How do I not sound like an AI, as a non-native speaker

[KatD_89_lib]

Hey folks,

So to preface that, english is not my native language, but I think I have a decent grasp of it. Its what years terminal of internet usage do to you, I guess.
I am currently writing my first longer story, and I do not want to write in my native language. It feels cheap, cringy, and tbf, the potential readership (not in a saleswise perspective, I do not do this for money, just as potential people who would want to read my drivel) is way way smaller. So english it is.
I have currently written about 10k words in my story, and when I ran it through AI detectors, it said that its most likely AI generated. Which it is not. I wrote this stuff.
I mean seriously, zeroGPT said „fuck me harder“ was a sentence that was likely AI generated. HOW??

Am I missing something? I think that maybe I don ´t get the grasp of some native idioms, but it sucks so bad that I am writing and turns out, it reads as if AI did it. Any non english native writers here, that have similar problems?

Cheers

 

[StillStunned]

I mean seriously, zeroGPT said „fuck me harder“ was a sentence that was likely AI generated. HOW??

Because AI understands that anyone using it is basically asking to be fucked, and for the rest of humanity to be fucked even harder.

Sorry, I have strong feelings on the subject.

In terms of practical advice: don't try too hard. English is a wonderful language that lets you craft beautiful prose using only the simplest words and sentences. Don't think you need to use big words or fancy sentence structures to make your writing read like you're a native.

You might find some useful tips in this thread too: Self-editing for authors.

Good luck!

 

[KatD_89_lib]

Because AI understands that anyone using it is basically asking to be fucked, and for the rest of humanity to be fucked even harder.

Thank you for making me laugh

I don ´t even try to write super complex sentences or fancy shmancy words. Maybe I need to check this with a native editors help, just to catch things that I don ´t get.
And thank you for the tip-thread, I ´ll be sure to check it out

 

[nice90sguy]

It's possible that Literotica's AI detection rules will NOT think your writing is AI generated; so maybe you should post the story here. And If it's rejected for that reason, you can explain to @Laurel in a DM about your non-native English maybe raising a false flag in the detector.

 

[KatD_89_lib]

Thank you, maybe I ´ll do that! I will probably finish another chapter up to the point where it is „publishable“, and then try to publish it.

 

[onehitwanda]

When you submit the story, include an explanation in the "Note to the admins" block at the bottom of the submission page.

 

[Bamagan]

There have been many threads about AI detection and rejection, and most of them included discussion about online AI detectors. Those are generally not considered very reliable, but regardless of whether or not they work well for their stated purpose, their predictive value for what Literotica will accept or reject is close to zero.
I also suggest finishing your story and submitting it with a note before worrying too much about potential rejections. The main thing to be cautious of, whether native speaker or not, is to avoid over-reliance on the grammar checkers that come bundled with many word processing software packages. Be wary if it tries to rewrite or restructure sentences for things like 'clarity'.
Good luck!

 

[KatD_89_lib]

I never use them anyway, I write on scrivener. The most I use the internet for is searching for words with an online thesaurus or a translation if I don ´t know a word that I want to use. So I hope that I ´ll be good in that regard. Thank you so much!

 

[Robin_Starveling]

From my sampling, ZeroGPT is one of the worst. Try gptzero.me -- it’s the least bad of the free ones.

LLMs are prone to efficiency and formality; they’ll readily squeeze a 16-word sentence into 12 if they can. If your writing’s succinct and formal, you’re screwed.

The more flawed, verbose, and reflective the text, the less likely it gets flagged as AI. From my tests, first-person narrations usually score 0–20% AI-generated, third-person omniscient about 40–60%, and third-person direct 60–80%. The conclusion is obvious: the more clinical, efficient, and formal the text, the higher the odds it’s labeled machine-made.

You can’t do much about it. Just know what to expect. Whatever you do, don’t change a single fucking word to please a machine.

Some clowns will tell you they’ve reverse-engineered the detectors and know how to beat them. Ignore them. They’re either idiots or misanthropes, usually both.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

What looks and sound like “AI” is a moving goal post unfortunately. Best I can offer you as advice is to keep writing in the way you want to write.

