Now I am 'Engineering' Stories with AI
I spent forty years at L&T building things: Process Equipment, Machines, Teams, and Strategies. But retirement has brought a different kind of construction project: Building a universe.
I’m currently deep in the "Grey Tiers" of Shakra City, the setting for my sci-fi trilogy, Shadow of Truth.
And while I’ve always been a "keyboard and coffee" kind of writer, I’ve recently added a new member to my creative team: Artificial Intelligence.
There’s a lot of fear out there about AI taking over. I saw a Reddit thread recently where authors were worried that bots would make human writers obsolete. But after wrestling with my own "Cyber-Genie" for a few months, I’ve realized something: The tool is fast, but the soul is human.
Training the Genie
My spouse made an astute observation the other day: Training an AI is a lot like life. Whether it’s a son, a spouse, or a piece of software, you have to communicate clearly to get the desired response!
She’s right. AI is a genie in a bottle. If you don't know how to ask for the wish, you get a mess. I don’t use AI to "write" my book; I use it to architect it. I feed it my "blueprints," My messy, raw scraps of ideas, and it helps me polish the technical jargon and sensory effects so the reader doesn't feel "out of breath." It’s an exoskeleton that handles the heavy lifting of punctuation and grammar, leaving me free to focus on the Universal Vision.
Why a Prompt Can’t Replace a Life
The real "Art" of a story isn't in how many words per minute you can generate. It’s in the intent.
A few days ago, I read a powerful piece in The Times of India about delivery partners in Chennai: People running between orders from dawn to dusk without a break. That raw, human struggle immediately clicked with a character I’m writing who is trapped in the lower rungs of Shakra City, desperately earning "Karma Credits" to survive.
An AI can describe a city. But it can’t feel the parallels between a Chennai street and a futuristic dystopia. It can’t draw on the Bhagavad Gita to explore the intersection of AI leadership and ancient management styles. Those connections come from forty years of lived experience and personal philosophy.
The Master of the Blueprint
Initially, authors swore they couldn't think without ink on paper. Then we moved to typewriters and word processors. I’m still of the generation that needs a keyboard to think. AI is just the next evolution.
It’s 100x faster, sure. But at the end of the day, the author is the one holding the blueprint. We are the ones who decide the ethics of the world, the logic of the "Ledger," and the heart of the characters.
AI is the brush. I am the painter. And Shakra City is just getting started.
World-Building Spotlight: The Architecture of Shakra City
In my upcoming series, the setting is a literal manifestation of corporate and philosophical structure. Shakra City is a vertical pyramid where every floor is a function of the "Logic of the Ledger."
- The Elite Gold Tiers: At the apex, where high-frequency strategy is formulated and broadcast downward.
- The Grey Tier: The sprawling foundation at the bottom, where the "Value Realization" actually happens through the relentless grit of the citizens.
In this world, strategy flows from the top, but the pulse of the city is generated from the bottom up. However, there is a catch: Accountability is a shared burden.
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