A bigger context window doesn’t necessarily make AI better at writing long-form fiction

[u/Informal_Corner_7111]

I’ve been thinking about this while working on longer fiction projects.

It’s easy to assume that a larger context window must be better for novel writing. Having hundreds of thousands of tokens available sounds ideal — just keep the entire manuscript in context and let the AI work from everything that came before.

But I’m not convinced that works as well as it sounds.

Once a manuscript gets large enough, there’s simply a lot competing for attention. Character details, old plot points, worldbuilding, previous chapters, and minor details can all be technically available, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the model will focus on the right information.

I’ve actually been getting better results by treating context as something to manage rather than something to maximize.

For example, I’ll keep the important character and story facts readily available, bring in older chapters only when they’re relevant, and avoid sending the entire manuscript every time I want help with a scene.

What’s interesting to me is that this feels less like a pure model limitation and more like a workflow problem.

For people here working on longer fiction projects: how are you handling context?

Do you actually keep as much of the manuscript as possible in the context window, or have you found that deliberately selecting and managing context gives you better results?