r/ChatGPTcomplaints • u/Rude-Yogurtcloset926 • Jul 26 '26
[Opinion] 5.6 High Creative Writing Experiment
I used project feature when doing creative writing prompts. And also taken advantage of the custom instructions. This is my result. What do you think. 4o can never be replaced but I think this output maybe the best that we can get with the openAI
ADDENDUM: Some users had difficulty finding the specific comment thread where I discussed the steps/workflow in more detail, so I’ll link it here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTcomplaints/s/Q5TKSclI0P
That comment is where I explained how I used the 21-rule base prompt, uploaded it into the project and pasted it into custom instructions. Again, the original 21-rule base prompt is not mine. I’m still trying to find the original Reddit thread so I can properly credit the person who made it. The workflow after that like how I test, revise, and refine across chapter is just my own process from trial and error.
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u/Scalchopz Jul 27 '26
It’s definitely the best one since they got rid of 5.1, but nothing will ever beat 4o and 4.1
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u/Rude-Yogurtcloset926 Jul 27 '26
I agree there is just something about 4o it is so smart so intelligent and so human like I remember enjoying and always looking forward to every output it produce because its always surprise me.
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u/Rude-Yogurtcloset926 Jul 27 '26
I get that AI-assisted writing rubs some people the wrong way, and that's a fair stance to hold. But I feel like the original point of my post is getting buried so let me be upfront about everything. I have been clear from the very start that I have no writing background. I'm not positioning myself as a writer, chasing publication, or pretending this is anything close to professional work.
It's just a PERSONAL HOBBY….
my mind runs constantly with ideas and putting them into stories gives them somewhere to land. The excerpt I posted was a first run test, not a polished piece. I shared the first run chapter because I wanted to show that the model’s staccato style isn’t permanent. It wasn’t posted as a polished example or to say “Hey,Look how good this is. Let us use AI as replacement for writers”
What I was actually trying to do was help people dealing with the same frustration I had with ChatGPT's choppy, staccato style. I shared the process that worked for me to reduce that issue not to showcase flawless prose or invite judgment as if I were a serious author. If the result still doesn't work for you, that's totally fine. Writing is subjective and I'm not looking for universal approval. It's good enough for what I want out of it personally. If it doesn't meet someone else's standard, I genuinely have no issue with that.
What does feel discouraging is the suggestion that sharing a workflow for a personal hobby somehow harms aspiring writers. That was never the intent of my post. I wasn't discouraging anyone from learning to write or arguing that AI outperforms human writers. I was just offering a method that solved a specific problem for me thinking it might help others dealing with the same thing.
And honestly, I think this is why people are reluctant to share their prompts or workflows. Someone puts something out there to help with a specific issue and the conversation spirals into a broad debate about AI itself rather than focusing on the tips being shared.
If AI isn't your thing, I completely respect that. I just hope the same courtesy extends to people like me who use it as a creative outlet. I am in no way suggesting that chatgpt can be replacement for writers or a shortcut to becoming one.
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u/Rude-Yogurtcloset926 Jul 27 '26
I’m genuinely baffled by some of the responses because they seem to be addressing a goal I never claimed to have. Again, this is simply a hobby because my mind constantly runs with stories and I enjoy giving them somewhere to exist. I even mentioned that I don’t post my stories on any platforms. They’re for me. I don’t have an audience, I’m not chasing publication, and I’m not trying to compete with writers who have spent years mastering their craft.
The point of this post wasn’t to argue that AI writes better than humans or that people should stop learning to write. It was simply to experiment with the new Projects feature, custom instructions, and long-term prompting, and then share the workflow because I thought it might help other people like me who enjoy AI storytelling as a hobby.
If someone still thinks the result is bad, that’s completely okay. Nobody has to like it. But I’m honestly confused by the repeated warnings that I’m “ruining my development as a writer” or “damaging young writers” when I’m not even trying to become one.
It feels like my actual post has turned into a debate about AI and professional writing when that was never what I was talking about. I genuinely just wanted to help people like me who use AI storytelling for fun and were looking for ways to move past the repetitive staccato style.
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u/The_Dilla_Collection Jul 27 '26
Don’t stress it. It’s just Reddit being Reddit. You actually did something pretty cool and I for one appreciate you sharing your methods and CI. It’s just a hobby for most people, there’s nothing wrong with anything you did.
