More and more, writers and authors are facing the same question: “Did you write this yourself, or was it made by AI?”
It’s a question that cuts deep. Not because we don’t understand the rise of technology, but because it diminishes the human craft behind storytelling. To suggest a book or story must have been written by a machine is to disregard the time, the imagination, and the lived experience that go into creating it.
This isn’t just about me — it’s about every writer who sits with a spark of inspiration, nurtures it into a world, and offers it up to readers. When people assume our work is machine-made, it’s as if we are being told that our humanity doesn’t matter.
Why Human Writers Are Different
AI, as clever as it seems, doesn’t think or feel the way we do.
It doesn’t feel that rush in the chest when a scene finally lands — that electric moment when a jumble of words suddenly clicks into place and becomes alive. It doesn’t wrestle with emotions in the quiet of the night, when grief or joy insists on being turned into ink.
It cannot carry a childhood, with all its innocence and confusion. It cannot recall the way heartbreak makes the air heavier, or how laughter shared with friends can echo for decades. It has no treasured memory to cling to when everything else feels uncertain.
When people suggest writers simply “use AI,” they’re not just questioning the method — they’re stripping away the essence of what it means to create. Writing is not the mechanical assembly of sentences. It is the art of weaving fragments of the self — moments, feelings, reflections — into a story that resonates.
AI can generate words that look like a story. But it cannot live, and it cannot remember. It has no instinct for rhythm, no ache that demands to be written, no lived wisdom to shape the voice on the page.
And perhaps most importantly: it does not care.
- It will never pause, uncertain, because a scene feels too close to home.
- It will never smile at a line because it reminds it of someone it once loved.
- It will never rewrite a paragraph ten times over because the truth of it matters.
A writer does all of these things. That is what makes writing human — the struggle, the persistence, the memory, and the soul that machines will never possess.
My Writing Process
Every writer works differently, but here’s how I approach my craft.
“For me, a story begins with a place before it begins with a person.”
I always start with setting. I have a keen eye for describing the world first — the sound of rain against a window, the way a streetlight flickers on a deserted road, the weight of silence in a room. Once the scene is alive, I let the characters step into it.
From there, my process grows layer by layer:
- A spark of inspiration — a thought, a fleeting image, a “what if?”
- A mind map — exploring how ideas connect.
- A setting — crafting the atmosphere, the backdrop where everything will unfold.
- A character — introduced only after the world is ready for them.
- A plot twist or complication — something that pushes the story forward.
- The questions — the who, the how, the why.
- The ending — whether it’s resolution or a cliffhanger daring the reader to want more.
Once I’ve shaped these foundations, I sketch out a chapter breakdown. Each chapter has a job: to build the world, reveal something new, heighten the tension, or deliver release. It’s like laying stepping stones across a river — I plan them carefully, but sometimes I find myself leaping somewhere unexpected.
And that’s the beauty of it. Stories evolve. Characters surprise me. The world I’ve built starts to breathe. That kind of unpredictability isn’t something a machine can feel.
Stories Rooted in Life
What makes my work authentic is not just the process, but the life behind it. Writing, for me, is never detached from reality. It’s tangled up in my past, my present, and even my hopes for the future.
My stories draw on the people I’ve known — those who inspired me, those who hurt me, those I loved and lost. A single conversation can echo years later in a character’s voice. A fleeting glance from a stranger might spark an entire subplot. The world I’ve lived in quietly builds the worlds I create.
The places I’ve walked become settings, reimagined and transformed. A misty morning in the countryside might resurface as a gothic opening. A busy city street at midnight may become the backdrop for a moment of revelation. When I describe a setting, it’s not conjured from nothing — it’s infused with memory, atmosphere, and feeling that only comes from being there.
Even the difficult parts of life — the scars and setbacks — play their role. Pain becomes fuel for conflict. Joy becomes light between the shadows. Reflection becomes the wisdom that characters carry with them. My writing is not an abstract exercise in putting words together; it is the reshaping of lived experience into story.
