Fiction writers often find themselves confronted with a question: are you a pantser or a plotter? This essentially means: do you sit down to write a plot before you tear into the details– sometimes taking months to tune and sequence every layer of events– or do you dive right in, putting one word after another without any outline in place.

ChatGPT has been swirling at the top of every creative conversation in the last couple of months, especially for indie writers. A new cottage industry of folks pumping books from their browser with the tool and pasting them right into Amazon has emerged, flooding the market with… with, what? I can’t really say, but I did give the tool a spin myself and it’s, in the least, very entertaining.

I gave ChatGPT the chance to approach a premise I started exploring on this site. The Twilight Rambler is a bit of a pantsy project, and it’s lost a lot of steam as I’ve been immersed in my true passion lately: plotting without ever finishing. ChatGPT, however, is the ultimate pantser. Unlike the humans who write the stories we read, it has no idea what it’s going to do between words. The tool puts down one word at a time, what it deems to be the best fit, with some randomization for realism’s sake, and then runs the logic again for the next word, always bouncing its progress off of the prompt and the wealth of human generated data that informs its decisions.

This is a bit of a fallacy, at least for most, since a pantser probably has a good idea of where they want their story to go and what beats they need to hit. They just don’t write them down… or count the syllables between them. Stephen King is undoubtedly the most famous pantser, and as prolific as he is, technology has given him a rival!

I gave ChatGPT the general premise of my foray into an episodic adventure.

Me: Tell me a story about a musician who uses an electric guitar to fight an evil motor bike gang.

This is how ChatGPT responded.

Once upon a time, in a small town, there was a musician named Jack who was renowned for his exceptional talent in playing the electric guitar. Jack lived a peaceful life until an evil motorbike gang arrived in town, causing chaos and destruction wherever they went.

One day, Jack witnessed the gang harassing an innocent family and decided to take a stand. He picked up his trusty electric guitar and confronted the gang leader. The leader laughed at Jack, thinking he was no match for their tough bikers.

But Jack was not one to be underestimated. He started playing his guitar and the music was so powerful that it caused the ground to shake and the bikers to lose control of their motorcycles. The gang leader was so intimidated by Jack's skills that he fled the scene with his gang, never to be seen again.

The townspeople were amazed by Jack's bravery and praised him as their hero. From that day on, Jack was known as the "Guitar Hero" and continued to use his musical skills to fight against evil and protect the innocent.

And so, the legend of Jack, the Guitar Hero, lived on, inspiring future generations to...

I should’ve let it finish. I’m curious what this story’s protagonist could possibly inspire. I love that we got “Once upon a time” and learned that our protagonist was “Jack” in the first sentence. Apparently “Jack” is the most obvious name for any protagonist (According to all the b.s. we’ve pumped into the internet or did ChatGPT call an audible?). Also noteworthy: there is a plot here. It’s the most foundational kind of plot, but, word after word, the tool found itself forming prototypical story structure.

Of course, we’re lacking a little flavor. Panache is the joy of Twilight Rambler for me. Undertaking the project and making it public was supposed to “inspire fun” whilst writing. Can ChatGPT have inspired fun? Let’s try. My second run at the prompt reveals a sliver of my inspiration for the Rambler and was queued up based on some of my reading regarding how others are using the tool.

Me: Tell me a story about a musician who uses an electric guitar to fight an evil motor bike gang in the style of Raymond Chandler.

Here is ChatGPT’s second draft.

It was a dark and stormy night in the city, and the only thing that could cut through the roar of the wind was the scream of an electric guitar. The man behind the guitar was a musician named Jack, who had come to the city to make it big. But instead of fame, he found trouble in the form of an evil motorbike gang that terrorized the streets.

Jack had heard of the gang's notorious leader, a man known only as "The Shadow," and he knew that he was the only one who could stop him. So he took up his electric guitar, turned up the volume, and hit the streets.

The first time he encountered the gang, he was just passing through an alley when he saw them. They were rough-looking men on motorbikes, wearing leather jackets and sporting menacing tattoos. Jack didn't know what they were up to, but he knew it wasn't good.

