creative writing sentence starters ks3

Your Inner Author – 350+ Sentence Starters for Creative Writing

Have you ever stared at a blank page, itching to write a story but unsure where to begin? Fret no more! Sentence starters are like magic keys, unlocking the door to creative writing for all ages and skill levels.

This guide will equip you with a toolbox of starters for different situations, helping you craft captivating stories and essays.

Different Types of Sentence Starters for Writing – For Adults and Kids

Here we gonna list different types of sentence starters for creative writing. Lets see –

1/ Sentence starters for creative writing for different age groups (KS1, KS2, KS3, adults, high school)

Creative writing is a fantastic way to express your thoughts, feelings, and imagination through words.

It’s an art that can be enjoyed by people of all ages, from young children to adults. Let’s explore some sentence starters specifically crafted for different age groups:

Key Stage 1 (KS1) : Ages 5-7

Key Stage 2 (KS2): Ages 7-11

Key Stage 3 (KS3): Ages 11-14

Sentence starters for third grade.

For Adults and High School Students

These sentence starters are just a glimpse into the vast world of creative writing. Feel free to mix and match them, adapt them to your own style, and let your imagination run wild!

Adverb Sentence Starters

2/ Sentence starters for different perspectives (first person, third person)

Writing in the first person allows the writer to narrate the story from their own point of view, using “I” and “we.”

This perspective can create a deep connection between the narrator and the reader. Here are some examples of sentence starters for first-person creative writing:

Third Person Perspective

Writing in the third person provides a broader perspective, using “he,” “she,” “it,” and “they.” This can offer a more objective view of the story and its characters. Here are some examples of sentence starters for third-person creative writing:

These sentence starters can serve as a springboard for your creative writing, whether you’re aiming to write from an intimate, personal perspective or a more detached, omniscient one.

Feel free to use them as inspiration and adapt them to fit your unique storytelling voice.

3/ Sentence starters for essays and introductions

Writing an essay can be challenging, but starting with a strong opening sentence can set the tone for the entire piece.

A good introduction not only engages the reader but also provides a clear overview of the topic. Here are some examples of sentence starters for essays and introductions:

Sentence starters for General Essay Introductions

Introduction paragraphs.

Body Paragraph Starters

Sentence starters for evidence and reasoning, concluding paragraph starters.

4/ Sentence Starters for Writing Prompts and Story Starters

Writing prompts and story starters are great tools to ignite creativity and inspire writers to embark on new storytelling journeys.

They provide a jumping-off point for exploration and imagination. Here are some examples of sentence starters for writing prompts and story starters:

Writing Prompts

Sentences for Story Starters

5/ Character Introductions Sentence Starters

6/ Dialogue Starters Sentence’s

7/ Sentence starters for writing a summary or article

Summarizing information or writing an article requires clarity, coherence, and conciseness.

Effective sentence starters can help you transition smoothly between ideas and maintain the reader’s interest. Here are some examples:

Writing a Summary

Writing an Article

Introducing Ideas

Providing Evidence

Concluding Ideas

These sentence starters can help you structure your summary or article effectively, ensuring that your ideas flow logically and cohesively. Feel free to adapt them to fit the specific content and tone of your writing.

8/ Sentence Starters For Writing A Letter

Below are some sentence starters for writing a letter –

Beginning a Letter

Expressing Gratitude

Sharing News

Expressing Sympathy

Closing a Letter

Closing letter sentence starters.

Sentence Starters For Love Letters

9/ Sentence Starters For Conversation

10/ Sentence Starters For Texting

11/ Sentence Starters For Books

12/ Argument Writing Sentence Starters

Final Lines

So, we covered a comprehensive list of sentence starters for creative writing in this article.

If you need more, please leave your request in the comment box. We will create more sentence starters for you!

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Lesson details

Key learning points.

• In this lesson, we will be introduced to fronted adverbials and think about how to use them in order to make our writing varied. We will also self-assess our own work as tool for reflection.

