AI-Generated Content: Here to Stay

 This Week's Topic: AI Art vs Artist / AI Composition vs Authors

Whoooooboy it's wild to be alive during another episode of technology aiding and infringing upon creative works. This season on Helpful and Harmful, we have machines being trained on copyrighted works and regurgitating bastardizations of those works without permission from Intellectual Property owners or remuneration paid to said owners. 

All was well and good in AI's nascent stages when developers used works in the public domain as source material. Then, sourcing tapped into lesser-known protected works under the education umbrella of the Fair Use Doctrine. Still hungry for data, sourcing leveled up to web crawling, blowing past any pretense of acknowledging Intellectual Property laws and protections. Now, AI is like Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors, screaming "Feed  Me, Seymour!"

Developers and project leaders pointed to Consumer Interest to continue to acquire funding. Creative AI hit the sweet spot of the 3 Cs of internet Consumerism: Cool, Cute, and Creepy. Image mashups went viral. Predictive texts got baked into apps as a "sticky" feature. It was all entertaining and time-saving. Then the fourth C of Consumerism arrived, slightly behind schedule: Costly. 

Through the theft of intellectual property, the AI projects didn't bear the cost of sourcing their data. The cost fell to the copyright holders through lost income. 

Suddenly, artists were discovering machine-generated collages containing significant portions of their original works, including modifications of commissioned works purchased by individuals and large Multinational Corporations. Reuse of purchased art without permission is a violation of the artist-client contract. So who was at fault? Neither of the parties in the contract. These modified works were being reused in commercial ventures without credit, permission, or remuneration. In legal terms, the businesses behind the AI machines infringed on the artists' copyright by exceeding the Substantial Similarity standard. 

Growing pains, the technologists scoffed. The AI "mind" is much like the human mind: the more information to which it is exposed, the more it is capable of expressing original concepts. Similarly phrased, the larger the pool of source material, the less readily identifiable the Intellectual Property infringements. Fully aware the enforcement of IP law lags significantly behind technology development, the AI teams push ahead. By the time the courts tell them to stop, it'll be far too late. Market integration and saturation will have peaked. The revenue realization will make whatever damages are to be paid a pittance, in the unlikely event that damages are awarded at all.  

Seeing artists being screwed, writers winced and wished them luck. Pirating has long been a problem for both groups, so have fan works that cross from appreciation into appropriation. Now there are machines programmed to do both with both clunky and slick consumer-facing frontends. Artists despaired, but their works remained cataloged. 

Despite sniggering over nonsensical AI-generated scripts and genre snippets, writers felt the creep of inevitability. We may not be in the same boat as the artists, but we are navigating the same sea. 

Sure enough, before long, the composition AIs were fed enough source data that predictive text expanded from a sentence to a short reply, to an article summary, to a short article, to short stories, to novellas, to novels. Freelance writers are losing gigs to composition bots. Magazines are inundated by AI-composed articles. Publishers, already unable to efficiently manage slush piles, are buried by the AI additions.

But is AI bad? No. Just because a significant portion of its development came about through peak avaricious capitalism doesn't make the programs themselves bad. Within 3-5 years AIs integration into our daily lives will be as seamless as emojis and voice assistants. Is it the death knell for creative arts? No, of course not. However, our marketplace is going to be inundated with AI-generated content. It is going to impact our revenue. It is going to demand we learn how to leverage the technology to help us succeed or we will suffer the fate of Luddites. 

The arrival of this technology isn't too different from when ebooks went mainstream. Publishing went through massive change and expansion. Cottage industries popped up to support the development of the primary technology which then spawned secondary and tertiary supporting technologies. Remember when the book market exploded with the deluge of self-published books? We're already seeing an influx of AI-generated books.

Can we look to the heavy hitters of industry to push for responsible use of AI? Pfft. If their approach to combating plagiarism and IP infringement is any indicator, it is highly unlikely that major retailers are going to stop AI-generated content from being listed in their stores. Sure, I'd love for the creatives' guilds and the parent companies of publishers to force retailers to use AI detection and employ deterrent programs and policies, but, let's be realistic. Anyone who read the US vs Simon's Radom Penguin transcripts can see what little value parent companies place on talent. They'd have to lose billions to AI to bully big retailers like Zon, Walmart, and Apple. It's way more likely that the parent companies will have stood up their own AI divisions before investing in protections for human talent. Remember, profits matter most. 

