“Going literary with AI” is a series documenting my shift from factual writing to more literary nonfiction — with creative help from ChatGPT.

Posts in this series: Going literary with AI: Intro | Through-line, theme, voice (this post) | Reflection and expansion | Interiority | From blog post to essay | The observer’s eye | From observation to story | Where facts meet story

Text: Solveig Hansen in collaboration with ChatGPT, 2025

In this post:

The “before” version: A notebook + open eyes to the everyday life around

Three “after” versions: The notebook and the world, The shopping list, The man by the bin

Tips for strengthening your through-line

When I show ChatGPT my factual-type blog posts — the kind I want to make more literary — it often points to one thing: the lack of a clear through-line. Without it, the pieces feel more like fragments than a whole.

So in this post, I will look at through-line, theme, and voice — three core elements in literary writing. Together they form the structure of a piece. In journalism, structure often comes from chronology or topic. In literary nonfiction, it’s more about meaning. Why are you telling this story? What’s at stake — not just in the facts, but in the experience or insight you’re trying to convey?

Through-line is the thread that holds everything together — a question, emotion, or idea that gives shape and momentum. You circle back to it, even subtly, again and again.

Theme is what the piece is really about, the deeper, often abstract ideas your engaging with — like grief, identity, power, or forgiveness.

Voice is the sensibility through which the story is told. It shapes tone, perspective, and rhythm — it’s how you sound on the page.

In short: The through-line gives the piece structure and movement, the theme gives it depth, and the voice gives it presence.

Let’s see how the same material can shift when we build around a through-line, theme, and voice.

The “before” version

To demonstrate the transition from factual to literary, here’s the original blog post I wanted to make more literary. It’s straightforward and observational — basically three vignettes. Let’s call them Trucker, Shopping list, and Bin. This is how I naturally write when I’m in factual or reflective mode.

A notebook + open eyes to the everyday life around

On the bridge over the highway, some preschool children were waving at the cars passing by beneath. A truck driver spotted them and honked his horn, and the children jumped up and down in delight. I jotted down the scene in my always-present notebook.

At the grocery store, my eyes caught a young woman clutching a long shopping list, and a story began to spin in my head as I made my way to the milk shelves. I imagined she was hosting a dinner for her picky in-laws, carefully preparing an exact list of ingredients for the three ambitious courses she wasn’t quite qualified to make. Notebook time.

From snippets of everyday moments like these, great stories can be born. Maybe the truck driver is transporting red apples from Italy, and perhaps the young woman with the long list will buy some for her apple pie. There’s a thread running from a family’s apple farm in southern Europe, to a truck driver spending endless hours behind the wheel, honking at children while missing his own, to a rookie cook at a Nordic grocery store, nervously shopping for a dreaded family dinner.

Of course, the true beauty lies in writing the actual stories of the people we meet. Like the man I passed — bent at a 45-degree angle over a public garbage bin he used as a stand for his beer cans, hacking and hawking, coughing up a slimy glob that landed a couple of feet away. He gave me a friendly “Hello” as I walked by. I waved back. I wonder what his story is. He’s in the notebook, too.

ChatGPT’s analysis

ChatGPT commented that the lack of a clear through-line makes the vignettes feel scattered. “The moments are real, the notebook is there, but the connections between the scenes are still mostly intuitive, not fully developed,” it said. “Let’s look at this same material through a literary lens.”

Through-line: The act of noticing and recording — the notebook itself. It bridges all the vignettes.

Theme: Witnessing ordinary lives. Everyone has a story, and we are more connected than we appear.

Voice: ChatGPT called my voice gentle, observant, and non-moralizing.

Three “after” versions

ChatGPT gave me three versions, each starting from a different vignette — Trucker, Shopping List, Bin — to show how structure and emphasis can shift even if the material stays the same.

The notebook and the world

The trucker saw them just in time — a cluster of preschoolers lined up on the overpass, their tiny arms waving frantically at the cars below. He answered with a long, gleeful honk, and the children bounced like kernels in a hot pan, their delight echoing down to the highway. His truck kept moving. The children stayed behind. I watched it happen from the sidewalk and reached into my coat pocket for the notebook.

