I wrote a book, almost. This was before AI was any good, so I never used it. If I had the AI tools that I had today back when I was writing, it would have been much easier for me. I used to stare at a blank page and think to myself, "I just need a push." I would get writer's block all the time, and I would always feel like I couldn't afford to get writer's block. This was because I was writing for WebNovels, because I was bored and wanted to have fun. My book got a lot of traction really quickly, and within a couple of weeks of writing, I received a contract from them and became a contracted author, so I felt like I had to represent. The work was too much for me, so I had to drop the project after catching covid. One of my friends found the book, enjoyed it, and then realized I was the author and told me I should have kept on writing because it was good, but the truth is… It was too hard to write without a little push. I wrote almost 100 chapters and left it on a cliffhanger.
A lot of people call AI-written stories and art slop. I personally think that it depends on who's making it and how they're editing it. I don't care who writes my story. The big question I have at the end of the day is, "Was I entertained?" There seems to be a stigma attached to anyone who uses AI to do anything creative. AI doesn't need to write an entire book, but that doesn't mean that it can't be used as a tool to help writers. When used well, an AI can help write and outline, draft scenes, fix pacing, and polish lines, while you stay the author. This is a guide that'll show you what AI does best, where it struggles, and how to use it responsibly.
Some of the good stuff that AI can do for authors is help them to brainstorm faster. Do you need 10 suspect motives or 5 sci-fi ship names? AI is pretty good at generating ideas when you can’t. There have been studies on professional writing tasks that show a lot of time is saved and quality is higher on first drafts when AI is used as an assistant. AI is also great at outlining and restructuring your work. Ask it for scene cards, chapter goals, and continuity checks. Allow it to help you outline your projects, and it will help you stay on track. AI can also help you polish up your work, ask it for clarity or similar language. Keep anything that you like and just throw out the rest. This is controlled revision, where AI shines in studies of co-writing.
Although AI has a lot of benefits, let's talk about some of the limitations. AI struggles a lot with staying on track with longer writing projects. It can definitely wander in its writing and you may sometimes need to regenerate responses several times before you get something that you can pass with some editing. AI can also sound right and still be wrong. I can't count how many times I've been misled by AI, so it's very important to thoroughly read what it generates. The final limitation I’ll mention here is that AI struggles with mimicking your style of writing consistently. AI will always have its hiccups where it will write something in a way that doesn't sound anything like you.
The short answer is that the U.S. copyright protects human creativity, not material generated entirely by a machine. The U.S. Copyright Office's 2023 Policy says that works created entirely by AI are not copyrightable, and that you must disclose AI material and claim only the human-authored parts. In 2025, the DC Circuit affirmed that purely AI-generated works with no human authorship cannot be registered for copyright. For context, the court rejected Dr. Stephen Thaler's argument that his AI system, the creativity Machine, could be a copyright author. Copyright law is intended for humans, not for machines. The Copyrights Office's 2025 Report does explain when a human using AI can be the author. When things like selection, arrangement, and editing show clear creative control, a person can be the author of a book that includes work written by AI.
This doesn't change public opinion, though. People want transparency. A 2024 Pew survey found that 54% of Americans think AI systems should credit sources that they rely on. A 2025 Pew report shows that the public is interested, but cautious about AI's role in culture. It's best to build trust with readers by being open.
Well, the self-publishing market just keeps growing. Bowker’s latest reporting in Publishers Weekly shows self-published ISBN titles rose 7.2% in 2023. AI won't write your bestsellers for you, but it can shorten drafting and revision cycles so you can publish things better and faster. People who used to struggle with their own creativity and getting it onto the page now have a way to do it. I have a friend who has a learning disability, and he is absolutely thrilled with the arrival of artificial intelligence. He struggles with his communication skills and many people don't understand him. AI has given him an opportunity that he would have never gotten on his own. He can be creative, he just needed a push.
Long-form novels aren't your only playground. Interactive, tabletop-style story engines will let you build worlds, generate NPCs and quests, and then play inside your own custom setting. That's where Friends & Fables gets exciting. Friends & Fables is a generative tabletop RPG with an AI game master named Franz, who remembers events, tracks inventory and HP, and uses your world lore to keep the story moving. You could play it alone, or you could play it with some of your friends. That makes it a great story lab for testing characters, locations, and plot arcs that you might later expand into a novel.
Friends and Fables also has free worldbuilding tools for any aspiring novel writer. The AI is built to generate maps, locations, characters, and items that are all built to work with the platform. If you don't have that much time to work on it, don't worry! Just know that you can create a prototype for your setting in just minutes and watch it breathe in an actual game. And if you're worried about lore, don't. The new lore update ensures that Franz can handle all your lore and seamlessly incorporate it into the story as you play.
I'm very active on the Friends & Fables Discord, and there are many aspiring novel writers who have shared their own worlds on the platform. Who knows? Maybe your world might be next.