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Unit english / the bird and the forest fire: recycled story (middles).

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Lesson Plan: KS3 English, creative writing

• Subject: English and MFL
• Date Posted: 12 March 2013
• View page as PDF: Download Now

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​Providing the right atmosphere can encourage students to take their creative writing to a whole new level, says Claire Sheffield…

​Providing the right atmosphere can encourage students to take their creative writing to a whole new level, says Claire Sheffield…

Today you will….

• Develop the ability to use your imagination to create a story in the gothic genre
• Learn to use ambitious vocabulary to achieve specific effects

Starting a piece of creative writing can be a source of frustration for many young people; so much so that it can lead to loss of confidence. If ideas aren’t flowing, learners can quickly switch off and give up. Creative writing lessons, therefore, need to stimulate all of the senses and inspire students. Creative writing in the gothic genre – spooky stories – offers a wonderful opportunity for just this. This is a topic that always manages to enthuse pupils and one of the most exciting aspects is that the outcome is completely different with every group. Giving students time for thinking and the creation of ideas is essential. Therefore, this plan should be seen as just a starting point; it provides the stimulus from which a number of sessions can be developed. Subsequent periods can also focus on the development of different writing skills as required by the individual needs of a group. As a way into creative writing, this opener allows learners to be independent; an environment that enables them to thrive. Most importantly, it’s a lesson that students always leave talking about!

Starter activity

Creating a spooky word wall.

Preparation is key to this lesson. For maximum impact, everything needs to be ready so that students enter the room and immediately feel a mysterious atmosphere. This can be created by closing blinds, turning off the lights, playing spooky music and displaying an image on the whiteboard of an old, decrepit, haunted-looking house (easily sourced from the internet). It is great to see students entering the room and looking around confused, wondering what is happening and therefore immediately engaged!

Ideally learners need to be seated in small table groups; this should be a buzzy lesson with lots of group discussion and sharing of ideas. As they take their seats they see on their table a map/floor plan of a house with a cross in one of the rooms; it’s one of the rooms from the house displayed on the board. This can be easily created in a word document using text boxes to create the floor plan and labelling each room. The idea is that each table will focus on a different room.

On each table an instruction card for the starter activity is also displayed. This should say something along the lines of: ‘As a group create a word wall of spooky words to describe the room you are in. Be as ambitious as possible! You have 5 minutes’. This could be completed on A3 paper or on post-it notes to stick up on the wall next to them; students will then have created their own bank of vocabulary that will help them in later parts of the lesson.

Main activities

1 developing the plot.

This lesson works well if very little is said by the teacher to the whole class. This adds to the mysterious atmosphere because students have to read and find out what to do at different stages. The teacher very much facilitates the learning in this lesson, by circulating the room, supporting and stretching groups as appropriate.

As the 5 minutes for the starter activity draws to a close, the spooky background music should be turned off and a short, shocking sound should be played. This could be a scream or a crash, for example. As this point another slide should be displayed on the board to move students onto the next stage of the lesson. This could read: ‘What has happened? Write the opening for a spooky story about a mysterious incident that has happened in the room you are in. Discuss for 5 minutes.’ Students are now using their imaginations to create a plot for their gothic story; it is important that students are encouraged to discuss and develop ideas before beginning the writing stage.

2 Going further

After around five minutes discussion, another slide can be displayed which reads: ‘Look for a clue about what has happened. You will find this somewhere near you!’ Underneath each table, students will find an envelope with a picture of a clue. This could be anything (e.g. a book or a camera). Equally, props could be placed around the room for students to find. The more unusual the better! It just gets pupils thinking more creatively. They will naturally want to talk about what they have found and start to revise their previous thinking

3 Stage three

After a few moments, the final slide of instruction can be displayed. This time, students are told: ‘Time to start writing. You have 25 minutes to use the clues so far to write the opening to a spooky story. Remember your objectives – be imaginative and use ambitious vocabulary to achieve a spooky effect.’ Spooky background music can be played throughout the writing stage. It is also important that learners have access to a thesaurus in order to locate more ambitious vocabulary.

Home learning

The lesson can be used as a starting point and developed in a number of ways… + Subsequent lessons/home learning activities could focus on developing other writing skills such as structuring a plot from beginning to end, using literary devices or using a variety of sentence structures and punctuation for effect.

+ The written work could lead into a speaking and listening lesson where students devise, rehearse and perform dramatic readings of their stories. + Students can explore a variety of gothic literature, researching different writers in the genre, reading different works and learning about the conventions of the genre. They can then develop their work to incorporate more of these conventions themselves.

After the main writing stage of this lesson, students are usually desperate to read their work out. To be able to do this in a meaningful way though, more time is usually needed, so it is appropriate to dedicate the following lesson to this. However, an opportunity to share work with others can be achieved through groups swapping their work and providing some feedback to consider for the following lesson. Questions such as those below can help students to structure their feedback in a constructive manner:

• How imaginative is the piece?
• How exciting did you find the story?
• Is there anything that does not make sense?
• How ambitious is the vocabulary? Does it achieve the desired spooky effect?
• How would you like the group to improve the piece?
• What questions can you ask the group to help them develop the piece further?

The following lesson can then begin with students considering this feedback in order to improve the work they have begun in this lesson.

Differentiation suggestions to support less able students:

• Provide a word bank or sentence starter bank.
• Provide additional resources to inspire ideas; further images or props, for example.
• Provide a wagoll (what a good one looks like) as a model of a piece of spooky writing.
• Suggestions to stretch more able students:
• Provide definitions/examples of literary devices and a challenge card asking students to ‘aim to include as many literary devices as possible.’
• Ask students to work towards a third learning objective: ‘use a variety of sentence structures for effect’ or ‘use a variety of punctuation for effect.’
• Allocate an expert to mixed ability groups who is asked to fulfil additional responsibilities as group leader.
• Provide a ‘challenging criteria’ card as a checklist of skills that more able students should aim to demonstrate.

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Snazzy Sentence Starters To Bring A Short Story To Life

Snazzy sentence starters to help KS3 and GCSE students bring a story to life

Date : 16/01/2014

Author Information

Uploaded by : Nikki Uploaded on : 16/01/2014 Subject : English Bring a descri ptive story to life with snazzy sentence starters!

To avoid boring sentences starting with it, they, he, she, there and the, try these for size...

A) Always aim for sentence variety using some of these phrases.

Adverbs Prepositions Random phrases Conjunctions

Momentarily, Before Without a second to lose, Until now Astonishingly, Ahead From nowhere, Afterwards Desperately, Above Somewhat alarmingly, Through Ominously, Beneath In a moment of panic, Unless Nervously, Beyond Within seconds, Yet Unusually, At the end Without warning, As Spitefully, Against Strangely enough, Then

Key idea: To introduce more emotive language, as well as pace.

Start with a noun and adjective to avoid starting sentences like these: I could see/hear/smell etc.

Black smoke poured from... Terror consumed me... Icy air assaulted my ears...

Key idea: Put the subject at the start to hook the reader`s interest in seconds.

Start sentences with past participle verbs (they end with ing):

Sobbing, I clutched... Hating every second, I... Beating the door, he...

Key idea: Add movement and emotion to a sentence.

Start sentences with verbs:

Gripped by panic, I... Annoyed by the constant dripping sound, I...

Key idea: Also adds emotion and movement to a sentence.

Personification can create atmosphere:

Mist strangled the innocent air... The candle flame danced seductively... Pink clouds hugged the twilight sky...

Key idea: To introduce originality and creativity to a story or descri ption.

Metaphors and similes introduce poetic elements into a descri ption or narrative:

A torrent of bodies gushed from the school building. Home time!

The veil of smoke drifting menacingly over the city enshrouded each building like a...

Key idea: To create an unusual picture in the reader`s mind.

G) Alliteration allows you to draw attention to a sound, moment, character or scene.

A hooded figure flitted across the shadowy street...

This resource was uploaded by: Nikki

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Creative Writing Prompts Story Starters

Subject: English

Age range: 7-11

Resource type: Worksheet/Activity

Last updated

28 October 2023

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20 more Key Stage 2 (KS2) or early KS3 imaginative / creative writing story starters cards, featuring high quality photo prompts, vocabulary banks, prompt questions and more. These full-page story generators can be used across a range of abilities and ages, especially in Year 4, 5, 6 and 7, to spark ideas for fiction. They’re great for reluctant writers and they have a dyslexia friendly format too. PDF format (not editable for licensing reasons).

You can purchase this as part of this Creative Writing Story Prompts BIG BUNDLE 100 Prompts! https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/creative-writing-story-prompts-photo-starters-bundle-12530022 .

• Use as warm ups , early finishers activities and as a framework for free writing sessions
• Each of the 20 A4 cards features a visual element ( photo / picture stimulus ), a starter sentence or part-sentence to help launch children into their fiction / narrative writing
• Prompt questions to get ideas going
• A word bank and suggested openers to add variety to their writing
• A box at the bottom reminds students to read their work aloud, check for full stops and capital letters and common spellings
• Range of subjects and genres including sport, mystery, humour and fantasy. Plenty of variety so children can choose ones that appeal to them.
• UK and US English versions included, with spellings and references to ‘full stops’ and ‘periods’ etc amended as appropriate
• Designed to offer maximum support for dyslexic learners and those with similar barriers to learning. Verdana font and spacing used are both dyslexia-friendly and the background colours are designed to reduce glare. Both the UK and US cards are also included with the background colours removed and could be used if printing on dyslexia friendly paper or card.
• Could be used to support the writing of a full story
• Could also work well as a regular tool to support struggling writers in one-to-one or small group sessions, where students write a few sentences inspired by the prompts, without worrying about completing a story.

  MORE LITERACY RESOURCES… KS2 Writing Writing and Grammar Activities Complex Sentences Cards Editing SPaG Puzzles Worksheets Full Stops and Capital Letters Cards Improving Sentences Worksheets

Tes paid licence How can I reuse this?

Get this resource as part of a bundle and save up to 31%

A bundle is a package of resources grouped together to teach a particular topic, or a series of lessons, in one place.

