Don’t lose your voice with an AI assistant
What’s your authorial voice?
You know what we mean. Anyone who writes fiction is very concerned with their “voice”, of course, but no matter what kind of writing you do – unless it’s warning signs for lavatories and elevators, or terse memos from Human Resources – you’re probably conscious of your voice and don’t want to lose it. And if you’re an editor – at least if you’re a good editor – you don’t want to change your authors’ voices, either.
But at the same time, you may want to use AI (artificial intelligence) applications to help expand your horizons – giving you suggestions for phrasing or ways to condense a text, for instance. You’re reading the blog of Draftsmith, which is a plugin for MS Word that gives AI-driven suggestions for rephrasing, so this is relevant! But what effect does using AI have on authorial voice? There are two legitimate concerns to address.
Use it or… uh, don’t have it
First, to quote James Harbeck (who has occasionally written articles for us too), “Lots of writers try really hard to find their voice. Lots of writers produce absolute rubbish trying to create an individual voice. A lot of “trying to find my voice” is also a stalling tactic motivated by fear of having to do the hard work of finding interesting things to write about and figuring out how to write about them effectively. You don’t need to find your voice. You already have a voice. You develop it by using it.”
The problem with AI is that if you’re using it to generate some or all of your text, you’re not using your voice. Harbeck goes on, “I sang with a very large, very good choir for years, and my singing voice improved and gained better character over that time.” Well, using AI to generate text is like getting someone else to sing for you. You’re not developing your own voice, and you’re getting someone else’s voice instead.
This means that you can’t use AI as a substitute for actually writing. If you give an AI text generator a prompt and ask it to generate text for you, you can’t expect that text to maintain your own voice. If you want to maintain a voice, AI can only give suggestions – it can’t do the writing.
Changing key details can change the voice
Second, however, if you’re using AI to help you adjust a piece of existing text that already has a voice, that adjustment can also risk losing the voice. After all, AI is a statistical modeling application: it generates text on the basis of what it’s learned from many other texts, which means that it is, by design, less individually distinctive. So you need to be confident that the application you’re using won’t flatten the individual character of the writing (though we should also note that not all idiosyncrasies are good – “that’s my voice” is not a suitable justification for flagrant sloppiness).
Sometimes there’s no help for it. Some of the things you want to use an AI application for may be directly opposed to a particular author’s voice. Take, for instance, this passage from A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway:
The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
Let’s run it through Draftsmith’s Empathy Tuner and tell it to make it “more empathetic”:
The world can be tough on everyone, but it’s often in those broken moments that we find our true strength. But those that will not break it kills. It takes the lives of even the kindest, gentlest, and bravest among us without regard for their goodness. If you don’t fall into any of these categories, please know that it could still be harmful to you, though there may not be an immediate urgency.
And so, we learn that a key feature of Hemingway’s voice is that it’s not “empathetic”. There’s no way to make it more caring without changing the voice.
Likewise, even reducing the word count may take away a certain key something of an author’s voice. Consider this passage from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen:
Miss Bingley’s attention was quite as much engaged in watching Mr. Darcy’s progress through his book, as in reading her own; and she was perpetually either making some inquiry, or looking at his page.
If we run it through Draftsmith’s Simplify tool, we see that the story is the same, but we realize that Austen’s style simply isn’t simple:
Miss Bingley was as focused on watching Mr. Darcy read his book as she was on her own reading, frequently asking questions or glancing at his page.
There are clear limits on what you can expect, and you’re always going to need to keep your own judgement in play, choosing which suggestions to take and which not to.
You can reword without revoicing
So is there any way to preserve voice when using an AI application such as Draftsmith? The answer is yes – especially with Draftsmith. There are many adjustments to writing that don’t change the voice in an important way, and Draftsmith uses Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service, which has a large training base (and a strict respect for copyright). What’s more, Draftsmith only redrafts what you ask it to. You can select a whole paragraph or passage and accept changes sentence by sentence in that section, or you can run Draftsmith on individual sentences.
Let’s look at a famous example of two starkly different voices conveying the same basic idea. George Orwell, in his essay Politics and the English Language, takes this well-known verse from the Authorized (King James) Version of Ecclesiastes:
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
And then he presents a rephrasing of it the kind of “modern” style that he spends his essay ripping to shreds:
Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.
Let’s have a look at those side by side as redrafted using some of Draftsmith’s settings, and you’ll see how the two starkly different voices are maintained.
Reduce Word Count
I saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, bread to the wise, riches to the understanding, or favor to the skilled; time and chance happen to all.
Success or failure in competitive activities does not correlate with innate capacity, requiring consideration of unpredictability.
Simplify
I returned and observed that success doesn’t always go to the fastest, the strongest, the wisest, the most knowledgeable, or the most skilled; instead, time and chance affect everyone.
Considering current events, it’s clear that success or failure in competition does not necessarily match a person’s natural ability, and that a significant unpredictable factor must always be considered.
More Exciting
Upon my return, I noticed under the sun that victory isn’t always claimed by the swift, nor is strength always rewarded in battle. Wisdom doesn’t guarantee sustenance, and riches don’t exclusively favor the knowledgeable, while skill doesn’t ensure favor; instead, time and chance play a role for everyone.
The dynamics of today’s world reveal that success or failure in competitive endeavors often has little to do with one’s innate abilities; instead, a significant dose of unpredictability plays a crucial role.
Eleven-Year-Old Reading Level
I came back and saw that being fast doesn’t always win the race, being strong doesn’t always win the fight, being smart doesn’t always get you food, and being skilled doesn’t always bring you wealth. Instead, time and luck happen to everyone.
Looking at today’s events, we can see that winning or losing in competitions doesn’t always match a person’s natural abilities. We also need to consider that luck plays a big role.
We will concede that the eleven-year-old level is a good deal more readable and less in line with the original style in both cases, but, hey, you’re trying to get an eleven-year-old to read it.
Besides, Draftsmith isn’t here to do all your work for you. It’s an assistant – it gives you suggestions that you can accept or reject one by one, and you can always revise further from its suggestions. Remember what Harbeck said… wait, for those who find his writing a bit rough, let’s ask Draftsmith to make it “more friendly”:
Many writers put a lot of effort into discovering their unique voice. A lot of writers end up churning out nonsense while trying to find their own unique voice. A lot of “trying to find my voice” is really just a way to stall because people are scared of the hard work it takes to find interesting things to write about and figure out how to write about them well. You don’t have to search for your voice. You’ve already got a voice. You learn it by using it.
Someone should tell him he could sound a little friendlier without losing his voice 🙂.
Have you tried Draftsmith?
It’s the AI-based redrafting assistant for writers and editors. When you want to fine-tune a piece and you don’t want to lose its voice, Draftsmith is there for you. And if you’re familiar with it but haven’t used it recently, Draftsmith 2.0, gives you even more individual control over edits – have a look at this video to see more.
And here’s your 7-day free trial.