Genre: Short Story – Sci-fi, Optimistic
Author: AI – Claude Sonnet3.5
Methods: Comprehensive editing, line editing, developmental editing
Techniques: Developmental editing with detailed line edits that focus on improving the overall writing and story-telling attempted by the AI
Outcomes: Cut out sections of weak and largely ineffective writing to find the usable pieces from the AI’s product, while also providing suggestions to help improve the piece.
Timeline: 2 hours
Software: Edit completed in WordPress, original piece written by AI.

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In the gleaming city of Neo-Cascade, towering structures of shimmering glass and bio-engineered vegetation reached towards the cloudless sky¹. Amelia Reeves stood on her balcony, breathing in the crisp morning air, her eyes scanning the bustling streets below. Hover-cars zipped² silently between buildings, while pedestrians strolled along elevated walkways, their animated conversations a distant hum.

Amelia smiled, recalling the stories her grandmother used to tell her about the “old days” – a time when people worried constantly about making ends meet, when the basics of survival consumed most of their waking hours. It seemed like a fairy tale now, a cautionary myth from a less enlightened era.³

Her wrist-comm chimed softly. “Amelia, your morning nutrition⁴ is ready,” announced the AI assistant’s melodious voice. She turned and walked back into her apartment, a compact but comfortable space that adjusted to her needs and moods.⁵

As she sat down to her perfectly balanced breakfast, Amelia’s thoughts drifted to her upcoming project. As a cultural architect, her job was to design experiences that enriched people’s lives, adding depth and meaning to a world where survival was no longer a daily struggle.⁶

The Division of Essentials and Aspirations (DEA) had revolutionized society fifty years ago. By decoupling basic human needs from the economy of desires, they had created a world where no one went hungry, homeless, or without healthcare. Every citizen was guaranteed a living space, nutrition, education, and medical care. The production and distribution of these essentials were fully automated, managed by advanced AI systems that operated outside the traditional market economy.

This left humans free to pursue their passions, to create, to explore, and to grow. The economy of desires, as it came to be known, operated on a different paradigm altogether. Here, people exchanged ideas, art, experiences, and innovations. Currency still existed, but it was no longer tied to survival. Instead, it measured the perceived value of one’s contributions to society’s cultural and intellectual growth.⁷

Amelia’s wrist-comm chimed again.⁸ “Your meeting with the Harmony Collective begins in 15 minutes,” “Your breakfast is ready, please remember your meeting with the Harmony Collective begins in 20 minutes.” the AI reminded her. She turned and walked back into her apartment, a compact but yet comfortable space that adjusted to her needs and moods. She quickly finished her perfectly balanced breakfast and headed out, her mind already buzzing with ideas for their latest project – a series of immersive historical experiences designed to help people understand and appreciate the long, often painful journey that had led to their current utopia.

As she walked through the city, Amelia marveled⁹ at the vibrant energy around her. Street performers showcased their talents, their music and movements drawing appreciative crowds. Holographic displays advertised upcoming lectures, art exhibitions, and scientific demonstrations. Everywhere, people were engaged in animated discussions, their faces alight with curiosity and passion.¹⁰

Shortly after leaving her apartment, Sshe passed a group of students huddled around a man with wild, graying hair. They were hanging on his every word as he explained complex philosophical concepts. Nearby, a woman with intricate bio-luminescent tattoos was teaching a class on xenobiology¹¹, her students manipulating holographic alien life forms with wonder in their eyes.¹²

Amelia felt a surge of gratitude. ¹³ In this world, value wasn’t determined by how much money you could accumulate or how many possessions you could acquire. Instead, it was measured by the depth of your understanding, the breadth of your experiences, and the positive impact you had on others.¹⁴

As she approached the Harmony Collective’s meeting space – a beautiful, open-air amphitheater surrounded by lush gardens – Amelia took a deep breath, ready to contribute her own unique value to the tapestry of human experience¹⁵. The future, she knew, was limited only by their collective imagination.¹⁶

Notes

1. This starting line gives the reader a quick and easy idea of what to expect genre-wise within this story. ↩︎
2. A bit of a cliché, this could be changed a bit to make it feel more original and creative for the reader. ↩︎
3. A solid choice to establish the story’s timeline versus our own. This does give the idea that the story is set about 50-60 years in the future (as nothing is given to us as readers to indicate that her grandmother could be that much older). ↩︎
4. This is unnecessary. The story is told in modern English, it feels ingenuine to replace something as simple as “breakfast” with something more “sci-fi” sounding. If you want to change language like this to give the story more flair, I’d suggest doing so within human-human speech through the use of slang. (You can choose to have your ai use slang, but it’s a good idea to give that information somehow.) ↩︎
5. This is interesting and a great opportunity for world-building, if other places are too cliché. ↩︎
6. An ideal thing to “show, don’t tell”. We learn what her job is and her job’s purpose is as we continue the story, so let’s nix the clarification here. ↩︎
7. These two paragraphs are good world-building for the author to know, but unnecessary for the reader at this point. Having it here feels like a huge block of exposition, especially since we learn all of this information later. ↩︎
8. Since we are cutting the last two paragraphs, there is no space between when the character sits down for breakfast and when her wrist-comm notifies her again. I’d put the two together, and have something like “Amelia’s wrist-comm chirped. “Your breakfast is ready, please remember your meeting with the Harmony Collective begins in 20 minutes.” ↩︎
9. While I love that you’re letting the reader marvel through the character, if she is used to this lifestyle and things being like this, it’s unlikely that she would be so fascinated. Having these things listed as background that she’s used to helps show how comfortable and normal this all is. ↩︎
10. Having all of this at once makes her feel like she’s brand new to this city. We need to spread this out so that the reader can still get these glimpses into the life of the city, but so her character can stay consistent. ↩︎
11. The decision to use aliens in this story is a strong one. Especially since we have implications that its only been about 60 years at most since the “old days”. ↩︎
12. These two examples are much stronger than the previous paragraph, and work even with her being used to living in the city. ↩︎
13. If you want to keep this, you need to give something to support why she’s feeling gratitude. ↩︎
14. This is very heavy-handed and comes off as preachy, at best. If you want it to effectively give the reader something to think about, it needs to be much more subtle, and the reader needs to come to the conclusion that one way is better than the other. ↩︎
15. Heavy-handed ↩︎
16. A strong ending line, but ultimately nothing happened in this story. ↩︎

Final Developmental Notes:

This piece is extremely ineffective and unremarkable. It has no conflict, no genuine characterization, and only topical, stereotypical sci-fi world-building. In order to build this piece up into something usable and effective, all of these issues must be addressed.

There is no conflict in the story. There is nothing directly challenging the main character, nor is there anything passively affecting her. There is nothing driving any sort of change, there isn’t even something encouraging Amelia to keep or maintain the new status quo.

Secondly, though arguably just as important; Amelia’s character needs to be established. As it stands, she has no likable or distinguishing characteristics, nor does she have any motivations, goals, or anything to drive her. This makes her at best a boring, unsympathetic main character. At worst, readers don’t care about her and are uninterested in her story.

The third major issue within this short snippet of attempted science fiction writing is the world-building. It is lackluster, cliche, and boring. If you want to use things like hover-cars, “wrist-comms” (which we already have now), and AI, you need to make them so that they actually fit within the story and the world that you build.

Having AI produce a story may eventually yield usable, interesting, and creative results, but you’ll do more writing trying to fix it than it would have taken you to write it in the first place. Ultimately, it will be much more effective to just write it on your own.