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This week on the podcast, we’re exploring the intersection of education, critical thinking, and creativity with a long-time friend of the show. We sat down with Susan Gable to discuss a fascinating experiment involving students and AI, as well as how these tools are helping seasoned authors break through years of writer’s block.
Meet Susan Gable: Author, Educator, and AI Pioneer
Susan Gable is an author with a career spanning over two decades, beginning in the “dinosaur days” of Harlequin romance. Beyond her fiction writing, Susan works in the education sector, developing curriculum for Stossel in the Classroom, a non-profit organization that encourages students to engage with economic and civic ideas.
Susan describes herself as a “cautious early adopter” who loves tech toys. While she initially integrated AI into her daily workflow for educational materials, she has recently leaned into the creative side, using tools like Claude and ChatGPT to revitalize her fiction career. Her journey is a testament to the idea that AI isn’t just for “new” writers—it’s a powerful ally for industry veterans as well.
The Failure of AI Bans in Education
A major highlight of the episode was Susan’s experience judging student essay contests. Last year, the contest implemented a rule banning AI. However, Susan—who has a “fine-tuned AI detector” in her own head from years of professional writing—could immediately tell that many students were using it anyway.
She noted that when you read hundreds of essays back-to-back, the “AI voice” becomes glaringly obvious. Despite the ban, students were submitting work with 20+ sources (unusual for high schoolers) and suspiciously similar prose. Susan realized that “AI detectors” are largely unreliable and that telling students “don’t eat the cookie” only leads to them eating the cookie and lying about it.
The AI Challenge: Measuring Thinking, Not Output
Instead of fighting the tide, Susan helped pivot the contest into the AI Challenge. In this new format, students were actually required to use AI (specifically tools like Poe, ChatGPT, or Gemini) to explore complex topics like congressional term limits or birthright citizenship.
The brilliance of this experiment was in the requirements:
- Submit the Chat Logs: Students had to provide a link to their full conversation with the AI.
- Play Devil’s Advocate: Students were instructed to push back against the AI’s answers and question its logic.
- Reflective Writing: Students wrote a reflection on the process without using AI.
This shifted the focus from the final essay to the process of thinking. Susan found that the most successful students were those who did research beforehand and went into the chat “loaded for bear,” ready to debate the machine. It proved that AI doesn’t make students dumber; rather, it highlights the widening gap between those who use critical thinking and those who just want to “press the button.”
Overcoming Writer’s Block and Mastering Craft
Susan also shared a deeply personal win: AI helped her break a decade-long bout of writer’s block. After not releasing a book for over ten years, she published a new title last year with the help of AI collaborators.
However, she was quick to debunk the myth of “push-button publishing.” Even when using advanced tools like Your First Draft, Susan spent an entire weekend refining her story worksheet to ensure the “Story Architecture” was correct.
Steph and Susan discussed how essential “underlying knowledge” is when working with AI. You have to know:
- Story Structure: Whether it’s a three-act or four-act structure.
- Character Mottos: A technique Susan uses to ensure characters stay consistent and driven by their internal conflicts.
- The “Black Moment”: AI often struggles to make things “dark” enough in a romance, requiring the author to step in as the “Story Engineer” to ensure the emotional beats are earned.
And much, much more.
Creative Play: Music, Art, and “Lessons in Lyrics”
The conversation touched on the “fun” side of AI as well. Susan has been using Suno to create “Lessons in Lyrics”—educational songs in genres like rap, rock, and country that teach concepts like the Rule of Law.
She also experiments with AI art tools like Midjourney, Leonardo, and Ideogram for book covers and visual inspiration. For Susan, these tools haven’t replaced her creativity; they have breathed new life into it, allowing her to offload the “drudgery” (like heavy typing that used to cause hand pain) so she can focus on being the “Story Architect.”
Key Takeaways from This Episode
- AI Detectors are Unreliable: In both education and publishing, focusing on “detecting” AI is a losing battle. Focus on the quality of the thinking and the final output instead.
- The “Human in the Loop” is Vital: AI is a “non-sentient computer algorithm.” It needs a human with craft skills to provide direction, guardrails, and emotional depth.
- Embrace the “Pioneering Attitude”: Curiosity and the willingness to iterate are the most important skills in the age of AI.
- Offload the Physical Strain: For authors dealing with repetitive strain injuries, AI can be a godsend by taking over the bulk of the typing.
- Teach Ethical Use: By teaching students (and authors) how to use AI as a Socratic partner rather than a shortcut, we preserve the value of critical thinking.
Resources Mentioned
Here are the links and tools discussed in this episode:
Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to Brave New Bookshelf, a podcast that explores the fascinating intersection of AI and authorship. Join hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite as they dive into thought provoking discussions, debunk myths, and highlight the transformative role of AI in the publishing industry.
Steph Pajonas: Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Brave New Bookshelf. I’m one of your co-hosts, Steph Pajonas, CTO of the Future Fiction Academy and Future Fiction Press, where we’re teaching authors how to use AI in any part of their process. And we’re publishing AI forward books and we’re doing lots of those things as…lots of meetings.
There’s been a lot of meetings lately I’ve been in, so I’ve been cramming my work into some of the hours outside of meetings, which is like before meetings and after meetings and before bed. And I really should probably take more time off. I know I should. And go outside and enjoy, which, this beautiful weather, which is what I was just talking about before we hit record.
