Your sexual experiences with Llamas?

[StillStunned]

Imagine having a proofreader, editor, and beta reader available 24/7.

Imagine being an actual proofreader and editor and understanding how crap AI is.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

"This class isn't about knowing the answers. It's about finding the answers. You'll never know all the answers, so you need to know how to get more answers, even after you're done with school." Me teaching stuff.

-Rocco

To quote Brandon Sanderson, Journey before destination

By the way, is anyone else reading Wind and Truth (and is somewhat annoyed by it )?

 

[TheWritingGroup]

By the way, is anyone else reading Wind and Truth (and is somewhat annoyed by it )?

Better than Rhythm of War. Fourth-best Stormlight book. Still OK, not great.

-Annie

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Better than Rhythm of War. Fourth-best Stormlight book. Still OK, not great.

-Annie

I'm about two-thirds through the book and so far, this is the worst of the series. My own ranking is WoR, WoK, RoW, OB, and WaT. It might change when I finish the book but I am not holding my breath, judging by what I've read so far. There is too much that wasn't done great.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

For me, RoW was just soooooo slooooow. I could cut 25% from it myself, and it would immediately be much better. Yes, that's arrogant.

WaT has great lore drops. And Adolin and Shallan. I'm not calling any other part of it "great".

-Annie

 

[AwkwardlySet]

For me, RoW was just soooooo slooooow. I could cut 25% from it myself, and it would immediately be much better. Yes, that's arrogant.

WaT has great lore drops. And Adolin and Shallan. I'm not calling any other part of it "great".

-Annie

I actually dislike these huge lore drops and heavy side-character developments at the eleventh hour. There had been time to build most of the world in the previous four books. Yet he is still heavily world-building in this one, where we mostly want to see things being resolved.
Also, barely anything happens except for reminiscing. It's constantly either past events or characters reliving some dramatic encounters. It dilutes the story so much.
Then there is the annoying staccato style Sanderson used, with POVs that shift every two pages. And there are like ten different POVs, at least. I don't know... I just feel he was indulging himself too much with his desire to build build and overbuild, almost forgetting that he was supposed to tell a story.

 

[onehitwanda]

you learn to tame and ride the steed, you’ll be less inclined to walk on foot

except when the steed hallucinates and decides it would like to indulge in a spot of murder - by which point it is often too late to decide that walking is actually quite an enjoyable activity.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Imagine being an actual proofreader and editor and understanding how crap AI is.

Extra fun working in those areas with content that can't just be interpreted as standard text.

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/fcell-11-1339390-1.pdf

 

[StillStunned]

except when the steed hallucinates and decides it would like to indulge in a spot of murder - by which point it is often too late to decide that walking is actually quite an enjoyable activity.

Actually it's more like the steed is a llama: an oversized sheep that spits. Good for wool and carrying loads, but unlikely to get you anywhere in a showjumping or dressage event.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Might be on topic/off topic but my cousin Billy Bob worked for a summer at a hunting ranch in Bolivia.
He'd been there for about a month when he started getting agitated. The ranch was quite a hike from the nearest town and there were no women on the ranch.
When it got to where he couldn't stand it, he finally broke down and asked one of his coworkers, "Man, what do guys out here do when they gotta, you know, do what guys need to do?"
"Hell, you're a porter. You know where the llamas are." The coworker's reply was as sharp as it was brief.
"Really?" Billy Bob asked incredulously. His coworker just shrugged and left him.
Now, the image in his mind wasn't something Billy Bob ever considered but it only took a few days before he found himself situated behind a nice young female llama, her back hooves hobbled and his pants around his ankles.
He'd no sooner started when the same coworker he'd asked came around the corner shaking his head, "You know, you do you, but most of us just slap a saddle on them are ride them to the whore house in town."

 

[StillStunned]

Same thing happened with an officer in French Foreign Legion and a camel, if I'm not mistaken. The punchline being, "Not to rush you, Captain, but when you're finished with the camel I'd like to ride into town to visit the brothel."

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Same thing happened with an officer in French Foreign Legion and a camel, if I'm not mistaken. The punchline being, "Not to rush you, Captain, but when you're finished with the camel I'd like to ride into town to visit the brothel."

