Dungeons & Dragons, the fantasy role playing game, turns 50 this year. My high school friend, Jeff, introduced me to the game and I was hooked. A group of us would get together and play for hours. For those unfamiliar with the game, one person is the dungeon master who crates the world and challenges players will face. Based largely on J.R.R. Tolkien's
The Lord of the Rings, players choose a character such as a wizard, elf, warrior, dwarf, hobbit or other imaginary being. They create their background stories and personal goals, then join with the other players as adventurers.
The dungeon master presents them with challenges, such as being attacked by a band of orcs when searching for a magical amulet. Each player, in turn, says what their character does. Wizards may throw fireballs. Warriors may charge with swords. Elves might shoot arrows. Dungeon masters control the opposing creatures. They role multi-sided dice and consult charts to determine success or failure.
It’s a unique game. There is no competition among players. Everyone must work together to achieve the goals of finding treasure, learning magic and winning battles. Ultimate success comes from the players working together as a team, a life lesson people in the real world could benefit from.
My first fantasy novel,
Dragons Unremembered, began as a scenario when I acted as a dungeon master in one campaign. The group of adventurers are in a tavern when an old man tells them about a treasure in a cave guarded by a dragon. I could have left it there and let the players create the story as they fought the dragon. Something inside me pushed to embellish the story, add new traps, create secondary characters for the players to interact with and develop twists.
Eventually, I realized this could be a book, so I wrote one. It was terrible. I had no idea how to write a novel. After years of study under a bestselling novelist and volumes of books about writing, I developed the skills, craft and my own voice. I abandoned the fantasy book and wrote
Beyond the Shallow Bank, historical fiction with elements of Celtic mythology. When I finished that book, I looked back at the original fantasy, saw it had exciting elements, thew out most of the material, and rewrote it from scratch to become the first book in
The Carandir Saga trilogy.
Unlike video games that present pre-programmed stimulation, role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons engage the imagination of players who form the worlds in their minds and make completely free choices outside of any machine control. Players, not computer programmers, decide what actions are possible. I’m certain other writers of fantasy literature were inspired by the game as well. For those who don’t go on to write books, the experience of cooperation and comradeship gives a sense of community people can take back into the real world.
Since 1999, many people have participated in the National Novel Writing Month, known more commonly as NaNoWriMo, to write the first draft of a 50,000-word novel or the beginning of a novel between November 1st and 30th. I’ve never personally participated. It takes me several months to complete a first draft as I explore the subjects, characters, plot and themes of a book. Still, many people find the time constraint of NaNoWriMo just the push they need to finish and have a great time. Up to now, everything submitted has been created by humans.
This year, the organization behind NaNoWriMo posted a statement on its website saying it, “does not explicitly support any specific approach to writing, nor does it explicitly condemn any approach, including the use of AI.”
A great backlash has come from writers, editors and even people on the NaNoWriMo board of directors who have resigned. I am appalled by this decision. If someone can use an AI robot to write a story, what worth is the exercise? It’s not the user of AI who created anything. Having AI submissions makes the whole concepts of NaNoWriMo worthless.
It is in the act of writing where we consider what we want to say and sometimes change our positions in the process as we better understand the materiel and characters while we uncover new ideas and perspectives.
When I write, I carefully consider the words I use and the structure I implore. This hones my mind to truly see what I want to achieve. I never use AI to write stories or even tools like Grammarly to suggest words, structure or plot points. The knowledge of these things as a writer is what allows people to create stories where the craft becomes second nature, like riding a bike or driving, and we can concentrate on the stories and characters. Tools such as Grammarly can be a good learning experience to train on, yet when people continue to rely on these supports and don’t train themselves to write effectively, they fail to communicate their own ideas.
I spent years learning how to write; how to put sentences together, how to form pacing, how to create fully formed, engaging characters, how to build stories that immerse readers in the world, and perhaps most importantly, how to consider the messages I want to share as I present my themes. For inspiration, I draw not from computer generated suggestions, but from my own experiences, my own opinions (which sometimes change as I see things during the writing process that I didn’t before), articles from reputable news outlets and conversations with others to learn about their views and experiences.
Writing is an art, not a mechanical process. Art is one of the important aspects of humanity that binds people and societies together. When we create and tell each other stories, we share parts of ourselves.
AI can be used for marvelous things to benefit people in weather prediction, medicine, drug development, traffic control, environmental assessments and more. When a machine builds a story, there is no human connection. Artificial intelligence tools should never be used to write stories because machines have no emotions or perspectives. They simply manipulate vast amounts of material written by millions of humans and organize it through a pseudo-neural network feedback loop to mash the material together. Sometimes the modelers pay writers or publishers to use their material. All too often, copyrighted works are just taken from the web, newspapers, magazines and books without permission or compensation. This is, in a real sense, plagiarism.
The term artificial intelligence is itself a misnomer, taken from an age-old desire of humans to create life. There is no intelligence involved. There is no sentience. There are no emotions. There is no compassion. There are just computer programs created by humans in which the programs follow rules laid out that are colored by the views, prejudices and agendas of the programmers. The results can be incomplete and unreliable, and sometimes return misinformation and lies.
Write stories in your own voice. It takes time and effort. Then again, so does living a full and socially engaging life.
