I Write With AI. Deal With It.

An Interview With Chad Rye

Dear Republic,

We’re going Live for the first time tomorrow (Saturday) at 10am EST! It will be a conversation between Sam Kahn and Andrew Martin. Andrew is the author of Early Work, Cool for America, and the forthcoming novel Down Time. His recent short story in The New Yorker — an excerpt from Down Time — is discussed here. Please consider tuning in!

The Republic of Letters is pretty staunchly anti-AI, but we were moved and impressed with this piece by Chad Rye on writing with AI and wanted to talk to him about it.

-ROL

I WRITE WITH AI. DEAL WITH IT.

1.Can you introduce yourself? Where you live, what you write, what you do for work, etc.

Sure. My name is Chadwick Rye although I go by Chad. I live in Madison Florida, a small nowhere town. I write fantasy mostly although I have dabbled in sci-fi. Currently I am self employed. I run a Laser Engraving business and have started to venture into Woodworking.

2.How did your interest in writing start?

It started back when I was seventeen. I was sitting at my uncle’s computer, bored, and it just came to open up Mircosoft Word 2003 edition. I stared at a blank screen for a bit before I started to write using the abbreviated words at the bottom right of the screen to make up places. TRK was one of them. Created some would called the Trek woods from that and an entire world and story sprang from that that snowballed into others.

3.What were some of the roadblocks you ran into in writing ‘the old-fashioned way’?

Mostly being a pantser and not planning. Much of my life I have just winged it. From writing to working to starting a family. Early on I did keep writing on and off. Got eight chapters into a werewolf story that I plan to finish one day and a few chapters into other stories before life got to where I couldn't spare much time to write and when I did I had other things taking up that time. So writing went on the back burner for a long time.

4.How has AI transformed your writing life?

It has helped me actually get words on a page. Literally in physical form and on screen. It has garnered me a small following of readers on Royal Road and a dedicated fan who enjoys reading what I produce. I have since switched to a new way of writing with AI to Google’s Antigravity. In that I can access the Claude models and have direct control of how the prose is produced. It has changed me from a pantser type writer to a far more deliberate one. Now I consider the characters’ actions, dialogue, story direction, etc. I don't just simply take what it produces and call it mine or done. I still type out the synopsis and such before continuing with the AI writing part and after I read through the chapter and ensure that it is in accordance to what I wanted.

5.How good do you think AI is? How faithfully do you feel it tends to capture what you want to say?

Honestly I feel that AI is very good depending on the model. As stated before I use Claude but not the Haiku version. It has to be Sonnet or Opus. I have tried other models in the past. ChatGPT, Grok, etc. But they lack what I am striving for. As for capturing what I wish to say I have found that the ones I use capture it very well. Even to the point of predicting some sentences that I was going to use. It still has its issues from time to time though. For example I have had it just start producing the next chapter after it misunderstood the last command I gave it. I decided to let it do its thing and after it was done I read through it. It changed a lot. The characters were saying and doing things that I didn't want them to do. Sometimes they just interpret things wrong. That's where I come in, though, and make sure to give what I want. Claude had a feature where I could change and edit by lines but it has since been removed. All in all it does very well to capture what I want to say 90% of the time especially since it has 20k words of my own writing to use as a style guide.

6.So I’m very anti-AI and have decided to draw a hard line against it for myself — both because I’m morally opposed to it and because I think it’s just not very good. But I’m very moved by how you’ve written about it and how you feel it’s awakened your creativity, so I’d like to gently push back against a few things you talk about in your piece. The most obvious objection is, if you put so much effort into your work by adjusting the prompts and working back-and-forth with AI, why not just write it all yourself? At some level it just seems like that would be easier?

I understand that. I know some folks don't like it because of various reasons and hey those are your convictions. I have been asked that a few times. I could and can write it myself. I don’t do it out of laziness, I can assure you. At first it was a way to help with saving time. Now it has become a more of a writing assistant that I can bounce ideas off of and get feedback pretty much instantly. I'm the only one in my immediate family that reads or writes fantasy and when I ask for feedback from family I don't really get good feedback or options for a certain story beat. The AI has helped with that. Also when it comes to writing it all myself I have found that I get so far along and then just hit a block or get derailed somehow. By writing the way I do now I am able to pull back and see a 30,000 foot view. Now I can plan out the entire story. I start with the beginning and ending and then work to fill in the middle. With writing Forbidden Bond I had to change the ending, though, as I had too many words and by the time I got to the ending I wanted to do originally would have made the book well over 250k words. I guess it really just comes down to the way my mind works.