Same joke, but Llama are indigenous to Peru and Bolivia. Not sure but I don't think they have a lot of camels down there.
And a good joke is always worth telling.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Actually it's more like the steed is a llama: an oversized sheep that spits. Good for wool and carrying loads, but unlikely to get you anywhere in a showjumping or dressage event.

Depends on the application. For writing fiction this analogy works, but for something like a field guide to foraging mushrooms I'll go with Wanda's murderhorse. A kelpie, perhaps.

 

[StillStunned]

Same joke, but Llama are indigenous to Peru and Bolivia. Not sure but I don't think they have a lot of camels down there.
And a good joke is always worth telling.

Definitely. There's a joy in retelling a good joke, like rereading a favourite book or watching reruns of a favourite show.

Depends on the application. For writing fiction this analogy works, but for something like a field guide to foraging mushrooms I'll go with Wanda's murderhorse. A kelpie, perhaps.

I wonder whether anyone's written a Lit story with kelpies before. Because now I want to.

 

[yowser]

Definitely. There's a joy in retelling a good joke, like rereading a favourite book or watching reruns of a favourite show.

I wonder whether anyone's written a Lit story with kelpies before. Because now I want t

I count 28. I assume these aren't the seaweed variety?

 

[StillStunned]

I count 28. I assume these aren't the seaweed variety?

Tricksy shapeshifting water-horses: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelpie

 

[yowser]

Tricksy shapeshifting water-horses: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelpie

With tentacles? Or do the sea urchins eat them?

 

[StillStunned]

With tentacles? Or do the sea urchins eat them?

Everything is better with tentacles. But the urchins might violate Lit's 18+ rule.

 

[onehitwanda]

murderhorse

that's a tautology. A friend is an equine vet, and according to her all horses are murderhorses

 

[gunhilltrain]

Are there other writers here who've played with LLM prompt engineering? I've got pretty deep into it recently, and I'm sure some other people here have too. Meta's latest offering, Llama 3.3 70B, is as as powerful as anything I've used commercially, and it's free (and runs locally, so you don't need to watch your language or curb your fantasies). It can run with your ideas, and at the very least, it's an incredible "spitballing" partner for your creative ideas.
I'm really interested to hear anyone else's experience with LLM's for creative writing, chat prompts, etc.

As I expected, the descriptions of this are a bit more technical than I can grasp.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model

https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/learning/ai/what-is-large-language-model/

Has this helped you in writing for this site? What can it do that your own mind can't do just as well? By the way, I have seen some AI-generated text (I think) - it seems to be showing up on Facebook, of all places. I can't explain exactly way, but it is grammatically correct but oddly boring to read.

I do see that in post #24 that you did explain some of that. Let me take another look at it.

 

[Bramblethorn]

that's a tautology. A friend is an equine vet, and according to her all horses are murderhorses

I have long believed this. Even people who love horses keep telling me how mad they are.

Still less terrifying than Heck Cows though.

 

[gunhilltrain]

The literary level of chat gpt is very low and is not a source of inspiration -its writing style is crass and riddled with trite metaphors and at best is a pastiche. So forget using any of its output directly.
But I referred in my o.p. to “spitballing” which doesn’t really require much intelligence or creativity - I remember actually doing this as a kid with my father who was a writer. I was just a sounding board.

Another thing that I’ve found useful is character. Instructing the ai to adopt a certain character , and then tweaking its behaviour as you go along , is really illuminating — it helps me, as the “prompt engineer”, to really learn how to define character clearly.

Okay, I'll take your word on that. I still think I'm the only one who can define a character clearly. It's not been submitted yet, but I gave a long-standing character a previously undisclosed trait. She has a nostalgia for the early 20th Century, including ocean liners. I wondered if that fit in with the rest of what she's done, and I decided I'm going with it. It does show a side of her that I haven't used before, and she explains why it it interests her. Could I get the S.S. Normandie from a program, or maybe I misunderstood how you use it?

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61PY-6lRqTL.jpg

She has a reproduction of that ad, among other things, framed in her room.