How to make AI-assisted fiction read like a human wrote it
AI prose has a fingerprint. Here's what it looks like and how to scrub it.
By InkSmith6 min readUpdated
AI-assisted fiction reads like a machine wrote it because of a handful of recognizable habits — stock metaphors, over-fond em-dashes, tidy three-item lists, and telling the emotion instead of showing it. Removing those specific tells with a dedicated editing pass, combined with a consistent cross-chapter voice, is what makes it read like a person sat down and wrote it.
The tells readers notice
AI writing leans on a recognizable set of habits: stock metaphors ('her heart pounded like a drum'), the 'it wasn't just X — it was Y' rhythm, over-fond em-dashes, tidy three-item lists, and summary sentences that explain the emotion instead of showing it. For the full rundown of what to look for, see the twelve AI tells.
Individually these are minor; together they make prose feel generated rather than written.
Why a dedicated pass beats prompting
You can ask a model to 'write more naturally', but it tends to drift back to its defaults. A separate editing pass that specifically hunts for known tells is more reliable than hoping the first draft avoids them.
InkSmith's Pygmalion pass runs after drafting and targets the twelve canonical tells one sentence at a time, so the version you read has already been cleaned.
Keep your voice, lose the fingerprint
The goal isn't to defeat a detector for its own sake — it's to make the prose genuinely good. Removing AI tics, combined with consistent cross-chapter voice, is what makes an AI-assisted novel read like a person sat down and wrote it.
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