If you can't beat em
Oct. 31st, 2025 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingSome situational background information:
I stopped putting this on my weekly writing logs, but I’m still querying agents. As of this week, I’ve sent 20 queries. So far, the only responses I’ve received are form rejections.
During this process, I’ve been paying close attention to the books that agents interested in my genre (which is “fantasy,” broadly speaking) have listed as their favorites, and I’ve been requesting them from my local library. Based on what I’ve seen so far, it’s all unreadable YA slop.
I don’t mind YA (or the slightly more risqué category of New Adult) on principle, but the writing in these books is so bad that I can’t parse half the sentences. I really do think they’re legitimately meant to be a collection of tropes with a cover that looks good on social media.
Yesterday, while trying to find something about Silksong on Reddit, I stumbled onto a thread discussing falling engagement on social media. The general consensus seems to be that: (a) the userbase is fragmenting onto smaller platforms, and (b) younger people prefer ephemeral forums like Discord and Twitch chats. That feels a bit anecdotal, but what seems obvious to me is that (c) on the larger platforms, it’s impossible for humans to compete with AI-generated content, especially when it comes to production-heavy content like narrative video.
For some time, I’ve been considering doing more overt self-branding on social media, like posting photos of my face or videos of myself talking. Performing in front of an audience is (technically) part of my job, after all. At the same time, making myself pretty for the camera feels like a chore, and living through an intense summer of death threats in 2014 (with Gamergate) and then again in 2018 (with anti-fandom bullshit on Tumblr) has made me camera shy.
What I enjoy isn’t posting images of myself, but rather narrative photosets of the weird places I walk through in Philadelphia, like abandoned sewer tunnels and the underground utility access corridors of university buildings. Although I edit the sequence of photos to form a fictional story, the photos themselves are real... usually. Sometimes I use photos I find online (mostly on Tumblr or Reddit), although I like to do some creative editing in Photoshop.
I post these photosets on my Instagram stories, sometimes with music and always with overlaid text. They’re essentially moving comics… Or perhaps storyboards? Like for a short video?
So I was thinking. And hear me out. What if I used AI to make actual videos?
For me, creative work is about the process more than the result. If I don’t enjoy whatever I’m writing or drawing, there’s no point. When I commission illustrations and comics, even though I’m not doing the actual work, I really enjoy gathering references and communicating with the artist.
But when it comes to making videos... I mean, I have no money. And, even if I had video editing software, I don’t have a computer that could run it.
There’s no artistic “process” for me to enjoy in making videos, since that’s not something I have the tools or resources to do. And, if I use AI to make short videos, I’m not taking work away from actual artists. I’m a broke writer, not a media production company, you know?
If you’re concerned about environmental destruction... First of all, I have bad news about smartphones and gaming consoles. None of us are free from sin. But second, that’s like blaming the trash gyre in the Pacific on someone who uses a plastic straw when they eat at a restaurant once or twice a week. In other words, it’s a question of scale – I wouldn’t be operating on the scale of, say,Twitter X: The Everything App.
So what if I wrote a script, gathered visual references, created a storyboard, and then had an AI create a video? That’s apparently what social media algorithms like to see, after all. And apparently, it’s what literary agents like to see too. Wouldn’t that be kind of interesting, maybe? Given that I’ve already written an actual novel, I already have tons of material.
What if, over a series of short videos, I turned my novel into a movie?
I'm not actually considering this, of course; I'm just thinking out loud. In reality, threads like (this) about AI and bloatware make me extremely tired.
I stopped putting this on my weekly writing logs, but I’m still querying agents. As of this week, I’ve sent 20 queries. So far, the only responses I’ve received are form rejections.
During this process, I’ve been paying close attention to the books that agents interested in my genre (which is “fantasy,” broadly speaking) have listed as their favorites, and I’ve been requesting them from my local library. Based on what I’ve seen so far, it’s all unreadable YA slop.
I don’t mind YA (or the slightly more risqué category of New Adult) on principle, but the writing in these books is so bad that I can’t parse half the sentences. I really do think they’re legitimately meant to be a collection of tropes with a cover that looks good on social media.
Yesterday, while trying to find something about Silksong on Reddit, I stumbled onto a thread discussing falling engagement on social media. The general consensus seems to be that: (a) the userbase is fragmenting onto smaller platforms, and (b) younger people prefer ephemeral forums like Discord and Twitch chats. That feels a bit anecdotal, but what seems obvious to me is that (c) on the larger platforms, it’s impossible for humans to compete with AI-generated content, especially when it comes to production-heavy content like narrative video.
For some time, I’ve been considering doing more overt self-branding on social media, like posting photos of my face or videos of myself talking. Performing in front of an audience is (technically) part of my job, after all. At the same time, making myself pretty for the camera feels like a chore, and living through an intense summer of death threats in 2014 (with Gamergate) and then again in 2018 (with anti-fandom bullshit on Tumblr) has made me camera shy.
What I enjoy isn’t posting images of myself, but rather narrative photosets of the weird places I walk through in Philadelphia, like abandoned sewer tunnels and the underground utility access corridors of university buildings. Although I edit the sequence of photos to form a fictional story, the photos themselves are real... usually. Sometimes I use photos I find online (mostly on Tumblr or Reddit), although I like to do some creative editing in Photoshop.
I post these photosets on my Instagram stories, sometimes with music and always with overlaid text. They’re essentially moving comics… Or perhaps storyboards? Like for a short video?
So I was thinking. And hear me out. What if I used AI to make actual videos?
For me, creative work is about the process more than the result. If I don’t enjoy whatever I’m writing or drawing, there’s no point. When I commission illustrations and comics, even though I’m not doing the actual work, I really enjoy gathering references and communicating with the artist.
But when it comes to making videos... I mean, I have no money. And, even if I had video editing software, I don’t have a computer that could run it.
There’s no artistic “process” for me to enjoy in making videos, since that’s not something I have the tools or resources to do. And, if I use AI to make short videos, I’m not taking work away from actual artists. I’m a broke writer, not a media production company, you know?
If you’re concerned about environmental destruction... First of all, I have bad news about smartphones and gaming consoles. None of us are free from sin. But second, that’s like blaming the trash gyre in the Pacific on someone who uses a plastic straw when they eat at a restaurant once or twice a week. In other words, it’s a question of scale – I wouldn’t be operating on the scale of, say,
So what if I wrote a script, gathered visual references, created a storyboard, and then had an AI create a video? That’s apparently what social media algorithms like to see, after all. And apparently, it’s what literary agents like to see too. Wouldn’t that be kind of interesting, maybe? Given that I’ve already written an actual novel, I already have tons of material.
What if, over a series of short videos, I turned my novel into a movie?
I'm not actually considering this, of course; I'm just thinking out loud. In reality, threads like (this) about AI and bloatware make me extremely tired.
