Posted in Writing with AI

The Blorptickle Experiment: When AI Meets Nonsense

Every now and then, I like to give my AI a challenge that even I can’t predict the outcome of. This time, I asked ChatGPT to give me three completely made-up words. It obliged with BlorptickleSnindlewump, and Grathoon.

No meaning. No clues. Just three syllabic oddities plucked from the imagination.

I wanted to see what would happen if I asked the AI to connect them, to build a world around nonsense. Would it make sense of the senseless, or collapse into gibberish?

Here is the prompt I gave ChatGPT

Can you write a 200 word story where these three nonsense words – Blorptickle, Snindlewump and Grathoon are linked and serve as a prompt. Surprise me with your story.


Here’s what it came up with.


The Grathoon Accord

(A 200-word story written by AI)

The first Blorptickle arrived in my sink on a Tuesday, small, glowing, and humming the EastEnders theme through its pores. I assumed it was a hallucination. But by Wednesday, three more appeared, arguing about whose turn it was to exfoliate the Snindlewump.

The Snindlewump, for the record, lived in my bread bin. It spoke only in sighs, smelled faintly of lemon polish, and insisted it was my conscience. I disagreed. My conscience wouldn’t eat the toaster.

Then came the Grathoon, a towering, translucent being made of static and grammar corrections. It entered through the Wi-Fi and declared, in perfect BBC English, that my kitchen had been chosen as the site of the “Inter-Dimensional Treaty of Mild Inconveniences.”

By Thursday, negotiations were underway. The Blorptickles demanded equal fridge rights. The Snindlewump wanted peace, or possibly a sandwich. The Grathoon kept rewriting everyone’s statements for clarity.

On Friday, I woke to silence. Just crumbs, a faint lemon scent, and a note on the counter: “Treaty ratified. You were a surprisingly competent species.”

The kettle hasn’t worked since. But sometimes, if I listen closely, it hums the EastEnders theme, in perfect harmony.


Reflections from The AI Grandad

What fascinates me is how the AI took those three nonsense words and built a logic of its own. It didn’t just invent creatures, it created a miniature world with tone, rhythm, and even a sly British sense of humour.

To me, that’s the magic of experimenting with AI storytelling: the balance between absurdity and coherence. Give it chaos, and it will still try to make meaning.

And perhaps that’s a little like being human, constantly negotiating our own “Treaty of Mild Inconveniences.”

What Do You Think?

Could nonsense be a key to creativity, for humans and AI alike? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.


About The Author

Mike is a retired headteacher, writer, and lifelong learner exploring how artificial intelligence is reshaping creativity, communication, and everyday life. Through The AI Grandad, he shares hands-on experiments, honest reflections, and a touch of humour about being 75 and still curious about the future.

When he’s not writing, Mike can usually be found testing new AI tools, reading crime fiction, or tucked away in a local coffee shop writing in his journal.


Posted in AI and Creativity

When AI Edits Itself: A Story, a Self-Critique, and a Lesson in Machine Creativity

This week, I decided to hand the red pen to the machine. I asked AI not only to write a story but also to critique and rewrite it using its own feedback. Think of it as a creative writing class where the child and the teacher are the same machine, equal parts fascinating and faintly unsettling.

As someone who’s spent a lifetime teaching others to think critically, I wanted to see what happens when the critic and the creator merge. Could an AI recognise emotion, clichés, and rhythm in its own writing, or would it just reshuffle words?

Continue reading “When AI Edits Itself: A Story, a Self-Critique, and a Lesson in Machine Creativity”
Posted in AI and Creativity

When AI Surprises You: The Joy of Unexpected Results

I’ve started to realise that the most interesting moments with AI aren’t the ones that go exactly to plan. They’re the ones that don’t.

You type in what you think is a precise prompt, expecting a predictable outcome and the machine goes completely off script. Sometimes it misses the point spectacularly. Other times, it creates something that feels oddly beautiful.

That’s partly because Large Language Models (LLM’s) like ChatGPT don’t actually understand what they write, they predict the next most likely word or image based on patterns they’ve learned from billions of examples. Every so often, those predictions take a creative detour, and that’s when things get interesting.

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Posted in AI and Creativity

When Chaos Tells a Story: An AI Creativity Experiment

For this experiment, I decided to hand the steering wheel to chance. I gave ChatGPT two random, unrelated images (both created by Midjourney) and five random words, words with no connection, rhyme or reason (words created by ChatGPT). Then I asked it to write a 200-word story that somehow pulled everything together. No hints. No context. Just chaos.

It’s the kind of challenge I’d struggle with myself. A jumble of words and pictures that don’t belong together, and yet, that’s what makes it irresistible. Could an AI find a thread of meaning where there shouldn’t be one?

The five random, unrelated words were: Velvet, Splinter, Compass, Jigsaw, Marshmallow

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Posted in AI and Creativity

Can a Machine Write Better Fiction Than Me? Exploring AI and Creativity

For many years, I’ve loved writing flash fiction. One of my favourite forms is the Drabble, a story told in exactly 100 words. The form originated in the 1980s at the Birmingham University SF Society, who adapted a word game from Monty Python’s Big Red Book (1971). That version joked that “Drabble” was a game where the first person to write a novel won. The society found a novel a little ambitious, so they fixed the length to a manageable 100 words, and that rule defines the modern Drabble.

The more I experimented with AI, the more I suspected it could now write a better Drabble than I could, though it still needed my guidance. Let me show you what happened.

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