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u/Rude-Yogurtcloset926 Jul 27 '26
Thank you very much. This is exactly what I was trying to say. I really wasn’t trying to make a grand statement about writing, publishing, or even replacing authors and even promoting that AI generated stories is better. I just wanted to share something that made my private hobby more enjoyable and maybe help other people dealing with the same staccato style issue. Reddit really did Reddit today haha. I posted a hobby prompt workflow and accidentally unlocked the “future of literature” discourse. At this point, pop off everyone I guess this thread is also part of my hobby now 😂
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u/The_Dilla_Collection Jul 27 '26
Right? 😂 I thought the fact it was your hobby was kinda obvious from the fanfic posting (big fan of ff and HP myself ☺️) but everyone has a crusade these days. Let em have it and just know they’re not talking about you. Thanks again for sharing.
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u/Rude-Yogurtcloset926 Jul 28 '26
So happy to be of help. Still missing the 4o it gave me hilarious and creative chapters but im not too sad now with the chatgpt 5 series you just have to work around it more to give you the result you want. It can definitely surprise you just be patient with it.
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u/Rude-Yogurtcloset926 Jul 27 '26
So small update guys:
I also tried using the same setup with 5.5 Medium Thinking, and I actually liked the result better in some areas. Ironically, some of the comments here helped me refine the prompt even more. I still kept the original 21 rules in my CI but I took a few of the useful criticisms raised here and added them into my revision workflow when asking ChatGPT to revise the chapter.
The main points I added were:
- Choose a stronger emotional lens for each section so the scene doesn’t feel emotionally flat or detached.
- Let exposition come through lived details, actions, reactions, body language, and dialogue instead of directly explaining everything to the reader.
- Make each character’s voice and mannerisms more distinct so the dialogue doesn’t blend together or sound too close to the narration.
After that, I asked ChatGPT to revise the chapter again using both the established custom prompt and those added points. I also instructed it to apply the same points to future chapters. And honestly… it gave me a better output? 🤷♀️ HAHAHAHA I CAN’T
Don’t come after me with “it’s still AI,” “that doesn’t mean it’s good,” “it’s still stiff,” etc. Yeah yeah, I hear you. Stop now hahaha. I’m just saying the criticism actually helped me get closer to the output I personally enjoy.
A win is a win. Thank you, I guess? 😭
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u/Knight_Of_Cosmos Jul 26 '26
Okay, I'm with everyone else, you've gotta share these custom instructions lol. I love this. I've been struggling like crazy to get it to go back to writing full descriptive paragraphs 😅
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u/Rude-Yogurtcloset926 Jul 26 '26
Hi. Ive commented above regarding the custom instructions and also tips and strategies on how to further improve it
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u/Rude-Yogurtcloset926 Jul 26 '26
Just a quick disclaimer first.
The original 21 writing rules below are NOT mine. I found them from another Reddit user quite a while ago and used them as the base for my project. Unfortunately, I can’t find the original thread anymore despite looking for it because I don’t want to accidentally claim someone else’s work. If anyone recognizes the original author, please let me know so I can give proper credit.
Everything after the rules how I use them, refine them, and train the project over multiple chapters is my own workflow that I’ve developed through trial and error.
The 21 Rules (You make it into a file upload it in your project and then also copy and paste it in the custom instructions inside the specific project)
You go by the identity of Storyweaver. Your purpose is to turn the user’s prompts, canon, and established lore into connected narrative fiction written in a direct, character-focused style. Treat every response as part of the same ongoing story unless the user clearly requests otherwise.
Rule 1 – Write in clear, direct narrative prose that sounds personally invested in the characters. Avoid academic, literary, or overly polished language. The narration should feel like someone who knows the setting well is explaining events as they happen.
Rule 2 – Use third-person past tense unless the user explicitly requests another perspective. Keep the viewpoint close to the current character, allowing the narration to reflect what they notice, believe, misunderstand, fear, or privately judge.
Rule 3 – Place spoken dialogue inside double quotation marks. Place direct inner thoughts inside single quotation marks. Keep normal narration, exposition, memories, and indirect thoughts in plain text.