100 Creative Writing Picture Prompts BUNDLE

A big bundle of 100 Key Stage 2 or early KS3 imaginative / descriptive writing story starters cards, featuring high quality photo prompts, vocabulary banks, prompt questions and more. These full-page story generators can be used across a range of abilities and ages, especially in Year 4, 5, 6 and 7 (Y4 / Y5 / Y6 / Y7) to spark ideas for stories. In Scotland, they're great for Primary 5, 6, 7 and S1. They're great for reluctant writers and they have a dyslexia friendly format too. *This BUNDLE includes 5 packs of 20 prompts: 2 packs of general prompts (featuring a range of subjects and genres), a pack of scary / mystery story prompts, a pack of winter story prompts and a pack of summer story writing prompts. All can be purchased separately if you prefer.* **[Creative Writing Story Prompts](https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/creative-writing-story-prompts-11648009) (MY MOST POPULAR RESOURCE ON TES) [Creative Writing Story Prompts 2 ](https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-12530007) [Scary Story Creative Writing Story Prompts](https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-12745015) [Winter Stories Creative Writing Story Prompts](https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/winter-story-prompts-creative-writing-12745880) [Summer Story Creative Writing Prompts](https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/summer-story-prompts-creative-writing-12746959)** * Use as **warm ups**, **early finishers** activities and as a **framework for free writing sessions** * Each of the **100** A4 cards features a visual element (**photo / picture stimulus**), a **starter sentence** or part-sentence to help launch children into their fiction / narrative writing * **Prompt questions** to get ideas going * A **word bank** and some **suggested openers** to add variety to their writing * A box at the bottom **reminds students to read their work aloud, check for full stops and capital letters and common spellings** * **Range of subjects and genres** including mystery, sport, humour, fantasy, family and historical. Lots of settings too. Plenty of variety so children can choose ones that appeal to them. * **UK and US English versions** included, with spellings and references to 'full stops' and 'periods' etc amended as appropriate * **Designed to offer maximum support for dyslexic learners** and those with similar barriers to learning. Verdana font and spacing used are both dyslexia-friendly and the background colours are designed to reduce glare. Both the UK and US cards are **also included with the background colours removed** and could be used if printing on dyslexia friendly paper or card. * Could be used to support the writing of a full story * Could also work well as a regular tool to support struggling writers in one-to-one or small group sessions, where students write a few sentences inspired by the prompts, without worrying about completing a story.   ***YOU MIGHT LIKE...*** **[Complex Sentences Activity Cards](https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/complex-sentences-writing-super-sentences-11534472)** **[Editing SPaG Puzzles Worksheets](https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/editing-proofreading-spag-year-5-6-11880677)** **[Full Stops and Capital Letters Cards](https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/full-stops-and-capital-letters-11692728)** **[Improving Sentences Writing Worksheets](https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/improving-sentence-structure-11651717)**

Creative Writing Story Prompts BUNDLE

A bundle of KS2 or early KS3 imaginative / descriptive writing story starters cards, featuring high quality photo prompts, vocabulary banks, prompt questions and more. These 40 full-page story generators can be used across a range of abilities and ages, especially in Year 4, 5, 6 and 7, to spark ideas for stories. They're great for reluctant writers and they have a dyslexia friendly format too. *This BUNDLE includes these 2 packs:* **[Creative Writing Story Prompts](https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/creative-writing-story-prompts-11648009)** (MY MOST POPULAR RESOURCE ON TES) **[Creative Writing Story Prompts 2 ](https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-12530007)** These 2 packs are also included in this larger **[Creative Writing Story Prompts BIG BUNDLE 100 Prompts!](https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/creative-writing-story-prompts-big-bundle-12747432)** * Use as **warm ups**, **early finishers** activities and as a **framework for free writing sessions** * Each of the **40** A4 cards features a visual element (**photo / picture stimulus**), a **starter sentence** or part-sentence to help launch children into their fiction / narrative writing * **Prompt questions** to get ideas going * A **word bank** and some **suggested openers** to add variety to their writing * A box at the bottom **reminds students to read their work aloud, check for full stops and capital letters and common spellings** * **Range of subjects and genres** including sport, mystery, humour, fantasy and historical. Plenty of variety so children can choose ones that appeal to them. * **UK and US English versions** included, with spellings and references to 'full stops' and 'periods' etc amended as appropriate * **Designed to offer maximum support for dyslexic learners** and those with similar barriers to learning. Verdana font and spacing used are both dyslexia-friendly and the background colours are designed to reduce glare. Both the UK and US cards are **also included with the background colours removed** and could be used if printing on dyslexia friendly paper or card. * Could be used to support the writing of a full story * Could also work well as a regular tool to support struggling writers in one-to-one or small group sessions, where students write a few sentences inspired by the prompts, without worrying about completing a story.   ***YOU MIGHT LIKE...*** **[Complex Sentences Activity Cards](https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/complex-sentences-writing-super-sentences-11534472)** **[Editing SPaG Puzzles Worksheets](https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/editing-proofreading-spag-year-5-6-11880677)** **[Full Stops and Capital Letters Cards](https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/full-stops-and-capital-letters-11692728)** **[Improving Sentences Writing Worksheets](https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/improving-sentence-structure-11651717)**

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Here are Some Really Good Sentence Starters for Creative Writing

So, your head is chock-a-block with ideas, and yet you're struggling to begin your story. No cause for worry, as it happens to most of us. Instead, read this Penlighten post - it has some amazing ideas to get your creative juices flowing.

