AI Nonfiction Writing Tips

Nonfiction writing is not as straightforward as it may seem, and can be difficult to get right. Nonfiction writers must ensure that their information is credible and comes from trustworthy sources. They also need to get their point across while remaining as unbiased as possible. 

For starters, whether you’re interested in being persuasive or informative, it’s vital to create a piece that is both cohesive and void of biases. There are many different ways in which a nonfiction piece can be biased, from overgeneralizing a complex issue to presenting an imbalanced representation of points. 

Though these flaws can be invisible to the eye of the author, AI tools like ChatGPT can help to make them evident. In this blog, I share strategies for those interested in using AI to support effective journalism or essay writing, but writers can definitely adjust and use these approaches for other styles of nonfiction writing, too!

Using AI to Identify Bias

In order to successfully use AI to identify biases in your writing, you must first provide context within your prompt. There are a few things you will want to establish with the AI tool: whether your piece is designed to be persuasive or informative, further detail about the purpose of the piece, and its intended audience. You can add other details where necessary, based on your project and the AI responses. Here’s an example:

Usually, I would accompany this prompt with the piece of writing itself. I might also go into further detail about any specific biases I’m worried about, like word choice or cherry-picked information. 

Synthesizing AI Feedback

Note that, for more persuasive pieces (and even informative ones), the goal is not to eliminate all bias, since you are still trying to make a point. The goal is instead to balance both sides of the argument and ensure you are using the right language—this will actually strengthen your point, as it will give you more credibility as a writer. 

Keeping this goal in mind can help you determine which parts of the AI feedback are useful. For example, the AI tool may say you are using emotionally charged language to express your ideas, which, in many cases, adds to a piece; here, you likely wouldn’t take its feedback into account, since you recognize that the tone fuels the purpose and delivery of your piece. However, if the AI refers to places in your text where you overgeneralize or lack a solid counterargument, you might want to make some changes to reduce bias in your work.

Establishing Other Areas for Improvement

Beyond bias, it’s also important for nonfiction pieces to be logical and to flow well. AI can help you achieve this. 

First, while rhetorical techniques can contribute positively to nonfiction works, you should make sure you’re not repeatedly stating the same point over and over again, to the point of becoming redundant. To identify redundancy, you can ask the AI to tell you if there are any areas in your piece where you’re repeating myself unnecessarily, and what they are.

Then, you can use AI to establish areas for improvement in terms of the logical development and flow of your piece. You could try using the AI to tackle large issues—for example, asking for feedback on whether your points build on each other, or whether the order in which you’ve placed them makes sense. Or maybe you want to ensure that your conclusion effectively summarizes your points. 

For general flow, you also want to make sure that the transitions between different sections of your piece are effective, since a lack of this can negatively impact your reader’s understanding. You can use AI to improve the logical flow of your writing by asking questions like:

Lastly, you want to see if your writing style fits the type of piece you're writing and your intended audience. For example, if you’re writing a literary essay, the vocabulary you use will likely be very different from the vocabulary you would use if you were writing an article or blog post directed towards teens. To use AI as a guide in this process, you can simply ask: Is my vocabulary too simplistic/complicated in some areas considering my audience and type of writing?

You can adjust these questions to address areas you think you need to improve on. I’ve found these questions to be great ways to start a conversation with AI tools like ChatGPT. From there, you can bounce back and forth until you think you’ve received valuable feedback that you can use to improve your writing. Good luck!