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Write Like You’re Taking a Polaroid
Zoom in, AI doesn’t know how to do it.
Note: This story contains a text written by ChatGPT Plus for comparative purposes. It is clearly marked.
(I borrowed this kind of notification from my favourite writer, Linda Caroll, because I find it thoughtful and respectful to my readers.)
The devil is in the detail, but the human is, too.
Taking a Polaroid is a unique attempt to capture a detail. A one-take on a moment’s emotion so we can hear its echo, again and again, whenever we look at it.
And what makes it special is its depth. We know what led to it, we know the places and people in it, and how they were in that instant of their lives. We know what happened next.
Like a Polaroid, great writing zooms in on the detail that best embodies the depth of the “big picture.” For example, a captivating war story doesn’t blab on adjectives describing the horrors of it, but rather zooms in on the dirty face of a child crying alone in the middle of an empty field.
Wondering if an AI could zoom in like a writer, and one day (soon?) become a Dostoyevsky, Kahlil Gibran, or Tony Morrison, I prompted Chat GPT Plus to “take a polaroid” of a unique human experience:
