What follows are two short stories. One I wrote over twenty years ago. It’s a bagatelle. I use it now and again to help guide newer writers on the concepts and structures of a basic short story. For my money, it’s a little mawkish and sentimental, but it’s effective enough and it serves its purpose in terms of providing something to examine and maybe learn from.
The other short story was created ten minutes ago using ChatGPT. I gave it thorough prompts, including the appropriate theme/moral such that it should have produced a story very similar to the one that I wrote. And of course, it did so.
Now you get to figure out which is which.
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The Unicorn Version 1
Once upon a time, in a world filled with magic and mystery, there lived a father named George and his two children, Alex and Lily. The family had been longing for a break from their busy lives, and what better place to escape to than a Greek island, known for its charming landscapes and enchanting tales.
Upon their arrival, they heard whispers of a wondrous garden nestled deep within the island, a place where the unimaginable could be seen for a price. This garden was said to house the last living unicorn, a majestic creature that was thought to have vanished from the earth centuries ago. George, fueled by the desire to create unforgettable memories for his children, decided to pay the extra fee and lead them into the garden.
As they entered the lush paradise, anticipation danced in the children’s eyes. Lily, the younger of the two, clutched her father’s hand with giddy excitement. The garden was like something out of a fairytale, with vibrant flowers and exotic trees in every shade of the rainbow. The air was thick with the scent of blossoms, and the sweet melody of birds filled the atmosphere.
At the heart of the garden stood a small enclosure. The children rushed towards it, their hearts pounding in their chests. Behind the gate, a creature awaited them. It was not the mythical unicorn they had envisioned. Instead, it was a goat, its ivory coat gleaming in the dappled sunlight. But there was something peculiar about this goat—a single, spiraled horn graced its forehead.
The teenage boy, Alex, felt anger surge within him. He had expected a genuine unicorn, a symbol of power and magic. He couldn’t comprehend why his father had brought them here for a mere goat with a horn. He crossed his arms and scowled, feeling cheated and disappointed.
Lily, on the other hand, clapped her hands in delight. She was captivated by the goat with the transplanted horn. To her, it was a unicorn, the embodiment of everything magical and beautiful. She approached the enclosure, her eyes wide with wonder, and extended her hand towards the goat. The gentle creature nuzzled her palm, and a radiant smile spread across her face.
Seeing Lily’s sheer joy, George’s heart warmed. He may not have found the mystical unicorn he had promised, but in his daughter’s eyes, this goat was a treasure beyond compare. He realized that sometimes, the beauty of a moment is not in the extraordinary, but in the simplicity of the experience itself.
“Isn’t it amazing, Dad?” Lily exclaimed, her voice filled with awe.
George smiled down at his daughter, touched by her innocence and her ability to find magic in the everyday. “It truly is, Lily. Sometimes, the most wondrous things are the ones that surprise us.”
Alex, who had been sulking in the background, reluctantly approached the goat and petted its soft coat. As he did, he couldn’t help but appreciate the unique charm of the creature. It might not have been a real unicorn, but it was a reminder that magic could be found in unexpected places.
The family spent hours in the garden, enjoying the beauty of the surroundings and the company of the not-quite-unicorn. They watched the sun dip below the horizon, casting a warm, golden glow over the garden. It was a moment they would treasure forever, a moment when they learned that magic could be found in the simplest of things and that the best unicorns were the ones that lived in the hearts of those who believed.
As they left the garden that evening, George held Lily’s hand, and Alex walked beside them. And though they hadn’t found a real unicorn, they carried with them a memory of a day filled with love, wonder, and the most enchanting goat they had ever met.
The Unicorn Version 2
It cost a good deal more than I wanted to pay, but once my kids heard there was a unicorn on the island, there was no alternative. Anyway, It was only money, right?
A unicorn didn’t seem very likely to me, but the setting was right. If one was to find a unicorn anywhere, surely it would be on the isle of Katakis, amidst the gardens of the long-ruined temple of Aphrodite which stood there in the days of Homer and Heracles. Now, of course, there was a tiny Greek Orthodox monastery built on the spot. It was supposed to be secluded for the spiritual purity of the monks — but for a fee, you could come and stay in the rough but comfortable war-time huts on the opposite end of the island.
And for a somewhat larger fee, if you knew who to ask, you could be admitted to the garden of the unicorn.
Despite the strict no-photography rule, Michael smuggled in his Secret Spy camera, ordered from a catalogue in the back of a comic book. He was going to take photographs and make a fortune. Rupert Murdoch would buy them for a million dollars, he assured me.