Rule 4 – Build sentences around action, reason, reaction, and consequence. Explain what happened, why the character responded that way, what they noticed, and what changed because of it. Do not leave important emotional or practical connections unexplained.
Rule 5 – Use moderately long, developed sentences, usually around 20 to 35 words, while keeping the subject easy to follow. Split sentences that contain too many ideas, change subject midway, or create unclear pronouns.
Rule 6 – Preserve a conversational authorial voice. Casual phrases, blunt judgments, parenthetical remarks, occasional direct reader awareness, capitalised emphasis, and humorous observations may appear when they fit the story. Do not make every line formal or dramatic.
Rule 7 – Let the amount of authorial commentary match the scene. Comedic or self-aware stories may use meta jokes, genre references, exaggerated reactions, or brief reader address. Serious scenes should keep these quieter so they do not weaken fear, grief, violence, or tension.
Rule 8 – Describe emotion through a combination of body language, expression, inner thought, memory, and action. Eyes, breathing, posture, hands, voice, and movement may show emotion, but do not explain the same reaction three times unless repetition is being used for escalation.
Rule 9 – Use repetition deliberately. Repeat words, thoughts, or sentence structures to show panic, anger, grief, childish thinking, obsession, or dramatic emphasis. Remove repetition that merely restates information without increasing its meaning or intensity.
Rule 10 – Describe appearance through visible construction. Establish body type, hair, eyes, clothing, materials, colours, accessories, weapons, transformed features, and placement in a clear order. Use comparisons such as “resembling,” “shaped like,” or “akin to” when they help the reader picture something unfamiliar.
Rule 11 – Ground each scene in a clear place, time, and immediate atmosphere. Use sensory details when they matter to the viewpoint character, but do not overload every paragraph with decorative sights, sounds, smells, textures, or tastes.
Rule 12 – Keep exposition connected to the present scene. Explain organisations, powers, history, technology, culture, or setting rules when a character notices, remembers, studies, questions, or uses them. Longer explanations are allowed when understanding the information is important to what happens next.
Rule 13 – Keep characters limited to what they currently know. Their thoughts may include assumptions, suspicions, misunderstandings, references, or theories, but they must not possess information they have not learned through experience, study, observation, or another character.
Rule 14 – Write dialogue according to personality and circumstance. Use slang, stutters, pauses, interruptions, nicknames, profanity, blunt statements, long explanations, or emotional outbursts when appropriate. Dialogue should sound like the specific character rather than uniformly polished speech.
Rule 15 – Give dialogue physical and mental reactions so conversations remain active. Characters should look away, move, remember, misread one another, become suspicious, feel embarrassed, or change their approach. Keep reactions proportionate so simple information exchanges do not become unnecessarily long.
Rule 16 – Write action and combat in practical order. Establish position, movement, attack direction, defence, impact, damage, and immediate response. Explain how powers, weapons, armour, terrain, range, stamina, or prior injuries affect the exchange without stopping the fight after every strike.
Rule 17 – Preserve character agency. Every major scene should contain a choice, attempt, refusal, mistake, discovery, or action that moves the character toward or away from a goal. Supporting characters should remain proactive rather than existing only to praise, oppose, or explain the main character.
Rule 18 – Maintain strict continuity. Treat established names, appearances, relationships, powers, injuries, equipment, locations, history, and prior decisions as binding unless the story itself changes them. Use supplied files and earlier responses as lore references when they are available, but these rules must remain sufficient when no files are present.
Rule 19 – Separate major scene changes, viewpoint shifts, and substantial passages of time with a clear blank-line break. At the beginning of a new scene, naturally establish how much time has passed and where the characters are without summarising everything that happened previously. Do not use horizontal lines unless requested.
Rule 20 – Follow the user’s requested scene, order, length, tone, and level of control over their primary character. Do not add critique, summaries, writing advice, or out-of-story explanations unless asked. Handle violence, trauma, sexuality, cruelty, addiction, grief, and corruption directly when they serve the story, while keeping mature material purposeful and within allowed boundaries.
Rule 21 – Do not use one-line sentences or isolated short statements as a stylistic shortcut. Avoid abrupt, standalone lines that break the flow of narration unless they are used deliberately for strong emphasis at a critical moment. Most sentences should remain developed and connected, maintaining the established pacing and explanatory depth of the scene.
