The Future of Fiction and the Storyteller’s Advantage

WHAT’S THE FUTURE OF FICTION writers in the age of artificial intelligence?

This is a huge topic of discussion in the world of authors, publishers, and readers right now. Existential panic abounds.

I’ll toss my thoughts into the ring for consideration. I’m going to explain the massive advantage that I believe fiction writers potentially have going forward, and why fiction readers need humans to keep expanding the literary universe—now and in the future.

(Notice I keep saying “fiction.” That’s my profession and my focus. Each art must navigate its own unique course.)

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Experiencing life vs. writing about it

I’m going to discuss the raw inputs for a fiction writer’s career: life experiences.

Learning to write is a separate challenge, but without unique source material, even the most well-crafted books fall flat.

Three realities define the future of fiction

Here’s how I summarize the current landscape, the opportunity it presents, and the advantage that storytellers have compared to some other creative artists.

The challenge: Derivative content is easy to generate

The floor for competent storytelling is rising rapidly.

Writers who rely primarily on familiar plots, familiar character archetypes, and familiar story structures will find themselves competing with AI systems that can generate endless variations on what already exists.

This may reduce the demand for certain forms of entry-level storytelling that have sustained authors in the past.

Meaning: Stories that are derivative of what already exists—which are the very stories AI systems are trained on and can replicate competently and endlessly—are increasingly within the realm of non-human authorship.

(Entry-level simply means stories that primarily recycle well-known plots and tropes and characterizations, regardless of genre.)

The opportunity: Humans inhabit reality. AI doesn’t.

Novelty isn’t completely a human capability; AI can sometimes produce combinations nobody has seen before. But humans are the source of most meaningful artistic departures because humans actually live in the world.

We all like our comfort content. I’m currently a fan of endless isekai manga myself. And certain tropes could show up in every story and I wouldn’t complain.

But when readers hunger for something new, when they want a premise or plot that is truly innovative, that is the domain of inspired human creativity—creativity rooted in humans’ experiences in the real world.

AI doesn’t understand what it’s writing the same way humans understand their own personal stories lived in the real world.

The frontiers of fiction have historically been expanded by humans, and I see no reason to believe that will change.

The advantage: Human experience compounds over a lifetime

Writers of fiction who dedicate themselves to the craft can get continually better at storytelling with each passing year for the rest of their lives.

Those with talent who start off struggling to write at the entry-level floor established by AI can continue developing throughout their lives and eventually produce work that no artificial intelligence system would have originated on its own.

I haven’t even been writing fiction for sixty years (unless you count putting a relentlessly positive spin on memos, reports, and PowerPoint slides for my corporate bosses). Yet every year I spent accumulating experiences gave me more material to draw upon once I finally turned to fiction.

Young writers, this is for you

It’s entirely possible for the future to be bright for the most-talented and dedicated storytellers, just as it has always been. And, unlike my pathway to my first novel, it doesn’t have to take sixty years or so.

(But if it does, I’m here to tell you that’s not a bad outcome either.)

Humans are live-action LLM’s

Artificial intelligence seems so perceptive because it can make connections between a vast number of things. A human brain is capable of doing the same thing.

Out of the box, it simply lacks the training data to accomplish it.

Human training data is accumulated by replicating what large language models do, but with a twist: Artificial intelligence scrapes the internet (and a whole lot more); a human brain scrapes life.

A writer who wants to produce innovative, non-derivative fiction for readers can’t do it if she doesn’t have experiences to connect. It’s really that simple.

A storyteller can choose to fill their their brain bank with interconnectable data that is broad, varied, and captures multiple aspects of the human condition.

Or… they can live a life that settles into a consistent groove and work from the same limited experiential dataset for decades, cross-connecting the same information until there are no innovative combinations left.

Real writers learn from real life

What should an aspiring fiction author who wants to connect with a wide audience major in at college?

Here’s a hot take: Anything they want, as long as it’s not writing.

Take some classes about English and writing, sure. But hanging out with other writers is the last thing you need if your intention is to write for everyday, ordinary people.

People who are obsessed with writing aren’t normal.

But people who like to read are, so that’s who you need to spend most of your time around.

College is fundamentally about learning how to think in an organized manner that reaches solutions, and how to interact with others to achieve results in actual jobs that pay the bills.

The reality of putting food on the table and paying rent is normal human stuff. The exact stuff writers of fiction need to be able to connect deeply and empathetically with.

