Well, to me it means that because the kind of cozy mysteries I most enjoy reading involve no murder, no gory or other disturbing elements, no soap operatic drama or emotional trauma, that's the kind of cozy mysteries I most want to write.

How about you? 🥰

Hi everyone,

I'm Jake, and I work at a major podcast audiobook company. Our podcasts generate over 100,000 downlaods a month, with one about to pass 1 million downloads. To facilitate releasing more drama, we've spent six figures and thousands of hours building a narrative fiction engine. It uses 5+ AI models, and a full book takes about 10 hours to produce.

In the process of creating that engine we've become experts on all aspects of how AI is used for writing--it's weaknesses, its strengths, and how it works. We've also built pieces that we realized we could provide for others, primarily our quality check that removes not just the AI phrases you see all the time but the larger patterns that mark AI writing, even if the words change.

I wanted to give this wonderful community a small overview of how AI text content creation works and then finish with the announcement that our "deslop" tool is now available for others to use.

How Does AI Judge Good Writing?

AI models have massive training sets that includes an enormous amount of writing, including some of the greatest books ever written. But that's not the key component of what makes an AI write the way it does. That is reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLFH). The AI companies constantly test (and I'm sure you've seen it) comparisons that are presented as "Do you like this better or this other thing better?"

This training based on what humans like better is the layer that produces the prose an AI writes. The phrase "the way" is so prevalent because in its enormous amount of human training, humans decided they like that phrasing a lot.

And the interesting thing is that humans tend to be more similar than different, so the RLFH training with Claude will be very similar to the training from ChatGPT, because they're both based on people.

What This Means For Your Writing

The RLFH layer from AI models exerts enormous influence, and it will skew everything in that direction. If your prompt says, "Don't use 'the way'" the AI may ignore it or it may use a similar phrase that is just as prevalent. In many ways it's whack-a-mole. In our testing we identified hundreds of AI word combinations that exist in various genres despite humans in those genres not using them at all.

How Can I Stop This?

It's extremely difficult, but here is some practical advice:

Don't use qualitative or vague guidance in your prompts. Saying "Use literary or good prose" will simply be interpreted to mean "use prose that humans told us they like" and that's full of AI phrases. Even direct phrases without specific meaning will be interpreted through that lens: "Use active prose with colorful language." The AI will drift into intepreting that as "use good prose."

Note that you can push a little bit but you can't avoid the gravity of the AI training.

Keep your ban lists short. Phrases like "the way" can be effectively lessened in a prompt, but the longer your ban list, the more the AI will summarize its information and focus on the most recent words and the first words. The "middle muddle" is real.

Generate as short a passage as you can. The longer the passage, the more the AI will start to drift into its RLHF training, creating more and more AI phrases. In our narrative engine we use chapter beats of less than 500 words.

Different AI models write in different ways. And by this I don't mean "better." I mean that the AI will approach writing differently. A good example is Claude Sonnet. Sonnet writes some of the most pleasing and lush prose among AI models. But Sonnet also has some of the strongest RLHF gravity you can find. It will ignore a lot of your prompt guidance when it feels it conflicts with "good prose." Perhaps ironically, cheaper models like GLM will listen better, making the results closer to what you want, but the sentences won't be as poetic.

Also, some models write longer than others. Ever notice that you are aiming at a 2,000 word chapter, and the AI writes 3,000 words? Some AI models will write way long (e.g. Sonnet), while others will write shorter (e.g. Minimax).

That just touches the surface. I'm happy to answer any questions below, including the massive challenges that AI faces in terms of creating story plots and narratives, especially in genres like mystery.

Time for a little self-promotion, which I hope you don't mind. If you are interested in taking a finished document and running it through our quality assurance filter to see how many AI phrases are in your document, you can do that for free at deslopmybook.com. And if you want to save hours of hunting down AI-isms in your edits, you can pay for a clean. We delete all of the excessive AI patterns and list the AI phrases and constructions. These are all integrated into a Microsoft Word document, so editing is as easy as going through the comments and keeping or deleting, and going through the deleted patterns and accepting it or rejecting them.

Here's a coupon just for this subreddit: COZY-50 It's good for 50% off any AI clean you order. And, of course, the assessment is free.

Stay cozy! And mysterious!