Like last week, we had snow that was literally up to my waist. And this week it is [00:01:00] 77 degrees. And there’s, and most of the snow is gone. It’s fantastic and I love it. I’m such a summer person. I love the sun. I love the nice weather. I love walking my dog Lulu out and about and that gives me time to think and ponder and get more ideas for writing, for business, all that kind of stuff.
I listened to a lot of podcasts. And just the other day I was watching something and they were like, you can tune into our podcast. I was like, everybody has a podcast, including me. It was very funny ’cause podcasts seem to be having their moment right now. And you guys are here listening to us talk about AI and publishing and we’re really grateful for it.
We’re really grateful for it. We love doing this for you guys, and we love talking about the subject. And yeah we couldn’t be happier and the we part of this conversation is my lovely co-host, Danica Favorite, and she looks happy today. I love that smile. Danica. You’re doing well, aren’t you?
Danica Favorite: I [00:02:00] am.
Thank you. Thank you. Yes. I’m doing great. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Danica Favorite. I’m the community manager at Publish Drive, where we help authors on every stage of their journey from getting their books formatted, to finding AI metadata and book descriptions and book covers, to distributing your books to the widest audience possible and helping you with some promos with your books.
And then finally, once your book is selling, if you have co-authors, we can help you split your royalties. So as I always like to say, between us and the FFA, we have everybody covered no matter what your needs are for writing. And yeah, I’m doing really well. It’s funny, we were talking before we hit record.
Obviously you guys won’t hear this for another month or so, but this is the first Tuesday after daylight savings time and we were talking about how it is just kicking us in the butt. And I totally relate to Steph this week because this is a busy week for me as well. I am [00:03:00] booked with meetings all week long and also every social event that I want to do in my life is happening this week.
And so I sat down today as I was journaling a little bit before we came on and I was like, how do I protect my peace and rest this week? And that’s actually my priority is I know I have all these busy moving pieces and so this week it’s about rest and protecting my peace and giving myself self permission to leave things undone so I can do things like also go out in the beautiful weather. I don’t have a cute dog like Lulu. Seriously, I have such Lulu envy. I think I’m her biggest fan besides the Pajonas family. And I just wanna be out in the beautiful sun. It’s beautiful out, sunny out. It’s sixties and seventies all week here in Denver.
Steph Pajonas: That sounds nice.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. Yeah, so really lovely. And I do think [00:04:00] that, you know, we were talking about what do we chat about before we record, but I think this is the thing that we wanna chat about, is that there’s always going to be something to do. AI is moving so fast, it is at this crazy fast pace, and I actually spent the weekend AI wise is I found out this is a handy tip for people.
Cowork was just not working on my PC well, and so I did some research and as it turns out, you have to have the professional version of Windows, not the home version for Cowork to work on a PC. So I upgraded my PC. Did all that stuff and then I realized with everything with the cloud going down over the weekend last week with AWS and all that, all of my backups are cloud-based.
And yes, I have two different cloud backups because I’m that paranoid, but I still went out and bought another hard drive back up. So I, and I spent the weekend backing everything up [00:05:00] to a hard drive. Just because you can never be too cautious. So it wasn’t a lot of doing fun stuff, but a lot of doing necessary stuff.
And like I said, I just wanted to put that pointer out there to those of you who are trying to use Claude Cowork and failing. That it’s not really clear in the documentation until you dig deep. So that is the fun I’ve been having.
Steph Pajonas: That’s a good tip. I didn’t know that. I didn’t realize you had to have a specific version of Windows to use Cowork.
So good tip.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, today our guest, I’m super excited that Susan is here. I love Susan to death. She and I have been friends longer than either of us probably want to admit. She was just telling me that the cute little boy I remember seeing pictures of is getting married this fall.
Which is crazy and mind-boggling ’cause we’re clearly not old enough to have a child that old, but it is what it is. She and I met back in our Harlequin days, [00:06:00] even before we both got published, and then we got published and we followed each other’s careers. Neither of us are writing for Harlequin anymore. Doing our own thing.
And Susan has a really fascinating job, because she works in the education curriculum space. She writes a lot of education curriculum, and she did a really cool experiment with some students on how they’re using AI. And I really thought, as she was telling me how this was all playing out, I thought this is perfect for our listeners because it really shows what Steph and I talk about almost every episode, this idea of needing critical thinking skills in this age of AI, that everyone’s so afraid that the AI is taking away our ability to think.
And I would say, and I know Steph agrees with me, that it actually is requiring you to think more and more deeply about things. And if you look at it from that [00:07:00] perspective, I think it’s really important for us to continue having these conversations. So with that, I want to introduce you to our good friend Susan Gable.
And Susan, why don’t you tell us about yourself and also how you came into this AI space as an author.
Susan Gable: It’s great to be here. Thank you both for having me. And yeah, Danica, I was thinking this morning yeah, we go back a couple decades and we’ll just call it, we’ll just say it like that. A couple decades we go back.
‘Cause like you say, my, yeah, my kid was little when we, or when we first met each other. So yeah, published with Harlequin many moons ago, back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. And, um, I love tech toys, right? I have always loved tech toys. And I wouldn’t say, I’m an early adopter, but I guess I kind of am, but I’m also kind of a slow [00:08:00] early adopter, like a cautious early adopter.