Honestly though, I can’t deny that I often think about whether my writing comes across as AI or not…

 

[KatD_89_lib]

Whatever you do, don’t change a single fucking word to please a machine.

The thing is, I want A) to be a better writer, because I like the challenge, and B) I want to publish my drivel, at least here (or wherever else) to share it with people and get (hopefully) constructive criticism. Its an outlet for a myriad of weird little kinks and things that rummage through my brain, so if I need to change something to be able to do that.. I think then thats mandatory. Not perfect, but if its the price of admission, so to say…

But super interesting what you are saying about the perspectives and AI recognition. Never thought of that, maybe my use of third person omniscient is partly to blame for this

 

[Robin_Starveling]

so if I need to change something to be able to do that.. I think then thats mandatory. Not perfect, but if its the price of admission, so to say…

No, that’s not mandatory. That’s giving up your humanity to satisfy the beast. It’s like taking out a loan on the gray market; it’ll only get worse.

If you still insist on feeding the beast with human sacrifices, then it’s the little things that count. Use “cannot” instead of “can’t”; LLMs always prefer a five-character word over a six. Add unnecessary adverbs and adjectives to make your sentences less efficient, shuffle the syntax, use a reflective tone, and include plenty of dialogue with characters who love to ramble.

 

[alohadave]

when I ran it through AI detectors, it said that its most likely AI generated.

Those detectors are bullshit and don't work.

 

[jsmiam]

On topic: English as a second language writers often have excellent grammar and a more formal style. Your use of slang and dialogue, you may be ok. Try submitting what you write first.

Next, somewhat off topic, but I’ve been holding this in all weekend! (Because, and absolutely no offense to the OP, we went the whole weekend without an AI thread, and I didn’t want to be the one to post one. )

Two news stories. First one extremely interesting and well written, second one hilarious and a sign of how awful and plagiaristic AI is.

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...iving-in-a-golden-age-of-stupidity-technology

https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/19/openais-embarrassing-math/

A quote: “Sebastien Bubeck, an OpenAI researcher who’d also been touting GPT-5’s accomplishments, then acknowledged that “only solutions in the literature were found,” but he suggested this remains a real accomplishment: “I know how hard it is to search the literature.””

(They first took credit for solving tough math conundrums. But all they did was find some articles and (at first) act like openAI solved the problems.)

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

The thing is, I want A) to be a better writer, because I like the challenge, and B) I want to publish my drivel, at least here (or wherever else) to share it with people and get (hopefully) constructive criticism. Its an outlet for a myriad of weird little kinks and things that rummage through my brain, so if I need to change something to be able to do that.. I think then thats mandatory. Not perfect, but if its the price of admission, so to say…

But super interesting what you are saying about the perspectives and AI recognition. Never thought of that, maybe my use of third person omniscient is partly to blame for this

Your writing in this thread is better than most natives. I could only spot some missing capitalisation and use of ,,~~" for quotes. Keep writing as you do, perhaps look at some of the English classics for ideas and use a human editor, not a machine.

 

[Robin_Starveling]

It's possible that Literotica's AI detection rules will NOT think your writing is AI generated; so maybe you should post the story here. And If it's rejected for that reason, you can explain to @Laurel in a DM about your non-native English maybe raising a false flag in the detector.

Once flagged, it’s immediately tossed into a purgatory queue, likely to stew for weeks, if not months, awaiting closer inspection by a human. Good luck keeping your patience beyond the first week of uncertainty.

Even regulars who clearly write in a tainted first-person voice have recently languished in oblivion for a month, so who knows how long the plebs might have to wait.

 

[Bamagan]

What looks and sound like “AI” is a moving goal post unfortunately. Best I can offer you as advice is to keep writing in the way you want to write.

Honestly though, I can’t deny that I often think about whether my writing comes across as AI or not…

It reads a lot more human ever since you stopped transcribing those *beep boop beep* noises you make.

 

[cw5523729]

Hey folks,

So to preface that, english is not my native language, but I think I have a decent grasp of it. Its what years terminal of internet usage do to you, I guess.
I am currently writing my first longer story, and I do not want to write in my native language. It feels cheap, cringy, and tbf, the potential readership (not in a saleswise perspective, I do not do this for money, just as potential people who would want to read my drivel) is way way smaller. So english it is.
I have currently written about 10k words in my story, and when I ran it through AI detectors, it said that its most likely AI generated. Which it is not. I wrote this stuff.
I mean seriously, zeroGPT said „fuck me harder“ was a sentence that was likely AI generated. HOW??

