So, you’ve written your manuscript with AI. You’re feeling pretty pleased with how much time and money you’ve managed to save yourself. Until…
You start to feel like maybe there’s something just slightly off about your manuscript. Turns of phrase that keep repeating. Idioms that don’t make sense. Plot holes and people who appear or disappear out of nowhere. Small character details that keep changing – like that blonde who drives a Jeep suddenly flicking red hair over her shoulder as she unlocks the door of her Chevrolet.
Maybe you’ve even given the manuscript to beta readers, who keep telling you they just can’t quite connect to the emotions of the characters or understand why they, as the reader, should care about them.
Yes, it’s happened: your manuscript is AI slop. But you don’t want to give up on it. So, what do you do next?
Make it yours
The first thing you need to do is to edit the manuscript… thoroughly. Even to the level of a complete rewrite. There’s a good reason for this that has nothing to do with the quality of the writing, although readers will notice those telltale AI signs even if you keep refining your prompts until you get something you think is perfect.
The reason you need to do a full rewrite is that AI output is not currently copyrightable. This means that if you do publish your novel, anyone else could steal your manuscript and start making a profit off it themselves. In fact, anyone can do anything they like with the book and the characters and plots inside it. In the event of your making a legal challenge, you would have to prove that you are the true author of the work – and you won’t be able to do that, because you aren’t.
Unless you make significant edits, which will turn the work into something you actually own and can copyright.
Read for consistency
The next step will be to read for any plot holes, character description changes, missed details, lost continuity, or anything else that could ruin the experience for the reader. This can be a hard task – especially if you’re finding plot holes so large, you need to rewrite whole chapters or even the entire end of the book.
At this point, it will probably be easier to hire a developmental editor who can point out those plot holes for you and suggest ways to fill them in – or even make the changes for you.
Throw out telltale AI phrases
There are a lot of tells that will key readers in to the fact that you’ve used AI. I won’t list them here, for the sheer reason that this list may change, evolve, and grow over time. The more people use AI, and the more of the output on the internet is written by AI, the more recursive these problems are going to get. When the language models are feeding on themselves to generate new work, things will become even more obvious and even more cliched.
We’ve already seen attacks on the em dash as proof of AI authorship – an entire form of punctuation now under suspicion. It will not stop there, and there will always be more telltale signs you just can’t quite strip out with prompts. Avoiding them in the first place by hiring a human ghostwriter will significantly reduce the amount of hassle and friction you need to face between having the idea for your book and actually seeing it out there in the world.
Get a human editor
If you haven’t already, it’s an extremely good idea to hire a real human editor who does not use AI in their process to go over your book. They need to assess not just the way it is written, but whether it is entertaining enough, whether the characters are consistent and enjoyable, and whether you actually have a viable product for sale.
All manuscripts, whether written by a human or otherwise, should always go through the hands of an experienced and skilled editor before considering publication. Your manuscript cannot be an exception, unless you want low sales and one-star reviews.
If this is all starting to sound like too much work, it doesn’t have to be this way. Don’t give up on your manuscript – bring it to a ghostwriter who can take care of it for you and bring it to the standard it deserves. I’ve already seen a significant increase in clients coming to me with manuscripts that need fixing thanks to AI – yes, even the ones that promise they can help you write a book – and I don’t see this trend shifting any time soon.
Get in touch with me today for a consultation on what your manuscript needs – and how we can save it from a destiny of being abandoned in the graveyard of AI slop.
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