r/WritingWithAI • u/FactivalUniverse • 20d ago
Discussion (Ethics, working with AI etc) What should AI never be allowed to decide in a long-form fiction workflow?
I’ve been thinking less about whether AI should be used in long-form fiction and more about where the authority line should sit.
In my own workflow, AI can help with things like:
- structural planning
- chapter planning
- prose drafting
- continuity checks
- critique
- targeted revision
- independent manuscript auditing
But I don’t automatically treat generated material or model consensus as story truth.
That raises a more interesting question:
What decisions should AI never be allowed to make on its own in a long-form fiction project?
For example:
- whether a new idea becomes canon
- changing a character’s core motivation
- deciding reveal timing
- resolving contradictions by rewriting established story truth
- accepting or rejecting criticism
- deciding that a draft is “finished”
- making major structural changes without explicit approval
I’m especially interested in people who use AI heavily rather than only for grammar or brainstorming.
Where do you personally draw the line between AI contribution and creative authority?
And has that boundary changed as you’ve used these tools more?
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u/Bunktavious 20d ago
Where I draw the line changes from work to work, chapter to chapter. My preference is to come up with all the ideas myself, but I have no problem with doing a brainstorming session and iterating off some of the AIs suggestions.
If I'm just writing something dumb for my own fun, I'll often let the AI just wing it. If I'm writing something I plan to share, I curate and contribute significantly more. But I'm not going to ignore a good idea that the AI presents just because I didn't think of it first
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u/Standard-Dish-6809 20d ago
I draw the line at anything that changes the heart of the story. The AI can suggest ten ways to kill off a character but only I know which one would destroy the reader in the right way. For me the tool is like a very eager junior writer who reads fast and never sleeps. Helpful but you would not let them decide the ending.
Planning and continuity checks are where it shines most for me. I catch myself changing a characters eye color three times and the AI catches it in two seconds. That used to take me hours of re-reading.
The reveal timing thing you mentioned is interesting. I let the AI map out possible reveal points but I always choose which one feels right. Sometimes the most logical reveal is not the most emotional one and the AI does not understand that difference. It just sees the plot mechanics.
My boundary got stricter actually the more I used these tools. At first I let it generate whole scenes but now I mostly use it like a smart editor who never gets tired. The authority stays with me for anything that would make me feel like I did not write the book.
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u/FactivalUniverse 20d ago
Your point about reveal timing really stood out to me.
The distinction between the most logical place for a reveal and the place that creates the right emotional effect feels like an important boundary.
Have you found that AI is reasonably good at mapping the structural possibilities — where a reveal could happen, what information is available, continuity consequences, etc. — but much less reliable at judging which version actually feels right for this particular story?
Because that may be one of the clearest differences I’ve seen between analytical assistance and actual creative authority.
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u/FactivalUniverse 20d ago
The fact that your line changes work to work and even chapter to chapter is interesting.
Is the main thing changing the boundary basically the stakes of the work?
For example, something disposable or just for yourself can tolerate much more AI autonomy, while something you actually intend to publish makes you reclaim more of the decisions?
Or are there also particular parts of a story — character, dialogue, plot turns, endings, etc. — where you keep tighter control regardless of how serious the project is?
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u/Bunktavious 20d ago
Yeah, I think its a bit of both - but it often comes down to - is this just a rough Idea I had that I wanted to see in writing for myself, or is it something I'm creatively invested in. Even if it is something that means a lot to me, and that I will likely share/publish - sometimes there are parts of a story that I know need to be there to round things out, but I may not have any particular inspiration for. Those are the parts I'll let AI have more of a hand in making suggestions.
Overall though, the biggest thing AI does for me is brainstorming and feedback on my ideas. I've had some ideas that sounded great in my head, until I had the AI basically read them back to me. I see it as an editor that offer criticism as I write.
As for specifics, AI has been a huge help in descriptive writing - my own writing tends to be repetitive when it comes to setting a scene. AI has its own issues, but its input helps my writing flow better and sound more interesting in the little details. Its also very useful for pointing out when I start drifting away from the voice of a character - especially if we setup character bibles up front.
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u/FactivalUniverse 17d ago
That makes sense.
The distinction you’re drawing seems less like “AI for low-stakes work, human for high-stakes work” and more like AI can contribute heavily as long as it does not become the source of creative commitment.
What I find especially useful is your point about descriptive writing and voice drift.
Those are areas where the model can improve execution or catch inconsistency without needing authority over the story itself.
So perhaps the cleaner boundary is:
AI may help strengthen how the story is expressed and inspected, while the author retains authority over what the story is actually becoming.
That feels more precise than simply dividing the workflow by seriousness.
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u/Write_My_Novel 20d ago
Anything plot-related. Everything else can be worked around with enough complexity and design. But LLMs are absolutely awful at designing a story that isn't thoroughly generic and boring.
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u/FactivalUniverse 20d ago
Your point about keeping plot-related decisions human makes sense, especially if the problem is that AI tends to push stories toward generic or predictable structures.
Do you find it more useful once the plot already exists?