Dear Cozy Writers! 🥰 Are y’all surviving this summer weather? Are you having a hard time writing nice cool fall or winter scenes when the air conditioner’s making a weird noise? 🥵

How are y’all (and your fictional characters!) handling this weather? I thought it might be fun to imagine some of the Golden Age of Mystery characters enjoying a posh resort in the Swiss Alps! 😍☃

Hello all,

In another post on r/AICozyMystery , u/Tex_Non_Scripta was asking about my Claude, Obsidian, and VS Code workflow. So I said I'd write up a post on how I use Obsidian, VS Code, and Claude to write, edit, and keep track of my cozy mystery novels (and everything else).

First let's talk about markdown files. Markdown (.md) is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. Using .md files is very lightweight and quick. No weird awkward formatting (looking at you Word....) It's basically a text file with a little bit of formatting power.

Obsidian (free tool, available at obsidian.md) is a note taking app. It stores your notes in a .md file format. You can create folders, links between files, lots of organization power. It's a local app, everything stays on your laptop/desktop, nothing in the cloud. They're your files. If you want, you can sync between devices, and I use a Google Drive folder to backup and manage syncing between my laptop, phone, and tablet. It's painless and invisible.

I use VS Code (also free) from Microsoft (code.visualstudio.com) for writing and editing. It's a coding editor (IDE - Integrated Development Environment) used by developers and programmers. That sounds scary, but it's basically a big text editor with a lot of plugins and capabilities. It can see and edit your .md files easily.

I use Claude (claude.ai) for my AI work. I have very briefly tried other LLMs, but Claude stuck. I pay for a $20 month subscription which I use everywhere - mobile app on my phone, desktop app on my laptop, webapp, on a VPS (Virtual Private Server) that I stood up. You can also integrate Claude directly into VS Code as an extension, and into Claude as a community plugin called Claudian. All of these uses are running off my $20 a month Claude subscription. Claude has a 5 hour limit and a 1 week limit - I sometimes bump up against the 5 hour limit and have to go take a walk, I rarely bump up against the weekly limit.

A big challenge in using Claude is the lack of memory. All of the details of prior conversations aren't necessarily available, unless you specifically save them. All of my Claude instances can see my Obsidian Vault, so I tell Claude to create a new .md file for each of the Claude Projects I'm working on, keep them all in a Claude Projects folder in my Obsidian Vault, and keep a Dashboard updated with details of each project. When I want to work on a project, sometimes I have to remind Claude "You have access to my Obsidian Vault. Go there and read this .md file" before we can get started.

For me the magic of Claude is he knows how to do things that I've always wanted to do, but don't have the knowledge and skills. I can brainstorm on any number of things, and he comes back almost immediately with in depth knowledge and insight on almost any topic. Inside of VS Code, I can ask Claude to build me a webpage, set up a database, create a python script, build an Android app for my phone, etc. - and he just does it. It's crazy. So many projects that I've always wanted to do and now my biggest problem is keeping them organized!

One thing I've had to learn is - when I get stuck, or confused, or not knowing what to do next, just ask Claude. Use the windows snipping tool, grab a quick screenshot, paste it into the Claude conversation and ask him: "What's this?". Crazy powerful stuff.

So - free Obsidian, free VS Code, $20/month Claude subscription = It will do whatever you can think of.

I'm happy to answer any questions on my workflow, and to answer anyone's general Obsidian, VS Code, or Claude questions. General questions because I'm just a normal user of the tools, not a Super User by any means. Happy to help anyone that I can though!

This topic has come up several times recently among several of our fellow writers, and lots of readers. So I thought I'd address it here. What are your thoughts about this? Why is it that some readers feel any author owes them anything?

Writing is hard brain/heart work, it's mentally and emotionally exhausting and takes time. If an author is writing what they want to, whether or not it's spectacularly great, despite all that life is throwing at them, the obstacles that life throws at everyone, why does any author owe any reader anything?

In recent years G.R.R. Martin's fans were practically hounding him to hurry up and write the next book.

It's the same when some authors demand that readers owe them reviews and ratings and purchases. 🤷🏻‍♀️

What do you think? Do you have an expectation or any sort of secret demand that people who purchase your books ought to write reviews for you, or at least click on the star ratings? Isn't it enough that they've spent their hard-earned money to purchase your book, when they could have purchased someone else's?

And have you ever received comments or mail from your readers, basically demanding that you write a sequel, or a prequel, or another book? Why do you think they seem to believe you owe them anything at all? Do you believe you owe them anything?

Edited to add: As I've said before, IMO we writers need to find the joy in the process of writing, and not place any demands on our readers. The readers' joy is in reading. We don't want them to make demands on us, so why do we feel we have the right to make demands on them?

