For me it’s not efficiency, if anything it takes much longer running the LLM notepad because I will randomly ask it about passages/chapters and revise stuff.
It’s kinda fun having an assistant to just bounce ideas off of on a whim. You can’t get that with beta readers, as they don’t just sit there while you write (and the LLM is much faster), and I don’t feel like I’m being charged for every response with an API model, especially if it ingests the entire story every time.
It’s also “smart” beyond me. For instance, sometimes I wanna come up with a name for a character, city or whatever, and I can ask it “what’s an interesting name for this engineer character’s brother, from X city in the story, maybe something mythological and fire themed,” and it will crank out tons of examples and start a little conversation about it. It takes me places I never would have googled, much less known off the top of my head, because everything is on the top of an LLM’s head.
I admit that the Beta-reading stuff sounds interesting, although I have never felt the need for one. If what I wrote is bad beyond correction, then it’s bad and that’s it, it is what it is; and if it’s good, then great. My main objective is that I am satisfied with the result, and I have never had problems in that aspect.
And as for the names, I have the habit of researching everything that catches my attention, a taste inherited from my mother who is a university professor. I even have an encyclopedic collection of 15 volumes that was my Wikipedia when I didn’t have internet, inherited from my mother as well.
Seeing the origins, evolution and etymology of certain things and concepts is quite inspiring. If I have at least one concept, say: a character who is from Scotland or a similar place, I look up common Scottish names and their meanings, and from there choose the one I like best, and with what I get I can delve into the character’s personality and/or background based on their name. Even if I don’t find what I’m looking for, I can get information that I can use for something else, I always find more than what I’m looking for.
For me it’s not efficiency, if anything it takes much longer running the LLM notepad because I will randomly ask it about passages/chapters and revise stuff.
It’s kinda fun having an assistant to just bounce ideas off of on a whim. You can’t get that with beta readers, as they don’t just sit there while you write (and the LLM is much faster), and I don’t feel like I’m being charged for every response with an API model, especially if it ingests the entire story every time.
It’s also “smart” beyond me. For instance, sometimes I wanna come up with a name for a character, city or whatever, and I can ask it “what’s an interesting name for this engineer character’s brother, from X city in the story, maybe something mythological and fire themed,” and it will crank out tons of examples and start a little conversation about it. It takes me places I never would have googled, much less known off the top of my head, because everything is on the top of an LLM’s head.
I admit that the Beta-reading stuff sounds interesting, although I have never felt the need for one. If what I wrote is bad beyond correction, then it’s bad and that’s it, it is what it is; and if it’s good, then great. My main objective is that I am satisfied with the result, and I have never had problems in that aspect.
And as for the names, I have the habit of researching everything that catches my attention, a taste inherited from my mother who is a university professor. I even have an encyclopedic collection of 15 volumes that was my Wikipedia when I didn’t have internet, inherited from my mother as well.
Seeing the origins, evolution and etymology of certain things and concepts is quite inspiring. If I have at least one concept, say: a character who is from Scotland or a similar place, I look up common Scottish names and their meanings, and from there choose the one I like best, and with what I get I can delve into the character’s personality and/or background based on their name. Even if I don’t find what I’m looking for, I can get information that I can use for something else, I always find more than what I’m looking for.