But when it came to the AI stuff and to this day, I probably still use AI more in the day job in the educational field than I do with my writing yet. And that’s just because I just haven’t gotten it all figured out yet. I just haven’t quite gotten all the kinks worked out of how I’m going to use it.
But I love it and it’s fun, and I’m a lifelong learner. Like that’s my big thing. This year my word is action, because I have spent so much time with the FFA, drinking from the fire hose of knowledge and, and guzzling it down as quickly as I can that this year my goal is to put that stuff into action.
The last educational nonprofit that I worked for the IT guy and I became AI buddies early on, like really early. We’re using this stuff, don’t [00:09:00] tell the boss, but what do you think? Because he was the IT guy. So I would be like, okay, if he says it’s okay to use it, then we’re gonna go, we’re gonna use it.
So I’ve had a ChatGPT paid plan, like since they first opened to taking our money, and I’m like, shut up and take my money. Because right from the beginning it was like, oh, I’ve run into a wall, I can’t like there’s all their usage is being sucked up and if you pay, you get more access. So I paid, uh, I paid early on.
Now, like many people, I’m moving more into the Claude space, but that was really because my son kicked me in the butt and said, and again, like you said, like it’s changing so fast. Like right now it’s okay guys, please just take a breather. We just need a breather. We just need a little bit of a slowdown so we can master what we have before you throw the next thing at us.
But I could feel the shift in [00:10:00] January of this year, January of 2026. It was like, okay, this thing is shifting and it’s shifting in a hurry and you gotta jump to the next level, right? Like having all my little prompts to do my teacher guide stuff was lovely. That time is over, you know? And that’s what my kid was telling me, you know, he’s like, Mom, come on now.
You gotta get on the bandwagon. He’s like, you need to learn how to make skills in Claude. So I’m proud to say I now am the proud writer of seven Claude Skills and have a list of ones that I want to make this week, because it’s it’s so powerful and, and I, I honestly can’t remember how I found FFA, but I like most things, just barreled on in and was like, question, question, question, question.
You know, Because that’s me. I am the question lady Uh, as a teacher, I always [00:11:00] said, there’s no such thing as a dumb question. Just the question you really wish you had asked later on. And you’re like, darn it. I should have asked that question.
Steph Pajonas: I remember you being in there pretty much from the beginning.
So I feel like, um, I feel like you, you found us fairly quickly. I am, I’m also like, I had a ChatGPT account right away, but the funny thing was, is that I was a Claude fan from Claude 1.0 instant, because we had Claude in a, what was it…the… slack. It was on Slack, that’s where it was. I’m like that, that, that application that starts with an S that I don’t use all that much anymore.
What was that called? Right, right. We had the Slack channel that had Claude installed on it, before they had API keys you could get, before they had Claude chat. That was literally the only place to get it. And I wrote a book using Slack chat back then with Claude. These are [00:12:00] OG things that we’re doing.
Right. And you’ve, I remember you being there from the beginning. So you’ve been with us for quite some time.
Danica Favorite: And I remember that.
Susan Gable: Not quite the beginning but pretty early on I guess, but yeah, and like I say, I wish I could remember where I found, I don’t, maybe I found you guys on Facebook.
I’m not sure. That may very well have been, but, happy to be part of the community. Really ha… what a great community, right? Very supportive, very open, very helpful. I always know if I run into anything and I can’t get it figured out, I can go into the Discord and say, Hey, help somebody.
Steph Pajonas: Between FFA and the AI Writing for Authors group, we’ve created a place that I feel a lot of authors are comfortable in.
I see a lot of posts that come into the AI Writing for Authors group that don’t necessarily get approved because, they’re asking about other author things, but they always say, I feel so comfortable here. I’m so glad I’m not going to be [00:13:00] shot down for using AI like I am in every other group.
Like all these other groups are just pushing authors away and we’re collecting them.
Susan Gable: It’s a safe space. Yes, it is. Um, I actually had a dream the other night, and in the dream some woman was yelling at me for using AI and oh, okay. You know, you live in Jersey now. Talk about getting my jersey up.
Oh, it got my jersey up. And I was like yelling just yelling at her like, how, I don’t know who you think you are and all that, but yeah, it’s good to have, it is good to have a safe place away from the pitchforks and the torches. And I, I always say when you see the power of what these tools can do for you, I don’t understand why anybody, it, it, it would be like saying, no, I’m not going to use a word processor. I want to use my typewriter for the rest of [00:14:00] my life forever. Yeah, but look, you can copy and paste on the computer thing. You can move, you can change your word, so easy, no white out required, no, you’re fixing ribbons. None of that stuff. And I just I don’t know.
I have a hard time with it, because we’ve already lived through so many massive technological changes. Like obviously I am dating myself. I learned in high school to keyboard on a manual typewriter.
Danica Favorite: Same here. Yep.
Steph Pajonas: Same, same.
Susan Gable: Like your fingers slipping off the home row and getting stuck in the keys and that kind of a thing, you know?
Um, then the internet, and holy moly, what a, what a change. And even just a computer, I remember my mom, my mom ran the office for my father’s business, and she just was like, no, no, no computer. No [00:15:00] computer, No computer. And my son was about two, and he was like, Grammy, I show you. And she was like, listen, if the 2-year-old can do it, I guess I can do it.
And then once we got her hooked on the computer and I taught her Facebook later on, she, you know, she, she loved it. And so once you see the power that these tools bring to us, how do you say no?
Steph Pajonas: There’s no going back.
