Beyond the Draft: Why AI Won’t Save Fiction Authors (Yet)

If I had to summarize what the first year of AI-enabled writing did, it is this: writer’s block is dead and buried. There can no longer be an excuse not to write.

With the death of writer’s block, we have seen a new generation of tools replacing the Microsoft Word-style text processor. AI is also a critical challenge to more sophisticated writing tools, like Scrivener, which had been widely considered a top choice for organizing and drafting novels.

The new generation of AI tools (at least the useful ones) have fallen into largely two categories:

• Base tools: ChatGPT with its different models, and Claude
• “Dedicated” tools: popular ones include Sudowrite and Novel AI, with the latest addition, Novel Craft, being praised as perhaps the breakthrough many AI-positive writers were waiting for.

Personally, as I enter the 6th month of my experimentation at the intersection of fiction writing and AI, I have stuck with the base models by and large. I have currently transitioned from using Scrivener to Notion to handle my manuscript, keeping open the two chatbots mentioned on the side to help as developmental and line editors.

The main reason for sticking with base tools has been that I have been doing a lot more AI-assisted…