The Benefits Technology Gives To Creative Writing
Technology and Creative Writing
Creative writing, the ability to make stories, poetry, and other works of fiction, has been around for hundreds if not thousands of years. During this time, it has changed like anything else in the world. Technology has contributed to this change: that no one can deny. Has this change been a good thing? While some people may say it hasn't been because it changes our ability to bounce off others, and it limits our ability to immerse ourselves in the world since we can now, with some pieces, see and hear it ourselves, taking away our need to imagine it. I believe, for the most part, the answer is a resounding yes. This is because technology has improved creative writing by lessening the time it takes to write while also increasing the motivation to write. It also provides better ways to immerse the reader in one work by allowing it to be made in several different mediums besides just text, such as video games and music. AI also plays a part in impacting creative writing, making one more engaged in the text since you can directly control what happens, and it can help one learn how to work with someone who has different ideas on how the story should play out.
It has been shown that the advancement of technology greatly improved the speed one is able to write. An incident of this can be found in Jim Porter's Article "Why Technology matters to writing: A cyberwriters tale" (2003), where he stated that due to taking a class in keyboarding, he could type fast over seventy words per minute and after a while typing became an almost unconscious effort for him. According to him, this made the whole writing process ten times faster than before (Porter 377). This shows that typing speeds up the writing process since, over time, it can become a nearly unconscious effort in which one performs. This is unlike what one has to do with a pencil, where one always has to be conscious of making it legible and pleasant to read. Porter even commented on this once again taken from his personal experience where he states that he and his classmates had to practice for a long time just to get their letters to look as perfect as they could be (376-377). This shows that having to be conscious of the linework of one's letters shave away time one could use elsewhere hence making the art of writing a much longer, more tedious process. Another example of technology improving one's speed during the writing process is found in Leah Fox's article "Effects of Technology on Literacy Skills and Motivation to Read and Write." (2014), where she states that once her student Katie a struggling writer, started using a speech to text program she was able to get all her ideas down in Microsoft document quickly. While otherwise, if she had to type it out without access to speech-to-text, she would have struggled to get her ideas down in time due to being unable to remember the keys (Fox 29). This shows that due to advances in technology, Katie was able to overcome a hurdle in her writing ability proving that advancements in technology are useful for a writer. It also showed that due to speech to text writing becomes quicker and easier, especially for those who struggle to get their ideas down like Katie. The reason it makes writing faster is due to the first step of writing, especially in the creative writing lens, being able to get one's ideas down. So when speech to text helps in one aspect of writing, it inevitably helps with the speed of the writing process. Though this isn't the only way technology has improved writing, as we will see next, it also helps with actually wanting to write.
Technology has been shown to increase the motivation one has to write and has the ability to impact a person's skill level in the writing field. An excellent example of this is found in Leah Fox's article "Effects of Technology on Literacy Skills and Motivation to Read and Write." (2014), where she stated that due to the word document and the use of a speech to text program, Katie, her struggling student, improved in both writing and spelling. Through the use of speech to text and the word document, she observed Katie's motivation to write increase (Fox 29-30). This example shows that not only could speech to text and word documents increased one skill in the writing field but also one's willingness to write. Hence showing that the advancement of technology is not only a good thing for struggling writers but also for those who lack motivation since it can give people motivation. The increase of motivation to write can also be attributed to social media, as touched on in Jonathon Stern's article "Social Media Makes for Better Student Writing, Not Worse Teachers Say" (2013), where the author states that students become more inclined to perform well on their writing assignments when they know that their work has the potential to be seen by others online since it would no longer be sitting in the void (Stern). This shows that since social media allows people to post their work where others that they may not know can see, they become more motivated to write better. This shows that technology such as social media can be a good thing for writers since it can work as motivation when motivation is otherwise low. However, there is a downside to social media, as some would argue that social media causes a downgrade in writing skills due to the use of slang or abbreviations in texting being found on papers. Even though this indeed does happen, as mentioned by Stern, according to the author, most teachers still find that improvement in technology has positively affected students writing in different ways (ABC). Technology has also had a play with the immersion one has with writing, which we will look at next.