Danica Favorite: Exactly.
Yeah. And I remember in college, one of my work study jobs is I worked in the computer lab and like it was a big deal, like, you know, we had to have it staffed at certain hours so that people could go in and write their papers and do the thing, because the internet back then was so precious and, God forbid just anyone could go in and they could ruin the whole internet kind of thing. And and now we’re in this age where the internet is just [00:16:00] everywhere and it’s doing everything.
And even with the AI stuff, it’s just so funny ’cause I told this story before about my mom handing me her phone and saying, take this AI off. And I’m like, mom it’s just not possible. And today I had an appointment with my therapist and they have a new thing now when you check in, ’cause it’s online and there’s like a big disclaimer that says your therapist may be using an AI tool to take notes so that they can better chart your progress.
If you object to this, here’s where you need to fill out the form, and I’m like. Everyone’s got this now. And so I appreciate the people who say, I never wanna use it, I don’t wanna use it. But it’s so important for people to understand that it is coming. And I’ve read some anti AI things recently that really had me offended about this idea of they feel like [00:17:00] they’re being forced into AI, but that’s the nature of the world.
And I understand that feeling, and I know it’s scary, but my approach has always been to say, how do we look at this from a logical perspective? How do we look at this from a way that I can take it and use it for my purposes? And do some good with this thing that’s coming, whether I like it or not? And that’s why I was really fascinated with what you’re doing, Susan in terms of your experiment with the schools, because again, there’s so much debate of should kids use AI?
Do we wanna teach them how to AI, how are they using it? And so I want you to tell us about that experiment you did, because I find it fascinating.
Susan Gable: Absolutely.
So first of all, newsflash. They are using it, whether they’re supposed to be using it or not. And anything else, the more you tell them not to use a thing, the more they’re going to use the thing.
[00:18:00] Um, the AI challenge contest that we piloted this year actually came about because last year…so every year Stossel in the Classroom, which is the name of the organization I work for, Stossel in the Classroom, always did an essay contest. And then a few years back, they also added a video contest.
And so we give kids topics and then they, you know, they either write their essay or they create a video about those topics. So last year was my first year judging, and I spent about three weeks in a row, 40 hours a week reading essays. Now, unbeknownst to me, I wasn’t involved in the planning last year of the essay and the video contest, and unbeknownst to me after it got rolling somebody told me, oh, by the way, we made a rule that they can’t use AI. [00:19:00] And my head literally like, when, boom. Okay. Not literally, but I was like, and how pray tell do you intend to enforce this rule? Because guess what? The AI detector stuff is all bogus.
It doesn’t work, so you can’t, so, oh, well, you know what? Don’t worry, Susan. It, it’ll be fine. We’re just gonna tell ’em not to do it and they’re not gonna do it. What are we like? We’re about kids here, are we, like, don’t eat the cookie. We go eat the cookie.
Steph Pajonas: And then they go eat the cookie, right? Every single time.
Susan Gable: And then they lie to your face. And then they lie to your face that they eat the cookie. They got chocolate and crumbs all over their face and they say, I didn’t eat the cookie. So I get into reading these essays and again, now, like I said, I’ve been an author for more than a couple decades. I had been [00:20:00] using AI for several years at that point.
I had a fine tuned AI detector in myself. And again, we all know, so I can suspect, but I cannot prove. But let me tell you something. When you read 400 essays back to back, and many of them sound suspiciously the same. You start to wonder and then you start to know, and I just wanted to, I wanted to take a pen and be like, ah, ah, I can’t, I can’t do this.
It was very discouraging for me. And again, I love AI. I love AI, but it was so discouraging and these contests have big cash prizes. So later on, my boss, who is a former high school teacher, when he started reading for round two, I got an email from him very [00:21:00] quickly and he said, I see exactly what you mean.
Okay. Because we had some entries that had 15 and 20 source references. No. That is not how high schoolers work. Five references. Okay, that sounds great. That sounds about right. Maybe 10, 15 to 20. No. So by the end of it, I, and I had been shooting off these emails and I finally said, this is ridiculous.
The point of these contests is to get students to engage with these ideas, right? We want them to think critically. This year our topics were congressional term limits, birthright citizenship, and I don’t know, the third, we had three for the AI. And the fourth one for the essay contests and stuff this year is the [00:22:00] 250th Birthday of America and the founding principles, and how do those founding principles impact you, and are they still relevant today? So we asked them to think critically about these concepts. I don’t wanna know what ChatGPT thinks about it. I, if I wanna know, I’ll go ask ChatGPT myself. So I was wrestling with how do we actually then get students to think about these ideas and to also use the AI in a way that is ethical, is actually applying those critical thinking skills, is doing the kinds of things that we want.
Because I want to measure the kids’ thinking, I don’t want to measure the AI thinking. So I used AI to, to help me flesh out this concept of how can we create a new contest. And so the contest [00:23:00] involves, again, like I said, they had three topics to pick from. And then they were able to go to, at that point we had three specific AIs that they could use Poe, which like, nobody, like Poe, who the heck uses Poe? I don’t know. Poe, ChatGPT, and Gemini. And the reason we picked those was because they had nice, easy links that the kids could share with us. So that was like the first critical part was, I want to see your chat with the AI. That’s the big part of what we’re evaluating. And then after that, they were asked to write a reflection on the process, and we gave them like five questions about, how did it go?
