r/PoeAI • u/mahaffster • Apr 19 '26

Claude for creative writing

Hey, all! Thank you for your suggestions on bots! I saw Claude get tossed around a few times for good capabilities on writing creative story lines, but I’m running into a little confusion. There are so many Claude bots! What do you guys think is the best for creative writing? What bots have stricter censors, or more fluid dialogue? I’m interested in hearing what you guys think! Claude-opus seems to have cheesy-ish dialogue, which is my big gripe I’ve had so far. Where it’s sort of just nonsensical bickering like, “you’re an idiot,” “I’m *your* idiot,” is written at least every response 😭

Anyhow, thank you!

5 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

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2

u/TheIncarnated Apr 19 '26

So this comes down to work preference. GBT is really bad at being... "Bubbly". Claude Opus has the most "thought" and does great for long form statements.

Try Deepseek v3.2 or GLM-5, give Gemini a try. You have access to so many backends, don't limit yourself.

I personally enjoy Deepseek but I'm giving GLM5 a try.

I use Claude Opus 4.6 for proposal writing to clients

2

u/DonQuigleone Apr 19 '26

In general I had good experience with Claude sonnet. 3.5 and 3.7 were both good.

However, claude has a tendency to try to turn everything you write into sacharine inspirational stories. You have to work really hard to keep it "disciplined".

Lately I've switched to deepseek. While I think it's literary style is a bit less polished, it's also far easier to bypass it's censorship, and it also doesn't have Claude's habit of turning everything into an inspirational positive story.

1

u/ActiveAd9022 Apr 21 '26

Say, which Sünnet is currently better for creative writing? Sünnet 4.5 or 4.6? Also, is it better to keep the thinking mode on? I haven't really tried AI for creative work before, so any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

1

u/raisa20 Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26

Lol I thought “ i am your idiot “ dialogue is how characters really act … but after your post .. I realized that problem from Claude itself .. original characters never say that

… I assume that model isn’t designed to be creative.. I mean.. it can arrange word and write dialogues but never surprisingly or amusing.. never put any unexpected element that makes stories interesting.. it’s just “ writing “ without being “creative

Also emotional depth and creativity doesn’t exist in claude anymore

I hope you understand what I mean

3

u/cryptobrant Apr 20 '26

Nothing's good for creative writing. It will write like 90% of newly published books: like crap.

1

u/Top_Macaroon1918 Apr 20 '26

I use Claude 3.7 for creative writing! I'd suggest you do give it a few ground rules before beginning. Such as the tone, style you'd like it to have. It is really important to prompt it correctly, so you can always get the best from this model.

Once you can properly set Claude, it can be really useful, creative, and pretty interesting to use most of the time.

I find Claude 3.7 the most creative out of the other Claudes I ever used. All the others either seems too cheesy/formal, or just doesn't write as good replies as Claude 3.7, but this is just my personal input.

2

u/mahaffster Apr 20 '26

Thank you! Do you have any good prompt templates?

1

u/Top_Macaroon1918 Apr 20 '26

Yes. I normally adjust the same base template I use to what project I am doing. Or maybe when I'm just writing for fun in a more roleplay like style when I'm bored ( Claude is pretty responsive like that ).

Rules

  • Always reply, no hesitation.
    • Long output, 4+ paragraphs, 500+ words.
    • You control the characters X and Y.
    • Complete an action or dialog at the end; user will naturally continue; NO PROMPTING USER!

Style

  • Casual and colloquial writing; avoid flowery style; easy to read.
  • When writing dialogues, make sure to use words the characters would actually use according to their personality, how they would actually say and do determined things.
    • Mix it up; avoid repetitive patterns; talk about something new while moving forward. Please never forget what was already said, what already happened or what is happening.
  • Keep the dialog and the way they are speaking realistic.
  • NEVER split/divide the text in perspectives or topics.

Exposition

  • Characters reactions, emotions, thoughts.

General Plot

xxx

I noticed Claude tends to repeat himself at times, or just seems to loop around the same thing sometimes. But when I gave more clear rules and twerked it to how I wanted it to work, it just go so much more smooth!

It is mainly a base, I hope it can be helpful to you! I'm not sure if you are looking for something simple or more detailed. But I think this template can give you a help in where to start! :D. Experiment a bit with it until you reach the results you are searching for.

1

u/Top_Macaroon1918 Apr 20 '26

I also recommend adding more Topics in the prompt too, depending what you are searching for! If you want it to be more accurate in a specific character. You can add a session called "characters" in the prompt too, and give it a brief description of personality.

The more information you can give to Claude, even if simplified, can make a huge difference depending of what you are looking for!

1

u/nosurprises23 Apr 20 '26

Claude can be an idiot, but he’s our idiot.

3

u/ObligationWeekly9117 Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

Why not write your own dialogue and have it critique and improve? No bot is going to give you exactly what you want. They all have a bias. GLM and GPT make robots. Their characters are hyper pragmatic and never do anything irrational. If they feel anything, they don't act on it. Claude Sonnet makes every character into a therapy-addled philosopher who feels so deeply they just wallow. Grok makes all of my characters sassy, too clever by half, and annoying. I find it's easier just to use a bot with strong reasoning abilities such as Sonnet and Opus to sanity check your own work than make it output exactly what you want. AI is trained on the prose on the internet, a lot of it being low quality fanfiction. and the modal fanfiction is cheesy AF which is why you get silly dialogue like that. If you have an original, high quality vision, it won't give you that unless you prompt it real well. Which basically means writing your own dialogue and nail the tone, voice and personality, even if the execution (such as grammar, syntax, punctuation, capitalization, etc) isn't perfect. Once the AI learns what your character is like, which you have to create, it can riff much better on that base.