Unleashing the Power of A.I. - Enhancing Your Writing Creativity

I previously wrote a piece on “Artificial Intelligence and Written Medical Content Production” in which I reviewed some of the limitations of the use of artificial intelligence (AI) programs in writing medical content. Since that time, I have been experimenting with the use of AI, using ChatGPT, to enhance my writing. One can create a complete essay solely written by AI or choose specific functions of AI to enhance writing that was not generated by it. While I continue to appreciate the limitations of AI in my personal writing, I have pinpointed some ways in which AI can be very useful and enhance what I have already written.

AI writing tools can be useful in a number of ways. First, they can be used to brainstorm ideas for written pieces and, then, help construct an outline. Next, AI is very useful for creating engaging article titles and subheadings for an essay. It can also be used to rewrite specific sentences or paragraphs in a written piece for clarity or impact and even help with a concluding sentence. Finally, I have used AI tools to create social media posts from my written work and create engaging questions for my readers to spark discussions. In a digital era where technology continually evolves, leveraging AI writing tools can significantly augment a writer’s toolkit, enabling them to enhance their work’s quality, structure, and audience engagement, elevating the overall impact of their written pieces.

Brainstorming Ideas and Constructing an Outline

AI is great for brainstorming ideas for articles, blogs, or essays. The more specific parameters that you use to instruct the AI, the more appropriate and suitable the ideas will be. You can start off as general or specific as you want with your instructions. For instance, asking the AI to generate ideas for an article based on pediatrics will give you different ideas than if you directed it to generate ideas based on pediatric urgent care. This can be further specified as pediatric urgent care rashes or even more specifically as pediatric urgent care viral rashes. Furthermore, if you want to generate more ideas on a more specific idea that the AI created, you can take an idea and ask the AI to generate blog or article topic ideas from one of the ideas that it generated earlier. The course of brainstorming will be entirely up to you and can be limitless.

For the outline request, selecting one of the ideas generated by the AI or an idea that you wanted to explore further will be broken down with more specifics in the outline. You can specify the number of paragraphs in the essay that you want the outline to cover, as well as the length of the article that you hope to generate. Headings and subheadings can be refined further, upon request of the AI.

• My AI Sample Prompts:

• Generate 10 blog or article topic ideas within the topic of [insert your area of interest here].

• Create an outline for a blog or article based on the writing idea: [insert idea here]

I tend to ask the AI to generate 10 ideas because it gives me a larger number to choose from. But, you can choose any number of requested ideas (i.e., 2, 5, 20, etc.). I have noticed that AI will generate some redundant or very similar ideas if you request a larger number of them to be generated. So, not every idea in the list will be distinct or unique.

As with any answer given by AI, further adjustments may need to be made. While AI can manufacture an entire essay or article and generate endless ideas, it is up to the human counterpart to tailor the writing to that individual’s style and the impression that they want to impart to their readers. AI can greatly facilitate brainstorming, but it takes a great deal of creativity to prompt the AI to give you the product that you specifically want. Ultimately, it is the creativity of the human operator that takes the AI-generated product and molds it into something that reflects the personality and individuality of the person generating the final product.

Create Engaging Titles and Subheadings for Your Written Work

Titles and subheadings should reflect what has been written in your work. AI does a nice job of summarizing written pieces, from an entire article to an individual paragraph. Creating engaging titles and subheadings for my writing has always been a struggle for me. I find that it takes a particular talent to come up with just the right title. AI doesn’t necessarily possess a “talent” for generating titles and subheadings. But, it can generate many options to choose from. So, when it comes time to create a title and subheadings, I look forward to the list of options that AI is able to put together. The titles and subheadings created by AI really reflect the written content and some of the suggestions are quite clever.