Lest we think we are too holy to partake in the sins of AI, we can't forget that we too are business owners looking to make a profit. If we are presented with low-cost, legally licensed use of AI-generated images for our covers or marketing materials, will we turn away from it on principle? If we are presented with a reasonable cost for an AI voice-acting app to create audiobooks of our novels, are we going to decline for fear of putting voice actors out of work? We are the pot and we are the kettle.

What about protecting our IP from AI? It's an expensive Sisyphean effort, particularly once our works are indexed by machines in countries that don't participate in IP protection. Once the data is added, there's no removing it from every system that has accessed the data. That's a battle to be waged at the level of national governments. Sure, we now have small claims courts for copyright infringement in the US, and, yes, the Author's Guild recommends adding a "not for AI training use" clause to all publishing contracts, but the burden of proof falls on us--not the data farms--to prove that that specific farm was the one who imported our protected text. Good luck proving it before you go broke. 

Look, we--the authors--have never had a say in how many books of what quality are released in our genre. Sure, we worry about reader experiences and how "badly written" books turn away potential buyers, but we can't control any of it. All we can do is write our stories to the best of our abilities...and scream into the din of Buy Me in search of readers. As for welcoming AI into our creative and business processes, we shouldn't shy away, but we need to be more responsible when it comes to the IP of others. That means being more diligent about verifying the licensing of images and voice work.  

AI isn't going away. It's intended to make our lives easier. It's on us to figure out how, responsibly.

Back Cover Copy is Hard

 

What's so hard about back cover copy? I'm just summarizing the plot, right? Giving you a short snippet of insight into the story?

It's what I thought when I was first published. Except my editor kept making me rewrite it. And rewrite it. I'd like to tell you I learned better by book two. I hadn't. In fact, back cover copy didn't get any easier for years. Because I was coming at it all wrong.

I don’t recall who finally clued me in, but I had to learn that back cover copy has nothing to do with the story. It has everything to do with the conflict and with the story question. At one point, I'd have shrugged and said, 'those are the same thing.'

I've learned better. Some.

Try summarizing the breadth and depth of your story in three paragraphs. I bet you tear out your hair. Your story spans hundreds of pages and sprawls across tens of thousands of words. It's people and places and events and backstory and oo! I forgot to tell you the main character grew up apprenticed to a dragon! I mean, it may be an amazing story, but it won’t sell a book because it doesn't lodge a question or a compulsion in a reader's mind.

That question should be, “OMG, HOW?”

Your conflict is the bait on the story question hook. Conflict, obstacles, and stakes. It doesn't matter what genre you write. Tell me what your characters need, tell me why they need it, tell me what's in the way (and why the answer is on some level 'themselves') and make sure to tell me what happens if they don't overcome their obstacles. What do they have to learn or overcome in themselves to earn the right to cross the final threshold successfully - assuming you aren't writing tragedy?

Recall our main character who was apprenticed to a dragon. All she wants is to learn to fly, because she's in love with the dragon's son and dragons court on the wing, but she can't fly because she's human. Internally, that sets our heroine up to believe she's a failure. She's not good enough. Maybe this echoes an old wound about not being good enough because her family gave her away to the dragons. All we know is that she longs to fly so she can tell the love of her life how she feels.

The young dragon prince, on the other hand, wants to eradicate humans because they hunted and killed his father. He can't start burning down human cities, though. The humans would rally and endanger the dragon prince's remaining family. Internally, he wants to avenge his dad and protect his remaining family. While he’s been kind to the human working with his mother and maybe even admires her, he’s convinced that all other humans are mean and nasty and destructive.

We create a sentence or two about how these different conflicts collide and interfere with one another. Finally, we cap it with what the two of them must learn if they're going to get together. If they aren't getting together, they still must learn something before they can win whatever challenge awaits at the climax of the story.

And there’s the trick. Your job with back cover copy is to snag the reader’s imagination by presenting all the desires, all the stumbling blocks (look! She’s in love with a dragon who hates humans! Uh oh!) and set up the horrible, dreadful consequences of the characters failing to learn their lessons before the climax. Aaaand you have to do that without giving the climax away AND while making it seem like these two will never rise above their obstacles.

