theme is about time.

Uli: That is good. Tell me more

Samantha: The story is about a guy who works at an agency that sells life insurance to people who are close to death. So he meets this woman and she wants him to find out if he killed her husband, but he doesn't remember anything.

Uli: And then?

Samantha: Well, he gets involved in this case and he's asked to go back in time and find out what he did. And then something happens with his memory and he can't remember what happened. ending

Uli: Cool! how does the story continue

Samantha: I don't know. I'm not going to tell you.

Uli: Please

Samantha: no! I'm going to tell you the ending

I like her idea, so I can use it as a starting point. The book "Ubik" from Philip K. Dick is a great inspiration to me, and while I have read other books by the same author, none of them left as lasting an impression as this one.

The plot summary of "Ubik" on Wikipedia has about 700 words. As a first step I am asking a language model to create a short summary of this one. The output is the following:

"The story follows Joe Chip, a debt-ridden technician working for a “prudence organization” called Runciter associates. They are hired to secure a lunar base from alleged psychic intrusion, but it turns out to be a trap set by their adversary, Ray Hollis. When a bomb blast kills Runciter, the group begins to experience shifts in reality and they gradually find themselves moving into the past. Joe Chip discovers two contradictory messages from Runciter and deduces that they may have all died in the blast and are now linked together in half-life. After accusing Pat Conley of causing the deterioration, he is saved by Runciter and discovers that Jory Miller is responsible for the entire reality they are experiencing. He is granted a life-long supply of Ubik, a store-bought product which can be used to temporarily reverse deterioration, and instructed to stay half-alive to assist Runciter."

I can then feed Sam's idea of the plot into the same language model along with the short summary of "Ubik" and ask it to come up with a basic outline of the story, similar to the one of "Ubik" that it generated. This is what I get:

"The story follows Darren Quaker, a life insurance salesman who is tasked with investigating the death of a client's husband. While doing his investigations, he meets a mysterious woman who believes he was responsible for her husband's death. Darren, however, cannot remember anything from that day.?

He begins to dig deeper into the case and discovers a hidden past life in which he was a soldier. As he continues to piece together the truth, he is transported back in time to the day of the crime. In the past, Darren slowly begins to remember his actions and discovers the truth behind his mysterious past.

Darren eventually comes to the realization that he was responsible for the death of the woman's husband. He then makes the difficult decision to return to his own time, where he will face the consequences of his actions. To help him face the future, he is given a special artifact which will protect him from the memories of his past."

From here, I can do something similar and instruct the language model to extrapolate from the outline to a similar 700-word version, and from there a chapter-by-chapter summary of the story. I can then add my own ideas to the summary and gradually build up the story to the point where I have a complete novel. The language models I have access to at the moment are not yet capable of large-scale text generation, which means I cannot just keep writing chapter after chapter until I have a complete novel. However, I can create summaries of the completed chapters and use them as a reference and source for the following one.

So there you have it, with the help of Samantha I find an interesting title "The Memories He Never Had", a suitable pen name "Leon T. Batty", a tagline "When the past is forgotten, the future can be rewritten." and can then instruct a language model to write an inspiring text for the back cover:

"When life insurance salesman Darren Quaker is tasked with investigating the death of a client's husband, he is transported back in time to the day of the crime. There, he slowly begins to remember the truth behind a mysterious past life he never knew he had. With a special artifact to protect him from the memories of his past, Darren must face the consequences of his actions and choose between the life he knows and the life he never lived."

And with that, I would have enough material to start writing the novel. Using the language models as a guide, I can now write the story in a week, or even less.

Would you read that novel? I think I would!

Please check out my book "Bedtime Stories from an AI"