AI prompts can boost writers’ creativity but result in similar stories, study finds

Ideas generated by ChatGPT can help writers who lack inherent flair but may mean there are fewer unique ideas

Once upon a time, all stories were written solely by humans. Now, researchers have found AI might help authors tell a tale.

A study suggests that ideas generated by the AI system ChatGPT can help boost the creativity of writers who lack inherent flair – albeit at the expense of variety.

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‘I felt different as a child. I was nearly mute’: Elena Ferrante in conversation with Elizabeth Strout

The author of the Neapolitan quartet and the Pulitzer prize-winning novelist discuss identity, ambition, truth – and the ‘convulsive’ urge to write

Thank you for all of your work. I am a huge fan, and I have read all your books, and by reading them I was able to take new risks with my own work. So thank you for that as well. In this new book you go deep, deep into the things that matter for readers and writers alike. I am very glad to be in a conversation with you about it.

“And your novel?”

“Oh, I put in my hand and rummage in the bran pie.”

“That’s what’s so wonderful. And it’s all different.”

“Yes, I’m 20 people.”

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Life being put on hold was just the spur this writer needed to fulfil her youthful ambition

Charlotte Northedge wrote a new novel in lockdown. She considers others who have realised the dreams of their youth

I wrote a novel in the last lockdown. To be clear, it wasn’t one of those creative outpourings some people had in between yoga with Adriene and baking banana bread. I had a deadline. Some days, I thought I’d never cut through the brain fog brought about by living through a pandemic. But gradually, as the initial panic subsided and the usual distractions of daily life fell away, I found the words did start to come, and the process of writing my second book was much more fluid and focused than my first.

Which is hardly surprising. I started my debut while on maternity leave with my second baby. I had dreamed of writing a novel since I was a child. I was one of those bookish kids whose weekly highlight was a visit to the library and who spent the best part of my teens squirrelling away short stories and beginnings of novels that never seemed to go anywhere. When I moved to London after my English degree, I joined a writing group and started a thriller.

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Hilary Mantel and JK Rowling add lots to auction for global vaccine rollout

Fundraiser running until 21 May also includes chances to consult with star agent Jonny Geller and have a character named after you in a Sarah Pinborough novel

A literary auction raising money to help vaccinate the world against coronavirus has made more than £23,000 so far, as book lovers bid to win signed novels by authors including Hilary Mantel, as well as mentoring sessions from star publishers and agents.

Bidding at Books for Vaccines for a personal consultation with literary agent Jonny Geller has reached £1,000, while a signed box set of the Wolf Hall trilogy, with handwritten first sentences from Mantel, has topped £600. The auction is running until 21 May, with other lots including the chance to have a character named after you in the next novel by Sarah Pinborough, author of the Netflix hit Behind Her Eyes, a signed copy of Marian Keyes’s novel Grown Ups, and the chance to write the dedication at the front of Jill Mansell’s new novel.

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