• My AI Sample Prompts:

• Generate 10 engaging titles for the following article:

• Generate 10 engaging titles of less than 10 words for the following article:

• Create subheadings for the following article:

Again, I tend to ask the AI to generate 10 title ideas because it gives me a larger number to choose from. But, you can choose any number of requested ideas (i.e., 2, 5, 20, etc.). In this particular article, I started with my own title, “How Do You Use AI to Write?” However, I requested 10 engaging title ideas from AI and it gave me the following results on the first query in a manner of seconds:

1. "Unleashing the Power of AI in Writing: Enhancing Medical Content Production"
2. "The Limitations and Advancements of AI in Medical Writing: A Personal Exploration"
3. "From Limitations to Enhancements: How AI Transforms Medical Writing"
4. "Unlocking the Potential: How AI Revolutionizes Medical Content Creation"
5. "The AI Writing Revolution: Amplifying Medical Writing with ChatGPT"
6. "AI as a Writing Partner: Boosting Creativity in Medical Content"
7. "Breaking Barriers: AI's Role in Medical Writing and Beyond"
8. "Enhancing Your Voice: Exploring the Creative Possibilities of AI in Writing"
9. "AI as a Tool for Writers: Unleashing Creativity in Medical Content"
10. "From Concept to Creation: Harnessing AI to Elevate Medical Writing"

Then, I requested that it create 10 title ideas less than 10 words in length because I wanted shorter titles, and it generated the following results:

1. "Unleashing the Power of AI: Enhancing Your Writing Creativity"
2. "AI as Your Writing Partner: Overcoming Writer's Block Together"
3. "From Ideas to Outlines: How AI Boosts Your Writing Process"
4. "Crafting Engaging Titles and Subheadings: AI's Secret Weapon"
5. "The AI Thesaurus: Elevating Your Sentences and Conclusions"
6. "Captivate Your Readers: AI-Generated Social Media Posts"
7. "Sparking Discussions: AI's Guide to Engaging Questions"
8. "Mastering Your Writing Voice: AI as Your Creative Ally"
9. "The Art of Prompting: Unveiling AI's Full Writing Potential"
10. "AI Empowers Writers: Enhancing Productivity and Impact"

Of these, I decided that I liked:

"Unleashing the Power of AI: Enhancing Your Writing Creativity" and this became the title of the article!

I will often look at multiple titles and combine title elements because I like something from parts of a title, but not the entire title. Some would say that I am letting the AI do the creative work. However, it is just providing me with a substrate that I use to produce a unique title from options that I may have not thought of. The creative work doesn’t end with the sole command of “generate 10 titles for this article”. The creativity of title design lies in choosing the title from the list that was generated by AI or making adjustments to an AI-generated title with prompts or mixing things up on your own to come up with a final product that suits you.

Rewriting Specific Sentences or Paragraphs and Helping with Concluding Sentences

Sometimes, we get stuck in writing and can’t find the right words to reflect the feelings that we want to communicate to our readers. AI can help with rewriting sentences and paragraphs, given the parameters to reflect a certain feeling or purpose. Also, I have used AI to help generate a final concluding sentence of a particular paragraph with a little more impact than what I had created on my own initially. The idea is that you can be given options for what you’ve already generated. It is like having a writing partner to bounce ideas off of. By requesting multiple options to your request, you have the opportunity to give yourself more ideas to sift through and use what is generated by AI to come up with something that reflects the true spirit of the idea that you’re trying to represent. I liken this function of AI to a kind of thesaurus for sentences.

• My AI Sample Prompts:

• Rewrite the following sentence (or paragraph):

• Rewrite the following sentence (or paragraph) with [insert feeling or type of written voice].

• Create a concluding sentence for this paragraph [can add a particular feeling or desire to make it more impactful].

As an example, the concluding sentence of the second paragraph of this piece is the result of the use of AI. I wrote the query, “Create 5 concluding sentences for this paragraph:” and pasted this paragraph portion following the query:

• “AI writing tools can be useful in a number of ways. First, they can be used to brainstorm ideas for written pieces and, then, help construct an outline. Next, AI is very useful for creating engaging article titles and subheadings for an essay. It can also be used to rewrite specific sentences or paragraphs in a written piece for clarity or impact and even help with a concluding sentence. Finally, I have used AI tools to create social media posts from my written work and create engaging questions for my readers to spark discussions.”