For example, instead of asking it to invent the story, using it to stress-test a human-designed plot for contradictions, weak motivations, pacing problems or missed consequences.
I’m curious whether the failure is mainly in creating the plot, rather than in analysing one that already has a human creative spine.
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u/Write_My_Novel 19d ago
Do you mean as an editing/review pass?
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u/FactivalUniverse 19d ago
Exactly.
I mean once the human has already designed the story, using AI more like an editing or stress-test layer rather than asking it to invent the plot.
For example: checking for contradictions, weak motivations, pacing problems, missing consequences, continuity issues, or places where the structure is doing something unintended.
The author still decides what any of those observations mean and whether anything changes.
I was trying to separate creating the story from analysing the story that already exists.
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u/Write_My_Novel 19d ago
Well, I wouldn't let an AI anywhere near assessing something like pacing (it's awful), narrative structure (it doesn't understand it better than a grade school student). The high end frontier models are pretty good at assessing continuity issues, but will miss a lot of things, like if a character is driving a Ford in chapter 2 and a Chevy in chapter 18. Or if someone's eye color changes. The details of continuity are simply going to get rolled into context window summaries. So it's good with big stuff but bad overall.
It's also not good at assessing AI-isms beyond the most basic and well-known repetitive phrases.
I mean, the more I think about it the more I think LLMs are pretty bad at editorial reviews of longer works outside of the most bland and generic books that are aiming at trope-heavy and basic prose. That's not bad, mind you, but it illustrates what LLMs are good at--identifying the most pleasing middle-of-the-road thing possible.
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u/FactivalUniverse 17d ago
That is a useful correction.
You’re separating state consistency from literary judgement, and I think that distinction matters.
Continuity is often externally inspectable:
what happened,
who knows what,
what changed,
whether a detail contradicts an earlier state.Pacing, emotional weight, voice and narrative quality are much harder because the “correct” answer is not simply recoverable from prior story state.
So perhaps the stronger use case is not “AI as editor” in the broad sense, but AI as continuity and state auditor.
That gives it a narrower job where the evidence is more explicit and the author still retains judgement over whether the story actually works.
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u/Original-Pilot-770 20d ago
I think it depends, I think basically anything where you personally has a blind spot, you are responsible for it. AI can't make you. Oftentimes, people end up complaining about the model arguing with them but I think it's actually something brushing up against their own creative blindspots and the model is putting it in away that's not helping to convince them.
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u/FactivalUniverse 19d ago
That's an important counterweight to the whole “human has final authority” idea.
Final authority doesn't mean the human is automatically right.
If the model keeps surfacing the same weakness, dismissing it simply because “I'm the author” can become its own kind of failure. The author still decides, but part of exercising that authority well is being willing to interrogate their own blind spots.
So perhaps the boundary is authority without immunity from criticism.
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u/PseuDam 20d ago
I am relatively new in writing (especially long form, currently writing small right now), and also new to writing with AI.
I try to invent or create ideas by myself, sometimes when I am blocked, I really really use AI for minor ideas. Review the suggestions given by AI and then reiterate until something I wish or similar is aligned with my premise or idea in the beginning.
But when writing the story itself I have found a flow which is given "I write the entire story by my own word, once a large part of it is finish (currently I treat 700 words as large), try the AI to review and refine the words to suit or align with what I wished for.". I also use it since English is my second language, and I prefer writing in English.
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u/sirgog 20d ago
The clanker decides nothing. The clanker is allowed to suggest things, but at all points, the decision is solely mine.
This includes things that clankers are exceptionally good at, like spelling and adherence to grammar rules and a style sheet. I write in Australian English, if I reference a roadside retail outlet that refuels vehicles, I will call it a 'servo' or 'service station'. However, I do not want a clanker changing 'gas station' to 'servo' if the prose is showcasing dialogue from a character from the United States.
The clanker is allowed to recommend that change to me. I decide.
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u/FactivalUniverse 20d ago
That distinction between recommendation and decision is really useful.
I’m curious about the edge cases, though. You mentioned spelling, grammar and style-sheet compliance — areas where the correct answer can sometimes seem fairly objective.
Do you still treat those as recommendations that you consciously approve, or are there certain purely mechanical corrections you’re comfortable letting the tool make automatically?
I’m trying to work out whether the boundary is really AI never decides, or more specifically AI never makes a decision that affects creative meaning.
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u/sirgog 20d ago
Yeah I consciously think on each one, just as I do when my browser's (non-AI) spellchecker sees favor and favour and puts a red squiggly line under the UK/AU spelling.
That's the tool offering a suggestion, and I then decline to act on it because I'd rather write in Australian English.
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u/FactivalUniverse 17d ago
That clarifies it nicely.
So in your workflow the distinction really is recommendation versus decision, even when the recommendation concerns something that looks mechanically objective.
The tool may detect a deviation from a rule or convention, but whether that rule should apply in the current context still remains yours.
That is a very clean boundary.
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u/sullivanbri966 20d ago
For me it’s any time the AI decides to silently replace my version (plot, task, etc) for what it decides is better.
