The Goal

I wanted to see if AI Writers — in this case, Rytr — can make the jump from writing emails, social media ads, landing pages, and full blog posts to writing fiction.

And no, I wasn’t necessarily bored when I came up with the idea for this tiny test — it was rather curiosity that pushed me in this direction.

The Input

• Use case: Story Plot.
• Story Idea (this is where you enter a few concepts, fragments, or keywords): “turtles, walk slow, but they get somewhere, wisdom, inspiration, travel, journey, patience”.
• I mean, who wouldn’t want to read a short story about wise turtles? Master Oogway, anyone? And yes, I know he is a tortoise. …But I digress.

The Results

• Yes, plural. I pushed my luck and after seeing the first result, I requested another, a re-test.

STORY ONE

“The narrator, a turtle, gives the reader wisdom and inspiration through their life.

I was born in a dark cave. My brothers and sisters were all around me, all crying. I survived only because my family protected me from predators. Every year we would travel a little farther in the water because it’s getting harder for us to breathe in our old home. One day, we were going to leave to go farther into the water when a boat came near our rock and trapped us there without moving at all. So that boat saved our lives, but it also changed us forever.”

Insert exploding-head emoji here. This is not bad, and given the fact that it was instructed to only provide an outline, I find the result rather complete. It’s a full story, emotional triggers, thrills, and all. Also, the idea of a turtle narrator… that’s pretty original, right?

The only thing I changed above is the “us” in the last sentence. It initially said “them”.

STORY TWO

“Came across a turtle, taking painstakingly slow steps.

I asked myself “Do they know something I don’t?”

I tried to follow the turtle’s pace, but after only a few minutes I refused to listen to my body’s screams.

My body started to ache all over. The turtle kept going, not even noticing my pain.

I continued following the turtle for hours, all day, into the night. It didn’t seem to tire or waver in its pace. It only stopped when it came to the edge of a swamp — where it promptly submerged itself in the water and disappeared from sight.”

It did it again! It’s a full story. Sure, some things need changing here and there to make more sense but it is still impressive. And I don’t know about you, but I am rather new to the “turtle stories” genre, so I still find this original.

According to its own Plagiarism feature, none of these texts is similar to other types of content on the internet. “Go, little rock star.”

RYTR passed the test if you were to ask me. It did a pretty good job and has the potential to assist both nonfiction and fiction writers in fighting writer’s block and maintaining high motivation and productivity levels.

Try it yourself if you’re curious. Maybe link to your own test results in the comment section below.

Have fun, wherever you write!