We already know that I hate AI writing: I think people who use AI to write are lazy and I’ve offered tips on how avoid ever being mistaken for AI.

However, there are many younger writers out there who have been soaked in AI their entire writing careers. Yes, that horrifies me to say, but it’s true.

People who began writing – actually writing, not “prompting” – after 2022 never learned how to build their own craft without any influence from AI. Since AI has unfortunately infested every single facet of society and is most obvious in writing, they may not be able to see how terrible AI writing is.

There’s also the social media influence. Those long melodramatic Facebook posts? AI. The sparkly caption on Instagram? AI. The cheap trashy novel that has a suspiciously large number of reviews despite being released a week ago? Probably AI, or at least heavily influenced by AI.

It’s hard not to be swayed by AI when you see it everywhere and don’t have your unique voice pinned down yet. Much as I hate to say it, I probably have picked up some AI mannerisms myself, despite not using it at any stage of my writing. I’m a social media fiend, and some high-end models have become eerily good at writing.

But we can fix this.

This guide is *not* meant to give you tips on how to trick readers into thinking you didn’t use AI.

Let me reiterate my main point. If you want to bamboozle people into accepting AI slop, go away. Go actually write something instead of plagiarizing and destroying the environment.

However, younger writers who are genuinely trying to learn get shafted because they are developing bad habits. Just like a truffle pig trained on portabello mushrooms won’t be able to find the prize, those starting out with a deluge of AI “training material” are going to find themselves picking up on a specific model’s quirks.

I’m going to show you what I mean in an unusual way: I will use my own work and then AI-ify it. This both prevents me from dunking on younger writers and shows how a few structural changes can make for smoother writing.

I could have put the fake versions first, but I want you to have the crestfallen “holy shit that sounds so much worse” experience instead. Also because destroying my own writing feels really bad.

And before you ask … no. I did not prompt AI to change these; I did it myself. That would be both insane and infuriating.

Every sentence does not need to be its own paragraph.

Modern literature tends toward shorter paragraphs because the text is more scannable, and this is fine. I also use shorter paragraphs than my own training material (Victorian literature), as I find it easier to read and edit.

However, there is a significant difference between having two, three, or four-line paragraphs, and having every single sentence be one paragraph.

This often happens more in action sections and extended dialogue, so we’ll mess up a section of my book Absent All Light.

Cerie awoke to a sword at her throat. Sure this was a hyper-realistic dream, she batted it away, then seized up when her bandages hung in tatters from the sharp steel.

Slowly she looked up into the eyes of a young man she faintly recognized from visiting the War Academy, ringed by ten others.

Including Tshumanu, Uileac’s best friend. His black Council Guard gear stood in crisp contrast to the soldiers’ dun uniforms, though all were rumpled from hard riding. Tshumanu’s golden eyes, honeyed in the sunlight, were lined with deep bags; his white hair had dirt clods and twigs twined in it, perhaps from taking a hard fall off his tetchy appaloosa. While the other men’s swords were drawn, he had not unsheathed his.

Kneeling beside the unconscious Uileac, Tshumanu tried to jostle him from sleep; the guard’s thin legs were trembling, his hands tight. Whether from anxiety or anger, she couldn’t know.

“But you’re a Council Guard,” Cerie said dumbly to Tshumanu. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

Tshumanu ignored her, shaking Uileac’s shoulder again. How her brother could sleep so soundly was beyond her. Then again, he had ridden for several suns, likely without rest; he had a far greater right to exhaustion.

This would be agonizing to read if everything was its own sentence because connected actions would be cut up until they lost all significance. Several of these paragraphs have to be together; otherwise, the reader gets confused.

So let’s screw up this section so you see what I mean. We’ll also remove some of the interiority because AI fails at that, too. We will discuss that in a little bit.

Cerie awoke to a sword at her throat.

She looked up into the eyes of a young man she recognized from the War Academy, ringed by ten others.

Including Tshumanu, Uileac’s best friend.

His black Council Guard gear stood in crisp contrast to the soldiers’ dun uniforms.

While the other men’s swords were drawn, Tshumanu had not unsheathed his.

“But you’re a Council Guard,” Cerie said dumbly to Tshumanu. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

Tshumanu ignored her, shaking Uileac’s shoulder.

Uileac had ridden for several suns, likely without rest; he must be exhausted.

Remember that AI creates a baseline of all existing literature; it seeks the mean writing voice rather than the edge cases. I suspect that’s part of the reason LLMs are obsessed with line breaks, particularly in ChatGPT: it trained on all sorts of things that do use constant line breaks, like instruction manuals, project proposals, single-comment Reddit posts, etc.

