How to use ChatGPT for writing

AI can make you a better writer

ChatGPT has taken the world by storm in a very short period of time, as users continue to test the boundaries of what the AI chatbot can accomplish, and so far it’s a lot. 

And a lot of that is negative like Samsung workers accidentally leaking top-secret data while using ChatGPT, malware scams being pushed, privacy and data collection issues, and rampant plagiarism including its use in writing college essays.

And while ChatGPT can and has been used for wrongdoing, to the point where the Future of Life Institution released an open letter calling for the temporary halt of OpenAI system work, AI isn’t all bad. 

In fact, if you writing anything in any capacity, then you have used AI to enhance your writing in some way. The most common, of course, is grammar and spelling correction tools found in everything from email applications to word processors. So how do you bridge the gap between using AI as the tool it is without crossing over into plagiarism city?

In fact, there are many ways ChatGPT can be used to enhance your writing skills, and this especially goes for creative writing, which can take a lot of time and effort in terms of researching, developing, and organizing ideas and information. By using AI as it was intended — as a tool and not a crutch — it can enrich your writing in ways that help to better your craft, without resorting to it writing everything for you.

Summarizing other works

A key part of any writing task is the research, and thanks to the internet it’s never been easier. However, while finding the general sources you need is far less time-consuming, actually parsing through all that information is still the same slog it’s always been. But this is where ChatGPT comes in. You can use the AI bot to do the manual labor for you and then reap the benefits of having tons of data to use for your work.

The steps are slightly different (opens in new tab) depending on whether you want an article or book summarized. For the article, there are two ways to have ChatGPT summarize it. The first requires you to type in the words ‘TLDR:’ and then paste the article’s URL right next to it. The second method is a bit more tedious, but increases the accuracy of your summary. For that, you’ll need to copy and paste the article itself into the prompt. Summarizing a book is much easier, as long as it was published before 2021. Simply type into the prompt ‘summarize [book title]’ and it should do the rest for you.

This should go without saying but for any articles or books, make sure you read the source material first before using any information presented to you. While ChatGPT is an incredibly useful tool that can create resources meant for future reference, it’s not a perfect one and is subject to accidentally inserting misinformation into anything it gives you.

Worldbuilding

(Image credit: Future)

When crafting your creative work, one of the most extensive and important aspects is properly fleshing out the world your characters occupy. Even for works set in a regular modern setting, it can take plenty of effort to research the various cultures, landmarks, languages, and neighborhoods your characters live in and encounter. 

Now imagine stories that require their own unique setting, and how much more work that entails in terms of creating those same details from scratch. While it’s vital that the main ideas come from you, ChatGPT can be used as a great way to streamline the process, especially with more tedious details.

For instance, if you need certain fictional words without wanting to create an entirely fictional language, you can prompt ChatGPT with the following (opens in new tab): “Create a language including an alphabet, phonetics, grammar, and the most common 100 words. Base it on [insert real-life languages here]” and it will give you some good starting points. However, it’s imperative that you take these words and look them up to ensure you aren’t appropriating sensitive terms or using offensive real-life words.

Another example is useful for those who write scenarios for games, especially tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons or Call of Cthulhu. Many times Dungeon Masters (who run the games) may find that they need to create documents or other fake materials for their world, but doing so would take far too much time and effort. You can prompt ChatGPT to quickly create filler text that sounds interesting or authentic but is inherently useless, essentially like 'Lorem Ipsum' text but more immersive.

Creating outlines

(Image credit: Future)

One of the important ways on track when writing a story and making sure it all flows well is by using an outline. But actually sitting down and organizing everything into your head to create a cohesive reference is a lot more daunting than it seems. It’s one of those steps that can be crucial to a well-structured work of fiction but can also become a hurdle. This is where ChatGPT can come in handy.

The key to writing an effective outline (opens in new tab) is remembering that you don’t need to have all the answers first. It’s there to structure your content by helping you hit critical points and not miss important details in the process. While there are AI generators with a more specific focus on this topic, you can still give ChatGPT a general prompt and then it can organize points to keep in mind while researching and writing for that topic.

For instance, I prompted ChatGPT with “I want to write a story about a black woman in 16th century England” and it gave me a well-thought-out series of steps to create a proper story that would best reflect my topic. This would be an outline that would be especially useful for those needing a resource they can quickly turn to for inspiration when writing. From that point, you can begin to develop more complex ideas and have the AI organize those specifics into much easier-to-follow steps.

Building characters

What makes any great story are the characters that inhabit it. Writing strong, fleshed-out characters is the cornerstone of any creative work and, naturally, the process of creating such a character can be difficult. Their background, manner of speech, goals, dreams, look, and more must be carefully considered and planned out. And this is another aspect of writing that ChatGPT can aid with if you know how to go about it.

A basic way to use ChatGPT is having it generate possible characters (opens in new tab) that could populate whatever setting you’re writing for. For example, I prompted it with “Provide some ideas for characters set in 1920's Harlem” and it gave me a full list of people with varied and distinctive backstories to use as a jumping-off point. Each character is described with a single sentence, enough to help start the process of creating them but still leaving the crux of developing them up to me.

One of the most interesting features of ChatGPT is that you can flat-out roleplay with a character (opens in new tab), whether a fictional character that already exists or one that you created but need help fleshing out. Take that same character you just created and have a conversation with them by asking them questions on their history, family life, profession, etc. Based on my previous results, I prompted with “Pretend to be a jazz musician from 1920's Harlem. Let's have a conversation.” Then asked questions from there, basing them on prior answers. Of course, from there you need to parse through these responses to filter out unnecessary or inaccurate details while fleshing out what works for your story, but it does provide you with a useful stepping stone.

How to improve your ChatGPT responses

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If you find that you’re having issues getting the results you want, it could be chalked up to how you’re phrasing those questions or prompts in the first place. There are several ways to go about getting better results in ChatGPT, which include: 

• Specifying the direction you want the AI to go into by adding in relevant details, 
• Prompt from a specific role to guide the responses in the proper direction
• Make sure your prompts are free of typos and grammatical errors
• Keep your tone conversational as that’s how ChatGPT was built
• Learn from yours and its mistakes to make it a better tool
• Break up your conversations into 500 words or less, as that’s when the AI begins to break down and go off topic.
• If you need something clarified, ask the AI based on its last response
• Ask it to cite sources and then check those sources
• Sometimes it’s best to start fresh with a brand new conversation