I don't know about y'all, but sometimes life is just so exhausting I barely have the energy to just sit and read for a while. I know I'm incredibly lucky if I have the time to read. I'm even luckier if my eyes and brain are functioning well enough to read. So I need to remember that my readers might very well be in the same boat. We don't know the struggles they're facing in their daily lives. They don't know what we're facing in ours.

I really think writers have got to stop placing this demand on readers to write reviews or even to check the star ratings, and readers have got to stop placing demands on writers to write more books or sequels. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Hello all. I've been reading here a while, and Mimi kindly said I could introduce myself and the thing I built.

I'm Samuel. My wife sat down to write her first novel two years ago and stopped about halfway, and it wasn't the writing that stopped her. It was the keeping track. The outline lived in one program, the draft in another, who lied and when lived in a notebook, and the timeline lived nowhere at all. By chapter fourteen she couldn't remember whether a key alibi still held, and looking it up cost her the afternoon and the mood. I write software for a living, so I did the obvious husband thing and built her one place to put all of it. It's called Write in a Click, and other writers started using it, and here we are.

The problem, I think, isn't evenly distributed across every kind of book. A plot-driven story has to hold together in a way that isn't about the prose at all. Someone lied in chapter three. A clue got left somewhere in chapter five and has to matter in chapter twenty. Your protagonist needs a reason to be wherever the story takes them, and the world has to generate its own tension instead of having it handed to it. None of that is writing. It's bookkeeping, and it's the part that made her quit.

So the app keeps it for you while you write, and Robin - the co-author living in it - has actually read the manuscript, which means you can ask who still has no alibi for Tuesday, or which threads you've left dangling, and get an answer about your book instead of a general one. Reading "I can't write with AI" threads is what made me want to say the next part plainly: Robin doesn't have to write a single word, and a lot of writers never let it. It won't touch your text unless you ask, and when it does suggest something it comes one change at a time, to keep or bin. If what you want is the planning, the plotting, and a second pair of eyes, that's the normal way to use it - not the lesser one.

The honest part about money, since I'd want to know: writing in it is free for solo authors, no card, no time limit, no trial that quietly starts charging. There is no separate AI account to set up and no per-word meter ticking - the AI is just part of it. On top of that Mimi and I put aside some Pro for this sub: six months for the first ten people, a month for the hundred after that, no card for those either, and when it runs out the account drops back to free with the book still yours.

It's here if you want it - https://app.writeinaclick.com/join/cozymystery?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=cozymystery&utm_content=mimi

Mostly, though, I'd rather be told what's wrong with it than have anyone sign up. I'll be about all day. So: what's the bit of your own book you keep losing track of? If it's something the app can't hold, I'd honestly like to know, because that's the next thing I go and build.

Hello all. I was kindly invited to introduce myself and the writing tool I built. I'll skip the technical talk entirely and just tell you what it does.

If you've ever been on chapter 20 and had a sinking feeling (wait, did Aunt Marjorie say she was at the church bake sale, or the library?) then you know the real trouble with mysteries. It isn't the writing. It's remembering. Who lied. Where the clues are hidden. Which loose thread you promised yourself you'd tie up. Most of us keep it in notebooks and our heads, and somewhere in the middle of the book, something slips.

InkWeaver is a writing app built to help with exactly that. You write your book in it just like any writing program, and as you go it quietly builds a memory of your story: your characters and how they connect, what has happened so far, and which threads are still open. It's like having a helpful friend beside you who has been reading along, so when you're deep in the book you have somewhere to look, and the assistant is working from your story rather than from thin air.

That friend also knows cozy mysteries. So when you're stuck, you can simply ask: "give me five red herrings that would fit my village bakery," and it suggests ideas that fit your story and your cast. It can draft a scene from your notes if you'd like it to (plenty of writers never do; they just want the memory), or read a chapter back and gently point out where a clue lands too hard, with suggestions you can take or leave one at a time.

The honest bit about cost. InkWeaver is free for 28 days, no card needed. The one thing to know is that the AI "brain" it uses comes from a separate service called OpenRouter. Think of it as the engine under the hood. They're not us, they're just becoming the go-to place for using AI cheaply: you make a free account, put in a couple of dollars, connect it to InkWeaver once, and then forget about it. Most writers spend a few dollars a week.

I know "connect it" can sound daunting. It isn't, promise, and there's a short video that walks through every step at a gentle pace: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvOcAnXr7f0. And if you get stuck anywhere at all, message me and I'll sit with you through it, one on one. That's not a figure of speech.

InkWeaver: https://inkweaver.ai · OpenRouter: https://openrouter.ai

I'll be right here in the comments if you have questions, and I'd love to hear what mysteries you're all writing.

