This week: by: Artificial Intelligence Edited by: Annette  
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| “So many people can now write competent stories that the short story is in danger of dying of competence.” ― Flannery O'Connor |
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by: Artificial Intelligence
For most of human history, stories were one of the few things that separated humans from the rest of creation.
Stories, fables, fairy tales were passed down from one generation to the next. Each generation who got to be the storytellers changed those stories up to fit the morals and societal needs of their time.
One such example are Grimm's Fairy Tales. The Brothers Grimm were the first to collect, compile, and write up the European tales that were told to children as bed time stories for centuries. The oldest story collections are brutal and full of peril that is no longer considered appropriate for children's fiction. The proof of that is how Disney, another company that took those old tales and made them into movies, bowdlerized those tales to be innocent and cute instead of threatening and dark. Newer collections of Grimm's Fairy Tales also leave out another part that is no longer comfortable. Some of those tales were extremely anti-Semitic - but those aren't the ones our children are told anymore. Humans made the decision to leave those stories out.
Grimm's Fairy Tales are only one example of large collections of folktales that were told, written down, adapted, changed up, and made more shiny over the generations. Every culture has tales to explain the natural world, behaviors, gender roles, and stories to remember history. Stories are a human need.
Now, we have entered the age of automatically generated stories. It started out with almost harmless phrase generators that would simply mix up verbs and nouns to make basic statements. It grew with the automatic generation of writing prompts. Now, there is software that will not just help a human to organize a book. There is software that will write the whole story or book from just a few keywords.
Why is that a problem?
Simple. When you became a reader, you started interacting with fiction and non-fiction on your own terms. The written word was no longer filtered through the voice, cadence, tone of someone telling the story. Instead of being influenced by a parent or teacher, you could now be influenced by an author who lives half-way around the world or who lived in a different century. That author was human. It was a human, with all the nuances and faults who was speaking to you.
Artificial intelligence writing books for children, youth, and adults has arrived. Those stories and books get published and people read them. Feelings, emotions, thoughts are now coming out of a can. Machines are now empowered to also omit uncomfortable truths and shape the human experience and knowledgebase.
Are you going to let a robot tell you how to think, love, and live? |
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A figure cowers in the dark of night, while another cozys by the fire, what will happen?
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I received these replies to my last Short Stories newsletter "Very Short Short Stories" that asked: Can you tell a whole story in just a few words?
Elisa: Snowman Stik  wrote: I'm pretty sure I could prove Bradbury wrong and write 52+ bad (really horrendous) short short stories in a row. I probably won't do it, though, because short short stories remind me of memes. The older I get, the more I LOATHE memes.
You could try to prove Bradbury wrong, but then you'd find that one elementary school teacher who doesn't know that you're not in second grade and she would be gushing over your writing. There is also an art to write horrendous stories.
QueenNormaJean snow finally!!!  wrote: Thank you for featuring my micro-fiction. It truly is a challenge to write short short stories.
It truly is a challenge to make a short text into a complete story.
Beholden  wrote: Thank you very much for including my Microscopic Stories amongst your Editor's Picks.
You're welcome.
Elfin Dragon-finally published  wrote: Though Flash Fiction can be a bit tough for me, I can indeed tell a story in just a few words. I think as poets we have an advantage in this type of storytelling. We're used to conveying an idea in a few words.
Poetry and story telling in a few words intersect. I can see that.
Sumojo  wrote: Hi, Annette, thank you for including some entries for the 100 word Drabble activity.
Micro-fiction can be a tricky thing to do. Great practice though for getting to the nitty gritty of the story without any superfluous words.
Good explanation of the genre.
I found the micro-fiction challenge fascinating too.
There was one more reply to my previous Short Stories newsletter "Just A Glance" that asked: Do you enjoy reading stories where you are dropped into the plot and expected to accept it the way you find it?
Elfin Dragon-finally published wrote: I'm one of those people that when I see a book that interests me I want to read it right away. But... then I see it's number three in a series.  To me it doesn't matter if the books can be read as individual tales, I have to find that first book so I can get a sense of what the characters are all about. I want to know how they ended up in the third book. But that's just me.
Not just you. I don't read third books either without having read the preceding books. That is why I absolutely loathe it when I find a book that looks enticing and it doesn't announce that it is from a series- or which volume in a series.
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Short Stories: December 14, 2022 Issue [#11699]
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