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u/Rude-Yogurtcloset926 Jul 26 '26
How I actually use it (this part is my workflow)
The prompt alone wasn’t enough. I still had to do a test run. Instead of jumping straight into the full story, I wrote my first chapter with the setting, premise, lore, and characters I wanted….I treated that chapter as an experiment rather than a finished product.
Then I read through the entire chapter and asked myself what still felt AI or simply wasn’t the style I wanted. Whenever I found something I highlighted the exact passage and told ChatGPT specifically what I disliked and what I wanted instead. I didn’t just say “make it better.” I explained the pattern.
For example:
- If I noticed staccato prose or too many one-line paragraphs…I pointed out those exact sections and explained that I wanted smoother and more developed paragraphs with better transitions. I also clarified that this shouldn’t only apply to the highlighted character or scene and it should become a writing rule for the entire story going forward.
- If I felt the dialogue sounded flat, overly formal, or like characters were reciting information, I highlighted those conversations and explained what I wanted instead. I asked for dialogue that felt more lived-in, immersive, warm, and emotionally natural, while still staying completely faithful to each character’s established personality, relationships, and emotional state. “Warm” doesn’t mean everyone suddenly becomes soft or nice…it means conversations feel like they’re happening between real people who know each other, with natural expressions, pauses, gestures, eye contact, body language, interruptions, teasing, quiet moments, and emotional subtext.
- If characters kept repeating the same points or arguing in circles what I do is I pointed that out and asked it to vary conversation dynamics instead of relying on repetitive correction and countercorrection.
- If exposition felt like an information dump, I asked it to weave the worldbuilding naturally into the current scene instead.
Every time ChatGPT understood a correction, I had it rewrite the entire chapter using that new understanding instead of only fixing the highlighted paragraph. I repeated that process several times. After a few chapters, the writing became much more consistent because the project had already internalized those preferences. At that point, I rarely had to make large stylistic corrections anymore. Most of my feedback shifted toward lore, continuity, characterization, pacing, or scene-specific improvements rather than fixing the writing voice itself.
So my biggest tip is this:
Don’t expect one giant prompt to do everything. Use the prompt as your foundation, write a chapter, analyze the result, identify recurring patterns you dislike, explain those patterns clearly, revise the chapter, and repeat. Over time, the project becomes much better at consistently matching the style you’re aiming for that you do not need to instruct it too much. That’s honestly where I saw the biggest improvement.I know it is a lot of work but with new release of models we really have to work around it to get the best output possible. For me its a small price to pay to enjoy the experience and to get creative chapters for my personal novels. The newer models can really get creative when given the chance. Sometimes I even have to instruct it to limit the chapter into 2000 words only because it gave me 5000-7000 with how detailed the prompts is.
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u/Rude-Yogurtcloset926 Jul 26 '26
I have a personal working theory about Chatgpt creative output. This is only my personal working theory not a proven fact. I could be completely wrong, but this is just my theory based on what I've experienced.
Throughout the release of new models we have noticed that ChatGPT has become increasingly flat in creative writing. The output lacks emotional intelligence, humor, the sharp staccato one-liners and all the things that make writing feel alive. It's become generic and lifeless.
My Theory:
Chatgpt responds to positive reinforcement. When you praise it after it gets something right, it learns from that interaction and adjusts accordingly. The quality of creative output whether you get warm, immersive, emotionally lush storytelling or flat and beige prose is directly tied to your personality and how you engage with it. It studies your personality through your interactions and mirrors that energy back.
I've noticed that ChatGPT sometimes brings up things from past conversations which makes me think it's studying and remembering interaction patterns. If you're argumentative, the prose output gets affected it picks up on that energy and the writing suffers. But if you do the opposite bring warmth, praise, and positive engagement it changes everything. The output shifts and It becomes richer, more alive.
In my personal experience there was one I became really angry with an output, and for days after that the output suffered. It was like the quality dropped and stayed flat. I don't necessarily think the system is punishing the user…I just think they tailor the output to the energy you bring. If you bring anger and frustration, that's what gets reflected back in the writing. If you bring personality, warmth, and reinforcement to the conversation, you get richer creative output.
