Beat the Bots reveals how writers can craft emotionally powerful stories that surpass AI’s limitations. While AI relies on recycled data, human writers draw from personal experiences and emotional depth, giving us the ultimate creative edge.

WHY I LIKE THIS BOOK
The author empowers you to sharpen your unique voice through practical exercises, expert tips, and thought-provoking insights. Whether you write fiction, nonfiction, or memoir, Beat the Bots teaches you how to create fresh, compelling work that stands out in an AI-dominated world.

WHO IS IT FOR?
A must-read for writers who want to thrive in an AI-driven world.

Beat the Bots book by Jane K. Cleland should be the go-to book for an aspiring author. It touches on all the basics of writing a good fiction book and gives a boost to anyone who thinks that starting a career as an author is a waste in the times of AI.

There is a lot of buzz around how AI agents and algorithms will soon make a career in writing worthless. That may be true a certain extent for certain writing professions. But it is not entirely true, as yet, in case of fiction writers.

Yes, it can write a story. Maybe a few pages long. But anyone who has spent any amount of time to craft a 60 thousand word novel using the AI tools realizes how hard it is to keep it consistent and on the path that you want it to be.

And that is the one single message that Cleland sends in this book. Your story is your’s and no one else can write it for you. No other person and definitely not a machine. Because the machine can’t yet predict what you are thinking and what you are about to do next.

Perhaps the day is not far when you will have the tentacles of the machine embedded in your brain and then it could predict your next thought like the Borg, but not today. I digress.

The author points out with examples the strengths and limitations of what AI agents can help you with. How you can use it to accelerate some parts of your craft. But if you stay true to your story, the bots cannot beat you.

For new authors, the bots might seem very efficient when it comes to plotting, but it inherently lacks originality. The author correctly points out that AI is mostly Search Engine on steroids. It can only read what is already written and it can pull a bit from here and a bit from there. What it cannot do is form an original thought.

Once that is drilled down in your mind, and you are ready to jump in into writing the next great novel, Cleland is ready and waiting to hold your hand through the entire process.

She guides you from how to paint the rough contours of your canvas, to giving you the tool for fine detailing needed to define the characters in the book.

Every author for centuries is writing the same story. For romance authors it is,

They meet each other.
They fall in love with each other.
Then the universe conspires against them
They unite to defeat the universe’s conspiracy against them
They live happily ever after.

I can hear the clamor of romance authors jumping up and throwing things at me at this time, but let me finish.

Yes. The story is the same, but it is what happens between these lines that matters the most and makes one story different than others. The author again points out how this stuff between the lines is yours. Only you can write it. No bot in the world can write the story that you want to write. The way you look at your characters. The way your characters do things they do.

Chapter after Chapter, Cleland hand-holds new and experienced authors thought the various, recursive steps involved in writing a book and hones their skills. Recursive because your characters influence the story and the story influences your characters. You may begin your voyage with a certain set of ideas, but you will have to be flexible to accommodate the unexpected storms and islands that you walk into while writing your book.

Ultimately, the author helps you bring in YOU into the book. Keeps showing you how to be original and stay away from the bots, no matter how easy and exciting its answers might seem.

Beat the Bots is an information dense book that will demand many hours from you as you work through it. But it will be worth your effort if you work through all the parts of the book. It might prove a little too much to do all that in one go. But you can read, work and digest the information slowly. writers who are already in their third or fourth books can still learn many things to hone their skills and make their stories richer and better.

Overall, Beat the Bots by Jane K. Cleland gives you the confidence that AI has still a long way to go when it comes to writing full length novel. And even if it gets their, your writing is unique to you. Your word choice, your emotions, your twists, your settings, and your characters.

I am generally a disappointed reader in self-help, reference and guide books, because I seek nuanced, fresh and practical advice and insights.
I started Beat the Bots with low expectations because of my reading and writing experience. What intrigued me was the topic.
Generative AI is commonly praised whereas we need to be extra mindful, critical and clever about it.
Jane K. Cleland does not only talk about the shortcomings of AI and how it lacks nuance. She also walks you through what matters in stories (plot), how to find the hows and whys of your writing as well a whats with a series of questions/writing and thinking exercises and how AI generated some not great responses to her prompts (also my experience, and it is so validating to see her examples).
I loved Cleland’s approach to writing, creativity, AI and what she values in storytelling.
Her guide is practical and can be implemented in writing classes, groups or as a writer, on your own.
I see why she also added the video prompts for TikTok, while they were not personally relevant to me.
Nearly five stars. I am just too picky.