So I saw a post on social media about an unnamed but well-respected writer who has apparently suggested that, as a way of making a living in a world that doesn’t pay enough for their actual work, writers should use LLMs to write “romantasy.”
The poster – also a writer – made the important point that since one would have to edit the LLM work, the writer would end up incorporating some of that style into their own work. (The poster is also a writing instructor who discourages the use of LLMs by their students because of its effect on their writing and also because reading LLM prose is deeply boring.)
But what struck me was that the first writer, who otherwise does their own work and wants respect for that, must consider romantasy a trash genre. I doubt they read it and if they do, it is with contempt. I’m sure they wouldn’t publish it under their own name.
So I guess outsourcing writing of “commercial trash” to LLMs is the current version of “learn how to crank out something that’s easy to write” to pay the bills.
Many years ago, when I was just setting out in the world and looking for a way to make a living that wasn’t too stressful so that I could explore my own writing and other passions, I checked a book out of the library on how to write romance.
I mean, romance is notoriously formulaic. I have been told repeatedly by people who write it and read it that there are basic rules you cannot break. It should be easy to write. Right?
Yeah, well no. Because what dawned on me then was that I couldn’t write romance because I don’t read it. I mean, I occasionally read it, and I don’t object to a good love story, but on the whole I’m not interested in stories in which the plot revolves around the characters falling in love and living happily ever after.
An occasional romantic comedy, sure. Jane Austen, of course – but then Jane Austen wrote horror, not romance. (I get cold shudders every time I think of a world that bars Elinor Dashwood from well-paid and useful occupation.)
I came around to the understanding that you can’t write fiction you don’t read and you really can’t write fiction you don’t like. I somehow doubt anyone who’s making money writing romance hates the genre.
As a result, I don’t write romance. Or tie-in novels. Or literary fiction about young editorial assistants having affairs with senior editors. (Especially that last one.)
I can see why someone looking at romance from the outside might figure LLMs could do it just as well as people because they think it’s just formula. I assume it’s similar for romantasy. But of course, the breakout romance novels do something different within that formula, because that is possible when you bring your whole self to the job.
LLMs don’t have a self to bring, so ….
My own solution – and it took me a long time to find – was a day job covering legal matters. The best job was editing a publication on class actions. It was intellectually stimulating, but it was also structured writing. I had to pay attention to being clear, but I didn’t have to invent new ways of saying things.
Doing that work was actually very good for my writing as well. Figuring out how to be very clear is good training.
But when I walked out the door, I was done. And, best of all, it wasn’t boring though it also wasn’t all-encompassing.
I think that’s the perfect day job for someone who has another passion to follow: not boring, but not all-encompassing.
Unfortunately, jobs like that are not easily available these days. I’m very glad I don’t need to find a job. And also glad that I’ve made my peace with not being famous or making serious money out of writing.
I write. I look for places to publish what I write. I could do more, but I don’t have to push things. That’s a luxury I appreciate.
The one thing I’m sure of, though, is that you shouldn’t sell your soul to make a living. For me, writing something I don’t respect – even if I write it myself and don’t use LLMs – is selling my soul. And I probably would be lousy at it anyway.
For the most part, only you know what is destroying to your soul, so only you can make the call. But I’m pretty sure that using LLMs to write is harmful to everyone and particularly harmful to anyone pursuing writing as an art or profession.
And using them to write something you don’t even want to read is definitely soul-destroying. Find another way.
I had a student in my “How to Write a Romance Novel” class, long ago and far away, who was an older, white man, a businessman who had been very successful, and had written half a dozen novels about Captains of Industry for which he had been unable to find a publisher. He had come to my class because he was determined to be published, and figured “anybody can write one of those” romance things. I tried to make him understand that unless writing something pushed some of his buttons, it was unlikely to push the buttons of any other reader. “My wife says I’ll fail because I don’t have any sense of what’s romantic,” he said, as if it were a badge of honor. Sadly, he persisted, and wound up sending me his novel to read. In structure and content it was very much like many Harlequin romances of the time. The only part that was interesting was the setting (a business milieu, where he was comfortable and even compelling). But the romance? His wife was right. And the sex scenes? More thighs and breasts than the poultry counter, but no… incense.
I will now think of this guy, who was not a bad human, as a forerunner of LLM fiction writing. He had no sense of what would touch a reader because he remained untouchable.
That last sentence sums up why LLMs cannot and will not create art better than any analysis I’ve read so far.