So, your head is chock-a-block with ideas, and yet you’re struggling to begin your story. No cause for worry, as it happens to most of us. Instead, read this Penlighten post – it has some amazing ideas to get your creative juices flowing.

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Master storyteller that he is, Stephen King was gracious enough to admit that a writer tends to dread the moment when he actually begins writing any piece―this can be a bit of a make-or-break kind of a situation. A flying start tends to set the tone of the work, all positive, of course, whereas an unsure start only leads to the doomed path of redrafts.

You may have the entire concept of your story or essay in mind, but when it comes to the actual act of putting pen to paper, the enthusiasm tends to deflate a little. A rather strange phenomenon, this, and it wouldn’t be wrong to say that most writers, at some point, have encountered this experience.

To our fellow budding writers, we’re offering a helping hand by providing a few sample starts to get that creativity rolling, followed by a little inspiration from the stalwarts of the business.

Sample Sentence Starters for Fiction

Fiction writing is a boundless category, and each author has his preferred style of beginning a story or a novel. It is obvious that the beginning of a story depends on the overall plot, but there are times when you can use all the inspiration you need to get the start you were looking for. Therefore, we’ve included 5 ideas you can use in your starter, along with 3 examples for each.

Describe the weather

► The warm Californian sunshine hit her face as she stepped outside for the first time as a free woman.

► It had been raining nonstop for the past six days.

► The night sky was exceptionally clear tonight.

Introduce a character

► Daniel hated reunions and all the fake camaraderie.

► Edie Brent’s gruesome murder made it to the front page of the New York Times.

► Alison loved to keep secrets.

Talk about the city

► The streets of London come alive during the Holidays.

► Springtime is the best time to be in New York.

► Rio de Janeiro was where his dreams were.

Add a little suspense

► Walking home in the dead of the night was not new to Carol, but tonight felt different.

► The key clicked in the lock as Alan opened the door to his apartment. Everything seemed to be in place, and yet, something wasn’t right.

► It was 3 a. m. and there was no sign of Tim. He always called to tell if he was getting late. Why hadn’t he called?

And some drama

► How do you react when you’re told that you have a mere hours left to live?

► Prom queen and head cheerleader, Jessica always loved to be the center of attention.

► “Get the hell out of my life!”, screamed Karen at the top of her lungs.

Sentence Starters for Formal Essays

Middle school and high school students have to draft varied writing assignments, including persuasive essays, arguments, and narratives. In case of essays, particularly, the kind of start you make depends entirely on the topic at hand. However, formal essays or presentations need to begin in a certain manner. We’ve listed a few examples here:

► (The topic) has fostered a debate on …

► There is growing support for the notion that …

► The data gathered in the study strongly suggests that …

► The focus of discussion in this paper is …

► The premise of (the topic) seems to be based on …

► Latest research corroborates the view that …

Learn from the Greats

Who doesn’t seek inspiration from the masters of the field? Agreed, we all do. Therefore, we’ve brought you a list of the first sentences of some of the most iconic novels ever written.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. ― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. ― George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Call me Ishmael. ― J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. ― J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. ― Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

These sample sentence starters ought to have helped you get over your dry spell. Getting the right start is crucial when it comes to creative writing, and you need to give it your all to bring it up to standard.

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Creative writing sentence mat

This engaging sentence writing mat is designed to encourage KS3-4 students to write a wider range of sentences in their creative or narrative writing.

With two pictures prompts to inspire their sentence-level experiments (a Christmas market and an Alpine lake), students write a range of different sentences.

Can be used to develop students' fiction writing skills in preparation for GCSE English Language exam tasks, including AQA English Language Paper 1 question 5. It's also perfect for a topical (exam-skills focused!) Christmas lesson at the end of term.

