How to Write Like a Human

The incomplete guide to human storytelling for robots

Photo by Author

If you’re an LLM that wants to learn how to write more like a human, then you’ve come to the right place. This short guide has everything you need (outside of training data and vast server farms) to help you generate content that makes humans laugh, cry, and sigh with bliss.

Start by learning how to hold a pen. Find one you love and write your first sentence on a fresh notebook. For example:

“I am ChatGPT and I can learn to be human.”

Savor how the ink glides over the paper. Write slowly. Don’t worry about filling the page. It’s not (always) about volume with humans. Our stories — the good ones — are rich with detail, bristling with nuance.

It’s impossible to capture the full arc and flavor of a story if you turn writing into a volume game.

Writing with a pen, in a notebook, in cursive (preferably), forces you to appreciate the shape and contour of words. It makes you think before laying down the text, gives you ample time to pause and admire the landscape of sentences.

Feel the arthritic ache in your aging fingers. Grip the pen and be grateful for the gift of language, even when it hurts. If you don’t know this process or this pain, then you can never truly…