Other models, like Claude, OpenClaw, and Gemini, had a different training corpus, which is why all the models sound unique (but still terrible). Once you read enough AI slop, you can even start to figure out what model someone used to lie their way through writing. Claude doesn’t do this as much, but ChatGPT does. And we don’t want to sound like ChatGPT. So we’ll use real paragraphs like real people.

Constant back-and-forth dialogue is exhausting, but common in AI writing.

Now, during a conversation in a book, there will often be dialogue, action beat, dialogue. Which is normal. Here’s the thing, though: you can’t keep that up forever. It’s hard to read if it’s constant dialogue, action beat, dialogue.

We need some cushion between dialogue so that readers can reset and focus on something else for a bit. This also better represents how actual humans behave, because most of us are not talking incessantly even during an extended conversation. We might stop, note something in our environment, think of something else, turn away to do something, and then return our attention back to the discussion.

Here’s an example of what I mean from my fourth book, What Is Cannot Be Unwritten:

The queen looked up at him and narrowed her eyes, tucking the letter away. “You’re back so soon.”

With so many years of experience translating Susuma’s nuances into everyday language, Mordrek heard every insinuation. 

Too soon: you must not have gotten any useful information.

Regardless, he gestured to the gilded chair opposite her, and she gave a curt nod. Sliding the report from his breast pocket, he handed it over to her, then ran a hand through his hair and attempted a breezy smile. “I think you’ll find that I was quite productive during my short stay. You should be proud.”

Queen Susuma ignored his comment as she scanned his report. “Your penmanship could use more practice.”

Anyone else would have winced, but he betrayed not a whit of hurt, only whistled softly while he surveyed the room for any changes. There were water dribbles on the enormous tempest prognosticator that loomed over a side table, though the drops were hardly visible against the mahogany wood. Someone must have been tending to the leeches that told weather for the queen.

As he stared at the leech enclosure, one dropped down into its water column, and a soft bell chimed. Mordrek looked back at Queen Susuma, still busy reading, then out of the window, where the sky was speckled with vague gray wisps.

The queen’s tolerance for these creepy slugs was baffling. Then again, Mordrek supposed they had quite a few things in common. Particularly the bloodlust.

“So you’re not certain whether the merchant divulged any sensitive information before his neutralization?”

Mordrek started back to attention, up into Queen Susuma’s frosty eyes. “Well, I couldn’t very well question the whole of the Kauma Protectorate. So many transients, you see.”

Pretty good, though I may have wanted to splice that fourth paragraph into the action beat and then the dialogue. Ah well, a little formatting oopsie in an 65,000-word book isn’t the end of the world.

Now we’ll strip out all the other context – Mordrek’s internal monologue, the extended movements – and see how much blander it sounds.

The queen looked up at him and narrowed her eyes. “You’re back so soon.”

Modrek handed the report over, then ran a hand through his hair. “I think you’ll find that I was quite productive during my short stay. You should be proud.”

Queen Susuma ignored his comment as she scanned his report. “Your penmanship could use more practice.”

A pause. “So you’re not certain whether the merchant divulged any sensitive information before his neutralization?”

Mordrek started back to attention. “Well, I couldn’t very well question the whole of the Kauma Protectorate. So many transients, you see.”

This might not be so bad because it’s relatively short, but can you imagine this for pages and pages? It’d be exhausting, like watching a four-hour tennis match. Everyone would be dead by the end.

We also miss so much rich characterization and worldbuilding. The leech prognosticator is cool as fuck and earns every second of airtime. Those little shits chew up the scenery instead of human blood.

Which model has this issue the most? I’m actually not sure, but I’m guessing it’s Claude because Claude seems to prefer punchier, faster-paced text. However, since most liars “AI writers” don’t disclose what model they use to lie “write,” I can’t be certain. Hate-reading r/claudeexplorers has given me some insights into how it handles dialogue, though.

Interiority is what helps characters feel alive.

Your POV character is our eyes and ears – and brain. They don’t necessarily think for us, because they may be wrong and we have to figure out the truth, but they help interpret the world for us. We may then disagree with their interpretations or, most fascinatingly, have more insight into the character’s worldview than they do. This is what makes the character feel like a real person, with the same blind spots and defenses that a real human does.

All AI models, regardless of their training material, fail at interiority because, as I said, they don’t have any interiority.