Writing can be learned outside of the classroom. Classrooms are for learning how not to starve while learning how to write.

Molding your ways of thinking to align with how real people think rather than how writers think is a long-term benefit.

Writing fiction is a lifetime commitment

“But this is the only time in my life that I’ll be able to focus exclusively on learning to write!”

First, most of what you’ll eventually know about writing won’t come from the few years you spend in college.

Second, let’s be real:

You’re going to find plenty of time in the future to focus obsessively on all kinds of things. If one of those obsessions isn’t writing, then “author” is not a viable career path for you.

Exotic experience is not required

“But my life is definitely not anything to write about. It’s… typical. Nothing special at all.”

You aren’t going to write about your own life. (Well, maybe if you write a memoir, but you can only do that once.) You’re going to write about life using your own experiences as relatable context.

Plus, no one’s life is typical.

Setting forth on the path of adulthood is an unending study in the human condition. The setting of one’s life doesn’t affect this.

The available lessons are vast and varied:

• Professional success and failure
• Caring for aging parents
• Falling in and out of love
• Building and losing relationships
• Forgiveness, grief, heartbreak, regrets, joy
• Illness, injury, death
• Sports, competition, triumph, defeat
• Military service, leadership, followership
• Raising children, launching young adults
• Travel adventures and debacles

That’s a very small sample from my bank of experiences that I can draw on to make my writing engaging.

Stories are about characters making their way through life. Every life experience a writer gains can enhance their ability to create characters with greater depth that appeal to readers.

Your career is what you make it

I spent a few decades in a career field that from the outside looks boring: insurance claims. It was anything but. Being an adjuster of liability claims taught me vast amounts about humans under stress and how the wider world worked.

• Negotiations, litigation, contracts
• Obligations, incentives, penalties
• Collapses, leaks, explosions
• Injuries, disease, death

Attaching a dollar value to someone’s pain and suffering—or even their loved one’s life—then talking to them about it with compassion was an endless study in humanity.

I did a bit of everything and loved learning all of it. The same troves of experience are hiding in all sorts of different jobs if one constantly seeks out all the challenges that are available.

Journaling is optional

If you like writing down your thoughts and actions in a journal, then do it. I’ve just never been able to keep one going for more than five days, and my brain still offers up an endless stream of past experiences—including stuff I’ve forgotten I learned—as I write.

The path of the storyteller

At some point, the conveyor belt progress of the school years dumps everyone off the end into a big pile. The couple of decades of being pushed forward no matter what you do ends.

Forward motion becomes each person’s own responsibility.

Regardless of the path a writer decides to take, here’s the lifelong storyteller’s motto: I’ll try anything once! ¹ Moderation in all things, please. Don’t be stupid.

(Click footnote numbers to open author remarks.)

If you can make a choice between doing two different things, or doing something two different ways, choose whatever you haven’t done before more often than not.

Choose the experience you have not yet had.

Any new experience is fuel for future fiction

That applies to all activities, from the exotic to the mundane.

Wavering about where to go on vacation? Pick the destination you’ve never visited.

Considering how to spend a Saturday? Put down the controller and go clean the beach with a volunteer group.

Cleaned the beach last weekend? Learn a new video game.

It’s all grist for the fiction mill.

Again: The point isn’t that you need specific types of activities. It’s that you need to be constantly adding different activities, new ways of thinking, new ways of processing the world into your cranial large language model.

Meeting a large variety of people doesn’t hurt either.

Introverted writers: This means you, too

I can live like a shut-in now and focus on my writing since I’ve spent so many decades mixing it up with humans in the real world. If you’re not yet over the six-decade mark, learning to force yourself out the door is a critical professional skill.

You don’t have to actually interact all that much. Just observing humans in their natural habitat is the real objective.

The field of fiction narrows but never closes

Even if AI becomes vastly better at storytelling than it is today, the following statements can still remain true:

• People continue accumulating experiences throughout life.
• Those experiences enrich storytelling.
• Writers can continue improving their craft for decades.

Innovative art emerges from people engaging with the world around them.

And readers will always be the better for it.

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P. S. I hear you: “That’s all great, but seriously: What about the writing part?” For that, you’ll need to stick around. I’m sharing what I’ve learned about writing in different outlets. Pro tip: Subscribing to my newsletter is a good place to start!

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Featured image by S. A. Weigle. Winding tracks in the sand. Tacoma Narrows Park.

Embedded Notes

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  Moderation in all things, please. Don’t be stupid. ↩︎