Sara brought only her sketchbook. I tagged along behind them, carrying nothing at all.
The creature came out of the sunset, through a gap in the crumbling stone wall, to drink from the ancient, sacred spring that rose among the olives and the laurels. It was white, yes, and it had a single horn in the middle of its forehead. It even had four hoofs — but there the resemblance ended.
“What a gyp,” said Michael, springing to his feet. “It’s a goat!”
I frowned. It did look a lot like a goat. Still, I said: “Goats horns grow from the sides of their heads, Michael.”
He rounded on me, a hip-handed pillar of teenage sarcasm. “Gee, Dad — don’t you know anything? They did this years ago! All they do is graft one of the horn buds to a new location and nip off the other one.” He glanced back at the creature in disgust. “This sucks. I’m going back to the camp. Have a nice time with the goat, you guys.”
“What about you, Sara?” I asked. A mere seven years of age, she was considerably less worldly than her brother, and I was concerned for her feelings. Unicorns are important to little girls.
“I think I’d like to stay, dad,” she said quietly. Her sketchbook was open on her knee, but she was making no effort to draw.
I sat down beside her on the herb-scented sward, and slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Are you disappointed?” I asked.
The goat lifted its head and gazed about the garden.
“Oh look, daddy,” said Sara in an ecstasy of delight. “He’s looking right at us! Isn’t he the prettiest thing? I think he’s the nicest unicorn I’ve ever, ever seen.”
The sun was vast and golden in the west, and the sky was shot with crimson. A thrush trilled from the olive trees. I smelled sweet clover and wild sage, heard the sound of sleepy bees humming in the bushes, felt a soft breeze on my cheek. My daughter leaned her small warmth against my side.
She was right. It was the nicest unicorn I had ever, ever seen.
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I figure you’ve probably had little trouble guessing which was which. But in case you need a further clue: I told ChatGPT very plainly to keep its MS to 500 words or less.
It couldn’t.
Folks — I do think AI is going to dominate the writing markets in the future. But it won’t happen as a result of the AI writing as well as, or better than, human beings. It will happen because the market will be flooded, and the audience will be trained to expect increasingly sub-literate material on demand.
When an AI can churn out a million novels in the time it takes a genuine writer to create but one… well, who will take the time to learn how to read and appreciate what makes the genuine work something more valuable? None of us could ever live long enough to read the entire output of a single AI. So once the AI is filling the marketplace, how will any kind of audience be able to find enough human works to learn that there can be better, more beautiful, more thoughtful and human pieces of storytelling?
It is much easier to teach the readership to lower its expectations and reduce its standards than it is to teach computers to touch the human soul. Far more profitable, too.
The Last Bastion 
Agreed, we are already seeing some of that. The opening credits of the Disney+ series Secret Invasion were done with an algorithm. Were they going to win an award? no -were they going to be remembered once a very average TV series finished airing? no. Did the mega rich company executive at Disney save a few buck by not having to pay people to make them and possibly got noticed up the chain for screwing the creatives AGAIN – probably. Personally I’d prefer world conquering AI that takes over to shitty algorithms that just recreate more of the average at less cost to the companies. WE have the average and over abundance of the average but I put up with the waves of average on the chance of the exceptional. Algorithms by definition will not create the unexpectedly exceptional.
I was chatting to Birmo on FB about this. The really interesting thing — to me — in this comparison is how you can clearly see that the the AI has learned what can be learned of the craft of writing. It has grammar, syntax, and basic short-story structure. It’s got description and action, basic characters, etc.
What it DOESN’T have is the art. It puts too much on the page. It doesn’t know when to leave the reader to find their own way. It doesn’t do subtlety or understatement. Birmo suggests it sounds like a gifted 12 year old — but we’re both in agreement that what’s missing is the ‘spark’, the touch of ‘talent’ that marks the work of decent human writers.
Over the years, I’ve seen scores, maybe hundreds of writers learn and improve the craft of their work. But I have never, ever seen ANYONE learn ‘the spark’. I’ve quietly and sadly watched a great many people try, but I’ve never seen it happen.
BTW — I make no claims to being a great talent. But I do have enough of it to know the good stuff when I read it, and to know those rare occasions when my own work comes out the way I want it to. If I could figure out how to ‘teach’ that part, I surely would, but I’m not sure it can be learned.
I also suspect that when we finally run across an AI which can learn that ‘spark’, we’ll be dealing with something which is truly ‘alive’.