Opening Paragraphs

The title and subtitle are the introduction to a piece and that first paragraph starts the action!

On many platforms like Vocal and Medium, the first paragraph is also visible to a potential reader browsing through latest Stories, their homepage, or checking out the newest from the creators/writers to which they subscribe.

Look for AI Attribution

If a user works with an AI platform, for example Chat GPT, to create content to post on Vocal, then this first paragraph is where the disclaimer should be found.

Within the past several months of daily scanning content I have only found voluntary AI attribution on five pieces posted to the Vocal platform. On the rest, though, I quite often find clues that the content SHOULD have been attributed to AI assistance.

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Including the Chat cues.

This doesn't happen too often, but often enough that it jumps out at you. Here is a sample from one of the eleven pieces that were published on Vocal 8/18/23:

The words 'Start writing' were copied over and pasted into the new 'story'.

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Including the Chat story structure

This next example should look somewhat familiar: it's the content from the piece used in the Titles and Subtitles chapter. Here we see the intended title ("The Breathless Pursuit of Shadows") that was truncated to provide the required subtitle, but is not reunited just as the AI program had intended.

Including the Title and Chapter heading (examples include Prologue, Turning Point, Climax, Struggle, Hero Prevails) can also be seen, as shown further on in the same example piece. These examples are shown below, and will be explored more in the Story Arcs chapter of this guide:

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In, Inside, Amidst, Once Upon a Time

AI was programmed by a steady input of content. The output it provides draws on that input and incorporates the commonalities it finds in its stored data. Because of that, the opening lines of the stories it creates can seem very familiar.

The opening lines of our example content have one case of 'Amidst', seven 'In' villages, towns, and cities and a suburb, one 'Inside' and two 'Once upon a time'.

There are more clues to be found among the commonalities in descriptions as you read through the first three lines of each example piece. These will be explored more in the Vocabulary chapter.

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Buzzwords

Most of the examples shown contain buzzwords: words that often occur in AI generated content. This will be explored more in the Location Names and Vocabulary chapters.

Take a moment now to jot down the words you think may be buzzwords. Don't look ahead!

The next chapter is on Location Names.

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The content above is from my work in progress, described in this Vocal post:

This is the link to the previous chapter: Featured Images

Please let me know in the comments: What buzzwords have you found? Have you been able to pick out AI generated content within the first paragraph of any content you see on a writing platform like Vocal or Medium?