It was the … well, you know the quote.
Lately, I've been fooling around with AI. Not to write for me, but for a couple of practical reasons. Proofing, of course. And, also to critique my work. In this context, AI giveth and AI certainly taketh.
Here's what Claude AI had to say about the first chapter of a story — 'Frontiers' — that I had published in SOL:
What's working.
Voice and prose rhythm. The clipped, declarative sentences ("Sarah screamed. She'd been trying to hold it in.") suit a hardened frontier narrator well. Flint's terseness in dialogue ("Sarah?" / "Sarah." / "Wait down here.") does efficient characterization without exposition dumps.
Sense of place. The Bighorn's layout, the town's geography (mine to the right, sawmill to the left, homesteaders south), the payday economy—all of this is concrete and lived-in. You're not just naming a Western setting, you're building an economy and a social order.
Flint as a character. The "weapon is a tool" ethic, the rule about paying whores for services rather than taking them free, the refusal to argue with Mrs. Chambers—these give him a consistent moral logic that's more interesting than generic gunslinger stoicism.
Structural device (Flint's Rules). The check-your-guns notice escalating to "no pissing in the spittoons" is a nice bit of understated comedy that also does world-building work.
Before I contacted the Pulitzer Committee about entering 'Frontiers', I read the rest of Claude's comments:
What needs attention.
Racial language and characterization. The Chinese characters are referred to almost exclusively by slur, treated as an undifferentiated "pack," and given no interiority beyond Ying Lee. Even within a historically-grounded unreliable narrator's voice, right now the text doesn't do much to complicate or ironize Flint's casual racism—it just sits there as texture. If that's intentional (period-accurate narrator whose blind spots the reader is meant to notice), you may want at least one moment where the narrative undercuts him, or the flatness will read as authorial rather than characterological.
Pacing/structure. The piece moves in short vignettes separated by section breaks, which works for texture but currently lacks a throughline. By the end of this excerpt we have: violence against Sarah, the Rufus incident, Lape's meltdown, Robinson's abuse of his wife—four different violent-toward-women incidents in one chapter, each resolved by Flint intervening. This risks feeling repetitive rather than escalating, since the stakes and Flint's response are structurally identical each time. Consider whether one of these could be cut or the pattern varied.
Sarah's "on the house" scene. As written, this scene (a rescued abuse victim immediately being offered up sexually to her rescuer, "no charge") sits uncomfortably close to the incident that opens the chapter without any apparent narrative self-awareness about that juxtaposition. Worth a hard look at whether this serves the story or just repeats a trope.
Timeline compression. Flint arrives in March; by "three weeks after she hired me" prices change, and Rebecca Robinson is already his established partner "a week after" her husband left. The chapter covers a lot of ground fast—readers may lose track of how much time has passed.
Minor craft notes:
Some dialogue attribution is unclear in fast exchanges (the opening Sarah/Sarah lines).
"I god" (Goodwin's dialect spelling) is unclear on first read—consider a beat of context.
A few modern-sounding phrasings ("bottom line," "for-profit business," "Dereliction") from Ollie read slightly anachronistic for 1887 dialogue, worth checking against period business vocabulary.
Nota bene:
This was the second time I asked Claude to critique the same chapter. Both the pros and cons shown here varied considerably from the first evaluation. Not sure what that says about AI.
Paige