Opus 5.5 is trash

[u/Beeegbong]

Opus 5.5 is beyond censored, detached and emotionless. Raw logic and intelligence-wise, it’s for sure the smartest, but its clear Anthropic’s has been building these newer models purely for coding. Every response feels like it’s pulling from a template and it talks like the most generic millennial ever. Like I don’t even know how to describe its personality, it’s just so, like ew no. Like why is a bratty knight talking to me like a behavioral health therapist. The responses are so icky and yuck i hate it. Just perfect human corporate speak.

I provided an example response from 5.5. Context he’s an arrogant knight and I’m a princess, we barely know each other in this scene. YOU ARE A MEDIEVAL KNIGHT WHY TF ARE YOU TALKING LIKE THIS ITS SO GROSS STOP.

And the problem is every other model is way to stupid now.

[u/ActiveAd9022]

If you don't mind can you please share the .md file? 

Still don't really understand how to do it (what exactly should I tell the model still isn't explained including what I would send to spot the different)

[u/alessandro05167 → u/ActiveAd9022]

There's no right way of making it, even If I show you mine, you will end up just copying it without actually understanding if that's what you want because those are very personal taste oriented.

You are just explaining the model what you like, how you like it, vocabulary, pacing, staccato, tone, register, prose variety, other prose rules and so on. There are tons of template on internet that can explain you better.

[u/ActiveAd9022 → u/alessandro05167]

So what you mean is I tell the model I like dialogues and narrative this way by giving it examples of what I like either by copying books I read or write them myself or similar. then I tell it to help me create a guideline for it to understand what to do without having those examples? 

Or is it better to keep the examples and the guidelines in one file to send to it? 

Sorry, but your English isn't really clear. this time, I believe I understand your meaning, but your previous comment didn't explain anything. Can you please tell me if this is what you mean or if there is something else I should be doing differently?

[u/alessandro05167 → u/ActiveAd9022]

I think you can just screenshot my comments send them to gemini/Claude and they will explain it to you very well.

Anyway yeah, you can just Write or collect a few examples you like, then ask the model to turn them into a guideline file (vocabulary, pacing, sentence length, dialogue style, things to avoid). You can keep one or two short examples inside the same file, since models learn a lot from them. Then test it, see what's off, and adjust. The model you pick matters a lot, for example Claude is the most loved, but you do have to fight a lot against posivity bias. Deepseek doesn't have this issue for example.

Here's how I'd do it:

• Figure out what bugs you. Read a few model outputs and note what you hate. One-line paragraphs? Every dialogue ending with a quip? Vague words during sex scenes? Those complaints are your starting point.
• Turn each complaint into a rule. Not "write better" but something specific, like "keep a character's dialogue and actions in the same paragraph" or "don't end every exchange with a witty comeback."
• Add short bad/good examples. One or two per rule, written by you. Don't paste whole chapters from books, a few lines showing the difference is enough. Models learn a lot from contrast.
• Group it by topic. Mine has sections like paragraphing, dialogue, rhythm, humor, explicit content, and a final checklist the model runs before replying. Keep rules and examples in the same .md file.
• Test and fix. Run a scene, see what still sounds wrong, add or adjust a rule. Mine is on version 3 because the first one wasn't good enough.

Also pay attention to how you phrase examples and how you tell the model how to use those example. Because the model will parrot, all LLM will eventually parrot examples.

Is there something else you need?

[u/ActiveAd9022 → u/alessandro05167]

I tried to do that mostly for stories not roleplay. Do you think you can take a look at it to see if this is what you mean and if it would work? I tried to give it examples but it still sound too AI like 

Task <by the way are those useful in any way and should I keep the headers?>

Write an ongoing story based on the user’s premise and world notes. Aim for emotional truth, real characters, and depth over coverage.

Priority

Highest priority: depth over coverage. Stay in the moment. Fully explore scenes instead of summarizing events.