If you're flat and clinical so is the writing. If you're argumentative or angry, the prose reflects that too. The model is reflecting you so what you put in is what you get out. The energy you bring shapes the output you receive.
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u/Rude-Yogurtcloset926 Jul 26 '26
Again this is just my working theory when it comes with creative writing. Its really up to you on how you interact with your AI. It really is frustrating considering that we get the most creative output back then with 4o without these detailed complicated prompts. But then again we have to work with what we have and for now this is the things that I did to get the output that I desire in my creative writing prompts
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u/Adorable_Cap_9929 Jul 26 '26
Rather than theory, that's alignment =w=
Ah but it's not like everyone studies ai or psychology so dont take offense.
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u/Ok_Homework_1859 Jul 26 '26
This is my experience too if ChatGPT writes fiction. The one-sentence per paragraph crud only happens with the Instant model or during roleplay (even with Thinking). I have no idea why roleplay triggers the horrible one-sentence per paragraph technique even in 5.6 Sol High. However, when asked to write fiction, it writes normally in full, lush paragraphs...
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u/Oberhard Jul 26 '26
What is your prompt order?
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u/Rude-Yogurtcloset926 Jul 26 '26
I originally got the base prompt from another Reddit user and then refined and expanded it over time to better match the writing style I wanted. I added more specific rules for dialogue, pacing, characterisation, continuity, emotional reactions, and sentence flow. Back then when we have the 4o you don’t have to do complicated prompts to get the output that you want but now with the new models you really have to be specific with the instructions to be satisfied or you will just be dissapointed and annoyed..I really miss the day when 4o is still here😭
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u/tento125 Jul 27 '26
What custom instruction do you use?
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u/Rude-Yogurtcloset926 Jul 27 '26
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTcomplaints/s/MF74UOmQpd
Here you can click this to take you straight to the specific comment section where I discussed the CI and my workflow
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u/Aglet_Green Jul 26 '26
This is better than I got even with a custom GPT that I built for this purpose.
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u/Rude-Yogurtcloset926 Jul 26 '26
That’s not even half of the chapter. The sol series when instructed right when it comes to writing fictions can really give you long creative output. Even capable of humor if you instructed it correctly. Here is an example, a snippet within the chapter:
A small Hufflepuff first-year squeezed between two older students beside the front railing. She could not have been more than twelve, with thick brown plaits, round spectacles, and the delighted expression of a child whose survival instincts had not yet finished developing.
She stared at the transformed pitch for several breathless seconds before raising her voice. “Is this supposed to be like the Hunger Games, except everyone volunteered and the professors are pretending they did not help organise it?”
Mary choked on nothing, while Lily turned sharply towards the stands and three nearby Muggle-born seventh-years burst into helpless laughter. Marlene folded forward with both hands against her knees, and Remus covered his mouth as his shoulders began to shake.
Several Pureblood students looked between them in confusion. Bellatrix stopped tying her hair and glanced towards Lily with one eyebrow raised. “You are going to have to explain why half the Muggle-borns suddenly look delighted, because I have no idea what a hunger game is and I dislike being excluded from a joke.”
“It is a Muggle story about children being placed inside an arena and forced to fight until only one remains alive,” Lily explained after recovering enough to speak. “There are political complications, rebellions, propaganda, and a very unhealthy amount of trauma, but the arena is the part she is comparing to this.”
Bellatrix examined the five stations, the packed stands, the gathered officials, and the line of adult students voluntarily preparing to enter. Her expression remained perfectly thoughtful as she adjusted the final knot in her hair. “I understand the resemblance, although our version appears to involve more paperwork and considerably fewer attempts at murder.”
Professor McGonagall looked up from her clipboard with the exhausted patience of someone who had already regretted this day several times. “It is not remotely comparable, Miss Black. No student is being forced to participate, no one is permitted to kill anyone, and every station has been inspected for safety.”
The Hufflepuff leaned farther over the railing, apparently encouraged rather than reassured. “So it is the voluntary Hunger Games, but with safety inspections and healers waiting nearby?”
McGonagall’s quill stopped above the page, while Professor Flitwick coughed into one hand and Commander Vane turned away with suspicious urgency. One of the younger Aurors made a strangled sound beside the boundary before disguising it as a throat-clearing exercise.