Without a moment's hesitation, Jack launched into a blistering solo on his electric guitar. The gang members were taken aback by the sudden noise, and some of them even covered their ears. But Jack kept playing, his fingers moving over the fretboard with lightning speed.

As he played, something strange happened. The notes from his guitar seemed to take on a life of their own, coalescing into a sonic force that knocked the gang members off their bikes. They struggled to regain their footing, but Jack was already on the move, using the power of his guitar to clear a path through the alley.

The Shadow himself wasn't so easily deterred. When he heard about the musician who had taken down some of his men with a guitar, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He gathered his most trusted henchmen and set out to find Jack.

The two forces clashed in a deserted parking lot, with The Shadow and his men on one side and Jack on the other. Jack knew he was outnumbered, but he refused to back down. He raised his guitar to his shoulder and played the opening chords of his signature song.

The sound was like a battle cry, and it rallied Jack's spirit even as it shook the ground beneath him. The Shadow's men charged forward, their bikes roaring, but Jack stood his ground. He played with all his might, and the notes from his guitar grew louder and more intense.

It was a showdown for the ages, with the fate of the city hanging in the balance. But in the end, it was Jack who emerged victorious. The power of his music was too much for The Shadow and his men to overcome, and they fled the scene in disarray.

The people of the city hailed Jack as a hero, and his music became a symbol of hope and strength. He went on to become one of the most famous musicians of his time, but he never forgot the night when he used his electric guitar...

Told you this was fun. The first paragraph is trope-ic gold (the transition from “Once upon a time…” to “It was a dark and stormy night” is pretty ripe) and definitely hits the hyperbolic note that Chandler had so finally tuned– though I think he would’ve made significant edits. The tool manages to hit on Chandleresque themes like dark cities and a lone-wolf protagonist taking on some form of sordid network, which is interesting, though its biggest shortcomings are still glaring.

It knows how people who want to sound like Raymond Chandler frame scenes, but the plot is still the same basic story with one extra beat. ChatGPT is fun when it’s laying context (if not incredibly clichéd), but it doesn’t have much to work with when it comes to plotting. Word by word, it pantses along, envisioning a fun setting with the fervor of a coked up eighties screenwriter– but it loses steam in the basic exposition and scene structure. For those using the tool to write stories, or novels, I imaging they’re knocking out one scene at a time.

I’m sorry for cutting the tool off again, but I’m pretty sure we’re not missing anything this time. Our tale was about to end like a third grade “what I did this weekend” essay, considering how it pumped through the general details of its plot and meandered towards a conclusion. One major difference between ChatGPT and a third-grader: kid’s have abundant imaginations.

It’s impressive that an AI can write a story, let alone a sentence. Where it falters is where data falters: data reveals trends and when ChatGPT pulls a word from the distilled pile of possibilities, it’s likely to grab something “trendy”, something too familiar. The result is a foundation of clichés, unless you get really good at tricking it into creativity… which is probably more work intensive than actual writing.

Another related observation: the algorithm seems adverse to specifics. It sets us in a “city” and not 1940s Los Angeles. Even the events of the story are general summaries, only providing details in a few specific occurrences– which tend to be action scenes that require exposition. The algorithmic author doesn’t even tell us what kind of music Jack plays. It’s a lot of forest and very few trees.

My big take away: ChatGPT is drawn to the most generic of outcomes. Big swaths of data don’t equate to unique and inspired writing. Instead, results are the most banal and clichéd prose (prosaic would be generous), and I say this ignoring its basic plotting and looking at its use of language. The stories were entertaining because of their simplicity and the jarring effect of knowing a computer wrote them.

The tool understands the context of a prompt well enough to skim along its surface, but the outcome is the hollow reflection of a human idea. If there’s a lesson in ChatGPT’s writing, it’s an example of everything you shouldn’t do– and it’s a grade school lesson.

These were pretty lean prompts, and I wonder if I told the tool to write a two-thousand word story if it would get better. Would the plot fill out as the tool plodded along? I don’t know, but I also don’t plan to read a ChatGPT story any time soon. Best of luck to those that do.

