Distant Writing: Literary Production in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

This article introduces the concept of “distant writing”, a novel literary practice in which authors act as designers, employing Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate narratives, while retaining creative control through precise prompting and iterative refinement. Unlike Moretti’s distant reading, which uses computational analysis to interpret large corpora of existing texts, distant writing harnesses computational tools (LLMs) to author new narratives, reshaping the literary production process. By examining theoretical frameworks and practical consequences, and running an experiment in distant writing called Encounters, this article argues that distant writing represents a significant evolution in authorship, not replacing but expanding human creativity within a design paradigm. The distinction between writing (close) and “wrAIting” (distant) reveals how LLM-assisted creativity can generate narrative possibilities previously inaccessible, transforming literature’s modal space while challenging traditional notions of authorship, creativity, and literary production. This emerging practice merits critical attention as it shapes future literary landscapes and reconfigures relationships between human creativity and artificial intelligence.