I then reviewed the 5 options that ChatGPT gave me and I liked 2 of them:

• In summary, the multifaceted capabilities of AI in the writing process empower authors to enhance their work's quality, structure, and audience engagement, elevating the overall impact of their written pieces.

• In a digital era where technology continually evolves, leveraging AI writing tools can significantly augment a writer's toolkit, enabling them to unleash their creativity and effectively communicate with their readership.

Instead of choosing just one, I used the parts that I liked best from each concluding sentence and created my own final concluding sentence product:

• “In a digital era where technology continually evolves, leveraging AI writing tools can significantly augment a writer’s toolkit, enabling them to enhance their work’s quality, structure, and audience engagement, elevating the overall impact of their written pieces.”

The nice thing about the options that are given is that you can choose exactly what AI gives you or you can mix and match what it gives you. There are no rules on how to use the material that is generated, as long as it appeals to you and speaks to your writing voice in an authentic manner.

Create Social Media Posts and Engaging Questions for Readers to Spark Discussions

You’ve finally created a blog, article, essay, or written piece that you would like to present to the world. Creating social media posts and engaging readers is the fun part of writing something. So, next, you go to social media to advertise and circulate your work to others to read and appreciate. Social media is a big part of distributing written works, whether it is a personal blog or a book printed by a large publisher.

The nice thing about AI, with regard to social media, is that it knows the general posting rules of the different platforms. Of course, at this time, it may not be current with the most recent social media platform algorithm to create a viral post, but it will help generate postings that are appropriate for the social media platforms that it has been educated about. The benefit of AI helping with your social media for works that you’ve already written is that it can generate multiple posts in record time and include the additional elements that you desire. It can generate posts with particular hashtags (based on your written text), limit the post to any desired character or word limit, suggest imagery and scenes for associated pictures or videos, and recommend the proper format for the desired social media platform. When given suitable instructions, it will generate ready-made social media posts that are just a “copy-paste-click” away from distributing to the world. The relative effort needed to create the social media posts, once you’ve created your written work, is so low given the speed and efficiency that AI provides you.

The other nice function that I’ve found with AI is its ability to aid one with generating engaging questions to spark a discussion on social media, your blog, or any other writing posting forum. I try to stay away from “yes/no” type of questions to aim for more thoughtful comments from readers. So, I try to have the AI generate open-ended questions about the article that aren’t specifically aimed at quizzing the reader about the specific content of the article, but how the information can be used or extrapolated upon.

• My AI Sample Prompts:

• Create 10 tweets from the following article of less than 280 characters and include hashtags (for Twitter):

• Create 10 Instagram posts with 20 hashtags within the posts from the following article and suggest an image to go with the posts:

• Create 10 open-ended questions based on the following article to generate reader engagement and discussion:

Power in The Prompts

The use of AI in writing is a trial-and-error process to create something that uniquely reflects you and your written voice. While it has been stated that AI can learn to write in your particular tone or voice, the ultimate product is dependent upon your review and approval anyway. As I mentioned previously, I have found that AI acts like a writing partner. It helps augment your creativity, can get you through writer’s block, and can review or rephrase sentences or paragraphs in much the same way we often use a thesaurus to find just the right word in our writing.

However, the ultimate power and effectiveness of AI lie in the questions that you ask of it. If you just use what is given to you by the AI, it will seem generic. You have to shape the writing to your voice and personality. Using AI requires a different type of creativity in learning what questions to ask the AI and how to prompt it. AI does have its limitations, but as we understand how to use it to its full potential, we can unlock and leverage its efficiency and enhance our own writing creativity and productivity.

In non-AI generated questions...

If you use AI in your writing, how do you use it?

Which writing prompts have you found helpful while engaging with AI?

What do you like about using AI in your writing and what don't you like about using AI in your writing?