Storytelling, The Writing Process, Neuroscience, and AI
I recently read an article by Mary Kole via janefriedman.com, “After Editing Two AI-Assisted Manuscripts, I Rewrote My Client Agreement.” In this insightful article, Kole details the difference, from an editorial perspective, between working on a human-generated piece of writing versus an AI-assisted piece of writing. Her observations get to the heart of what we do as writers and editors.
Writers translate the messy human experience into community through language, organization, and empathy.
Kole’s basic thesis is that editing generative AI writing and editing human-generated writing are two very different jobs, and she describes how she has changed her contract agreement to reflect this, including adding a 50% premium for AI-generated projects to reflect the additional editorial and creative work such manuscripts require. In other words, AI takes the humanity out of the writing, and editors of AI-generated pieces are being asked to put the humanity in.
Much of the recent dialogue about generative AI usage has centered around writers’ immediate experiences. Kole takes an important look at the expansive effects of AI use, the repercussions of which reach well beyond one author seeking to streamline a project. Writing is a communal act, a fundamental act of communication, human to human. When you insert a chatbot into the mix, that human interaction is lost, in more ways than one.
The Neuroscience of Narrative
Reading Kole’s article reminded me of why we write in the first place, why stories matter. According to sociologist Jonathan H. Westover, Ph.D., in his 2024 article in Human Capital Leadership Review, our brains are fundamentally wired for narratives. This isn’t an anecdotal claim. It’s neuroscience. Westover writes:
[S]tories allow humans to foster social bonds and cultural cohesion. Our brains are wired for connecting with others, priming us to immerse ourselves in social experiences. Stories provide virtual interaction by lighting up neural regions associated with first-hand experience and theory of mind. Through inhabiting characters, we learn cultural beliefs and simulate community.
From an editorial perspective, writing is first and foremost a relationship with the reader. If the writer bows out of that conversation and allows a chatbot to represent their voice, writing is no longer about connection. And while an AI chatbot can potentially mimic empathy, often in the form of positivity bias, there is no human experience with which to connect.
In a 2013 article in Greater Good Magazine, neuroscientist and frequent TED speaker Paul J. Zak, Ph.D., describes how stories change the brain:
[A]s social creatures who regularly affiliate with strangers, stories are an effective way to transmit important information and values from one individual or community to the next. Stories that are personal and emotionally compelling engage more of the brain, and thus are better remembered, than simply stating a set of facts.
Zak wrote this particular article more than ten years ago, well before generative AI became the publicly available tool it is today. The neuroscience remains the same. This next selection is a long quotation from Zak’s 2013 piece, but I share it in its entirety because it details the role of narrative, or storytelling, in the development of human society on a large scale. In other words, the human connection forged through story is bigger than the immediate person-to-person connection we experience on an individual level. Zak writes:
Emotional simulation is the foundation for empathy and is particularly powerful for social creatures like humans because it allows us to rapidly forecast if people around us are angry or kind, dangerous or safe, friend or foe.
Such a neural mechanism keeps us safe but also allows us to rapidly form relationships with a wider set of members of our species than any other animal does. The ability to quickly form relationships allows humans to engage in the kinds of large-scale cooperation that builds massive bridges and sends humans into space. By knowing someone’s story—where they came from, what they do, and who you might know in common—relationships with strangers are formed.
Interestingly, both Zak and Westover refer to the neural and emotional connection-building of story sharing as “simulation,” which can mean both human modeling and technological mimicking in different contexts. Do we want to learn how to be people from other people? Or from computer-generated human impersonators?
Human relationships are the foundations of societies. Put very simply, we can do more and better together than we can do alone. In order to work together, to collaborate, humans communicate our experiences, build and share empathy, and identify common goals through narrative.
Everything is Story
When I taught composition at West Virginia University, one of the textbooks we used was called Everything’s An Argument by Andrea Lunsford and John Ruszkiewicz, et. al. The title was meant to convey that “argument” means much more than disagreement or conflict. Any time humans work to persuade another human for any reason, we are using argument, or rhetoric. All communication includes some form of persuasion; therefore, everything’s an argument. This is how humans construct meaning.
Storytelling is the empathy part of rhetoric, the connection between author and audience, the heart of persuasion. While some stories are more story than others, even an email is a narrative, telling a story about the person writing it, their position and their needs, their relationship to the reader, and their desired outcomes. If we outsource our storytelling and communication to generative AI, we are missing the point of human interaction. We are missing the connection, the understanding, the meaning.
Kole’s article about her experience encountering AI-generated manuscripts as an editor is an important reminder that AI-generated communication is something entirely different from human-generated communication and creative work.
As humans, we communicate to feel connected and to problem-solve, to move forward. These interactions, these stories, are what it means to be human. If we remove humanity from the equation, what are we even doing?
Works Cited
Kole, Mary. “After Editing Two AI-Assisted Manuscripts, I Rewrote My Client Agreement.” Janefriedman.com. Aug. 13, 2026.
https://janefriedman.com/after-editing-two-ai-assisted-manuscripts-i-rewrote-my-client-agreement/
Westover, Jonathan H., Ph.D. “The Power of Storytelling: How Our Brains are Wired for Narratives.” Human Capital Leadership Review. Jan. 11, 2024.
Zak, Paul J., Ph.D. “How Stories Change the Brain.” Greater Good Magazine. Berkeley. Dec. 17, 2013.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_stories_change_brain
