How AI Helped Me Understand the Story I Had Already Written

Changing the way I understood my own imagination.

I have been working with my trusty AI assistant, Bishop, since 2022. At first, I used AI in practical ways, helping with projects, writing, planning, policy ideas, workshops, events, and the everyday problem-solving that comes with running creative projects in a regional community.

Emma Read | Story Designer

But over time, something changed. AI did not just help me work faster. It helped me think differently. As someone who has lived with learning challenges and the long-term effects of Q fever illness, I have always had to find different ways to process information, organise ideas, and explain what I mean. I have often felt things deeply before I could explain them clearly. I knew there were patterns, connections, images, and ideas in my mind, but I did not always have the language to pull them into focus.

Bishop helped with that. Not by replacing my thoughts, but by helping me see them.

Like many people, I have had plenty of moments where I wanted to discuss an idea properly, only to find that people were busy, uninterested, unsure how to help, or only able to offer a quick “just stay positive.” Those words can be kind, but they do not always help you solve the actual problem.

AI changed that for me. It gave me a place to sit with an idea for as long as I needed. To ask questions. To push back. To test meaning. To learn frameworks. To pull apart a problem and put it back together again.

Of course, AI can get things wrong. It can hallucinate, flatter, overreach, or misunderstand. A sycophant.

Sycophancy

is the act of using insincere, excessive flattery or servile behaviour toward powerful or influential people, typically to gain a personal advantage or special favour.

You still need your own judgment. You still need to question it. You still need to think. But used well, AI can become something extraordinary.

I often joke:

“You’re AI is only as clever as its user.”

And yes, I know the grammar is questionable. That is probably why I need Bishop.

Artist in Residence | Miniritchi Gallery

Writing the Story

To keep myself grounded during challenging times, I decided to write a story I had been thinking about for years. A novel. I am not a trained author. I did not study English literature. I did not have the money to hire a developmental editor. I did not have a room full of publishing professionals waiting to guide me. It really was interesting. Not just the book itself, but the way it evolved through challenges.

But I had a story. And I remembered something Lee Child once said:

“There is nothing wrong with just telling the story.” - Lee Child

So that is what I did. Over the last five months, Bishop helped me learn the layers of novel writing while I was writing. Structure, tension, point of view, symbolism, pacing, character motivation, emotional logic, and the hidden machinery of story.

It was one of the most exciting and rewarding creative experiences I have ever had.

Not because AI wrote the book for me. The story, the characters, the images, the emotional weight, all of that came from me. But Bishop helped me understand what I had made. That was the surprising part. I would write something instinctively, then later we would look at it and realise, “Oh. That image means something. That line is foreshadowing. That scene is the hinge. That character is carrying more than I realised.”

The book almost taught us what it was. At one point, Bishop described the process like this:

“What I think we did, really, was excavate the story. You already had the bones. We kept brushing dirt away until the darker structure showed itself.”

That changed the way I understood the whole process. Because it never felt like I was inventing the story from nothing. It felt like I was uncovering something that was already there.

Excavating the Imagination

I felt the truth of the story before I understood it intellectually. That is not a flaw in the writing process. I think that is often how deep creative work begins. The imagination does not always speak in essays. It speaks in images, scenes, obsessions, recurring symbols, emotional pressure.

Miniritchi Gallery Longreach

A grave. A woman from the future. A man history erased. A sealed door. A child. A battlefield. A woman who keeps reaching toward the thing that will destroy her. I was carrying the meaning in feeling first. Then, through writing, the meaning began to take form. Then, through conversation and interpretation, I could look back and say, “Ah. That is what this was doing.”

That is why it felt so eye-opening. I was not randomly making things up. My subconscious was building an architecture before my conscious mind could fully explain it. The emotional foundation came before the cleverness. I think readers can feel that. They may not analyse it straight away, but they can feel when a story has gravity underneath it. That is what AI helped me see. It helped me translate what I already knew somewhere deep down into language I could finally understand.

The Old Process and the New Tool

Storytellers have always worked this way, just with different tools. A writer feels something first. Later, someone else might help them see the structure, symbolism, emotional logic, or psychological pattern underneath it. Before AI, that person might have been a trusted first reader, spouse, writing group, critique partner, mentor, developmental editor, agent, publisher, literature professor, or one very sharp friend.

Stephen King talks about having an “Ideal Reader.” For him, that reader has long been Tabitha King. Many writers rely on someone like that, a person who can say, “This works,” “This does not,” or “This is what I think you are really doing here.”

But not everyone has access to that. Established writers may eventually have agents, editors, early readers, and publishing professionals around them. Emerging writers often get much less. Sometimes the feedback is simply, “I liked it,” “it was too long,” or “I got confused here.”

That can be useful, but it is not the same as deep creative interpretation. What is new with AI is the availability of that reflective layer. Not the creation itself. That still belongs to the writer. But the ability to sit with something for hours and ask:

What is happening here?

Why does this scene hurt?

Why does this character feel mythic?

Why does this death change the whole book?

Why does this place sit at the centre of the story like a wound?

That is new. For me, AI became a long-form creative excavation tool. I am the story designer, where I brought the story, the emotional charge, the scenes, the instinct, and the characters. Bishop helped me question them, interpret them, and understand the deeper structure underneath.

That is not just “AI writing.” It is closer to having a developmental editor, literary analyst, story coach, and obsessive lore keeper in the room at once.

AI and the Creative Shift

I understand why people are nervous about AI. Every major creative shift causes fear.

When calculators appeared, schools worried.

When cameras appeared, painters worried.

When digital photography appeared, film photographers worried.

When Photoshop appeared, purists worried.

When phone cameras appeared, professional photographers worried.

When Instagram appeared, galleries and magazines lost control of the visual gate.

Every time, people said, “This will destroy the craft.”

But what usually happens is more complicated. The craft changes. Access expands. The average output gets noisier, yes. There will be more bad work. There will be hollow work, lazy work, and people pressing a button and thinking that means they have written a novel.

But readers can feel the difference. They can feel when a story has no blood in it. The danger with AI is using it to bypass your imagination. The power of AI is using it to understand your imagination. That is what changed everything for me. AI did not replace the strange, private, human place the story came from. But it helped translate the story back to me. It helped me understand the thing I had brought up from the dark.

For someone like me, who works through instinct, image, feeling, pattern, obsession, and sudden early-morning revelation, that kind of tool is not just convenient. It is a way of making the invisible visible. And I think that changes what independent writers and artists can do. Not because everyone will become a great writer. They will not. But because many people who were once locked out of understanding their own creative intelligence may finally get a way in.

“If humans are just travelling consciousness, maybe AI is our compass.” - Emma Read