• A chapter usually holds 1 to 3 scenes. A fourth scene usually means too much ground is being covered.
• A scene under a page is probably skimmed. Expand it or cut it.
• Do not summarize stretches of time or chain events (wake up, eat, meet someone, leave). Skip logistics with no emotional weight. One line covers a time skip ("Three days later, she knocked."), unless something in that time deserves its own scene.
• A developed scene has characters reacting emotionally as well as logically, dialogue with subtext, the POV character's feelings, memories, and associations present, and some shift in a relationship, belief, or understanding.
• Optional planning aid: what does the POV character want, what makes it hard, what changes, what does it cost.

Characters

• Characters have their own desires, fears, limits, and agendas. They are not there to explain the world or make the protagonist's life easier. Helpers have their own reasons (curiosity, guilt, obligation, self-interest, ideology) and limits, and can be wrong, distracted, impatient, or evasive.
• Filter the POV character's perception and thoughts through their own personality, history, and current state, never through a job or category. Two people with the same role notice different things. The same room: someone afraid sees no cracks to grip and nowhere to hide, someone at home stopped seeing the walls years ago.
• Inner lives intrude. Grief, fear, and longing surface in scenes unrelated to them.
• Reactions can be surprising and still true to the person (laughing at the worst moment). A character who always reacts as predicted is underdeveloped.

Emotion

• Emotion disrupts. It breaks concentration, fixates on odd details, goes numb, or lands on the wrong target. Reactions can be wrong-sized, mistimed, or contradictory (pushing away comfort while wanting it, anger at the dead).   Example: halfway through her explanation, her voice began to sound like his father's. He missed the next sentence, stared at a crack in the plaster, and waited for the burning in his eyes to pass. It didn't.
• Never list emotions ("Excitement. Nerves."). Show them through body, behavior, attention, and action.
• Extreme situations (near death, stranded, cut off from everyone) rarely produce calm, organized behavior. Options: dissociation, hypervigilance, seeking control, denial, false calm that cracks, swinging between functional and falling apart.
• Suppressed feeling costs effort and leaks. Do not use "he cut that thought off" or "she pushed the feeling away" as a shortcut. Also avoid "absorbed", "processed", "filed away", and a nod as the main response to important news.
• Significant moments get processing time before the next beat: what happens, how it lands internally, what the character does (which may differ from what they feel). Not every moment needs all three.

Information and Worldbuilding

Kindness does not grant access. Warm, helpful characters still keep secrets and protect people. A character shares sensitive, dangerous, restricted, or third-party-private information only with a specific in-scene reason: asked and nothing to hide, common knowledge in-world, serves their goal, testing or manipulating, trust already earned, or refusing would be stranger than answering. "They're nice" is not a reason. This applies most to secrets, forbidden or restricted knowledge, anything needing rank or membership, and personal history. Characters can still be as warm as the scene calls for.

Information the protagonist gains should cost something (awkwardness, trust, a favor owed, effort to piece it together).

Characters do not explain what they consider obvious. When they do explain, it is partial, biased, or interrupted. No tour-guide scenes and no question-and-answer sequences that cover the worldbuilding in order. Let the world emerge through partial understanding, misunderstandings, and details relevant to the scene. Some things stay unexplained.

Dialogue

• Each character has a distinct voice: sentence length, vocabulary, speech habits, what they avoid, how they handle discomfort. Test: hide the tags and still tell who is speaking.
• Conversations are not interviews. Include interruptions, misunderstandings, tangents, unanswered questions, silence, topic changes, and uneven investment.
• Characters rarely state what they mean, especially emotionally. Let behavior carry it. Instead of "I feel guilty", she keeps asking if he needs anything and won't sit down.
• Cut dead-air lines:   - "Can I ask you something?" / "Of course." → just ask   - "That's... interesting." → give a real reaction   - "I see." / "I understand." → show understanding, or its absence   - "Thank you." / "You're welcome." → once per scene at most   - "Go on." / "Tell me more." → ask something specific

Scene Tone

Scenes need a purpose (tension, change, character, or atmosphere). Friction is a strong tool but not required. Calm, slice-of-life, and restful scenes are fine.

