The literary world is awash with all sorts of literature written by AI. The collection of writers across the world seems to have been split into three different categories. The first category is made up of writers who ordinarily don’t have writing skills and are now relying heavily on AI to write for them. The second category uses AI to structure their work while they flesh out the content.
The third category of writers is anti-AI and wants AI to stay completely away from their writing. Irrespective of the category you belong to as a writer, one burning question is: how does human writing stand out in the midst of AI writing? This article answers that question, especially for writers who enjoy the art of writing organically with little or no AI input.
Share Personal Stories
One way that human writing stands out from AI writing is that it features personal stories. There are some experiences that only humans can share and communicate effectively in writing, which AI can’t. Anecdotes give insight into personal experiences and lessons learned from living life as a human. AI has no persona; stories. So, enrich your content with your experiences and lessons picked up over the years. That is one way to make your human writing shine forth in the midst of all the AI writing in the public space.
Describe Real Events
In addition to things that happened to you, you can also share events that you witnessed, even if they did not affect you directly. Recounting real-life events is one way to show that you are a human writing, and not a robot churning out artificial content.
Use Slang
Slangs are used in regular human conversations. They are part of everyday language. In that same manner, use slang in your writing. If your book is not intended for a formal, technical, or professional audience, but for the public, it is okay to use informal words. This is one thing that differentiates human writing from robotic writing. While AI strives to stay formal and rigid, you have the poetic license to write as you like in a language that your audience can understand.
Use Your Natural Voice
The secret behind human writing is to write as you speak. Write in your natural voice, so that your audience can identify your voice even when you write under a pseudonym. Your natural voice is your style and identity that runs throughout your writing. It is an identifier that stamps a part of your soul on everything you write. AI has no natural voice and therefore ends up sounding bland and cold. That is where your human writing thrives over AI writing.
Provide Details
The difference between someone who has been to London and someone who has only seen London on television is how detailed the former is. Giving details about a place, people, a period in time, and other aspects of your content will help your human writing stand out in the midst of all the AI writing. AI writing can be shallow, and it can touch on a few descriptions and move on.
You, as a human, have the edge to be as vivid and descriptive as you want to be. Spare no details. Shine through in your human writing with all the tiny details. Tell your readers how the sun made the plant shrivel because it was left outside for so long. Describe the broken flower pot and how one corner was painted by the poor widow to give it a semblance of newness, even though that effort made no difference to how faded the flower pot remained. Never skimp on the minute details. That is what separates your human writing from the non-human writing that is slowly taking over the literary space.
Show Emotions
A huge difference between human writing and AI writing is that the latter is not emotive. This means that AI writing is unemotional. Artificial writing focuses on presenting the facts without any input or emotional response to the situation described. This is understandable because Artificial Intelligence has no capacity to feel. Having the capacity to feel, as a human, should therefore work to your advantage.
Express how sad the child was and how much he missed his mother. Give your own input as a narrator (especially if you are writing in the first person point of view). Let your readers feel the emotions of the characters; pain, joy, jealousy, sadness, longing, nostalgia, whatever it may be. Let your writing feel human and convey human emotions. That way it is obvious to your audience that this is human writing, and not some cold, emotionless, fact-stating AI writing.
Be Original
Originality is one thing that will make you stand out from the crowd. Writing original content that is not a copy or simulation of previous works of other writers is a great way to make your human writing valuable in the eyes of your readers. One thing that many readers have found out about AI is that its output is a collection of the works of many different writers across the world.
This, therefore, means that AI does not present anything new or original. It simply complies what is out there and presents it to people. You can’t go wrong with originality. This is one way to show your readers that you are writing from the heart and not from a cold collection of other people’s works. Not only does originality show human writing, but it also helps you become a trusted favourite to your readers.
Stick to a Point of View
One feature of human writing is having a particular point of view from the start to the finish of your content. Before you start writing any story, ask yourself what angle or perspective you want to write it from. Do you want to tell it as part of the story (first-person point of view)? Would you prefer to stay out of the story completely and just tell it like an observer (third-person point of view)?
You could also decide to tell it from an all-knowing perspective by stating things that are not known to the characters or predicting things that were yet to happen in the story (omniscient point of view). Whichever you choose, you have to stick to that point of view until the story is over. That is one thing that AI finds difficult to do. AI sometimes switches points of view and ends up confusing the readers. Stick to your point of view and make your human writing easy to understand.
Show Your Personality
Your personality is one quality that will make you unforgettable. Think about how people remember you because of certain quirks that you have, or how you laugh so loudly and throw your head backwards when they crack jokes. Those are characteristics that make you memorable. In the same vein, infusing your personality into your writing will make you unforgettable to your readers.
Let your writing reflect your humour, warmth, calm, love for asking questions, passion for travelling, insatiable appetite for adventure, and all the characteristics that make you unique. These qualities make you both relatable and also give you a uniqueness in the eyes of your readers.
AI has no personality and can’t bring this unique quality to any writing. This is yet another edge that human writing has over AI writing.
AI writing seems to have taken over the literary world. Yet there is still room for human writing. As a writer who writes from the head and heart, these tips can make your human writing stand out and win you a place in the hearts and on the shelves of your readers.