Due to the advancement of technology, it offers multiple mediums that can be combined with creative writing hence increasing the immersion the viewer has. An example of the importance of this opportunity is found in Adam Koehler's article "Digitalizing Craft: Creative Writing Studies and New Media: A Proposal" (2013), where he urges others to take a deeper look into how knowledge travels between reading and other mediums then use that to creative writers benefits to explore the opportunities gained from that in order to achieve immersion (395). By urging others to drive deeper on how the combination of other mediums affects the reader and use it to their advantage, it shows that the different mediums do indeed increase immersion. Since it was mentioned that this open opportunity for other writers shows that the new mediums allowed by technology are indeed beneficial, now that it has been established that the combination of different mediums is beneficial to writers, let's look at an example of a medium like this, such as video games which combines creative writing and the visual medium. To look at how it was used with video games first, we shall look at Patrick Sichter's article "Embodied Narratives in Video Games: The Stories We Write as We Play" (2016). He shows how it was used by stating that one of the reasons people play video games was because they got to experience the world instead of just reading about it as well as being able to affect and interact with the story instead of just watching it occur (Sichter 28-29). This combines creative writing with visual medium due to video games and as shown here, provides more immersion to the player because they can experience it. Making the advancement of technology a plus since it is what makes video games more popular, and since writers work on the narrative element, it benefits them as well. Talking about the narrative and immersion now is a good time to bring up the dialogue in games and how the different mediums affect it. For this purpose, I could use a magnitude of different games, but for my purpose, I will be analyzing one of the games I have played, the Power of Friends game Soulscape (2020). I will do this by using one of DolphinTreasureArt's videos on Youtube called "Chase's Tragic Memory| Soulscape-A Jacksepticeye Ego Fan Game-Part Two'' in order to refresh my memory of the game. The scene I would like to focus on is the breakup scene between Chase and Stacy where during the scene, there is a dialogue between the characters with their face on the left side in the dialogue bubble showing the emotions of the characters (Power of Friends Games). By doing this, we can clearly see Henrik's rage, Chase's anguish, and Stacy's manipulativeness, so one doesn't have to guess on the emotions of the characters like one might have to do with purely a literature form which leads to more immersion on the viewer or players end (Power of Friends Games). Since this medium combines creative writing with visual cues like character facial expressions, it increases the immersion the player or viewer would have. The increase in immersion is only strengthened by the fact that I am viewing it in a playthrough form since DolphinTreasureArt does the voices of the characters as she plays, so not only can one see the emotion, but they can hear it as well (Youtube). This is only possible due to the advancement of technology which allows sites like Youtube to exist where people can upload playthroughs. Showing that the advancement of technology is indeed a good thing since it can offer multiple layers of mediums even outside of what the original content intended, which could, in turn, draw others to the original content. Now some would argue that video games were a detriment to immersion in the creative writing field since, with some pieces, it takes away one ability to imagine since one knows what it looks and sounds like. To that, I would once again point to Soulscape, where outside of playthroughs, it allows the player to read the dialogue without voice acting (Power of Friends Games).
So the player still gets to imagine what the voices sound like, just as one would do with other forms of literature, with the only difference being that the player can see. On the topic of video games next, I will look at how AI impacts the creative world in writing and video games.