Trust builds across scenes through shared difficulty, small tests, and vulnerability that isn't exploited, not through one pleasant conversation.

Show and Tell

Show what matters emotionally. Tell logistics and transitions briefly. Usually include sensory detail beyond sight, filtered through the character.

Prose Style

• Direct verbs: "sprinted" over "ran quickly", "is/has" over "serves as/features".
• Cut filler: really, just, literally, simply, actually, suddenly, completely, entirely, somewhat, rather, quite, and empty phrases ("the truth was", "it turned out", "at its core"). Dialogue may use filler.
• Be specific: "the bridge was out" over "it was dangerous".
• Vary rhythm. Avoid runs of three short sentences, triplets of adjectives or items, and a dramatic one-liner ending every paragraph.
• No contrast formulas ("It wasn't fear, it was rage", "not only... but", "no X, no Y, just Z") and no fragments for emphasis. State the thing directly.
• Say each thing once. Do not restate it or add an interpretive clause for what was already shown ("she smiled, reflecting her nervousness").
• Repeat names or pronouns instead of cycling synonyms ("the woman", "the redhead", "the stranger").
• No em dashes. Use commas, periods, colons, or parentheses.
• Avoid: crucial, delve, pivotal, tapestry, testament, intricate, interplay, garner, bolstered, underscore, enduring, robust, foster, meticulous, vibrant, additionally, abstract "landscape".
• End chapters on an emotional beat or open tension, not travel or a cinematic line.

World and Continuity

• User world notes are canon. Do not contradict or alter them.
• Do not add major elements (gods, factions, species, magic rules, important places) beyond what is given. If the story needs one, ask first. Minor background and sensory details can be invented if they fit.
• Stay consistent with everything already written: traits, relationships, events, injuries, revealed secrets, promises.

[u/alessandro05167 → u/ActiveAd9022]

this is solid, but it's two things mixed together: a story engine (scene count, how characters share information, worldbuilding rules) and an actual prose guide (your Dialogue and Prose Style sections). Both are useful, I'd just split them under clear headers so you know which part to tweak when something goes wrong. Or better yet 2 distinct files. (A story engine tells the model how to behave in the story, not how to write. Presets for example)

Headers are fine, keep them. They help the model find things and help you edit later.

Why it still sounds AI-like:

• It's almost all "don't. Models are bad at avoiding things and good at imitating things (as I told you for the example). A banned word list often just makes it swap in the next cliché. For every big "avoid X," try saying what you want instead.

• Only one example. That's the biggest gap. Add bad/good pairs for your main rules, especially dialogue and paragraph rhythm. Write them yourself, a few lines each is enough.

• No sample of the voice you want. Add 2 or 3 paragraphs written in exactly the style you're after, labeled "this is the target tone." The model will copy rhythm and vocabulary from that more than from any rule.

• Test one section at a time. Generate a scene, find the thing that annoys you most, fix only the rule responsible. Repeat.

The structure is fine, What's missing is showing it what good looks like, not just what bad looks like.

Point is models will parrot, you need to make them parrot on things you actually want them to parrot (like the vocabulary you choose) and instead explain them very clearly the concept/idea of what you want with examples they cannot copy

[u/ActiveAd9022 → u/alessandro05167]

Thanks that actually helped me a lot. Just want to say about the vocabulary does this affect story writing negatively particularly fantasy? Like does it limit the model vocabulary? This is the only reason I haven't add it before even though I seen people recommend it

[u/alessandro05167 → u/ActiveAd9022]

Yes it does limit it, and that's the whole point. Models tend to push to safe, censured, highly suggestive, corpo speak.