Am I missing something? I think that maybe I don ´t get the grasp of some native idioms, but it sucks so bad that I am writing and turns out, it reads as if AI did it. Any non english native writers here, that have similar problems?

Cheers

My best advice:

a) don't worry about AI calling your writing AI - automated AI detectors are worthless anyway.

b) have a native English speaker edit it. Honestly, even if you were a native speaker, you should be having a 2nd person edit it anyway. You should never edit your own stuff. But that's a separate discussion. Back to my point, your English in your first post is very good but both your first and second sentences (the second in particular) reveals that you're not a native speaker. So it's a very, very safe bet that any story of length is going to make it obvious that you aren't a native speaker. But your grasp of English seems plenty good that any native speaker with experience editing could fix any awkward phrases.

English is tough and quirky. Plenty of native English speakers on forums have trouble making coherent sentences. And to make matters worse, there are many cases where correct English grammar comes across as AI, such as using the word "whom" that almost no native speaker uses correctly in day-to-day conversation unless they are an English teacher. Another example is "good" vs "well" - ask someone "How are you?" and 90% will say "Good" when grammatically "Well" is actually correct. I've noticed that non-native speakers I work with are the ONLY ones that use "well" correctly in that situation.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

It reads a lot more human ever since you stopped transcribing those *beep boop beep* noises you make.

 

[Jorunn]

On topic: English as a second language writers often have excellent grammar and a more formal style. Your use of slang and dialogue, you may be ok. Try submitting what you write first.

I often try to use slang and local words to describe places. I avoid Word (Grammarly, etc) corrections to long sentences. ESL writing is much more challenging than speaking it.

Others have commented that the ‘detectors’ are not always accurate. Write it your way and submit it with a note. If your goal is like mine, you want to keep getting better.

 

[cw5523729]

The thing is, I want A) to be a better writer, because I like the challenge, and B) I want to publish my drivel, at least here (or wherever else) to share it with people and get (hopefully) constructive criticism. Its an outlet for a myriad of weird little kinks and things that rummage through my brain, so if I need to change something to be able to do that.. I think then thats mandatory. Not perfect, but if its the price of admission, so to say…

But super interesting what you are saying about the perspectives and AI recognition. Never thought of that, maybe my use of third person omniscient is partly to blame for this

As was said, write what you want to write. In whatever perspective you want to write in. If you try to change the POV solely for the purpose of appeasing some AI detector, your story will be worse for it and you'll be doing the readers a disservice. Write in the POV that you want to write in because that's what's going to come across as most believable and fluid.

Having said all that, you can do everything right and have your story end up in queue purgatory anyway for God-only-knows what reason. There are many threads about it so don't kill yourself trying to game the system. Just write, cross your fingers, and be happy.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Forget those detectors.

I'm a non-native speaker, but I've never had any problems with AI-related rejections. Submit your work and don't fret in advance. If it does get rejected, then people here can maybe help.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Without knowing you or your use of the English language it's my experience that many second language folks don't use contractions or double words like gonna or wanna which would pop up in dialog between two people.

I'm wonding if AI detectors are looking for the lack of those things?

 

[KatD_89_lib]

As was said, write what you want to write. In whatever perspective you want to write in. If you try to change the POV solely for the purpose of appeasing some AI detector, your story will be worse for it and you'll be doing the readers a disservice. Write in the POV that you want to write in because that's what's going to come across as most believable and fluid.

Having said all that, you can do everything right and have your story end up in queue purgatory anyway for God-only-knows what reason. There are many threads about it so don't kill yourself trying to game the system. Just write, cross your fingers, and be happy.

Perspective wise I am absolutely on board with that, I hate writing in first, and I wont do that for any detector BS in the world. But its good to know that it might simply be one of the main reasons

I guess I am just a perpetuall little worrier, so that miiiight factor in here. We ´ll see once I am satisfied enough with the first few chapters and try to publish them.

Thank you so much to all of you who commented so far! You have actually helped me a lot