Maybe our heroine argues with the dragon prince because she’s dead set on convincing him not all humans are bad. He’s not buying it, so he challenges her to prove it by hunting down his father’s killers and bringing them to him. Since she’s secretly convinced she’s a failure and not good enough, she refuses. He throws her out and banishes her. Cool. We all know that to prove her love, she’s going to go hunt down the killers (and learn to believe in herself at the same time.) We all know he’s going to start harrying innocent humans and endangering the rest of his family (and come face to face with the terrible consequences of his actions and realize he’s become what he hates.)

Finally here’s what the stakes sentence might look like:

If they cannot learn to trust one another and work as a team, all dragon-kind will die.

(Yeah, yeah. It’s a romance. She catches the killers and bargains with the dragon prince for a ride on his neck while he flies so she can confess her feelings, okay?)

Book Cover Blurbs

As a reader, what do you first do when you pick up a book? Droll over the cover art….soooo. Readers, when you pick up a book what do you do second? Read the blurbs!

I said blurbs plural for a reason. Jeffe did an excellent job describing blurb differences, and there are differences, even though most readers wouldn’t differentiate them. 

The back cover copy, BCC, blurb is one of the groan inducing aspects of being an author. This consists of the few paragraphs on the back of the book, or the inside front-flap of a hardcover, that tease the reader with the drama contained within. Yes, that means you must condense your entire novel into a few paragraphs. Ah-ha, there’s the groans! 

But hey, it’s more verbiage than your elevator pitch!

Then there are the fellow author blurbs on the cover. These glowing, one sentences are there to entice the reader to pick up the book and read the back. How do these come about? 

If you’re a traditionally published writer your agent or publishing house will help get an ARC, advanced readers copy, of your book into the hands of some (hopefully) well-known authors. Then you cross your fingers that they actually have the time to read it, and as writers we all know how precious reading time is, and give a blurb. 

Talk about pressure! How do you write a sentence to sum up a book you loved that’s more articulate than: I-loved-this-so-much-you’ve-gotta-read-it-right-now!! You basically do what you need to do when you’re writing your own BCC. Pinpoint the heart of the story and add in how it made you feel or an aspect that gripped you so hard you couldn’t stop reading. 

As with everything, it takes some practice. A great way to do that is to write book reviews. If you are staring a blurb request down, have written some, or are dreaming of the day you’re asked to provide one, reading will help you build this skill. 

With that, happy weekend and may your reads be great!

How to Write a Blurb/Back Cover Copy

 Last night, SFWA did the big online show to announce our Nebula finalists. Killian got to play a special role in a guest appearance as a catterfly, a denizen of Planet Friend. Isn't he adorable?

But catterflys aren't our topic at the SFF Seven this week. Pity. Instead, we're discussing blurbs and how to write better ones.

Now, there's some confusion out there about exactly what a "blurb" is. In traditional publishing, a blurb is what one author says about another. Along the lines of "Golly gee whiz, this book was better than espresso brownies!" In indie circles, self-published authors tend to call the book description a blurb, whereas the trad community refers to it as the back cover copy or BCC.

Taking my cue from KAK yesterday, I'm going with the BCC definition. Except there's no freaking way I'm going to write that before I write the book. My writer brain doesn't work that way. However, I can give advice on how to write your BCC.

The Basics

The BCC structure is very simple and looks like this for a book with romance:

Paragraph 1: What the protagonist wants, why they want it, and why they can't have it. Should include both external and internal conflicts, if present.
Paragraph 2: What the other protagonist wants, why they want it, and why they can't have it. Should include both external and internal conflicts, if present.
Paragraph 3: How these two intersect, make each other's lives more difficult, and present a threat to them ever getting what they want.

Boom. Done.

 

Level Up

Once you have the basic stuff in there - and I just sketch it in to get the structure and dynamics - then I polish it up. Remember: while you want to give a sense of the story to the reader, you also want to entice. Exact details are less important than posing intriguing questions. Hint at secrets and drama. Resist naming too many names or places. Those aren't important at this stage. A sense of who the characters are and the challenges they face are what matter. Make sure the genre is clear. Choose vivid, active words. Make it sizzle and excite!

 

Advanced Tricks

Once you have it polished and seductive, see if you can slip in some keywords for the genre. Think what readers might search for. References tropes. (Then go back and polish so it sounds good.)

