trauma fiction – Ridley Park

Nitpicking DeepSeek

August 4, 2025Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Book, ChatGPT, Claude, critique, Generative AI, Ridley Park, Software, WritingTagged addiction narrative, ai, AI hallucination, AI-assisted editing, Artificial Intelligence, author editing process, books, ChatGPT, ChatGPT editing, Claude, cognition, deepseek, DeepSeek review, editing, excerpt, fiction, fragmented prose, Gemini, Generative AI, Grok, language, literary fiction, Meta, Needle’s Edge novel, novel, perception, raw storytelling, Sarah Stacey character, stream-of-consciousness narrative, technology, Thinking, trauma fiction, unconventional narrative style, visceral writing style, Writing, writing with AILeave a comment

How do you use AI to assist your writing or editing process? As I’ve shared before, I use it extensively for research, where previously, I would have used Google, a library, or personal books or journals. I use them for proofing, editing, and alpha and beta reading. Today, I’m editing.

I’m still editing the manuscript for Needle’s Edge. When I finish a scene or a chapter, I run it through several AI platforms – the usual suspects: ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Meta, DeepSeek and Gemini – with a simple prompt:

how does this scene read?

Usually, I copy-paste the content, but this manuscript also relies on presentment, so I share a screen capture instead. Rather than share the pages, I share the line I am discussing here:

Image: Excerpted line from Needle’s Edge

From this, DeepSeek shared this as part of its “thinking” process.

The writing style is very visceral and fragmented – short sentences, intentional misspellings (“c-noses” for cash, “waigh” for might), and stream-of-consciousness elements. This creates an immersive, uncomfortable reading experience that mirrors Sarah’s physical and emotional state.

Interestingly, there were no intentional misspellings. DeepSeek’s OCR failed and mistook ‘c-notes’ for ‘c-noses’, and then tried to interpret the results. I couldn’t determine where it got ‘waigh’. There is a word ‘might’ per its comment, but I don’t see how it confuses that. No matter.

Still, its assessment feels close enough, and a reminder that grammar and syntax are less important than one might (waight?) believe.

Overall Impression:

The scene is powerfully distressing. It doesn’t glamorize or moralize; it simply shows the brutal, day-to-day reality of addiction and survival on the margins. It’s effective in conveying:

Physical Horrors: The relentless pain, discomfort, and bodily damage.

Psychological Toll: The desperation, numbness, fleeting panic, and dangerous denial.

Social Environment: The hostility, degradation, danger, and shared, traumatic knowledge of the street life.

Hopelessness: The cycle of seeking relief only to encounter worse consequences, underscored by the memory of others’ fates and the resigned “never again” that likely won’t hold.

It’s a difficult read due to its unflinching portrayal of suffering and decay, but it’s compelling in its raw authenticity and visceral impact. The style perfectly matches the content, immersing the reader in Sarah’s painful, precarious world.

Persona, Identity, and the Many Faces of Sarah

August 2, 2025August 2, 2025Posted in Book, Character, WritingTagged addiction, book excerpt, book review, book-reviews, books, character study, compartmentalization, editing, editing in progress, feminism, fiction, identity, indentity, indie author, literary fiction, multiple selves, narrative structure, Needle's Edge, notebooklm, novel, persona, philosophy, podcast, psychology, Ridley Park, romance, sex work, survival stories, trauma fiction, women’s fiction, Writing1 Comment

(Notes from the cutting room floor)

I’m taking a break from editing to share something about the protagonist in my latest novel-in-progress, Needle’s Edge. She’s a woman – yes, but not just. She’s a prostitute. She’s an addict. And she’s three people.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic. (Direct)

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6CwKMXyRXB5tPxpYidwSUD

There’s Sarah, her given name. The name reserved for friends, family, and those rare few who know her without conditions. It’s the name she hears in moments of tenderness, or shame, or memory.

Then there’s Stacey, the escort, the stripper, the performer. This is the name on her ads. The one whispered in hotel rooms and shouted in clubs. Stacey is curated. Sexual. Selective. She knows what sells and how to sell it.

And then there’s Pink, the street persona. The user. Pink is who shows up when Sarah needs to score. She trades in slang and silence. She wears a different skin. A different currency.

Three names. One woman. No seams showing – if she can help it.

In her world, compartmentalisation is survival. If a dealer connects the dots and knows she’s an escort, she’s vulnerable. If a client finds out she’s using, her value drops. Appearances are everything. Rates depend on it. Reputation is a balancing act on a razor’s edge. And so each name carries its own set of rules, risks, and rituals.

But here’s the deeper cut: Who’s the “real” Sarah?

Is Stacey fake? Is Pink less than? Is Sarah just the base layer beneath the makeup and muscle memory?

They’re all her. None of them. Some of each. Identity is slippery.

The left hemisphere of the brain craves coherence. It wants simplicity, categories, reduction. But the truth is, identity is a heuristic. A convenient fiction. And Sarah, more than most, knows this. Where most people perform one role and pretend it’s a self, she splits hers openly. She curates them. Manages them. Leverages them.

And yet, the cost is high.

Stacey and Pink are exhausting. High maintenance. High risk. But being Sarah isn’t a comfort either. It’s just what’s left when the others are stripped away. She doesn’t retreat into Sarah so much as collapse into her.

In that way, Sarah isn’t a self – she’s a default.

The irony? For all this agency, for all her awareness, she’s still trapped in identities designed for consumption. For transaction. For escape. Whether it’s sex, drugs, or memory, she’s always negotiating something.

Three names.
Three roles.
Still no way out.