Leon Furze

This is the sixth and final post in a series exploring how generative artificial intelligence can be applied to the writing cycle from our book Practical Writing Strategies.

If you haven’t already read them, check out the first five posts on purpose, exploration, ideas, skills, and collaboration. Throughout this series, I have tried to demonstrate that generative artificial intelligence can be used as part of a writing process in ways that don’t supplant the writer’s ideas or creativity and ways which can help beginning writers learn the craft. This final stage in the writing cycle is about valuing all of that hard work and publishing a finished piece in whatever form is most appropriate.

When we were first writing Practical Writing Strategies, this stage was originally called “submission”. But we felt that “submitting” a piece of writing reinforced the idea of writing being primarily an assessment task. We think that in order to shift the narrative around the purpose of writing in education, we need to help students understand that publishing their written work is a valued activity. So although submitting the finished piece is necessary for assessment items, we think it’s equally important to find ways to publish student work, whether that’s through anthologies, online platforms, or in communications with the school community.

In Practical Writing Strategies, we gave some suggestions for where students could publish their work:

• Compile a group of analytical essays into a literary journal. Consider writing (or having one or more students write) a foreword or introduction to the collection which contextualises the essays.
• Use a free online publishing tool like Google Sites or WordPress to make an online anthology of writing, such as a poetry site or collection of short stories.
• Record students reading work aloud as part of a video collection or YouTube playlist.
• Create a student newspaper or magazine, particularly for opinion pieces, editorials and persuasive texts.
• Print class or year level short story anthologies. Go through an editorial process with the students to long-list and short-list successful stories for publication.
• Use PowerPoint or Google Slides to produce an anthology of short fiction such as poetry or flash fiction.
• Host a reading, with students reading to their peers, the school community and parents. This might be used in tandem with a book launch.
• Use professional self-publishing services (such as IngramSpark or Amazon) to produce and print an anthology of writing for sale. This might be a collection of writing from across year levels and could include a variety of genres, forms and curriculum areas.
• Publish ‘best-practice’ reports of student work for use as mentor texts in future years. Anonymise the work, and collate it into a PDF for each task (after benchmarking and moderation if it is a senior school piece).

The following activities are designed to help students with that process.

Activities for Publication

Activity 1: Sticking to style

Many online and media publications have a style guide which informs how authors must present their work. Academic publications also have style guides, which provide advice on everything from formatting through to which spelling and grammar conventions to use. For students who intend on writing professionally, or who might need writing as part of their academic or professional career, it’s good practice to get into the habit of understanding and being able to follow style guides.

This simple activity produces a media publication style guide for any type of writing:

• Step 1: Students must have an almost complete piece of work.
• Step 2: Using a prompt like the one below, students develop a style guide for their final submission.
• Step 3: Students edit their final piece and submit it alongside the style guide.

Prompt: We have been working on [form of writing] about [topic of writing]. You are a publisher that publishes this kind of writing online. Produce a comprehensive style guide for your publication which should be followed for the submission.

Activity 2: AI-assisted query letter

A query letter is a crucial component of the publishing process, particularly when seeking traditional publication. This activity challenges students to craft an interesting query letter with the help of generative AI, and will also help to clarify to students whether they have met the original purpose and audience of their writing.

• Step 1: Students research the key components of a query letter, such as the hook, book summary, author bio, and closing.
• Step 2: Using a generative AI tool, students input a prompt like the one below that includes their book’s title, genre, and a brief synopsis. The AI generates a sample query letter based on this information.
• Step 3: Students review the AI-generated query letter and identify its strengths and weaknesses. They then use this as a starting point to craft their own query letter, focusing on showcasing their unique voice and story.
• Step 4: Students share their query letters with the class and discuss how the AI-assisted process influenced their final product.

I have written a short story/other piece of fiction about [topic]. Here is a brief synopsis: <synopsis>. Generate an example of a query letter to a publisher for this book.

Activity 3: AI-generated book trailer

Book trailers are an engaging way to promote a published work. In this activity, students create a script for a book trailer and use generative AI image generation (and soon enough, video generation) to bring it to life.

• Step 1: Students write a short script (30-60 seconds) for a trailer promoting their published work. The script should include key elements such as the hook, main characters, conflict, and theme.
• Step 2: Using a generative AI tool that creates images or videos from text prompts, students input their script and any additional desired parameters (e.g., style, tone, visuals). For now, this is mostly limited to tools like Adobe Firefly for image generation. Soon, it is likely they will be able to use video generation models.
• Step 3: Students review the AI-generated images/video and make necessary adjustments to the script or parameters to refine the final product.
• Step 4: Students share their book trailers with the class and discuss how AI tools can be used to create promotional materials for published works.

Activity 4: Joint venture

This activity is adapted from Practical Writing Strategies

There are plenty of student writing competitions out there that offer students the opportunity to showcase their writing skills and potentially win prizes. These competitions cover a range of purposes and genres, including analytical writing, creative writing and presentations. Participating in these competitions can be a great way for students to challenge themselves, gain confidence in their writing abilities and potentially have their work recognised by a large audience.

In addition to the personal rewards of participating in writing competitions, students may also have their work published in the future. Some publishing houses use submissions from student writing competitions as models for future editions of textbooks. This means that students who are selected as winners or finalists may have the opportunity to see their work in print and be used by their peers across the country.