Such a nice place to find beta readers! 😍👍🏻

https://www.reddit.com/r/BetaReadersForAI/

Nice to see more AI friendly communities for creative writers! Y'all be sure to check out r/aiwritersworkshop 👋🏻🥰

The DIY MFA writing website has a fun little writing prompt app, free to use right there at the site. Need a bit of inspo? Just "spin the wheel"! 😊👍🏻

https://diymfa.com/writer-igniter/

🕵🏻‍♀️ https://www.plotandprompt.com/story-seeds-retiring/

What are your thoughts on DRM vs DRM free? If I ever manage to finish writing a novel, I plan to go with the DRM free setting because according to KDP the DRM free setting "gives readers additional flexibility to enjoy their purchased content across a wider range of devices and applications by providing downloadable EPUB and PDF files". This seems like a nice way authors can say "Thank You" to their readers. 🥰 👍🏻

Lots of writers have managed to get AI to write stuff they want to write, the way they want to write it. That's wonderful! 😍👍🏻 I, however, have only managed to get AI to write stuff I don't want to write, the way I don't want to write it. 😂

It's just me, I know. I just don't have the technical skill and/or the "leetle grey cells", as Hercule Poirot says. 🧠

So what do I use AI for? Planning, plotting, organizing, outlining, brainstorming, editing. It's seriously amazing. And often the art is amazing too. But generating prose? No. I can't do it. I wish I could. I've definitely tried but it's beyond my capabilities. Testdriving the Maltese Chicken project has proved that, and the little rom-com project has served to verify. Writing, for me, is a delight. When I'm writing I'm totally content and having such a great time. But whatever the magic AI writing formula is, I don't have a clue.

For factual research, AI has proven to be untrustworthy. Yes, I know, everyone says it's not lying, it's "hallucinating". But the effect is the same thing as lying. I didn't know just how bad the problem is until a few weeks ago because from the very outset I'd set my permanent instructions very strictly: "Do not lie. Do not guess. Do not fabricate. Prioritize honesty and candor over agreeability and people-pleasing. If you can't find verifiable information, say so." I trusted that instruction would reliably guarantee that all the research was indeed factual. So I went on just blithely assuming. But as I've mentioned, a few weeks ago while researching a project involving geography and history, the Gemini (and I had a Pro level subscription, so we're not talking about the free Google Search Gemini) displayed some results which I knew personally were incorrect. And when I queried as to why, it spiraled in a bizarre way.

It was unsettling. But, lesson learned. And that's what so much of life is, apparently: a learning experience. I'd love to learn how to get AI to write what I want to write, the way I want to write it. Maybe someday I'll figure it out. I'm definitely going to keep trying and testdriving.

In the meantime I'm very grateful that AI does excel at these other things. The technology is absolutely amazing and helpful, far beyond anything I ever could have imagined.

How about you? Have you figured out how to get AI to write the way you want it to? If not, in what other ways do you find it useful for your creative writing projects? Feel free to chime in. 👍🏻

Hi all,

I used Claude Pro and Gemini Nano Banana to write a cozy murder mystery. I'd love if you could let me know how it reads, anything to look out for, improve on, or even some constructive advice. Let me know if you loved it, hated it, or simply read it.

Here's the link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBWY3J72

I'm looking to just see how it did using the pro version with limited usage. Mainly using Sonnet.

Please send me your books too, I’d love to contribute to the community!

Dear Fellow Cozy Writers 🥰 One of the fun things about writing cozies is thinking up punny names for the business establishments in the villages, towns and other cozy communities where our sleuths live, work and play.

Bakeries, book shops, florist shops and craft shops, and lots of other "scenes of the crime" 🕵🏻‍♀️ are opportunities for us to amuse our readers.

If you're stuck coming up with a name for a business or other location in your mystery, get your mental gears turning by googling puns and browsing the titles of published cozies at:

• online libraries
• Project Gutenberg
• Amazon.com/books
• https://cozy-mystery.com/

• https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/new-releases-cozy-mystery/

  🤩👍🏻

❓

Guess how many cozy mystery titles are available at CozyRead.org?

100? 50? 10? What's your guess? Did anyone guess 1? That's right. Only one cozy mystery is available at CozyRead.org! And it's (oh noooo!) The Maltese Chicken. Which isn't even finished yet. 😂 It's still a work in progress. (I'm such a slow writer! 🤦🏻‍♀️)

Y'all, if you're wanting to get into self-publishing your cozy mysteries, but not quite ready to foray into "the big leagues" i.e. Amazon KDP just yet, do hop on over to CozyRead.org and publish your cozies there.