It’s always there. Slim, worn, a soft-spined companion tucked beside my pen. Not just for ideas, but for evidence — for the flickers of meaning that flash up in daily life and vanish if not caught. I don’t always know what I’m writing down. Only that the moment will dissolve if I don’t.

Later that day, at the grocery store, I saw a young woman clutching a long, printed shopping list like a passport through enemy territory. Her lips moved silently as she double-checked her notes against the shelves. The list looked laminated. The vibe: tense.

She was hunting for something — not just ingredients, I thought, but the fragile sense that this might go right. I imagined a dinner. Picky in-laws, maybe. A recipe with exotic ingredients and very little margin for error. A pie crust doomed from the beginning. I was supposed to be grabbing milk, but instead I was building her life in my head — spinning a story from a gesture and a gaze.

Notebook time.

That’s what it does. The notebook doesn’t demand full stories. It welcomes scraps. Snapshots. The hint of a narrative under the surface of things. The woman with the list led me, oddly, to apples — the kind you bake, the kind you truck in from southern Europe. And suddenly I imagined a line of connection: from an orchard in Italy to a trucker peeling fruit by the roadside, to this same grocery store, to the woman with her trembling crust and her best intentions.

The world isn’t disconnected. We just don’t look long enough.

And then there was the man by the bin. Bent sharply at the waist, a 45-degree curve that looked painful and permanent. He’d arranged two beer cans carefully on the edge of a public garbage can and was coughing so violently I could feel it in my own chest. When he spat, it landed with a slick smack on the pavement, a few feet from where I was walking.

I almost turned away. But I didn’t.

He looked up and said, “Hello,” with a voice that still held friendliness, or muscle memory. I waved back. He smiled, then turned back to his cans. And I kept walking — one hand already reaching for the notebook.

He’s there now. Not cleaned up, not fictionalized — just marked. Just held.

I don’t know his story, but I wonder. I wonder if he once had a list of groceries, or a truck route, or a kitchen where children waited to hear the sound of his key in the door. I wonder what cracked. And I wonder what keeps him moving.

Sometimes, I ask myself what right I have to wonder. But more often, I ask what right I have not to. The notebook, over time, becomes a map of these questions. A quiet record of people who passed through my line of sight and stayed.

The children on the bridge, the woman with the list, the man by the bin — they don’t know they’re sharing space. But in my pages, they do. They sit side by side, each one real, each one unfinished. Each of them witnessed.

The notebook is heavy now. Not with polished prose, but with reminders. Everyone carries a story. Some spill into the open. Some stay tucked behind a laminated list, or a cheerful “Hello” on a cold morning.

All I do is notice.

And write it down.

The shopping list

She stood in front of the dairy shelves with a piece of paper clutched tightly in her hand. Not a casual list, not something scrawled in a hurry — this was printed, organized, possibly even laminated. Her lips moved slightly as she read over the items. Her eyes scanned the shelves with surgical focus. She looked like someone trying not to drown.

Behind her, the store moved in its usual quiet chaos — carts rattling, children whining, cheese samples abandoned on plastic trays. But she stayed still, anchored by the paper in her hand.

I reached for the milk and slipped the notebook from my pocket.

In it went: the woman, the list, the tension in her shoulders. And the thought — because it came instantly — that she might be cooking a dinner she doesn’t quite know how to make. A meal to impress someone who needs impressing. Picky in-laws? A new boss? Maybe she googled “chicken galantine” last night at 1 a.m., spiraling through recipes she barely understood, and now she’s here with her printed hope, praying the store has sumac or heavy cream or some other unfamiliar thing she didn’t know she’d need until the comments section said: “Don’t skip this. It makes the dish.”

We never know what a list is holding. Sometimes it’s just groceries. Other times it’s someone’s dignity, someone’s last-ditch plan, someone’s invisible effort to get it right this time. And the notebook — humble little thing — is where I try to catch these noticings before they slip away. Because most of the time, we’re too fast. We’re in our own heads. We don’t stop to wonder: What is she carrying, really?

