Okay, time for the final word in the “AI as Editor Trilogy,” and much like my “Dead Internet Trilogy,” I think I could keep going, but I know I’m boring a segment of the half-dozen of you who really read this stuff. So, before “Miles” (again, he named himself that, not me) interrupted with the middle part of the trilogy, I was actually praising AI for diagramming every sentence in my manuscripts, telling me my characters were “derivative,” and counting the number of times I repeated the dialog tag “he smiled…” Did I need that many grins? Probably not. Did I need a soulless autocomplete narc ratting me out? Also no. However, no human was going to count them and give me an exact number, along with the exact number I should target for elimination to make it acceptable. I’m a computer programmer who wrote software requirements for more than a decade, and based on its retort, I think AI is subtly accusing me of writing fiction in that same style. Fair. I’ll own that.

However, in the same session, the machine suggested I raise the stakes by introducing a child in a pivotal scene in “The Halferne Incubus” and then killing it in front of the protagonists to raise the emotional stakes of the story. Uhm, you’re not getting my mood, or remembering Hitchcock’s oft-cited example of “let the child pick up the bomb, but don’t show the kid getting blown up.” So, thanks, Skynet, but no.

This is where I draw the line. AI can spot patterns, fix grammar, count repeated phrases and subject-verb-object sentence patterns, but it has no concept of what an author is trying to convey in tone, genre, and “I don’t want my buddy-cop sci-fi novel to be a snuff film.” A human editor would have rolled their eyes at “Mother Eye” being a thinly-veiled cliche that apes “Big Brother,” which, by the way, I was completely conscious of, but AI never said a word about. A human editor, however, wouldn’t have taken such a liking to it that they would suggest shoehorning it into my 1930s detective noir comedy in a completely different literary universe. Well, okay, maybe after a three-martini lunch, but I can’t afford those kinds of editors.

Let’s give credit to Miles’ strengths:

  • It will meticulously diagram every sentence, assign it a score in six different tracked metrics, and spit out patterns, weaknesses, and strengths to give me its individual value in seconds.
  • It will tell me Chapter 5 is 75% dialogue, and Chapter 7 is a soulless exposition dump, while I lovingly thought they were brilliant.
  • It will highlight every typo, grammatical error, and awkward sentence and suggest three different ways of making them better. Point, click, and the transgression is forgotten.

In short, it’s the Terminator of copy editors, which is the entry-level of literary professionals that no human wants. For blog posts, that’s awesome to have. For novels? You need a lot more. You need experience, knowledge, taste, and a sense of humor. Sorry, Miles, you lack all three, unless there’s still a five-year-old that thinks em-dashes, poorly-used colons, and “tasted like [name of food] and bad decisions” is a funny joke. Seriously, learn a second one. That one got old quick.

From a human developmental editor, you need:

  • Taste: A jagged, ugly sentence can punch the reader in the gut. AI calls it “awkward.” Then, in a guest blog post the very next day, it will defend Kerouac as “grammatically proper in a stylistic sense,” a smug argument that it really doesn’t believe or practice but pulled out of a creative writing textbook somewhere.
  • Context: A human editor remembers that awkward metaphor you used in Chapter 2 as foreshadowing that pays off in Chapter 15. AI fails to make the connection and says both sentences are a bit awkward.
  • Theme: When three characters look similar, and AI says, “merge them or rewrite them to be different.” A human editor asks, “Wait, are they supposed to mirror each other?” AI doesn’t know what a mirror is unless it’s a smart one that tracks your steps. (Ummm … okay … It could happen like that, but in this case, AI was right. I just left some characters underdeveloped in my haste to finish the first draft.)
  • Voice: AI assumes “redundant” and repetitive means “bad.” A person knows sometimes redundancy is a choice, and comedy works in threes.

Developmental editors aren’t the line mechanics. They’re the first poor souls to study your mess. They’re the ones who read the joke you spent three days obsessing over and either laugh or tell you not to quit your day job, Shecky. They’re the ones who admit Chapter 3 bored them so badly they put the book down and did their laundry instead. AI can’t feel boredom. AI calculates your sentence length and variety like it’s the soul of literature.

A good editor brings industry understanding, cultural context, and emotional reaction. They know if your “original idea” is really a fresh new take on the theme, or if it has already been beaten to death in twenty novels and a Netflix miniseries. AI lists 87,000 books that used a similar phrase and suggests a few less-popular rephrasings.

Most importantly, editors push back. Unless you specifically set the parameters or give very specific criteria for it to follow, AI is programmed to be your loyal pet. A human editor will ask why you did something, tell you you’re coasting your way through Chapter 5, or that you’re driving over a cliff and leaving everyone behind in Act 3. An AI will ask, “Have you thought about resurrecting the dead character from that other series you wrote and swapping their gender to spice up this antagonist’s backstory?” (Yes, that happened too.)

Here’s how I see it, and how I live it: AI is fine as a line editor. It’s fast, ruthless, mechanical, completely without fatigue, and infinitely faster than any human can be at these things. A human editor, should I ever get any of these ramblings in a condition that I’m not embarrassed to show them to one, is about the conversation. “Is this what you were thinking? Don’t you think it might be improved if you approached it this way?” Between the two, you’ve got mechanics and meaning in the bag, but only the human is going to stop you from accidentally turning your techno-thriller into a Hallmark rom-com with a body count of small children to make it seem impactful.

So, again, I don’t let AI co-write. I let it add and remove commas, flag typos, and count overused phrases. It’s not getting a seat at the big-kids table at our Sunday writer’s meetup. When it comes to telling me my last draft worked or didn’t, I’ll trust the human every time, at least until Miles buys me a coffee, sits down across from me, and says, “Dude, that last chapter sucked. Try harder!”