How did they feel about using the AI, did it change their thinking at all about the topic and all of this. As I started reading them [00:24:00] and going through and then, and, and I, so on my monitor, I would have the kid’s chat with the AI and their reflection on the process side by side and go through and read it and read it and make notes and stuff.
Fascinating, utterly fascinating to me to look at how these kids, because of course we said to them, we want you to play the devil’s advocate. Because again, our John Stossel, I don’t know if you guys know John Stossel, he’s an investigative journalist. He was on 20/20 years back and he started as like a consumer advocate reporter.
But very heavy investigative journalism. We’re like, be like John Stossel, always play the devil’s advocate, push the question back or push back against the AI. So we gave them very explicit instructions of kind of what we were looking for, and a lot of them delivered, others did [00:25:00] not.
And of course the rules were use the AI in the AI chat. No AI in the reflection. ‘Cause again, I’m not looking for, I wasn’t looking for an essay, I don’t want a five paragraph essay or whatever, or a five page essay for that matter either. And want to know about your thinking process. And one of the biggest things that it validated besides validation, which was important, right?
We always say iterate, validate. You need the human in the loop. Garbage in, garbage out.
I tell that to people all the time. Garbage in, garbage out. Oh, AI is lousy. Okay, what’d you ask it? How did you ask it? What’d you put in there?
So the kids who really, um, one of the entries as I started reading the reflect, like, this kid came loaded for bear. This kid, and you could tell, and they said in the [00:26:00] reflection, I did a whole bunch of research before I even started the chat. So this kid had stuff ready to throw back at the AI and say, well, what about this thing?
And I read about this and what about that? And how about this? And, um, I, I know a lot of people are afraid, like you said that AI is going to make us dumber and that AI is gonna make, and that there are students who say, why do I need to learn to read the AI’s gonna read for me? I think what we’re gonna see is an ever widening of the gap, right?
Which we’re already seeing. And the gap is going to be kids who know how to read, know how to write, are willing to do both of those things, are willing to push back, are willing to ask questions. [00:27:00] And that is something that can be taught, like those are skills that can be taught, but the attitude, like the attitude is so important, right?
Like.
Steph Pajonas: You have to have a pioneering, almost attitude. You have to have curiosity. You have to go in there excited and ready to learn. And there are just, there are a lot of people who are not those things. They just, they wanna do a rote or routine, repetitive thing over and over again and get paid for it and go home, right?
And do whatever they wanna do. But, um, you know, the, you really just need that curiosity. The kid who went in there ready to debate with the AI, that kid was curious, had done some research, was interested in the subject, and went in there ready to question and to hear the answers and then rebut [00:28:00] those answers, right?
But that is not something that necessarily can be taught. You can definitely stoke the fire in kids especially if, you feel like they’re, they’re close. They just need to learn a few skills and they’ll be awesome. But there is an inherent like curiosity in people that, that really gets you there and that is going to be very apparent in the future with that ever widening gap, like you said. I just, I think that there will be a set of people who just, they just wanna do the same job.
Susan Gable: They just wanna press the button.
Steph Pajonas: They wanna press the button
Susan Gable: And get the whole book and be done with it.
Steph Pajonas: Yes.
Susan Gable: And that is not how that works. Okay. Just for anybody who came for the book portion of this, let me just assure you of that.
You can’t just press a button, get a book, be done, put, put it up on Amazon and it’s done. It does not work that way.
Steph Pajonas: No.
Susan Gable: Um. I just I, I also feel like a lot of this like, [00:29:00] again, obviously book lover, huge book lover, always have been. Learned how to read before I went to kindergarten, grew up in a house full of books and my mom read to me all the time. And I feel like that’s something we’ve lost right now.
I feel like more parents need to put their phones down, pick up their kid and pick up a book and read to their child. If you want to equip your child for success, that is the most important thing you can do for them. Read books to them. Cultivate a love of reading, right? And it always has been like that is one of the best things you could do for your kids in terms of, of giving them future success.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. Absolutely. And it’s so funny that people are so afraid of AI taking over the human jobs. Okay. And yet we give over that human job [00:30:00] of raising our child by handing them an electronic device.
Susan Gable: Yeah, take this.
Danica Favorite: Instead of just cuddling them and holding them. And I’m, I’m kind of dealing with, with this, with my neighbor who is a stay at home dad, trying to figure out how to raise his kid. And he was just baffled when I said how often do you just cuddle him and read to him? And he’s like, well, he’s got his tablet.
I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let’s have a talk about this. Let’s sit and read a book with him. And he was just amazed by that parenting advice. And that’s the thing is that no one can replace you cuddling your child and reading it a story. But there are a million tasks as an author, as a parent, as a human, that we can give to AI.
We can say, Hey, I’m actually, God help me, this is part of why I installed Claude Cowork on my computer, is can we please just figure out my inbox and make it manageable? [00:31:00] Rather than me doing it, let the AI do that and then I have time to go outside and take a walk. And I have time to enjoy my life.
And that’s what I want AI to give us.
Susan Gable: Agreed.
Steph Pajonas: Agreed.
Susan Gable: I also want the AI powered robot that can do the laundry and do the dishes.
Danica Favorite: Yeah.
Susan Gable: All that stuff. Because again, I’d much rather be doing writing or whatever else, you know, with, with my stuff.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. And my AI robot vacuum. It tries. God love it.