When I write, I am not producing “content.” I am sharing fragments of my human story — the small details, the raw emotions, the questions that never quite leave me. That’s what makes my work authentic: it is not written from nowhere, but from somewhere very real.
In Defence of the Em Dash
Another strange assumption I’ve seen is that the use of an em dash (—) is a “sign” of AI writing. Let me be clear: that idea is nonsense. The em dash has been part of English punctuation for centuries — long before artificial intelligence was even imagined.
I’ve even read from a few authors who say they’re now afraid to use this piece of punctuation in their writing, worried that readers will think their work is machine-generated. That fear breaks my heart, because it shows how suspicion around AI risks stripping writers of a tool that has always belonged to them.
Far from being a “giveaway” of machine text, the em dash is a flexible and expressive tool for any writer. It serves several important functions in the English language:
- To create emphasis or interruption
- The em dash can replace commas, brackets, or even colons, drawing the reader’s attention to a particular phrase.
- Example: I write because I must — not because I can.
- To capture interruption in dialogue or thought
- It mimics the way people speak or think, when a sentence is cut short or another thought barges in.
- Example: “I thought you said—”
- To extend or clarify
- Writers often use it to expand upon an idea without breaking the flow of the sentence.
- Example: The story began with a simple image — rain falling on an empty street.
The em dash is not artificial; it’s human. It reflects the rhythm of real speech and the unpredictability of thought. To dismiss it as a mark of “AI writing” is to ignore the long history of punctuation and the artistry of language itself.
For me — and for countless other authors — the em dash is a bridge between precision and emotion. It allows us to write with nuance, rhythm, and a touch of personality.
A Place for AI?
This isn’t to say AI has no place at all. It can be a tool—useful for brainstorming, or for nudging through writer’s block. But it is not the heartbeat of a story.
At its core, AI is a powerful assistant, a vast library of language patterns and literary structures. It can help you find a new metaphor, suggest synonyms, or even generate a rough plot outline. For a writer facing the dreaded blank page, AI can be a starting gun, a way to move from stasis to motion. It can provide a scaffolding of words and ideas, but it can’t build the emotional core. Think of it as a highly efficient ghostwriter for the mundane, allowing you to focus on the moments that truly matter. It can arrange words, but it can’t feel the weight of them.
AI can imitate form. But a writer creates meaning.
This is the fundamental distinction. An AI can imitate the form of a sonnet, a haiku, or a short story. It knows the rules—the meter, the rhyme scheme, the narrative arc. It can replicate the style of a famous author by analysing their entire body of work. It is a masterful mimic, a reflection of what has already been created.
But a writer does something more. They infuse a story with their own humanity—their fears, their joys, their unique perspective on the world. They make intentional choices that an algorithm can’t replicate. They decide to use a simple word because they know it will break your heart, or to leave a sentence unfinished to create a sense of unease. This isn’t a matter of data points or patterns; it’s an act of empathy and creation. The meaning you find in a story, the connection you feel to a character, comes from a human mind reaching out to another. The story’s heartbeat is the writer’s soul.
Why We Keep Writing
So why do we continue to write in an age when so many assume every word is artificial? Because storytelling is more than content. It is connection.
In a world saturated with an endless stream of algorithm-generated text, human stories are the life rafts. They aren’t built from data sets, but from the raw material of life itself—the quiet grief of a loss, the electric jolt of a first kiss, the memory of a childhood street. An AI can analyse the structure of a tragedy and mimic it, but it has never had its own heart broken. It can describe a landscape, but it has never stood on a hill and felt the wind on its face. The writer puts their own fingerprints on the page.
The point of being a writer is to create something only a human can: stories shaped by memory, emotion, and experience. Stories that may reflect our deepest questions or our quietest moments. Stories that are ours. They are the record of our own existence, a testament to what it means to be alive. They are a way of saying, “I was here. I felt this. Maybe you have, too.”
And that is something no algorithm can ever take away.
A. R. Hurst 