Viewing: Notes » Director.
Director.
(17 minute read.)
Architects and bricklayers.
I often think about how tech is used in creating things—how it enables, speeds, eases, etcetera.
Obviously, that includes my use of it too.
Among the things I ponder is the new type of author that's emerging… they don't write. Well, not beyond a bit of tinkering with a word or two here, maybe a sentence or a paragraph.
Instead, they assemble. They work with generative AI. Recognising the technology can likely write better than they themselves ever could. Simply, it does work they shouldn't.
Their role is similar to that of a film director. Maybe a producer too. They provide a concept, and have a vision—or at least an idea—of where it should go, and some of the things that should happen within it. So they get on and build it, finding and using appropriate resources accordingly.
Here's an essay about it, written partially by me and of course mostly generative AI.
The Director’s Cut: On the Emergence of the Post-Literary Author.
For centuries, the image of the author has been a romantic one: the solitary genius, hunched over a desk, bleeding ink onto parchment, wringing sentences from the depths of a tortured soul. From the garret to the cabin in the woods, the writer’s currency was language itself—a private, hard-won mastery of syntax, rhythm, and voice. But a new figure is now stirring in the ashes of this tradition. They do not claim to possess this mastery. In fact, they openly concede that the technology at their disposal can 'write' better than they ever could. They are the new author, and their craft is not creation 'ex nihilo', but assembly.
This emergent author is less a scribe than a director. Their relationship to the final text mirrors that of a filmmaker to a motion picture. Just as a director rarely operates the camera or sews the costumes, this author does not generate prose line by line. Instead, they work with generative artificial intelligence, a collaborator that is at once a tireless scriptwriter, a vast casting agency, and an entire special effects department. The author’s role is to provide the concept, to hold the vision, and to orchestrate the vast, probabilistic machinery of language models into a cohesive artistic statement.
The shift is fundamental. Where the traditional author labored under the constraint of their own linguistic habits—their unique, often limited, stylistic fingerprint—the new author operates in a space of infinite stylistic possibility. They can instruct the AI to render a scene in the clipped, cynical tone of Dashiell Hammett, then pivot to the lush, meandering prose of Gabriel García Márquez, all within the span of a chapter. Their skill is no longer fluency in a single voice, but fluency in direction. It is a form of meta-literacy: the ability to articulate a vision precisely enough—through prompts, constraints, and iterative feedback—that the AI can manifest it. The author’s true medium is no longer language, but intent.
Like a film director, their work begins long before a single word of the final narrative is set. They start with a concept, a logline: perhaps a noir detective story set in a terraformed Mars, but the detective is an unreliable AI. This is their pitch, their directorial vision. From there, they move into pre-production. They may not write the full script, but they will outline the narrative architecture—the beats, the turning points, the character arcs. They will 'cast' the AI by instructing it to emulate specific styles or tonal registers. They will dictate the 'cinematography' of the prose: the pace, the focalization (is it tight third-person or omniscient?), the emotional palette.
Never miss a Note… get updates by email or rss.