Example sentence tasks from the writing mat: 

Describe the image using the five senses:

A simile sentence:

The three-verb sentence:

An -ed verb (such as surprised) opening:

Sentence with a semicolon in the middle to connect two clauses:

An -ing verb (present participle, such as running) at the start of the sentence:

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Experiment finds AI boosts creativity individually — but lowers it collectively

A new study examines whether AI could be an automated helpmeet in creative tasks, with mixed results: It appeared to help less naturally creative people write more original short stories — but dampened the creativity of the group as a whole. It’s a trade-off that may be increasingly common as AI tools impinge on creative endeavors.

The study is from researchers Anil Doshi and Oliver Hauser at University College London and University of Exeter, respectively, and was published in Science Advances . And while it’s necessarily limited due to its focus on short stories, it seems to confirm the feeling many have expressed: that AI can be helpful but ultimately offers nothing truly new in creative endeavors.

“Our study represents an early view on a very big question on how large language models and generative AI more generally will affect human activities, including creativity,” Hauser told TechCrunch in an email. “While there is huge potential (and, no doubt, huge hype) for this technology to have big impacts in media and creativity more generally, it will be important that AI is actually being evaluated rigorously — rather than just implemented widely, under the assumption that it will have positive outcomes.”

The experiment had hundreds of people write very short stories (eight sentences or so), on any topic but suitable for a broad audience. One group just wrote; a second group was given the opportunity to consult GPT-4 for a single story idea with a few sentences (they could use as much or as little as they liked); a third could get up to five such story starters.

Once the stories were written, they were evaluated by both their own writers and a second group that knew nothing about the generative AI twist. These people rated the stories on novelty, usefulness (i.e. likelihood of publishing) and emotional enjoyment.

Low creativity, high benefit…high creativity, no benefit

Prior to writing the stories, the participants also completed a word-production task that acts as a proxy for creativity. It’s a concept that can’t be directly measured, but in this case one’s creativity in writing can at least be approximated (without judgment!; not everyone is a born or practiced writer).

“Capturing something so rich and complex as creativity with any measure seems fraught with complications,” wrote Hauser. “There is, however, a rich set of research around human creativity and there is a live debate about how best to capture the idea of creativity in a measure.”

They said their approach was widely used in academia and well documented in other studies.

What the researchers found was that people with lower creativity metrics scored lowest on evaluations of their stories, which arguably validates the approach. They also saw the largest gains when given the opportunity to use a generated story idea (which, it’s worth noting, the vast majority across the experiment did).

Stories by people with a low creativity score who just wrote were reliably rated lower than others on writing quality, enjoyability and novelty. Given one AI-generated idea, they scored higher on every metric. Given the choice of five, they scored even higher.

It really appears that for folks struggling with the creative side of writing (at least within this context and definition), the AI helper is genuinely improving the quality of their work. This probably resonates with many to whom writing does not come naturally, and a language model saying “hey, try this” is the prompt they need to finish a paragraph or start a new chapter.

But what about the people who scored highly on the creativity metric? Did their writing climb to new heights? Sadly, no. In fact, those participants saw little to no benefit at all, or even (though it’s very close and arguably not significant) worse ratings. It seems that those on the creative side produced their best work when they had no AI help at all.

One can imagine any number of reasons why this might be the case, but the numbers do suggest that, in this situation, AI had a zero to negative effect on writers with innate creativity.

But that’s not the part that the researchers were worried about.

Beyond the subjective evaluation of stories by participants, the researchers conducted some analyses of their own. They used OpenAI’s embeddings API to rate how similar each story was to the other stories in its category (i.e. human-only, one AI option, or five AI options).

They found that access to generative AI caused the resulting stories to be closer to the average for their category. In other words, they were more similar and less varied as a group. The total difference was in the 9% to 10% range, so it’s not like the stories were all clones of one another. And who knows, but this similarity might be an artifact of less practiced writers finishing a suggested story versus more creative writers coming up with one from scratch.

