Writing Craft Resources vs Generative AI: An Increasingly Unpopular Opinion

August 2025

I recently added three new writing resource books to my collection. 😊

For more than five decades, I've used writing craft resources to teach myself new skills and help me to hone the skills I've learned and developed through years of study and practice.

I've subscribed to Writer's Digest magazine since I was about sixteen (and saved nearly every copy). Back in the days when they published resource books under the F+W Media imprint, I bought nearly every "how to" book I could get my hands on, and several editions of The Writer's Market (all of which I still have and use regularly.) The imprint is gone now, they filed for bankruptcy in 2019, and were acquired by Penguin Random House, but I still subscribe to the digital version of the magazine. I've also periodically picked up various copies of Poets & Writers, The Writer, and a smattering of other trade publications.

I've also found tremendous assistance from The Great Courses, with their in-depth texts and accompanying video and audio classes taught by professors and industry experts on topics such as sentence structure, the foundations and history of literature and language; and specific genres like fantasy, science fiction, and creative nonfiction. With a "learn at your own pace" approach, I've found these courses to be tremendously helpful in filling in the gaps from my traditional education, and refreshing my knowledge on specific topics.

About a year ago, I discovered a fantastic brainstorming tool called The Story Engine. This is a collection of story prompt cards, organized in collections that include Agents, Anchors, Aspects, Engines, Conflicts, Regions, Landmarks, Namesakes, Origins, Attributes, Advents, and Lore. These cards are fantastic "idea starters." When used in combination (from one to the entire collection - depending on how complex I want to get), I can flesh out or enhance my ideas for a storyline, character arc, or nuggets of lore that might nurture my imagination in new directions. They're fantastic for jump-starting through those moments of writer's block everyone encounters from time to time. They also work very well to help create flash fiction prompts to use as a daily writing stretch to keep my creative muscles in top condition.

Over the years, I've found tremendous benefit from these and other writing resources. They reinforce the lessons of craft I learned in high school and college: things like scene and setting, crafting characters, mapping plots, and writing tension into my stories. These resources don't do the work for me. They present strategies, concepts, and developmental assists in new or interesting ways from a plethora of viewpoints, helping to reinforce my unique writer's voice.

Just like working with a thesaurus, dictionary, or style guide, these resources (and a host of others) assist, rather than replace, the sweat equity I must invest in every essay, story, or poem I write.

In my younger days, I used the library and its vast card catalogue or the Encyclopedia Britanica or Funk & Wagnalls to find answers to the research questions necessary to make my stories more plausable. Today, I use Google and Wiki pages in much the same way. I enter search parameters and hop from one research rabbit hole to the next to find the answers. Then, I take that information and weave it into the prose I create. Most of these research tools have been digitized - it's rare to fine a card catalogue in a library anymore - but the inherent use of the resources still remain.

My point is, with all of these resources, whether it's a dictionary, thesaurus, craft book, engine card, or webinar, I still have to do the work. It's not magic. It takes effort, creative compromise, and hours upon hours of trying things out to see what works best for the story I want to tell, while retaining my unique voice. The results still must come from ME.

In contrast, Generative AI uses Large Language Models trained on the work product of other authors. AI endeavors to eliminate the required arduous labor of creation to denigrate the individuality of imagiation.

Personally, I see generative AI tools, apps, and websites as the antithesis to every writing resource I've mentioned in this article. Sure, you type a question or a statement into the engine field, just like you would with other electronic tools, and it gives you an answer. But if you use it to generate stories, chances are better than not that the engine is stealing from another writer's sweat equity to produce the end result. Generative AI tools don't create. The have no imagination. They take from what's already out there and cobble it together to formulate an answer to the queery you posed. There's no YOU in that process. It doesn't require effort or dedication or creativity; and it substantially lacks emotion.

When you use Generative AI to write a story, you haven't obtained those results from the long and arduous gestation of your unique idea or concept in your imagination, while spending hours in the intensity of building sentence structures, character development, and emotional expansion on the page. You asked the machine to tell you a story, and it stole from other authors to piece together a story that comes close to what you requested. Generative AI eliminates the YOU in the story and the specialness of your voice.

I know that my opinion on this topic is quickly gaining vehement opposition. It makes sense. Humanity has spent a large chunk of its history trying to build the better mousetrap and find the easier way out. Still, I think there's something tremdoudously disingenuous about taking shortcuts and stealing from what others have created simply to make the process easier.

I find the greatest joy in creation knowing that my stories are told in a way that no one else could ever tell them. My ideas, inspired by the world around me and the people I encounter, are unique to me, and the way I put them on the page is, too. I'm proud of the work I do... even through the stalls, false starts, frustrations, and hours staring at a blank page. I'm proud of it because it's 100% ME. It's my creation. It came from my brain, my imagination, my heart. There's a lot of courage required to pull story out of my soul and put it on the page. I'll continue to use both analog and digital resourcecs to help me do a better job of it... But I won't use generative AI to set aside that struggle, or depreciate the reward of knowing it all came from me.