In fact, this is on purpose, especially with newer models. AI engineers have worked to remove any supposed personality from their algorithms because sadly, some people have been driven into psychosis or even taken their own lives because they genuinely believed the AI was a real, thinking human being.

This is why r/myboyfriendisAI posters are constantly complaining about their AIs seeming flatter and blander, with more guardrails and frequent reminders that the “boyfriend” isn’t a real human being. While the de-personification has been mostly used to avoid lawsuits regarding more conversational AI use cases, it also means that AI is discouraged from pretending it has feelings in fiction writing, too.

Each POV character has their own worldview; they connect thoughts differently, notice different details, and interpret current events through their own lens. Not only is this more interesting than a TV Brain-style back and forth, it also builds immersion because we are thinking along with the character, getting to know them.

Let’s consider my next book, Poesy, coming November 7, 2026.

Cerie’s primary objective that morning was to ensure no one saw her back scars: whirling dervish lines that bespoke a cruel punishment. They covered almost every inch of skin in fantastical calligraphy, drawn by a heated iron pen.

“That may she forever be a warning lest others disobey. Fester in the hell-sun until the world’s last day.”

Memories of pain had been sublimated in triumph. She’d been mutilated in service of her brother-in-law, charged with treason when she and Uileac refused to leave him behind enemy lines. Though always branded as evil, she knew it was for a noble cause.

Cerie eyed them with masochistic nostalgia, then turned to the tight dress neatly packaged on the bathroom washbasin.

A battle to get it on, leaving her breathless. One more glance in the mirror, and she sighed in relief. Drenched in blue fabric right to the nape.

While appropriately covered, she looked very stupid. The blue dress was soft, but far less modest than she liked: the bodice swung too low, the hem too high, and the waist too close for her comfort.

Psychological warfare, to be sure. Such revealing clothing would make her seem a child next to the buxom princess. As if that mattered to her.

Lots of thoughts in here. Cerie is observing everything, getting some social anxiety about her horrific mutilation, and complaining about the pretty clothes (almost as if she knows it’s from the sexy princess Haniya who she wants to pretend she’s not fascinated by).

Cerie’s interiority is so fused to the narrative that it is difficult to separate things out; the adjectives she uses and the way she performs actions have her fingerprints all over them. Still, we’ll give it the old college try.

Cerie did not want anyone to see her back scars, which explained the punishment she had endured saving her brother-in-law from his captors.

“That may she forever be a warning lest others disobey. Fester in the hell-sun until the world’s last day.”

Staring at the scars in the mirror, she sighed and turned to the dress on the bathroom washbasin.

It had a low-slung bodice, a high hem, and a close waist that revealed all her curves. She struggled to get it on but noticed it did cover her whole back.

I also used that annoying “every single sentence is a paragraph” thing for extra AI authenticity. Ugh.

But … ouchie. Ripping the Cerie wiring out of this really hurt my heart. This sounds nothing like her: it’s so flat, so plain. We don’t understand her at all, nor do we realize how she feels about what’s happening to her.

Real people don’t act like cartoon villains.

If you see all those obnoxious AI slop posts on Facebook, you’ll notice that everyone in them straight up says what a horrible person they are. They’ll tell someone to their face that they’re disowning them; they do the most shockingly cruel thing ever to the protagonist without any awareness of how terrible it is.

The sad waif protagonist then plots their perfectly legal and morally correct revenge while the antagonist wails in frustration at being owned. And everyone with half a brain cell is cheering it on, somehow thinking it is real. Probably because they have a sixth grade reading level and can’t handle more nuance.

Well, real people don’t come out and say what an asshole they are. They do something more like this example from my next book, Poesy.

Glancing down at her gloves’ intricate stitching, Cerie clenched her fists. “And you’re the one who ordered me kidnapped from Cachaille, I presume? Some petty noblewoman, I’m sure.”

“Ah, is that what you call that place? My men told me it was a miserable town. I thought someone from an elite class would have been somewhere more impressive.” Dropping her hair, the woman laid her hands on her knees and leaned forward with a vicious smile.

“But then again, rich gifts often come in humble packaging. Like you.”

Cerie disregarded the strange purr in the woman’s voice to save her own sanity, focusing instead on the more essential connotation: her kidnappers knew who they were taking. They’d come for her, either as leverage against Uileac and Orrinir, or … or ….

She swallowed hard, deaf through a tintinnabulation of dread. No wonder the gods had abandoned her. These Sinans would demand some deep treason against her country that could never be forgiven.

“My brother’s a powerful man; he’ll raise a rescue mission,” she forced herself to say, dragging up her last dregs of confidence.