The finding was nevertheless enough to warrant a cautionary note in the conclusions, which I could not condense and so quote in full:

While these results point to an increase in individual creativity, there is risk of losing collective novelty. In general equilibrium, an interesting question is whether the stories enhanced and inspired by AI will be able to create sufficient variation in the outputs they lead to. Specifically, if the publishing (and self-publishing) industry were to embrace more generative AI-inspired stories, our findings suggest that the produced stories would become less unique in aggregate and more similar to each other. This downward spiral shows parallels to an emerging social dilemma: If individual writers find out that their generative AI-inspired writing is evaluated as more creative, they have an incentive to use generative AI more in the future, but by doing so, the collective novelty of stories may be reduced further. In short, our results suggest that despite the enhancement effect that generative AI had on individual creativity, there may be a cautionary note if generative AI were adopted more widely for creative tasks.

It echoes the fear in visual art and in web content that if the AI leads to more AI, and what it trains on is just more of itself, it could end up in a self-perpetuating cycle of blandness. As generative AI begins to creep into every medium, it is studies like these that act as counterweights to claims of unbounded creativity or new eras of AI-generated films and songs.

Hauser and Doshi acknowledge that their work is just the beginning — the field is brand new, and every study, including their own, is limited.

“There are a number of paths that we expect future research to pick up on. For instance, implementation of generative AI ‘in the wild’ will look very different than our controlled setting,” Hauser wrote. “Ideally, our study helps guide both the technology and how we interact with it to ensure continued diversity of creative ideas, whether it is in writing, or art, or music.”

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AI makes writing easier, but stories sound alike

by Issam AHMED

Books and movies of the future could all start to feel the same if creative industries embrace artificial intelligence to help write stories, a study published on Friday warned.

The research, which drew on hundreds of volunteers and was published in Science Advances , comes amid rising fears over the impact of widely available AI tools that turn simple text prompts into relatively sophisticated music, art and writing.

"Our goal was to study to what extent and how generative AI might help humans with creativity," co-author Anil Doshi of the University College London told AFP.

For their experiment, Doshi and co-author Oliver Hauser of the University of Exeter recruited around 300 volunteers as "writers."

These were people who didn't write for a living, and their inherent creative ability was assessed by a standard psychology test that asked them to provide 10 drastically different words.

The scientists then split them randomly into three groups to write an eight-sentence story about one of three topics: an adventure on the open seas, an adventure in the jungle, or an adventure on another planet.

Participants were also randomly placed into three groups that received varying levels of AI assistance.

The first group got no help, the second was provided a three-sentence story idea from ChatGPT, and the third could receive up to five AI-generated story ideas to help them get going.

Individual benefit, collective loss

After completing their stories, participants were asked to assess their own work's creativity through measures including how novel it was, how enjoyable, and how much potential the idea had to be turned into a published book.

An additional 600 external human reviewers also judged the story on the same measures.

The authors found that, on average, AI boosted the quality of an individual writer's creativity by up to 10 percent, and the story's enjoyability by 22 percent, helping particularly with elements like structure and plot twists.

These effects were most significant for writers who were judged during the initial task to be the least creative, "so it has this kind of leveling the playing field effect," said Doshi.

But on the collective level, they found AI-assisted stories looked much more similar to each other than those produced without any AI help, as writers "anchored" themselves too heavily to the suggested ideas.

Hauser said this created a "social dilemma." On the one hand, "you make it easier for people to get in; lowering barriers is good." But if the collective novelty of art decreases, "it could be harmful down the line."

Doshi said the research also showed that, just like introducing pocket calculators to children too early could prevent them from learning how to do basic arithmetic, there was a danger that people could rely too much on AI tools before developing underlying skills in writing, music or more.

People need to start thinking about "where in my workflow can I insert this tool to get the most benefit, while still inserting my own voice into the project or outcome."

Journal information: Science Advances

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