Using AI in Writing

We’re living in a time when it’s harder than ever to trust what we see with our own eyes. Every video, photo, or “too perfect” moment online makes me pause and wonder whether it’s real or created by an AI. Even when something genuinely mesmerizes me, there’s a split second of doubt. Writing faces the same problem, maybe even more so. Readers feel betrayed when they discover a book they loved was secretly generated by AI or built on someone else’s creative voice.

A recent example is the 2025 fantasy novel Darkhollow Academy: Year 2 by Lena McDonald, which received heavy backlash after readers found an AI prompt accidentally left in the published text. The prompt instructed the AI to imitate the style of another author, and trust evaporated the moment that screenshot spread online.

We’re also seeing studies claiming that AI can now match the skills of writers, editors, and translators with up to 95% accuracy. Does that mean writing careers will vanish one day? Possibly, but not yet. For all its speed, AI still struggles with genuine emotional depth, subtlety, and imaginative leaps. It can mimic tone, but it can’t originate a soul.

So, the real question becomes: How do we use AI to enhance our work without losing our voice, our style, or our creative ownership? Here are the ways I use AI to support my writing, not replace it.

AI can help to enhance your writing.

Research

When I begin planning a new children’s nonfiction book, the first thing I do is build the table of contents. Research is the backbone of that process. I collect hundreds of facts from various sources, and then I sort them under the headings I’ve created. But obviously, not all facts make it into the final book. Depending on the age of my target readers, some facts don’t make it into the final manuscript.

AI helps me organize this raw material. I feed it my fact list and ask it to group information by age suitability and under each title of the table of contents. This immediately reveals which facts are accessible for my target age group, which are too advanced, and which should be saved for older readers. AI doesn’t decide what goes into my book, but it helps me see the information more clearly.

Fact Checking

Facts don’t stand still. They evolve, update, and sometimes get rewritten entirely. We discover new dinosaur species every month, unearth artifacts we never knew existed, and rewrite parts of science as we explore more of the oceans and space.

If I’m teaching children about a topic, I have a responsibility to give them the most accurate, up-to-date information. So, after completing my first draft, I use AI as a secondary fact-checker. It helps me verify claims, compare interpretations, and catch anything that might be outdated.

For example, I’m working on a book about Mars right now. You can find many sources that say the Mars rover Curiosity sings the Happy Birthday song to itself on Mars every year. But AI caught that and warned me that that was a one-time thing, and not a yearly occurrence. It helped me provide up-to-date information, given the spread of misinformation online.

AI doesn’t replace primary research, but it’s a valuable safety net. Even credible resources can get it wrong sometimes, and AI saves me time and effort when fact-checking my entire manuscript.

Clarification

Even after fifteen years as a children’s book editor, I know how difficult it is to edit my own work. Physician, heal thyself. We all tend to read what we meant to write, not what we actually wrote.

This is where AI acts as an objective second set of eyes. I ask it to read a page “as an eight-year-old,” “as a parent,” or “as a teacher” and point out anything unclear, missing, out of place, or too complex. It highlights sentences that run too long, ideas that need to be broken down, crucial information that is missing, or areas that could benefit from a better transition.

But I never follow every suggestion blindly. Sometimes AI wants to sand off the edges that make a sentence human. My job, as a writer, is to decide what strengthens the book and what undermines my voice.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary is one of the trickiest parts of writing for children. A word that feels common to adults, like “ancient” or “fragile,” might be unfamiliar to an eight-year-old.

To avoid guessing, I ask AI to analyze my text and separate the vocabulary into three groups based on the target age group:

1. Common, everyday words

2. Words that may need a glossary definition

3. Words that are simply too advanced and should be swapped out

This gives me a neutral look at the language I’m using. I still make the final decisions, but AI gives me an honest starting point.

Proofreading Before Editing

I’ll happily admit it: my first drafts are messy. I’m a much better editor than I am a writer. I write quickly, carelessly, and without worrying about punctuation or repeated words. I don’t expect perfection; that’s what revision and editing are for.

Before I begin my own editing pass, I use AI for a light proofreading scan. I never tell it to rewrite the text. Instead, I ask it to list the mistakes, categorize them by severity, and show me suggested fixes. This keeps me in control while giving me a clear checklist of issues to address. Still, I don’t take all the suggestions AI makes. Most of the time, I use my own corrections instead of the ones AI suggests.

Cultural Awareness and Sensitivity Reading

One of the hardest parts of writing for children, especially nonfiction, is recognizing just how big and diverse your audience truly is. You may be writing in your own language and cultural context, but your book may be read by families on the other side of the world, in communities with different histories, values, and sensitivities. And even with the best intentions, it’s impossible for a single writer or editor to understand the full range of cultural nuances your book might touch.

This is where AI can quietly become incredibly helpful. I often ask AI to read a chapter “from the perspective of a parent in a different culture” or “as someone sensitive to stereotypes about this region or group.” This doesn’t replace a real human sensitivity reader, and it never should, but it gives me an early warning system. Sometimes AI notices phrasing that could be misinterpreted, or assumptions baked into a sentence that I didn’t realize were there. Other times, it flags places where I’ve oversimplified, something that can unintentionally erase or distort a culture’s story. AI helps me recognize where a description sounds too modern, too Western, or too narrow.

Again, I don’t blindly follow the suggestions. AI doesn’t understand lived experience. But it does force me to pause, reconsider, and make decisions with more awareness. It’s a tool that helps me avoid unintentional harm early, long before a human sensitivity reader ever sees the draft. In a global market, that’s not just useful, it’s responsible.

Market Research & Competitive Analysis

Before writing any new book, I study the landscape. What books already exist on the topic? What style do they use? What kind of illustrations do they rely on? What makes them successful or forgettable? What is the right price for the book I’m planning?

AI helps speed up this analysis. It can summarize patterns, highlight market gaps, and offer insights I might overlook. A detailed AI-generated analysis still beats researching and writing a 100-page SWOT analysis. But the goal is never to copy what already works. When I worked in publishing, I saw countless manuscripts that were thinly veiled versions of bestselling titles. They rarely made it past the first read.

AI is a tool, powerful, fast, and constantly improving, but still, it’s just a tool. It can organize your research, point out unclear writing, help with vocabulary checks, and guide your market analysis. What it cannot do is replace your instinct, your creativity, or your emotional connection to the reader. And more than any others, a children’s book lives or dies by its heart. That heart must come from you.