And yet the value of a novel isn’t only in its prose. On Amazon, “Shy Girl” has a rating of four out of five stars, based on input from hundreds of reviewers. Many of them praise its premise and ideas—features of the book that it seems reasonable to think were shaped by human decision-making. (One reviewer describes knowing about “the controversy” surrounding the novel, but liking it anyway: “The premise sucked me in.”) The big-picture reality is that many novels are poorly written. They can still succeed with readers because fiction, like music, is a forgiving art form. Just as a good song can have a groovy beat but a predictable melody, so a piece of fiction can work on some levels but not others. Partial success can be enough, as long as readers find something that moves them—suspense, beauty, realism, fantasy, even just a sympathetic protagonist in whom they can recognize themselves.
If the creation of fiction is a layered endeavor—if premise, plot, style, and so on are to some extent separable—then must all the layers be made by the same individual? This question has already been answered by practicing writers in a variety of disciplines, who often work in groups and teams. James Patterson, who produces one out of every seventeen hardcover novels sold in the United States, does so by providing collaborators with detailed outlines and treatments, effectively running what’s been described as a “novel factory.” (He might oversee thirty projects simultaneously, publishing fifteen books a year.) This practice exiles him completely from the realm of literary fiction; some might even question whether Patterson is really a writer. But our expectations vary by context, with implicit understandings that we rarely make explicit. When reading a Booker Prize-winning novel, we expect every word to have been written by the author, but when reading journalism we assume that both writers and editors played a role. We frequently praise the showrunners of prestige television, who rely on groups of writers to produce scripts. When a screenwriter wins an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, the word “original” means only that the script isn’t an adaptation; a lot of people, credited or not, may have contributed to the final product. Perhaps we’re more open to writerly collaboration when it’s part of a larger project, such as a film, which is itself inherently collaborative. But what if the larger project is the continuation of Patterson’s “Alex Cross” series, which has been running since 1993? No individual could write that many books. A factory is simply required.
It seems inevitable that writers will use A.I. to start their own factories. In February, in the Times, Alexandra Alter interviewed Coral Hart, a pseudonymous romance novelist who has used A.I. tools to speed-write hundreds of novels, which she’s self-published on Amazon under dozens of names. After Hart prompts her system into motion, it can produce, in forty-five minutes, a draft ready for human revision (about, for example, “a rancher who falls for a city girl running away from her past”). Although none of Hart’s novels have been best-sellers, she makes “six figures” through her method, Alter reports, and also offers online classes for aspiring A.I.-assisted romance novelists. The future implied by the story is one of depersonalized, industrial-scale fiction production, where authors become showrunners, supervising A.I. writers’ rooms. One risk, of course, is that readers of such fiction won’t necessarily know who, or what, was involved in producing what they read, undermining the implicit understandings on which they depend. (Amazon asks Hart to disclose her use of A.I.; she sometimes doesn’t.)
But is high-volume production the only option A.I. offers? A lot depends on your goals and perspective. I’m an extremely amateur musician, and I’ve certainly found that technology has increased my productivity. Sitting at my computer, armed only with a two-octave MIDI keyboard, I can hurtle through the steps of composition; I could spam Spotify with two new tracks a day, writing an album a week. But that’s not what I’m doing. Instead, I’m using musical technology to help me get to where I want to go. I couldn’t possibly perform my songs for an audience—I can barely play a dozen bars of piano without making a mistake—but that’s not my aim. I just want to listen out loud to what I hear in my head. To put it in grandiose terms, I want to realize a vision.
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