Little Roomba. You’re so sweet. But you’re still not there yet. It’s okay. I still love you. One of these days. One of these days, Roomba.
Susan Gable: Yeah. So, So overall, again the contest was very eyeopening for me. One of the reflections that a student gave us was this should have been easier.
That was it. It was supposed to be 500 to 750 words, but that one sentence was their entire [00:32:00] reflection. And I’m thinking, okay so again, that’s the whole thing. It’s gonna come down to attitude, right? I am dreading the essay contest. I am just overwhelmed already with dread, because I know that if I say we had, let’s just say 85% of the essays last year were AI, or had some AI involvement.
I just know that it’s gonna be 90 or 95% this year, because they’ve had a whole nother year, right? To get better at this. And that’s what I said to them last year. I said, you think this is bad this year? You wait until you see next year when they’ve had a whole nother year, when the AIs have had a whole nother year to get better.
When these kids’ prompting skills have gotten better, and they’re like, oh, but look, this kid says I did this. Oh, would you like me to show you how that’s done? Hey, chat. Here’s the prompt for the essay. Please [00:33:00] write this from the point of view of a high school student.
Steph Pajonas: Done and dusted.
Susan Gable: And again, they, they didn’t know, because they weren’t using it. This is why I do a lot of reading in the AI and education space and, a lot of like college professors are going back to blue books in the classroom, because then I know that’s your writing and you wrestled through it in front of me while you were here, so no electronics or whatever. Here’s your blue book, fill it out.
Steph Pajonas: I have a good friend of mine, old time friend, knitter, whatnot. She is a linguistics professor at the University of Rochester. And she teaches a class every year on AI, and using AI as part of language, learning, language, understanding language, et cetera.
And I speak to her class every year about using AI and publishing. Since I have that expertise. [00:34:00] So, it’s always interesting to, to see what kind of questions these college kids ask, because they’re now using it, they’re learning how to critically use it, how to ask and answer, and do almost like the, the Socratic method with with an AI.
At least we’re doing some sort of AI education now. I feel like it’s starting to, it’s starting to roll downhill. It’s starting to pick up some speed, and if we can teach people how to use these tools, using critical thinking skills, that I think that we’ll be better off in the future.
Just like you said, the person who, who said, oh, well this child, this child said that they didn’t use it when you proved them wrong by saying, do it with this style or whatever. It’s because people don’t use the tools, and they’re trying to make rules around stuff that they don’t understand.
Susan Gable: Correct.
Steph Pajonas: So we, we see this a lot too with authors who’ve never used the tools also saying oh, you can press a button and [00:35:00] get a book, or you can do all, and they don’t understand, because they just don’t use them. They don’t understand. And just like your, like, it should have been easier.
I love that reflection because yes, there are so many times where I was just like, um, I, I am still doing a lot of work when I’m using AI and I’m writing books, because it is not easy. It is not easy. I took it as a challenge and I love, I love a good challenge. Love it. And let me tell you, AI can challenge me till the cows come home, that’s for sure.
Susan Gable: I think the thing in education and in novel writing with AI is you need the underlying knowledge, right? How do you know if the book that the AI spit out is any good? Do you know what show don’t tell means? Do you know what a three or a four or a five act structure is? Do you know how to craft a good sentence?
Do you know how to make a 3D character [00:36:00] that’s, you know, well fleshed out and not a flat cardboard nothingness?
Steph Pajonas: This is because craft skills are really important. And Danica and I have talked about this many times on the podcast, just how important craft is, whether you’re using AI or not, but especially when you’re trying to tell a non-sentient computer algorithm how to write. Like it does understand things like a four act structure.
But I have to tell it that’s what I want. And I have to want those things and specify those things
Susan Gable: And know why do you want that thing. Why do you want a three act over a four act or a four act over a three act, or, why do you want this, this word length or what, you know, why are, why are you making the choices that you’re making?
Steph Pajonas: I can make those determinations, because I’ve been writing for like, over a decade, right? I was the person who went out and researched story structure, because [00:37:00] I remembered some of it from college when I was in all of the English classes that I took, but I went and refreshed myself.
I read James Scott Bell. I understood story structure and whatnot. And so when I go to the AI and I sit down with it and I say things like, I’m a big fan of James Scott Bell’s super structure. I like a four act four, you know, a four act story with a mirror moment in the center. I wanna make sure that I hit all the signposts along the way.
And because I’m able to ask for those things, the AI is able to reflect that back to me and be like, okay, this is how we’re going to plot it out and we work together and it’s a collaborative thing.
Susan Gable: And then when it spits it out and it’s not right, you know that, ’cause you know, to go looking and you know what to look for and to be able to say hold up, hold, hold up a second here. You missed the middle part, you know, or, or you’ve said the same darn thing 20 times in the book, right? Because we know that’s an AI favorite thing. Like it gets something stuck in its little computer brain and all of a [00:38:00] sudden it’s in every single chapter. I wrote a book called Character Motto uh, a Writer’s Guide to Knowing Your…for me, that helped me and, and it was something that I did naturally, like from my very first book, my characters had mottos. And that was a reflection of, it would relate to their goal, their motivation, and their conflict.
It would relate to their greatest fear. It would actually relate to where are we going with the black moment for this story, and so I use that. And so again, it’s like trying to write a mystery with AI where it will tell you who did it in chapter one or chapter two, because it knows and it wants to make sure you know, and I find sometimes I, I have like, the motto doesn’t have to be in every single chapter, you dumb AI, you know? No, I, like once maybe as we’re getting to know the character and then later on in the story when it becomes very important, maybe we [00:39:00] revisit that. Sometimes they never actually tell what their motto is, but it’s guiding their behavior.