As a final challenge I added some eldritch flair to its task. I promise I don’t use that word often (especially in fiction), and maybe I should have put it in my prompt, but I didn’t want to confuse the poor thing. As a finalé, ChatGPT left me with this…

Me: Can we add an element of the "weird".. something Lovecraftian?

ChatGPT: It was a dark and stormy night in the city, and the only thing that could cut through the roar of the wind was the scream of an electric guitar. The man behind the guitar was a musician named Jack, who had come to the city to make it big. But instead of fame, he found trouble in the form of an evil motorbike gang that terrorized the streets.

Jack had heard of the gang's notorious leader, a man known only as "The Shadow," and he knew that he was the only one who could stop him. So he took up his electric guitar, turned up the volume, and hit the streets.

The first time he encountered the gang, he was just passing through an alley when he saw them. They were rough-looking men on motorbikes, wearing leather jackets and sporting menacing tattoos. Jack didn't know what they were up to, but he knew it wasn't good.

Without a moment's hesitation, Jack launched into a blistering solo on his electric guitar. The gang members were taken aback by the sudden noise, and some of them even covered their ears. But Jack kept playing, his fingers moving over the fretboard with lightning speed.

As he played, something strange happened. The notes from his guitar seemed to take on a life of their own, coalescing into a sonic force that knocked the gang members off their bikes. They struggled to regain their footing, but Jack was already on the move, using the power of his guitar to clear a path through the alley.

But the gang was only the beginning. Jack soon discovered that there was something far more sinister lurking in the city. It was a creature from another dimension, a Lovecraftian horror that had taken up residence in the abandoned factory on the edge of town.

The creature had been drawn to the city by the sound of Jack's guitar, and it knew that the musician was the key to its ultimate power. It sent its minions to capture Jack and bring him to the factory, where it planned to use him to open a portal to its own realm.

Jack was cornered in an alley by the creature's minions, who were not quite human but not quite monstrous either. They had strange, unrecognizable features, and their limbs twisted and contorted in unnatural ways. Jack knew that he had to fight back, but his guitar was no match for these creatures.

He closed his eyes and focused all his energy on his music. He played a single chord, and the sound reverberated through the alleyway. The creatures recoiled, their bodies writhing in pain as the music hit them like a physical force.

Jack played on, his fingers moving with a fluidity that he had never felt before. The notes from his guitar grew louder and more intense, and the alleyway began to warp and twist as if reality itself was being distorted.

The creatures writhed and twisted, their bodies contorting in impossible ways as they tried to resist the power of Jack's music. But it was no use. They were overcome, and the portal that the creature had opened began to collapse in on itself.

In the end, the creature was destroyed, and the city was safe once again. Jack emerged from the alleyway, his electric guitar still in hand, a hero who had saved the world from the Lovecraftian horror that had threatened to destroy it.

Finally, you’re thinking, he let the damn thing finish– and how we were rewarded for it! There’s a semblance of plot still, but the tool ran off in an entirely different direction to tackle the new wrinkle in the prompt. What did impress me was the transition: connecting Jack’s supernatural ability to the arrival of a supernatural force. There’s a whiff of creativity in this detail.

The other changes were less inspiring. We did get creatures and some Lovecraftian adjectives, including “Lovecraftian,” but we’re still pretty short on details. You might get more from a page of cliff notes, which probably comprise a large amount of the data that feeds tools like ChatGPT. After all, we tend to publish less original content to the web than content explaining it. The result here is something impressed by the immense weight of the internet: a frenetic monolith with no time to focus. Reducing that wealth of data with a series of prompts also seems to take the creative joy of that bustling world away.

So there you have it: you’re out of work! Or you have to try the slightest bit. Goodnight and good luck!

** This was written before the release of ChatGPT 4.0. Adventures into bot pantsing are sure to be more and more thrilling in the coming months, but I have to get back to circuitous plotting in the meantime.

** Art was generated using Midjourney AI. It only seemed fitting.