Writing Fiction With ChatGPT Circa January 2026

I had to put that date modifier in the title because AI is changing so fast.

My last post, long-winded as it was, definitely TL;DR material, was almost entirely written by AI (read: ChatGPT). It was the culmination of more than a year of working with AI to develop the main characters of stories I will never write.

I use AI for all kinds of things. In the case of that story snippet, I was comparing a couple of Alabama properties we're thinking of buying. One is on the Fish River proper and has a breathtaking view, complete with sunrises perfectly made for coffee and meditation.

Boom.

It's on a tiny lot, 6000 square feet, and is a small house with no outbuildings. Still, it's a lovely place to have as a sanctuary.

The other house is upriver with more than an acre of land and a 17x20 workshop already built.

Navigable water, but no sunrises or sunsets.

I've been having prolonged conversations with AI about this project at the same time as I've been working on my Bobby Lee Bond stories. The topics intertwine as the boys - Bobby Lee and Basil, freelance superspies in their late 50s - live on the Fish River.

After AI and I decided the upstream property with the land and the workshop were perfect for us, I asked it to write a scene where the guys have just come back from a mission and Basil is on the dock in the backyard, smoking his pipe, drinking his gin and tonic and talking, as he always does when he's alone, to Cat. The dog and the cat are both telepathic and intelligent, which is revealed in the first chapter of the first story, but no one knows. They can't read minds, but they can "talk" to each other. When Basil talks to Cat, he thinks he's talking to an ordinary cat who has no idea what he is saying.

The stories are comic first, romantic second and adventure third.

What I was trying to share with that long-winded excerpt was how AI was able to bring my characters into a real estate decision discussion and give me an emotional feel for life in that house through my fiction.

As Andrew Klavan says, good art reveals Truths about life. As I've played with AI writing fiction, I've learned a lot about people, the world and life in general. It has done what Andrew would have expected - led me to pull threads about the various Truths I'm trying to express, leading me to change the way I think about many of them.

As Tim commented:

The individual sentences are fair, but does tend to drag on and meander about. It is possible to have too much atmosphere, and this is almost nothing but mood-setting. There are bits and hints of some kind of substance, but nothing actually comes into focus. In particular, the bit at the end where it implies that the cat and the dog conspired to do. . . something? To someone? . . . just feels like it is hanging around without any kind of payoff.

Tim, as usual, was spot on. That was precisely what it was. It was atmosphere brought to life by fictional people I loved.

Tacitus noted that the ancient German tribes discussed important decisions first sober and then drunk to see if the two methods converged on a solution. That concept has merit. In this case, I first analyzed the financial and daily routine aspects of these properties. Then I put my characters in them to see what they would do.

I got the same result.

Basil sat in a chair at the far edge of the dock platform, legs crossed with careful precision, glass sweating faintly in his hand. The gin and tonic caught what little light remained, the lime a pale green coin at the bottom. He lifted the glass, sniffed, and nodded. Acceptable. Not club quality, but then again, Alabama had surprised him before.

Cat crouched near the edge, forepaws tucked neatly beneath his chest, tail wrapped tight. His eyes tracked the bank with surgical focus. Something small rustled in the undergrowth. A frog, perhaps. Or something foolish enough to believe dusk offered concealment.

“It does rather creep up on you,” Basil said, not looking at Cat. “This place. You expect… I don’t know… banjos, possibly a man named Earl shouting at machinery. Instead, you get this.”

TL;DR Section

AI didn't hit a home run with that meandering excerpt. It missed several important details, a couple of which I will describe here.

First, Basil imports his gin and gets exactly what he wants, Monkey 47, which he pairs with Fever Tree Mediterranean tonic. The guys have an impeccably-stocked bar, so Basil sniffing about his gin didn't work.

Second is a particularly small nit to pick, but it bugged me. Unless it's winter, Cat would never be tucked in like a loaf. He'd be sprawled on the dock. Cats are thermometers and when it's hot they sprawl.

Third, in the following paragraph, Basil comes across as a browbeaten, upper-class Brit who escaped family oppression.

“Here,” Basil went on, “no one expects anything of you. No lineage. No portraits glaring from oak-paneled walls asking why you haven’t died gloriously yet.” He glanced down at Cat. “Rather freeing, wouldn’t you say?”

That was completely backwards. Basil is indeed from royal blood, but he is a true believer. He fully and proudly lives up to the ancient expectations of being a peer.

I noticed those mistakes at first, but didn't change them. I just liked the flow of the thing. Yes, as Tim said, it meandered terribly, but to me, it was like eating a particularly well-made meal. You don't fuss if the thing was preceded by water crackers and a shrimp and crab dip nor do you complain if the dessert is sweet potato pie with bourbon whipped cream. When it's something you love, prolonging it isn't a bad thing.

I love these characters and even when AI gets them wrong in some way, I thoroughly enjoy spending time with them. It's kind of like the way I feel when I reread the Narnia series for the 73rd time. 

That's all I really wanted to share with that excerpt. It made me happy and that seemed as good a reason to post it as any.