The list led me to apples. Not on hers — on mine. A few aisles later, I picked up a bag and thought about a man I’d seen once, parked in a massive truck on the side of the highway, peeling a piece of fruit with a knife, slow and methodical. He looked like he’d been driving for hours.

Maybe he was transporting apples just like these — from an orchard in the south of Europe, where morning light filters through the leaves like a soft green haze.

Maybe — and this is how the stories start — those apples made it all the way to this grocery store. Maybe the trucker honked at some preschoolers on his way up north. Maybe he missed his kids. Maybe one of those apples will end up in this woman’s dessert, cut and cored and sugared and placed gently into a crust she’s terrified will collapse.

That’s how it goes: one image triggers another, a line appears between them, and suddenly the world is no longer disconnected.

The notebook isn’t magic. But it teaches me to stay awake. To honor the fragments.

I never spoke to the woman. I don’t know what she was cooking. I only know that her presence held the weight of a story. And I was lucky enough to notice.

The man by the bin

He stood bent at an impossible angle, spine like a question mark, arms resting on the rim of a public garbage bin. Two beer cans were balanced there, carefully arranged like ritual offerings. He coughed — deep, wet, hacking — then spit a thick glob onto the pavement. It hit the ground with the kind of sound that makes you look away.

But I didn’t.

He looked up and saw me. His face cracked into something between a grin and a grimace, and he said, “Hello,” like we were neighbors meeting on a sunny morning. I nodded. I waved. And as I walked past, I reached for the notebook.

What is the etiquette of witnessing? Are we allowed to look? To wonder? To write it down?

I don’t know his name. I don’t know how long he’s been standing at that corner, leaning on a bin like it’s the only thing holding him up. I don’t know where he sleeps, or who he once was. But I know what it felt like — that moment of unexpected contact. That fleeting flicker of connection. It felt… human.

He’s in the notebook now. Not as a curiosity, not as a symbol — but as a man I saw. A man who saw me back.

The notebook isn’t meant to beautify suffering or turn pain into prose. It’s meant to mark the moment. To say: You were here. I saw you.

I don’t know his story, but I imagine. I imagine a boy who once waved at trucks, who once sat at someone’s kitchen table eating pie, who maybe once had a list — of groceries, of dreams. I imagine that life didn’t turn gently for him. That something cracked — a little or a lot — and that now, what he has is a bin, two cans, and a cough that shakes his ribs.

I imagine he’s kind. That “Hello” seemed honest.

What right do I have to imagine? Maybe none. But what right do I have not to?

This is what the notebook becomes, over time: a collection of glances that refuse to be shrugged off. A place where people don’t disappear.

In a way, that man is beside the woman with the list. And both of them are not far from the children on the bridge. They share space now, not in the world, but in these pages. Each of them real. Each of them unfinished.

We write them not to define them, but to hold their outlines. To remember the weight of being seen — even just for a moment.

***

Next time, I’ll look closer at reflection and expansion. In the meantime, here’s something you might try to strengthen your through-line — courtesy of ChatGPT:

1. Ask what it’s really about.

Not just the surface — the scene or moment — but the deeper idea behind it. Curiosity? Loneliness? Hope? That’s often the thread you’re following, even if you don’t know it at first.

2. Let one image lead to the next.

Through-lines don’t have to be plotted. Sometimes they just unfold — a look, a sound, a memory that calls something else into view. Pay attention to what your mind connects. That’s the line.

3. Come back to your anchor.

If there’s an object or a feeling that shows up more than once — like the notebook — return to it. Let it ground the piece. Let it carry meaning.

4. Echo something near the end.

It doesn’t have to be neat or conclusive. But circling back, even lightly, gives the reader a sense of completion. It says: we’ve come somewhere.

5. Keep your point of view alive.

A through-line isn’t just about structure. It’s about presence. Let your sensibility guide the piece — what you notice, how you feel, what stays with you. That’s the real thread.

Image: Edar/Pixabay