This is what makes people go hollow in Dark Souls

[rynling]

A Publisher Pulled a Book for Suspected A.I. Use. I Got My Hands on a Copy. What I Found Was Revealing.
https://slate.com/culture/2026/03/shy-girl-mia-ballard-novel-a-i-book-horror-reddit-hachette-canceled.html

Dylan Garity, a freelance editor based in Brooklyn who has edited more than 500 books, agreed that it’s not about individual tells: “It’s 100 things stacked on top of each other. And it’s less even about taking it down into those individual 100 things, and more about an overall feeling that you get upon reading it. That sounds kind of vague, and not back-up-able, but it is most of what we have to go on.”

That's it exactly. If you know what ChatGPT looks like, it really does scream at you. Even if you can't "prove" it through, like, five simple steps or whatever. Also, I don't like this:

“Quality control has collapsed,” said another editor. John Baker, a literary agent at Bell Lomax Moreton, said that editors are seeing their jobs transform more and more into project management, and that while publishing houses make good profits, “the last thing they spend it on is more staff. Everyone working well beyond capacity is the norm.”

Comments

[renegadefolkhero]

I have really mixed feelings about Shy Girl.

I read it after the shit hit the fan and still didn't pick up on the AI stink part. It has the weirdest and most distracting epub formatting I've ever seen, so maybe that's partly why (I think she generated a print pdf then converted it to epub???)

[rynling]

I think my over-sensitivity to the stink comes from teaching undergrad classes for about ten years. Before 2023, there were as many styles of student writing as there are colors of the rainbow. Since 2023, everything has been the same monotonous shade of gray: uncannily precise in terms of grammar, noticeably limited in terms of vocabulary, and eerily smooth in terms of flow. Complete confidence and zero friction.

I mean like. Before 2023, very few students knew how to use commas or semicolons. MS Word and Google Docs still don't know how to use commas, for that matter. And yet now I never see any mistakes, none at all.

In terms of ChatGPT-generated fiction, this sort of thing is super common:

My breath evens out, the outline of possibility taking shape. A job. The thought lingers, solid and improbable. A flicker of hope.

Nathan’s name flashes on the screen.

My chest tightens, anticipation blooming sharp and fast, and I unlock the phone with a clumsiness that betrays me.

Namely: one-sentence paragraphs + multiple sentence fragments + "[a] and [b]" adjective clusters

It's not so much the style itself, but rather that I see this same style of "Hollywood movie script" writing so frequently now (often in fanfic and other self-published work) when it was relatively rare before. Let's just say that I was very surprised when my favorite gothic romance writer suddenly started publishing work written like it was an episode of Law & Order.

Which isn't to say that everyone should be hyper-aware and suspicious all the time, but...

In any case, Mia Ballard has been very sus about the whole thing. She's like, "Idk, maybe the freelancer I got to edit the book put that style of writing in there, I wouldn't know." Girl it's your own damn book!! And she can live her best life, but I'm disheartened by the situation with the publisher. Did no one at Hachette notice that Ballard has no idea what she's supposed to have written beyond general vibes? Or did they just not care, because "big idea + attractive cover" is what performs well in stores and on socials?

I apologize for ranting, but it's maddening. Every time I learn something new about the current state of the English-language publishing industry, I wish I hadn't.

Good luck to all of us, I guess. 🫠

( Also I am going to take the plunge and buy the Atticus formatting software this month! I also find bad formatting to be extremely distracting!! )