Below are links to the some of the writing and speaking competitions that our school has participated in in the past. We’ve also included some public speaking links, as this book has mentioned several times: speaking and writing are linked.

• Insight Creative Writing Competition
• Write a Book in a Day (collaborative writing competition)
• VATE Creative Writing Competition
• National History Challenge
• Plain English Speaking Award
• (Note: These links are for the 2022 competitions. Some are also for Victoria only. I’m sure you can find plenty!)

This activity requires an internet-connected LLM like Microsoft Copilot or Google Gemini. Students should have already completed a piece of writing suitable for entry into a competition, whether fiction or nonfiction.

• Step one: Using a GenAI model with internet search, ask for details on nearby (local, state, or national) young person’s writing competitions. You may need to provide som information such as a general (not specific!) location.
• Step two: Use the GenAI model to compile a list of competitions and identify the main requirements, age groups, and so on.
• Step three: Narrow down the choice to two or three competitions, and prompt further to identify a strategy to submit to these competitions.

Practical AI Strategies is available now from Amba Press

Generative AI and the Writing Cycle

Hopefully the 20+ activities in this series give you a few ideas about how to use generative artificial intelligence in ways which are still creative and value writers’ autonomy. I’m going to wrap up this final post with a few examples of lesson sequences which use these activities to take students through the writing cycle from start to finish.

All of these activities can be found in the articles in this series on purpose, exploration, ideas, skills, and collaboration, and this final article on publication.

Entertaining Blog Post

Lesson	Activity	Summary
1	Context Brainstorms	Students use contextualised prompts to brainstorm ideas for their blog post, focusing on tone, style, form, perspective, audience, purpose, and subject matter.
2	GenAI Assisted Annotation	Students annotate mentor blog posts using generative AI tools, focusing on language features, structure, and style.
3	Brainstorming with Image Gen	Students use image generation platforms to create visuals based on their initial brainstorming, using the images to further develop their ideas.
4	Voice Coach	Students brainstorm words and phrases that reflect their unique voice and style, then use generative AI to suggest techniques for incorporating these elements into their writing.
5	AI Editor & Peer Review	Students use AI tools to catch simple errors in their drafts and generate anonymous peer reviews for feedback on clarity, logic, and the strength of their writing.
6	AI-Generated Book Trailer	Students create a script for a trailer promoting their blog post and use generative AI to create images or videos to accompany the script.

Persuasive Argument

Lesson	Activity	Summary
1	Understanding Purpose	Students use generative AI to generate examples of persuasive writing on a chosen topic, analyzing how purpose affects style, voice, tone, register, level of detail, and content.
2	What Are We Looking For?	Students create checklists of features to look for while annotating mentor texts, then use generative AI to generate additional items for their checklists.
3	Idea Incubator	Students brainstorm ideas for their persuasive argument, then use generative AI to extend and develop their initial ideas.
4	Strong vs. Weak	Students compare AI-generated examples of strong and weak persuasive paragraphs, annotating the features that contribute to their effectiveness.
5	Writers’ Workshops + AI	Students participate in small group workshops, sharing their persuasive arguments and receiving feedback from peers, with AI tools used to transcribe and format the discussions.
6	Sticking to Style	Students develop a style guide for their final submission using generative AI, then edit their work to adhere to the guide.

Analytical Writing

Lesson	Activity	Summary
1	Building an Audience Profile	Students use generative AI to create detailed audience profiles for their analytical writing, considering how audience knowledge should inform their writing decisions.
2	Visualisation Activity	Students read through a mentor text and create visualisations based on the text, then use image generation tools to create AI-generated visualisations.
3	GenAI Thinking Routines	Students brainstorm initial ideas, then use generative AI to assist with the “Sort, Connect, Elaborate” steps of the thinking routine.
4	Skill Chat	Students identify conventions or features to focus on in their analytical writing, then use AI chatbots to locate resources to support and refine those skills.
5	Peer Review	Students submit complete drafts of their analytical writing to generative AI for anonymous peer review, focusing on clarity, logic, and the strength of arguments.
6	Joint Venture	Students use internet-connected generative AI to research local, state, or national writing competitions, identify requirements, and develop a strategy for submitting their work.

Conclusion

The writing cycle isn’t supposed to be rigid or linear. Students can dip in and out of it and cycle back through as they please. Often it’s necessary, before publishing the piece of work, to circle back around and double check that the purpose and audience are clearly identified, and that the writing technique, ideas, and the use of mentor texts is sharp throughout.

The more students practice their writing from end to end, including idea generation, drafting and revision, the more confident they will get in their writing. Generative AI tools can support this process, but they don’t need to replace it. There will always be some students who struggle with writing, who dislike writing, or who outright refuse to put pen to paper. Ultimately, as those students go through academic and career pathways, they might choose to use generative artificial intelligence to do all of their writing for them in the future. That’s their decision, and there’s not a great deal we can do to change that, particularly as these platforms become more and more ubiquitous.

But that doesn’t mean that every student will lose the ability to write, or to create, or to think for themselves. I’m a prolific writer myself, and now I use generative AI tools all the time in many different ways, none of which I feel suppress my own voice as an author or my own abilities to create text. It will be the same for our students. We don’t need to worry about the impact of these technologies, but we do need to learn how to use them.

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