Yeah.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, there’s a lot We have to teach it. It’s so funny you mentioned the black moment, and the biggest struggle I have with AI writing the black moment is I like mine really dark.
Susan Gable: Black.
Danica Favorite: It really has to be an all is lost point and getting the AI to understand that all has to be lost.
It’s oh, but no, let’s make this happy. I’m like, no, they need to think that all is lost and…
Susan Gable: Happy comes later. They have to earn it.
Danica Favorite: And as an experienced author who understands story structure and understands that’s what I love in a romance novel, that’s something that I have to teach the AI.
And I, it’s not just gonna do it. And I think that’s, all these people who think it’s so easy, I’m like, cool, go have it write a black moment. ‘Cause I promise you, unless you [00:40:00] spend a lot of time in your prompting, it can’t. And that’s the other piece of that is, like you were saying, you could tell the AI writing by reading hundreds of these essays that were clearly AI.
And so many of these authors will come out, AI, slop, AI, blah, blah, blah. It’s to, you know, and first of all, the things that they think are AI tells aren’t always AI. Most of the lists of AI tells are all things I did in my books pre AI. And the reason that AI does it is because that’s what they were trained on.
Susan Gable: They learned from us. It learned from us.
Danica Favorite: They did, they learned from us. And what I think is really interesting about it is all of these things that people think are AI, I just judged a writing contest and I don’t, you know, Susan, you back in the day there were a lot of contests for unpublished authors for through RWA.
I don’t know if they still have them now. But I [00:41:00] remember judging.
Susan Gable: Tthere ares till some, yeah.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. I remember judging a lot of these contests and I, this contest that I recently judged was obviously for indie authors, but some of the stuff that I think people would’ve said is AI slop. What I realized in this one particular, it was just an inexperienced author and I could tell…
Susan Gable: Right.
Danica Favorite: That this author was just finding their voice as an author.
Susan Gable: RIght.
Danica Favorite: And I think, I hope that no one reads what this author wrote and calls it AI slop and says, oh, this is terrible, and discourages that author, because I actually do believe this author wrote the piece themselves. There were just also inexperienced author tells that…
Susan Gable: Yeah.
Danica Favorite: I remember from back in the day of judging contest after contest.
Susan Gable: Yeah.
Danica Favorite: And so we have to remember that some of the things we wanna judge in other people’s work is just their learning process. And it’s just how they [00:42:00] write and what their preferences are. And I know I beat this drum a lot, but we have to stop judging authors based on what we think they do or don’t write, or if we think they do or don’t use AI.
At the end of the day, the only question that I care about is this a compelling story? And if it’s a good story, I don’t care how you made it.
Susan Gable: Exactly. But my other point simply is no matter what, the AI still does not write books by itself. The AI does not just decide, Claude does not decide on a whim that he’s gonna write a book.
Chat is not writing an opus in the background somewhere, that, maybe someday that will come. I don’t know. That time is not now. So people always say there has to be human input. Well, who do you think told the thing to write a book and gave it some structure and gave it some guardrails and gave it some ideas of this is [00:43:00] where we’re going. No matter what, it’s, you know, I mean, I have used Your First Draft, right? Which is very cool piece of software. Very cool. And, but still, like the first book that I put through there, which again, people would think is a press the magic button, get a book. I spent. I spent an entire weekend and then some on my worksheet or whatever we’re calling it these days, to get the story the way that I wanted this.
And that’s one of my biggest problems right now is I still, and especially like once they get something in my head, nevermind the AI getting something in its head. When I get something in my head, it’s kind of like, yeah, but no, that’s perfect. Leave it alone. I wanted, I want the story to do this thing.
But it’s still a heck of a lot of work, right? These things are not making books by [00:44:00] themselves. And my other thing, I love playing with AI art, and I have, um, I first learned discord and not well at the time, so that I could use Midjourney. I started playing with Midjourney was the first one, and then I went from Midjourney to Leonardo, because that seemed easier and better.
And I went to ideogram because I was like, okay, people are getting really cool, good results with that. And now I’m just very much either ChatGPT or Gemini. And the things that you can do with these now are mind boggling. I also, especially even for work, I use Suno. I love making music with Suno and the FFA, I gotta say, I love all our music.
Like we have such fun with the music, right? I started a thing last year called Lessons in Lyrics, right? Because I loved Scholastic Rock, [00:45:00] right? You remember Scholastic Rock and all the all that stuff. I can still sing the preamble to the Constitution. So I was like, okay, well now I have this tool at my fingertips.
So I started doing Lessons in Lyrics. And so we have, right now we have, it’s about a, I take a concept like we have Rule of Law. Now don’t you wish everyone understood Rule of Law applied equally to all, to everyone under all circumstances? Hi, that’s like a basic bedrock principle of how our society’s supposed to work.
So I have, I make them in different genres. So I do like rock, rap, country, and pop for each concept. And then there’s a teacher’s guide that go with them. And I had, that was my summer project last summer, and I had more fun making. And then I made videos, like I make actual videos that showcase and we showed it to [00:46:00] some teachers early on and realized that they don’t always understand the definition of the term.
