what are the little tells that a fic is AI? I notice the big obvious ones but I'm always afraid I'm reading one and not noticing
the most obvious tell is the writing pattern of "not this, not that, but this other thing."
the writing style is extremely similar across different stories. you'll feel like you've read this before. you might wonder if you've read this actual story previously and go back to check the posting date.
a lot of use of words that don't actually mean anything. people are "intentional". what does being intentional look like? we'll never know.
lack of concrete and specific details. when a human-written story uses details well, it'll stick with you. good authors include specifics that you've never read in any story before and your brain will freeze on them and turn them around again and again. the uniqueness will feel fresh and vivid and you'll remember them for a long time after reading. AI written stories are the opposite of this.
there's little to no sensory information. there's nothing that has that ring of authenticity "ah, yes, that's exactly how it feels or smells or tastes".
the story feels like it goes on and on without anything actually happening. it's difficult to go back and summarize what has actually occurred because the story just flows like empty nonsense. there's this feeling that you're waiting for something to happen, and if you just keep reading you're going to find it, but it never comes, and you can't articulate what it actually is you're waiting for.
in stories written by humans, there are moments that you have to pause to try to figure out what's happening. you can't read the whole story at the same pace because something will happen that interrupts the flow - either in a good way or a bad way. a good way being that a skilled author has subverted your expectations or added something with a lot of complexity or write something that's challenging. a bad way being that human writers also make a lot of mistakes and typos and it may be difficult to figure out the intended meaning.
ai written scenes are long, and all scenes in a story are those same long ones. there's never those short dense punchy scenes where a whole bunch of information is conveyed in a compact style that has a different brain feel. there is no difference in pacing. the story doesn't zoom from a close psychic distance to a far one. no matter what's happening, we're at the same vantage point. there isn't much variance in length of paragraphs or sentences.
to that point, nothing ever feels different. you're not laughing and then crying. the story has the same flatness the whole way through. there's no variance in the feeling of affect.
the same amount of emphasis is placed on every single sentence, so there's sort of a fake sheen of urgency that is at odds with what is actually being written.
the writing doesn't have a rhythm that changes depending on the content. for example, a human writing an emotional scene might have the writing style become choppy and stop using full, grammatically complete sentences. or they might use long long run on sentences where it feels like each word is tumbling one after another. the writing style is used the show the emotional state of the character, and the writing style literally changes to evoke different feelings. if you were reading it out loud, your voice would change. your cadence would differ.
ai written characters talk and spend a lot of time bantering, but they don't feel human, and nothing that's being disclosed feels intimate. the voices are generic and are not differentiated from each other. you could copy and paste different characters interchangeably.
characters summarize what the other one needs/wants in a bizarre way. it's a subset of almost therapy speak, but it's not active listening the way a human does it. it's almost too well summarized. there's none of the messy complexity of competing wants and needs. people aren't conflicted. there aren't powerful double meanings in the things that people say vs what we as readers know they actually think. anything artful that comes from a human writing skilled dialogue is absent.
and there's never any feeling of author-to-reader communication. there's no authorial voice, but there's also no little cheeky winks of like "this is an in joke to canon" or "i know you'll see what i did here".
in summary: there's nothing weird. there's nothing original or unique or surprising. it is technically correct but lacks any artfulness. you don't feel inspired to write after reading it. nothing about it feels fulfilling, so you're just off to look for the next thing.