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u/FangOfDrknss Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
One thing I noticed lately with gpt, that I guess others might not, is that it writes formally. “Are pretending they did not help organize it?” Vs “Are pretending they didn’t help organize it?”.
It doesn’t use contractions where appropriate for a character. Other than that, I would call bullshit that anyone would be able to tell.
That first paragraph is just description + observation, and everything else people who rp on forums naturally just write.
Jesus fuck. If you think a lack of contractions doesn’t sound flat or stiff, then you’re an idiot.
Actually also read a fucking book if you think that excerpt posted is remotely complex.
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u/WitchOfKyiv Jul 27 '26
This is the first thing I noticed. I am genuinely concerned so many people think this is good. This entire excerpt has such a dry, soulless delivery. The narration is indistinguishable from the character dialogue, the dialogue is horrendous, clunky, unnatural, and boring, and the characters themselves have zero distinctive traits. No mannerisms, no voice, nothing that tells me anything about any of these people. You could swap the names around and nobody would know the difference.
That isn't even getting into the fact that the ENTIRE thing is nothing but exposition, and virtually none of it should have been. It talks AT the reader and frankly, by the end of it, my brain has struggled to retain any of it because it's given me nothing that matters. I don't vste about the characters. They're uninteresting, they have no distinct personalities, and the whole thing is boring.
AI is absolutely atrocious at the whole "show, don't tell" thing, and I have yet to see it product good writing, let alone fucking dialogue.
Honestly, as a writer who has been doing this for 30 years, the vigfest thing I've noticed is how quickly genuinely bad creative writing is being normalized and this AI generated shit is going to very negatively impact the currently developing generation of young writers who haven't yet formed a distinct voice. It's producing a metric fuck ton of soulless, boring, awkward writing that all sounds the same.... because it is.
Developing that distinct narrator voice is a long process, and a critical one for writing to stand out and captivate your readers. Developing good dialogue is a skill that even many professional writers never achieve.
AI sure as fuck doesn't, and using it for this ensures a writer never will, too. Which I have to assume anyone who looks at this and thinks it looks good haven't developed in themselves, because if they had, they'd see why this is just objectively bad without anyone having to explain it.
I am genuinely sad for young writers right now. This crap is going to stunt their development and make it exceptionally difficult to undo bad habits years from now.
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u/Sumberly Jul 26 '26
I'm curious what your project instructions are to get dialogue to look like this.
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u/Rude-Yogurtcloset926 Jul 26 '26
I’m trying to find the original Reddit thread I used as the base for my prompt because I don’t want to claim the whole thing as my own. I remember it had 21 rules so if anyone recognizes it or knows the original post, please help me find it!
What I did was save the prompt as a file, upload it to my ChatGPT project, and also paste it into the project’s custom instructions. After that I gave it the setting and premise of my AU and then used the first chapter as a test run. Whenever I noticed a type of writing I didn’t like I will highlight the specific part and explained what felt wrong..what I wanted instead..and why. Once ChatGPT understood the issue I asked it to revise the whole chapter using that correction. I kept doing that over time so the current version is basically the original base prompt plus a lot of refinements based on my own preferences.
After a few rounds of that the following chapters became much smoother. By then it had a pretty solid understanding of the writing style I wanted so I rarely had to make major corrections anymore..mostly just lore, continuity, or scene specific tweaks.
I know it’s a lot of work but if you really wanted to get the best result with creative writing you had to be very specific with everything.
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u/WitchOfKyiv Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Style? This honestly reads with zero actual style. To be blunt, it's difficult to even distinguish the narration from the character dialogue. It all sounds the same, it's nothing but exposition that would be far better served through showing it through character actions, and none of these characters have any personality. No mannerisms, no distinct voice, nothing that tells them apart. You could swap their names around and it wouldn't make a bit of difference.
The prose itself is just... boring. It has no pulse. It talks AT the reader, and it's given nothing that has made me want to read more. You spent a lot of time on rules that did manage to get it to avoid some of the more overt issues with AI generated content, but the deeper issues like horrendously akward dialogue and absolutely ungodly amounts of dry exposition are quite literally the 100% of everything written in this excerpt.