Better Blurbs: Write Before Chapter 1

 This Week's Topic: Writing Better Blurbs

Once upon being a baby writer, I hated writing a blurb. What is a "blurb," you ask? It's the 100-200 words on the back of the book that describes what your book is about in a way that will make readers want to buy it. It's also used on the sales page for your book at most online retailers. It's SUPER important. It's not something you can skip doing. Oh, sure, you can outsource it, but why pay for something that's actually going to save your ass?

Wait, what? Save me? The author? Yep. I said what I said. As a baby writer, I wasn't able to distill my 90k-250k novel into 150 words. Why couldn't I? It took me a long while to answer that question, and the humbling truth was...

There was something wrong with my story.
{GASP}

I know. I know. I know. You're thinking, "KAK, that's impossible! Your works are flawless!" I thank you, dear reader, for that misbegotten belief. (Keep buying my books, though. I swear they get better and better!) However, the inescapable truth of why I struggled with the blurb had nothing to do with "distilling" the novel, and everything to do with a messy plot. I couldn't say it in one sentence because the story didn't hug the plotline. My novel was a freakin' Tree of Life with lots of branches running away from the trunk. It somehow managed to have an ending (probably an unsatisfactory one), but the middle was a disastrophy. How can someone summarize that many tangents? You don't. You also don't publish that book in that state. All hail The Blurb for finding the HUGE problem before the invasion of the 1-star reviews tank your hard work. 

The three pieces of a blurb are Hook, Character, and Conflict. 100-200 words works out to roughly two-three sentences per section. It's not very much, is it? This blog post is a lot longer. 

The Hook is a one- or two-sentence plot summary that should carry throughout the story (no matter how many twists) and be answered/ resolved by the end of the book. Even if your book is one of a series, that Hook is specific to that book. You're going to use, reuse, and morph that hook all over the place, from advertising to in-person conversations. Learn it, love it, and keep it SHORT.

Character Tip: in genre writing, especially SFF, your character description should include a "classification" that is recognizable to fans of the genre, combined with what makes your protagonist unique from every other protag in that class in your genre. Example: A rock-eating, parasite-wielding, fire warrior is the short description of my protagonist in my high fantasy LARCOUT. "Warrior" is the classification that readers of the genre recognize. "Rock-eating, parasite-wielding" are the uncommon traits meant to lure the fans. Did I have that in the initial blurb? No. Have I used that short description in social spaces in the 8 years since publication? You betcha. Lesson learned? Ayup.

Conflict: If you can't summarize the 500ft -view of the conflict into two or three sentences, go back and take a look at your plot. Did you lose it around Ch13? Did you make it too complicated? (I suffer from this problem, which makes the book clunky and hard to follow. A too-complicated story is a story  readers put down and never pick up again.) In the conflict section, add a thrill by including what's standing in the way of the protagonist's success, but also what price the protag will pay for failing. 

The best piece of advice I can offer for writing better blurbs is: 

Write your blurb before you write your book
(then go back and revise it once you're done with the 1st draft)

Girl, you crazy! Nah. I'm serious. Writing your blurb before you write your book forces you to really think about "what am I trying to accomplish with this story and how am I achieving it." Plus, it saves you so, so, so much rewriting during edits. True for plotters and "organic discoverers." 

Ethical Dilemmas in Writing

Ethical situations in writing. Hmm. I've had a situation where I felt I was being dealt with in an unethical fashion by my agent. When an editor offered information that confirmed my suspicions, the relationship with the agent was severed. I would like to tell you that was the end of the ethical dilemmas I've faced in writing but it isn't. That particular situation cast a long shadow and to this day, I shy away from looking for representation because the agent I fired is still out there and most of the agents in publishing know one another. I'm probably being unreasonable about this. I admit the situation has probably played an outsized role in how slow I've become at getting books together. What's the point if it feels like there's no where to go with them? Anyway. Whose idea was this topic?? I didn't intend to write my own psychoanalysis in blog post form today.

Most of my minor ethical dilemmas have to do with the business end of writing. The squick about finding a new agent is one. The other my confusion over requesting reversion of rights on books that technically never go out of print because they were never in print to begin with. I suppose I could resolve that with a letter requesting reversion of rights of digital works and see whether the lawyers laugh me off. Yet is seems to be one of those things I never get around to doing because I seem to define conflict avoidant. Ye gods. Again with the psychoanalysis. Honestly. The other issue I have is promoting books that have been out long enough to be learning to drive. That may not strictly be an ethics issue to anyone but me. I feel pretty strongly that back list should be promoted, yes, but with the expectation that the back list being promoted isn't still a series in progress that hasn't seen a new book in several years. This is me remembering how much I hated finding a series I loved only to find out I couldn't binge the entire series because the final few books weren't finished yet. You'd think that would hurry me up on finishing a series, wouldn't you? No one's more annoyed with me than I am about it.