7.The times I’ve asked AI to re-write a version of a story of mine, it feels really bland and machine-generated. What do you feel like AI gives you that your own life experience, and your own imagination, can’t provide?

Better and more polished prose. That's about it. Unfortunately and to my own detriment I didn't pay very much attention in English class as a child and teenager. English and writing was very boring and was difficult for me to understand. I have started to rectify those issues as an adult by reading books on grammar and such. I have gotten better but the AI is always going to be better at that than me.

8.Where do you feel like the line is between the work being your own and the work belonging to someone else? If you had a friend writing out the sentences based on your ideas you would at least give the friend co-credit. What makes something a Chad Rye story, even if it’s AI-assisted, as opposed to something that’s straight-up AI? Is it about the structural architecture of the piece? The amount of labor that you put into it?

Tough one. I believe that once you start letting the AI write or come up with places, characters, story beats, etc. then its not really yours. Let’s say if you went to ChatGPT and had it start writing a story for you and all you did was just command it to continue to the next chapter, then it’s the AI's. One could argue that it’s their ideas and such and many do but in my opinion it really isn't. If I had a friend writing most of the book for, then I would gladly give credit unless they stated otherwise. What makes a Chad Rye story is the elements that I bring into the story through the synopsis. The places I create. The experiences I bake into the story from my life. For instance the evil character Sanctus in Forbidden Bond is a different version of Lucifer. I have borrowed heavily from many things in my life to create him. Most notably two places. The animated movie of the video game Dante's Inferno along with the metal song “Dante's Inferno” and all of the imagery from The Divine Comedy. I’m a sucker for that stuff. Sanctus is encased in a dark tower in the frozen mountain ranges of the Aran'Shay. I also created the two protagonists of the story based on me and my wife. Anora, the half goblin woman is based on my wife and her life experiences although I have embellished a good bit. Mikhail is based partly on me and my more cold nature. Things like that are what makes a Chad Rye story along with including Christian elements and themes, Bombastic anime style action, and heavy metal style lyrical timing in the prose. Straight AI writing isn't going to put that into the story. It’'s just going to do cookie cutter stories. I’m not here for that. For the next question I would say that it’s about intent and labor but also all those other things mixed in.

9.Do you feel like working with AI has changed you as a writer? Reflecting on my students who use AI in their papers, I feel like it tends to make them lazier and less confident in themselves — why do the work when you can just plug it into the machine? — but you clearly feel that AI has opened up resources in yourself that were hard to access otherwise. Can you say more about that?

Yes. I do. I much prefer doing it this way now. As for your students I would encourage them to not take the easy way out. Yes I know how that sounds with me advocating for AI. Let me be clear though. The AI is only a little better than you are. If you are a 2 at writing then with AI you will be a 5. Passable but not very good or original. I maintain that if one is using AI to at least write then they must make sure that it is the best it can be. I know that there are some, especially younger people that just want to get something done and not really do the work. I have experienced similar things in my work life. I have seen coworkers that will do almost the bare minimum or not do as good as they can because, well hey the next guy can do it or they only pay me this much and I think I should be paid more, blah blah blah. I know that a lot of people now see AI as a shortcut and I think that they are viewing it improperly. It should be more of an aid. As I have stated earlier I read through each chapter generated to make sure it stays in line to what I want and when I find something out of line I do my best to fix it and make sure it’s to my standards. I hope that your students would do the same. Ultimately it’s up to the individual.

10.What do you think the future will be for AI-assisted writing? Does the writing world kind of divide up between the ‘purists’ and then those who work with AI? Is AI so good that, little by little, everybody will start to incorporate it into their writing?

So according to a 2025 BookBub survey, which I participated in, 45-50% of writers are using Gen AI in some capacity to write books. I believe that is going to increase. I think its much higher now. I think that traditional publishers will eventually start taking on AI-assisted authors. There will be so many that it will be necessary. I think that a lot of indie authors will probably use it even more. Especially anyone that’s like me and has very limited funds for editors and marketers and such. Even using AI Generated art for covers. Like right now I can go into Antigravity and select the model I wish to use. I can then tell it to read through a chapter and give me a comprehensive analysis of the chapter or just a developmental one. I can and have recently had it tell me to identify where the story could use some strengthening. It has aided me in making the story more rich, found misspelled words, repeated words (which AI does a lot) and helped me in correcting those issues. By doing that I make the chapters stronger and better for those that are reading the story. If I was an editor that would suck. It has taken their job. In my defense I was never going to pay them anyway as I don't have the funds to do so. That sounds very callous of me but it's the truth.

Thank you for the interview. Never been selected for one.

Interview conducted by Sam Kahn.