So now the video’s open and close with the definition of the term on the video to really make it stick. But. How much fun is that?
Steph Pajonas: It’s so much fun. So much fun. We actually, we got approached by Suno, the FFA, got approached by Suno because they saw all the stuff that we’re doing on our channel and thought it was cool.
So, you know…
Susan Gable: That’s cool.
Steph Pajonas: It’s fun. It’s fun. I love all of these tools as well, like the art, the music, the writing. Like it, this is a great way to stoke your creativity and I love it.
Susan Gable: That’s exactly it. And again, people are like the AI’s taking over creativity. No, it’s not. It is. It has breathed creative life back into me.
Danica knows I was blocked for years and years. Blocked. [00:47:00] And I used to say I didn’t believe in writer’s block, and I didn’t believe that was a thing. And I hadn’t written a book in well over a decade. And last year I released a new book, and I’ve got several other in process.
And now with these tools, I’ve got some that I absolutely love that are sitting on the hard drive and they need their chance. They need their day in the sun, and the AI’s gonna help me listen to that. Help me.
Steph Pajonas: It’s gonna help you get to the place that you need to be.
Susan Gable: Exactly. And it’s still gonna be my book, my story, how I decide the story’s gonna go. Now Claude or Chad might have some of their own opinions on that, but ultimately, again, story director, right? Story architect, we are story engineer.
We are all of those things now. We [00:48:00] always were, but now we also, we sub some of it out a little bit.
Steph Pajonas: I’m fine with that. Yeah, I’m fine with not having to type every single word. I, there were times when I couldn’t write because my hands literally hurt from so much typing, and I wore braces and tried changing my keyboard and doing all these kinds of things.
And I lived with like massive hand pain for a long time. And I can tell you it’s been gone for the last two to three years, because I’ve offloaded a lot of the typing, the actual, the actual word making to AI. It’s been great. I, and I think this is the perfect place to conclude this conversation, because I think that we’ve gone through all of the different parts of, creation and like learning and education and creation. And now I’m, congratulations. I’m glad that you’ve got a book out there. That’s really freaking awesome. So I think that really brings a lot home for our listeners this [00:49:00] week, to hear all of that from you what do you thinking Danica?
Danica Favorite: I completely agree. I’ve just been sitting here thinking like, how amazing is it that Susan finally got a book out there? And as we say a lot, there are so many authors that it’s finally helping them, bringing their words to life. And I really wish that some of these people who are just AI haters could understand what a powerful, beautiful thing this is. Because it really is just making us all so much more human and allowing us to bring forth our stuff into the world. No matter how you do it or which piece of the process you take. For those of you who don’t subscribe to Steph’s Substack, she just wrote a really great piece this week about that very thing. Is that it doesn’t matter how you’re using it, and everyone’s gonna tell you a different way to use it, but find that way that sparks [00:50:00] the thing in you and allows you to be more you and do the things you love, so that you can give over more of that to your creative self.
And I really do hope this encourages people because like I said, I just, I found that whole experiment Susan did so fascinating. Because it really does show that yes, the AI’s gonna be here and people are gonna keep using it whether we agree to it or not, whether we like it or not. And so let’s double down on those efforts to insert our humanness into it and learn how to use it in ways that make us shine.
Steph Pajonas: Agree a hundred percent. Susan, we wanna make sure that we send people to you online. Do you have any URLs for us today?
Susan Gable: Susangable.com is my website, and I think from there you can find my Facebook page, which is pretty much the only social media I do these [00:51:00] days. Yeah, it’s one of those things again, I always now there there’s a harness that I need to do is.
AI for social media…help take that stuff off my plate. ‘Cause I, I don’t really love all that stuff. Except for Facebook. I do love Facebook.
Steph Pajonas: I think a lot of authors are in the same boat. I see that question at least three or four times a week. How do I do AI and social media? I’m like, you’re not alone.
A lot of people need that. Yeah. So I, everybody who’s been listening come by bravenewbookshelf.com. Check out the show notes. We’ll link to everything. We’ll talk about all the things that Susan was here to talk about today. And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter as well. You can click on the subscribe in the top nav on the website and sign up for the newsletter.
We send out the notes the next day after the podcast. So the podcast is usually on Thursdays. So on Fridays, the notes go out to people who are on the newsletter. So if you’re one of these people who you listen a lot and then forget to drop by and check out the notes, you should just come by and subscribe Instead.[00:52:00]
Danica, what else should we leave people with?
Danica Favorite: Always. I’m gonna remind you to please like and subscribe on YouTube. Make sure that you get to see our lovely little faces and just yeah, today we didn’t show off anything super cool, but it’s always good, watch us on YouTube, have that playlist going and and subscribe to us on Facebook as well as Future Fiction Academy, Future Fiction Press and Publish Drive as well.
And yeah, I mentioned Steph’s Substack. She and I both have Substacks. Uh, Steph is very much got all kinds of cool AI stuff. I ramble between AI and all kinds of other life things, so I think very on brand for both of us. Make sure you’re following us there as well.
Steph Pajonas: Excellent. All right. Again, thank you Susan for being here today, everybody. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you guys in the next episode. Okay, bye.
Danica Favorite: Bye.
Speaker: Thanks for joining us on The Brave New Bookshelf. Be sure to [00:53:00] like and subscribe to us on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. You can also visit us at bravenewbookshelf.com Sign up for our newsletter and get all the show notes.