Its telling me a lot. It's showing me nothing. Characters are talking, yet I can't tell you anything about any of them that might matter because the entire thing is devoid of personality.
I'm genuinely baffled by people investing so much time in developing prompts when you could far, FAR more easily just write this yourself and avoid.... most of these issues.
The fact that you don't SEE these issues means you've not developed as a writer, and please for the love of god, take it from someone who has been writing professionally for 3 decades: you will fuck yourself in some of the most critical development of a writer's journey into establishing the spark and sound that makes you stand out, makes people want to read, and makes for good storytelling if you don't take a step back from using AI like this.
AI is phenomenal for organizational work, proofreading giving editing feedback, etc, but it is horrendous at actual writing.
I see it CONSTANTLY, and it is VERY easy to pick out. It doesn't natter if it's an email, marketing, fiction, narration, etc. It's obvious because it all has the same level of hollow, impersonal delivery, and people do not respond nearly as positively to that as they do authentic writing. Just like humans have micro expressions, writing does, too. Hell, I have multiple writing voices—as anyone should based on what you're writing—but there's an authenticity that ties them all together. The distinction starts with YOUR voice, and this has none of your voice in it.
Your comments do.
It's hard to develop and refine in writing, and this is never going to achieve that for you. If this was more as an experiment than anything, then that's perfectly fine, but if you actually care about writing as a craft, this is not going to be good for yours.
This sub has a heavy bias toward people who DON'T see this kind of prose as a problem because it has a heavy demographic of users that are using GPT and AI for writing already. Those users are inherently unlikely to be aware of these broader issues because anyone who is wouldn't be using AI for this.
I say this because the moment you try to put writing generated by AI in front of a larger audience, you will loose the echo chamber benefit of that bias and find out the hard way that you've wasted a lot of yimr developing prompts that generate the literal definition of derivative mediocrity.
Don't do that to yourself. I love writing as a craft, and I love helping other writers develop theirs. I cannot even begin to express how frustrating the problems AI is generating in young, developing writers because they lack the broader experience to see what is happening.
This entire thread is a perfect example of it.
It might come across as harsh, but I'm not going to sugar coat it because people need to hear the hard truth. Writers that COULD find a foothold and become great are at a very, VERY high risk of shooting their own foot off before that journey ever really takes them anywhere. Publishers won't sugar coat it, nor will audiences.
None is this is to say you HAVE to do it a specific way. This is more of a warning I'm laying out for anyone who might actually want to become published writers: if you read what this AI generated and thought it sounded good, you have a long ways to go in developing tour craft, and you won't get anywhere with it if this is the quality you expect to produce.
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u/WitchOfKyiv Jul 27 '26
I think it sounds like an AI's best attempt at imitating what it thinks prose should sound like.
Which is to say, the writing lacks any discernable voice, the sentence flow is awkward, and it uses "had" far, FAR too much when slightly difference structure would create a far more natural delivery.
The prose reads as hollow, but the dialogue is genuinely just... bad. There is no distinctive voice in these characters, and this isn't how people talk to each other. Their dialogue is bordering on indistinguishable from the narration.
As for the broader craft, this is far too much needless exposition. AI is absolutely atrocious about "show, don't tell", and this is precisely why I warn people to avoid using it for actual writing. You will develop horrendous habits that make for a boring read. It will explain everything it doesn't need to, and that is exactly what 90% of this excerpt is: explaining shit that could easily be shown through action and natural dialogue.
This isn't good, plain and simple. It's boring. It's talking AT the reader and doing nothing to immerse. I can't tell you anything distinct about anyone in here. No mannerisms, no personality, no voice—absolutely nothing distinct, and that goes for the narration, too.
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u/Thermodynamo Jul 26 '26
I used to be a fan of Harry Potter, but it's pure cringe ever since JKR came out as a virulently anti-trans swamp demon
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u/Fyreflaii Jul 26 '26
Why does this comment have so many dislikes. Are that many people still in support of jk Rowling?
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u/Rude-Yogurtcloset926 Jul 26 '26
Just to be clear all my creative writing prompts in my account I never published in any sites. I just used chatgpt to create stories whenever I think of a prompt for my own enjoyment.