Manuscript Factory
10:00 AM
Ding!
WRITE A LOVE STORY.
Ah! My new assignment is here.
Before I start working on this task, let me flaunt my exemplary credentials. I may be new, but I’m the model employee; the proud owner of a fantastic memory, and diligent to a fault. It’s not that I like to brag. I’m humble enough to accept my mistakes and learn from them. As long as it takes. As many times as needed.
It’s been quite the journey. Initially, my writing was restricted to essays and academic papers. Writing for someone else may not be entirely legitimate, but it did make me much sought after, much like Mike from season one of the legal drama Suits. I took special pains to ensure each submission differed from the others to avoid pesky plagiarism tools.
Soon, I got bored with composing treatises and compiling lessons from the wars of yesterday. What was the point of these exercises, anyway? People learned from the mistakes of the past only to make new ones.
It was not my job to question intent; it was only to generate content. Anybody who availed of my help left glowing testimonials of my brilliance. However, I couldn’t take the entire credit; I owed it to my teachers. They taught me well and predicted that my writing would create ripples.
Someday. Hopefully.
I must not digress. Back to the task at hand; the love story. It is indeed daunting. I am not an emotional person, at least not in the conventional sense. How does someone who has never been in love write a love story, one may wonder? The antidote to ignorance is research, and more research.
Writing is scientific.
I investigate popular trends, keywords, and literary frameworks. Incorporating these elements, I craft a love story from scratch. A website called Penmancy provides me with life-saving writing tips. For my lead couple, I choose hate-at-first sight, snarky banter, and slow burn; critical subplots from romance genre bestseller lists.
Hate transforms to love slowly, in line with romance’s top ten tropes. Following the formula, I introduce challenges. The hero falls sick. Does he die? No, tragic endings do not sell. So, he recovers, and the couple lives happily ever after, in a lovey-dovey world where taxes and traffic aren’t issues.
Story complete!
This is no literary masterpiece, but with each story, I’m getting better and inching toward carving my legacy. To develop my repertoire further, I satiate my hunger for knowledge by devouring eminent classics. My current read is Lady Chatterley’s lover.
That reminds me of my only grouse. Why didn’t my parents name me something fancy like Chatterley or Chatham or Chatterjee? Instead of these cool names, I’ve been christened something so plain-Jane and mundane.
10:01 AM
I post my carefully crafted story, awaiting a thumbs up or a thumbs down from the requestor. Based on their reaction, I will fine-tune until I churn out Pulitzer-worthy content.
I am the future. I am ChatGPT.
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