[weeksie]

I understand the thought, and if you are unfamiliar with the process of writing a novel it makes some intuitive sense.

If that method were effective, we would not have to wait for a machine learning algo to make use of it. There has rarely been a time in our literate world where encyclopedic catalogues of plots and plot devices haven't been available. If one could throw a dart at Polti's 36 dramatic situations to understand their story better, or write their way out of a jam then I'd be more inclined to believe that you could use GPT-3 to muddy your way through a draft. This is not the case, however.

// Edit, addendum:

If I had GPT-3 generate a synopsis for me, based on a corpus of my work (let's say) I would have before me a framework that loosely adhered to my conventions and internal logic, however it would still be deep in that uncanny valley as any longer story from GPT-3 ends up being. The bulk of the work would be in reconceptualizing the generated synopsis into something that contained real, cohesive themes and character development. The project itself would likely be as much work as writing from scratch, but would also be an art project of sorts.

Novels are far more complex than most people assume. If you compare to movies or television, you have to take direction, cinematography, and production into account, rather than just the screenplay.

Maybe that sort of thing can be delegated to a GPT like algorithm, maybe GPT-4 will obsolete the novelist and the auteur, but I kinda doubt it.