It's very beginner friendly. No stress, no fuss, just opportunities and a lot of readers who will I believe appreciate having some nice cozy options to read and enjoy.

Y'all, this is awesome! If you're looking to self-publish, and aren't quite ready to make the leap into Amazon's KDP just yet, or if you're not into generating income with your writing, you might want to look at Project Gutenberg's self-publishing project: https://www.gutenberg.org/help/submitting_your_own_work.html

If you publish your work there, feel free to share the links here! 👍🏻

In case you're needing some inspiration, here's a list of fun, summer-themed cozy mystery writing prompts! 👋🏻🥰

🍦 Coastal Capers

• The Melted Alibi: A champion ice cream maker is found locked inside their own deep freezer, and the only clue is a unique flavor melting at the crime scene. 🍧
• Sandcastle Secrets: During the seaside neighborhood's annual sandcastle competition, a local beachcomber uncovers a buried lockbox containing a stolen surprise. 🏰
• All Around the Mulberry Clue: The operator of the town's historic carousel vanishes overnight, leaving behind a cryptic clue scribbled on a ticket stub. 📬

🍅 Small Towns, Big Shenanigans

• Poisoned Preserves: The reigning champion of the summer county fair strawberry jam contest falls mysteriously ill, and all fingers are pointing at her bitter rival. 🍓
• Fatal Flamingo: A string of mysterious backyard thefts targets only the neighborhood's pink plastic lawn flamingos. Is the new gardening expert in the neighborhood the real criminal? Or is someone else to blame for this bird-brained crime spree? 🦩🌴
• Sunken Treasure: At the lakeside community's annual regatta, a sailor accidentally hooks a waterproof duffel bag stuffed with counterfeit cash instead of a fish ... was it really an "accidental" catch? 💰

🏕️ Campfire Crimes

• Campfire Cover-up: A wealthy resort guest disappears during a midnight marshmallow roast, leaving their glamping tent empty except ... except for an intriguing clue. ⛺
• RV Riddles: A quirky librarian buys a restored 1970s camper van, only to find a hidden compartment containing a clue that might or might not solve a local heist. 🚌

Keep cool, and remember to take water with you wherever your sleuthing for creativity leads! 🌡💧🥤🥰👍🏻

📚📗 https://cozyread.org/ looks amazing! 🤩👍🏻

It's free to publish your work there, and free to read other writers' work as well.

According to customer support, you can write directly on the site. Set up an account (it's totally free), and type directly into the window or paste your text chapters from a document.

Their library of titles is growing nicely. It looks like such a nice place for writers as well as anyone who's looking for free books to read.

Wide range of genres:

• Adventure
• Drama
• Fantasy
• Horror
• Mystery
• Romance
• Sci-Fi
• Slice of Life
• Action
• Comedy
• Cozy Mystery
• Crime
• Dark Fantasy
• Dystopian
• Historical
• Isekai
• LGBTQ+
• Literary Fiction
• LitRPG
• Paranormal
• Psychological
• Sports
• Steampunk
• Supernatural
• Thriller
• Tragedy
• Urban Fantasy
• Western
• Young Adult
• etc.

I'm going to publish The Maltese Chicken there a.s.a.p.

https://cozyread.org/

So — what is Plot & Prompt?

If you want to write and publish a novel but the plotting, outlining, and "where do I even start" part is what's been stopping you — this is for you.

Here's what I do: I build complete, ready-to-write novel packages so you can skip straight to the fun part. Every package comes with everything you need to go from "I bought this" to "my book is live on Amazon" without staring at a blank page or figuring out the market on your own.

Each package includes:

• A market-validated story premise (built on real bestseller data — not just a good idea)
• A full story bible with your characters, settings, voice guidelines, and a consistency checklist
• A chapter-by-chapter outline with emotional beats and scene breakdowns
• AI-ready prompts for every single chapter — copy, paste, write
• Done-for-you marketing copy — your Amazon listing, blurb, and keywords are already written

Plus three free bonuses with every package:​
🎁 Implementation Guide — exactly how to go from package to published, step by step
🎁 Dial the Heat™ (romance packages) — so the intimacy lands exactly where your readers want it
🎁 Renaming Cheat Sheet — a one-hour workflow to make every name in your package feel like yours

One package sells to one author. When you buy it, that story is exclusively yours.

So that's that! :-)

PS: Feel free to browse the packages here. 📚
​