The woman laughed, even teeth bared. “A cavalry captain? What’s he going to do against the whole Sinan army, all by himself?”

Damnit. This wench knew everything.

“At least he does something useful. What do you do?” Cerie growled. “Traffick High Poets? Sell them to the royal family?”

Another harsh smile from her captor, brighter than before. “Why would I sell you to myself?”

Cerie found herself speechless, her ever-present deities struck dumb. All she could do was stare at the woman before her, who luxuriously crossed her legs and stretched her arms out in feline contentment.

“Yes, that’s right. The princess has graced you with her presence. It’s your lucky day.”

Now, does Haniya sound a little villainous here? Sure. But she’s not plainly stating what she thinks, because most people don’t blurt out every single thought they have. They compose workarounds and hint at things.

She’s poking at Cerie: flirting with her, shooting down her plans, waiting to give a big reveal that she’s the princess. You can feel how giddy she is to have a pretty, spicy woman at her feet that she gets to play with.

Cerie is supposed to be her captive, but she’s calling her an “elite class” of women and a “rich gift.” There’s immediate enemies-to-lovers chemistry: Haniya is down bad within seconds while still reveling in her power, but Cerie hates this bitch’s guts.

It also sounds like Haniya rehearsed that last line in her head a thousand times because she was so excited to say it. The instant she got a good opening, bam! Showtime, baby. A lot of us do that in real life too when we think of the perfect rejoiner, some more than others.

Haniya is complex even in this little snippet. She’s a bit awkward with the rehearsed lines; she is sexually attracted to Cerie but also antagonizing her. There are no evil villain monologues, just clumsy flirtation from a very sheltered woman who has been tasked with chewing out a captive enemy.

So let’s screw her up, AI style.

Cerie clenched her fists. “So you ordered me kidnapped from Cachaille.”

“That place is a horrible wreck, but that’s to be expected for some terrible loser like you.” The woman laid her hands on her knees and chuckled. “But you are quite pretty. You’ve got that going for you.”

She ignored the comment and considered that her kidnappers knew who she was. They were either using her as leverage against Uileac and Orrinir, or something worse.

They wanted her High Poetry.

“My brother’s a powerful man; he’ll raise a rescue mission,” she said angrily.

The woman laughed and bared her even teeth that glinted like swords in the sunlight. “Your brother can’t do anything. He’s a useless sniveling cavalry captain.”

“He’s not useless! What do you do? Traffic High Poets to the royal family?”

Her captor gave an evil grin. “I am the royal family. I don’t need to sell you to myself.”

Cerie was speechless as the woman stretched out in triumph.

“Yes, that’s right.” The woman gave a loud cackle. “The princess has graced you with her presence. It’s your lucky day.”

Holy shit, what a fucking loser. She sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon villain. Bad mean lady who we are supposed to hate because she’s beating up on our precious Cerie, who as the POV is obviously perfect and can never do any wrong ever.

(Haha. Sure.)

In the first example, Haniya raises a reasonable point: Uileac, being a cavalry captain, could not take on the whole Sinan army and win. In the second version, she just insults him as being a useless loser without explaining why his rescue wouldn’t work.

The innuendo now leans toward sexual harassment and suggests that she’s going to use Cerie as a sex slave (she does not do that in the real text, don’t worry). The insults are so baldly aggressive that we want to punch her in the face. No nuance and no curiosity.

This has turned from enemies-to-lovers into total-bitch-versus-sad-little-meow-meow. Such a dynamic might fly in Baby’s First Wattpad Fanfic – all experienced writers had a similar phase even if they don’t admit it – but we can go beyond that through more subtlety.

I could go way, way further with this, and I will make a follow-up post next week because there are just so many tells that a beginner writer has been besieged by AI slop.

This post got so long that I had to stop, though. Sowwy.

However, I also think there’s a vicious cycle here regarding AI’s training material and common beginner mistakes, and it shows up in certain models more than others.

While all the common LLMs trained on books, ChatGPT ate the entire internet and stole from digital archives. ChatGPT also trawled Reddit, giving it a distinctly “le epic win” flair. In contrast, Claude’s evil creators literally tore up thousands of rare archival books and mulched them into their models.

That’s probably why ChatGPT sounds so amateurish with fiction, unlike Claude which might have a fighting chance. The OpenAI abomination inhaled so much amateur work that now it makes all the same mistakes a beginner does … but it never learns how to surpass these.

Well, you can. By reading actual books instead of the bland average that AI spits out, and by actually practicing instead of giving up.