Ethics, fairness, and honesty matter. It's possible I read too many superhero comics growing up. I want people to feel better for having worked with me. I don't want readers hurt because I'm being racist or because I'm culturally appropriating what I have no business in. At the same time, I recognize that the difference between appropriation and appreciation is caring (and actual research and sensitivity advisors from within the culture). I'm not going to avoid writing an experience or culture that isn't mine *if the experience or culture is intrinsic to the plot*. If it's window dressing, ethically, I'm out. I'll find some other way to evoke a feeling - some way that doesn't objectify another person's way of life or race or gender/lack thereof or orientation. And maybe all of this last paragraph isn't really about ethics - it's about respect. But in the end, I feel like ethics and respect are entwined. We have ethics because we respect ourselves and we respect the other people who share the world with us. Or maybe I'm just naive. Still.

Do Good

 Ethics—what thorny issues have you dealt with or worry about as an author?

So far this week Jeffe and KAK have posted about conflict of interest in our writing world. So I’ve been trying to come up with anything else to do with writing ethics. But I have’t found my author self in any thorny issues revolving around ethics. 

The closest instance I can come up with is that I’m a member of SFWA’s romance committee and as part of that group I want to be sure we’re doing our best to provide an even playing field. 

So many things in life aren’t fair or even, which means if I’m given the chance to attempt to make it so, I sure will. And I hope you will too. Never forget to look around you and extend a hand to those who could use help. I don’t mean overextending yourself. I’m talking about things that are small and easy to you, but to someone who is struggling they’re huge. 

If you put good out in the world, karma will send it back. The age old: do unto others as you would have done to you. And so I hope your weekend begins with all the good things which include many words!

Ethics and Authoring - When Is COI a Problem?

This week at the SFF Seven we're talking ethics. We're asking each other: what thorny issues have your dealt with or worry about as an author?

I can't say that I've dealt with thorny issues as an author. The ethics there are pretty clear to me. But then, I'm often described as a very ethical person, which pleases me because being ethical is a core value of mine. 

Most of the ethical issues I wrestle these days are author-tangential, primarily in my role as the President of SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association). As a 501(c)3 charitable organization, we have a fair number of ethical lines assigned to us by the IRS in order to maintain our tax-exempt status. One of the primary concerns is that I avoid "self-dealing." What this means is that I can't line my pockets with SFWA money. Remember Unicef in the mid-90s, when it came out that they'd "lost" billions of dollars? Lots of hands dipping into those pots of money and stowing the funds in their own pockets instead of using them for the charitable purposes of the organization. That's the clear, bright line: don't take money from the organization.

Where it gets fuzzier are the areas of conflict of interest (COI). In my old day job, I had to take COI training, so I find myself often in the position of explaining COI to people. A clear example would be that I can't use my position as president to get the board to vote to hire me as an author coach for SFWA members. That's absolutely conflict of interest, because I'd be using my influence to send SFWA money to my pockets. What's less clear is when I'm not using my influence and the recipient isn't directly related to me, but it might LOOK that way. This is where it gets difficult for people, because we have to understand that the APPEARANCE of COI is just as much of a problem as actual COI.

For example, if the board votes to pay my friend to be an author coach, that can look like I influenced that decision, even if I had nothing to do with it. Think about a Sopranos scenario, where the lucrative construction contract "just happens" to go to the niece who is a contractor. Because people can and have attempted to do scurrilous things with money they're responsible for directing, everyone has to be so far aboveboard that no one could possibly believe there was anything shady going on. What do we do in these cases? To continue the example, what if my friend is the very best candidate? I recuse myself from discussion and voting. In that way, we avoid not only actual COI, but any appearance of COI.

Next week - Tuesday, March 7 at 6pm MT! - we'll be announcing this year's finalists for SFWA's Nebula Award. I've been in rehearsals for the show and it's very fun, so tune in! https://www.facebook.com/events/198142222865460 I'll be there announcing, but I won't be one of the finalists. That's because, as long as I'm President, I recuse my works from consideration. It could appear to be a conflict of interest, should one of my books final. Recusing myself is the ethical thing to do.