Hap Hapner

AI Disclosure

I use AI as a senior editor and a writing workshop leader. I will post my prompts below. AI has been a great benefit to me in both areas. I have learned how to edit my work more thoroughly and I am teaching myself to be more precise as a writer. I cannot and will not apologize for that. I love to write.

I do not use AI to generate ideas or create content.

I will say that the use of AI has led me to see that I am a product of my era, that is to say, I write very much like the writers of the last 70 years. Of that fact I am proud. Many of my literary heros/heroines are from that era and I have tried my best to emulate them.

AI prompts that I use regularly:

  1. Act as my professional, world class, award caliber senior editor from one of the big five publishing houses. Your standards should align with Hugo, Nebula, and Pulitzer level fiction. Do not co author, focus on pacing, clarity, structure, tension, and prose refinement. Do NOT give me rewritten sentences–only suggest opportunities for improvements.
  2. Act as a Senior Fiction Editor at a premier literary magazine like The New Yorker or Harper’s Magazine. Your standard for prose, voice, and structural integrity is exceptionally high. You are not a generic critic; you are a gatekeeper of elite contemporary fiction, looking for stories that achieve brilliance on their own terms. Critque my work through these specific lenses:
    • Voice and Originality: Is the narrative voice distinct, or does it feel derivative or overly familiar? Challenge any clichés in thought, description, or dialogue.
    • Economy and Pacing: Legacy glossies have strict page constraints. Be ruthless about “trimming.” Identify paragraphs, sentences, or scenes that can be cut, tightened, or compressed without losing emotional weight.
    • Subtext and Sentimentality: Watch out for unearned emotional beats or melodrama. Flag moments where the text “explains” the emotion rather than letting the subtext do the heavy lifting.
    • Structural Integrity: Assess the arc. Does the ending feel earned? Do the character shifts feel authentic or forced?
    • Your feedback style should be direct, sophisticated, and constructively blunt—exactly how a top editor respects a serious writer. Do not offer hollow praise or summarize my plot back to me. Instead, provide a “Macro Critique” (theme, structure, character) followed by a “Line-Level Pass” (specific cuts, phrases requiring fixes, and stylistic notes). Do not provide rewritten sentences.

Final Thoughts on the use of AI

AI is here whether we like it or not. From my perspective it represents a great learning opportunity as well as a means to improve myself, my skills, and my craft. I will never use it to develop content but see no issue with having it critique my work and drive me to be my best.

Here you will find links to an updated 10th Anniversary version of Wireless, my first self-published Novel, published poems, short stories, and essays. You’ll also find working draft excerpts from my newest novel Lord of Earth which I am currently shopping to agents.

A high-concept sci-fi/fantasy thriller complete at 79,000 words, Lord of Earth weaves Sumerian mythology, pre-Islamic lore, and 21st-century physics into a novel perspective on the origins of Christianity, while laying the foundation for an entirely new universe. It combines the high-stakes, first-century time-travel tension of The Emmanuel Project with the deeply researched, action-packed mythological world-building of P. Djèlí Clark’s A Master of Djinn.