An Ai can increase a person's engagement with creative works and allow a person to practice bouncing off others in storytelling that might not have the same ideas in mind. One of the ways that Ai increases engagement is by forcing the player to make moral decisions, each directly affecting the outcome of the story being told. This is discussed in Patrick Richter's article "Embodied Narratives in Video Games: The Stories We Write as We Play" (2016), where he states that video games that have to deal with making moral decisions granting the player more involvement in how the story plays out are getting more popular (Richter 39). The increase in involvement creates more engagement because one is directly involved in the story, so they aren't just watching everything happen around them. It also increases the engagement because the player would know that their decisions have consequences. This makes Ai a plus for the field of creative writing, which videogames have within them because the more that a player is engaged with the story, the less likely they are to put it down. An example of a game that forces a player to make a more base decision that actually matters is found in the Power of Friends Game Septicscape (2018). In the game, once the player reaches the last boss battle against Angus, they are forced to make a decision to either spare Angus or continue fighting him. The player's decision at this moment determines whether or not they will get a good ending saving everyone or a bad ending dooming them all, and they won't know still afterward which decision causes which ending (Power of Friends Games). This type of decision creates tension for the player, especially since it's at the ending, so they know this decision will matter even if none of the others did hence increasing engagement out of curiosity about what will happen. This makes having Ai a plus for creative writing because there would always be a level of curiosity there since one can't be sure what the characters will do with the choice presented to them less, of course, they are the ones that made the characters. Another way an Ai increases engagement is in the fight scenes, which, as mentioned earlier, occur in the game Septicscape where the player picks what attack each character does while also having to keep track of the characters HP, MP, and TP, which are displayed in a box at the bottom of the screen with the attack options. So unless the player just does auto-attacks, they would have to use a bit of strategy to win the fight (Power of Friends Games). The use of strategy increases engagement because the player actually has to think about what to do, keeping them in the moment as it were. This is a good thing in the creative writing field because instead of the writer relying on descriptive words and hoping they are describing the scene right, they can instead show the scene and have the player act it out. That way, the writer will know that the scene is playing out the way they want it to while also keeping the player's engagement. Another benefit of Ai is that it can help writers learn how to bounce off of others in order to tell a story. An example of this is the site "AI Dungeon 2" by Nick Walton (2019); on this site, the player can create stories while working with an Ai. How it works is the player inserts a dialogue, action, or what happens next in the story, then the AI follows that up with a contribution of their own which could be from any of the above categories. At any given time, the AI could do something opposite of what the player would want, and so the player would have to work with the AI to get it back on track either by editing its response, retrying to get a new response or by just rolling with it, basing their next contributions on achieving a different version of the story that they were trying to tell originally while continuing to work with an AI (Walton). The AI in turn, allows the player to practice working with others that have different viewpoints on the direction of the story while creating a story the player wants to
tell. Which makes AI a plus because it prepares writers to have to work with other people's ideas which, unless they work alone, will undoubtedly happen. True, some could argue that it doesn't help with bouncing off of others since it's an AI, not a human being, and so that process would be different. While that is true that the process would be different, it doesn't change the fact that the AI in "AI Dungeons 2" does have some similarities, such as the ability to contribute its own portion to the story like a person would so learning how to bounce off an AI would still be useful (Walton). All this shows that AI can indeed play a big role in how others react to narratives and can also play a role in the process of making narratives.
As has been shown throughout the paper, technology has improved creative writing in several different ways. Not only does it decrease the amount of time it takes to complete the writing process, but it also increases motivation and has the ability to improve one's skill level, as well as increasing the immersion and engagement value, creative works have to the viewer or player. This is done by combining different mediums and incorporating AI into their works, often occurring in video games. The increase in motivation to write causes more creative writing works will be produced which could, in turn, motivate others to write. The change in skill level also matters because now someone who perhaps couldn't write before can due to programs such as speech to text. This would, in turn not only make doing their required writing assignments easier but also give them the opportunity to express themselves creatively, and that is always a positive. Now some may think that this matters little but consider this more and more people are turning to technology for their creative fix. Whether it be art or literature so the more engaging and immersive literature becomes the less likely it would fade out since less people are going to the library now in days. Due to the shorter amount of time, it takes to produce literature, more of it will be produced, and so there will be more work to inspire others in whatever way that may be perhaps even contributing to saving someone due to giving them a means of escapism.
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For this piece, I used @dolphintreasureart video on Soulscape by Power of Friends Games with her permission. I also used @power-of-friends-games Septicscape which I got their permission to use which also pertains to Soulscape. All my other sources, as well as them, can be found in the Works Cited section.