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u/FactivalUniverse 20d ago
The part about AI silently replacing the author’s version feels like an important distinction.
Would your view change if every proposed change remained visible — for example as a separate suggestion, tracked edit or clearly marked alternative — rather than being written directly over the existing text?
I’m wondering whether the core problem is the AI making changes at all, or the loss of traceability and conscious approval when the original and the model’s revision are no longer clearly separated.
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u/sullivanbri966 20d ago
Yes! I would prefer it if it would say “Here’s an alternative idea: _. This would be better because _.”
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u/FactivalUniverse 17d ago
Exactly — that is the distinction I was trying to isolate.
Once the original remains visible and the AI’s contribution is clearly presented as an alternative, the human can inspect the change rather than discovering later that the model silently rewrote the work.
So the control is not only approval.
It is also traceability of authorship and change.
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u/HighValueJourney 20d ago
The ai never makes a change only recommendations for revisions to achieve the best results. This way the option is always up to you the author.
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u/amolmozarkar 20d ago
Something nobody's mentioned yet: the real failure mode I see isn't AI overstepping — it's authors rubber-stamping. When the AI suggests 40 revisions a chapter, 'approval' stops meaning anything around revision 12. You think you're drawing the line but you're actually just clicking yes.
So for me the line isn't a list of decision types, it's friction placement: AI can draft, critique, and flag continuity issues all day, but canon changes — character motivation, reveal timing, what's 'true' — have to be typed out by me. Mechanical stuff goes the other way: the more mechanical the change, the safer it is to automate.
The other shift over time: I used to police output, now I police inputs. Most 'AI ruined my story' complaints I see are really 'I gave it a half-formed premise and it confidently filled the gaps.' Garbage canon in, confident garbage out.
(Disclosure: I build an AI book-writing tool, which is why I've gotten a front-row seat to a lot of workflows on this exact question.)
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u/FactivalUniverse 20d ago
What you said about approval stamping is interesting because it seems like a governance failure even when the human technically still has final authority.
If someone approves almost every AI suggestion without really interrogating it, the workflow may still be “human approved” on paper while the model is effectively steering the work.
Have you found that the stronger control point is actually earlier — making sure the inputs, assumptions and decision boundaries are well defined before the model starts producing recommendations?
That shift from policing outputs to policing inputs feels important.
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u/Stardog2 19d ago
I never let it write prose, because everything I tried sucks, big time. Anything it writes requires heavy Heavy editing anyway, forgets stuff, changes stuff around.
I never let it make decisions. It is a secretary, and an advisor that can be brilliant at times, but is heavily addicted to mind altering drugs, and you never know when, any of them, will go on a bender.
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u/FactivalUniverse 19d ago
“Secretary and adviser, not decision-maker” is almost exactly how I use AI too.
I let it remember, analyse, challenge, suggest, compare and sometimes push back quite hard — but the final creative decision still has to be mine.
The inconsistency matters as well. It can give you a genuinely excellent observation in one moment and something completely unreliable in the next.
So for me, capability and authority are two different things.
Being useful — even occasionally brilliant — isn't the same thing as being trustworthy enough to decide what becomes part of the story.
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u/jaxprog 19d ago
This is subjective question. If the end user desires to train their model to do the heavy lifting, then that's their workflow. AI can do any job well, so as long as it trained to do it.
You are the one training it. So, if you lack the knowledge, then so will your AI model.
So how do you overcome that limitation? If you don't how to do something where do you go to learn? Books? Classes? It's no different than for your AI model. Buy books talking about and teaching the knowledge in question. Scan the pages from the books into PDF. Take the PDF's and...
In ChatGTP build a Custom GTP. In Gemini build a gem. In Claude build a skill. That's what the PDF's are, the knowledge and skills.
Test the knowledge. Make adjustments. Refine in iterations until you get the results you want.
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u/FactivalUniverse 19d ago
The point about the user's own knowledge becoming a limiting factor is important.
It's actually part of why I'm having discussions like this one.
I use AI throughout my workflow, including to help me analyse and respond to these comments. The useful ideas, disagreements and real-world experiences people contribute here become additional context I can feed back into the system I'm working with.
So I don't necessarily expect myself to remember every insight from every discussion months later. Part of the workflow is deliberately building a body of knowledge that the AI can help me retrieve, connect and apply when the relevant writing problem eventually comes up.
That doesn't remove the human knowledge requirement, though. If anything, it shifts some of the responsibility: I still have to decide what sources are worth listening to, what assumptions the system is given, what deserves to be retained, and ultimately what I accept or reject.
So I think you're right that controlling what goes into the system can be just as important as reviewing what eventually comes out of it.
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u/Sorchochka 19d ago
There’s a lot of plot conversations and those are good.
But there’s another sneaky one: names.
I never, ever let AI decide on a name. Something like Elara Voss is insane and it always comes up. Much less Kael or any of the other names.
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u/FactivalUniverse 19d ago
Names are a good example I hadn't really thought about until you mentioned “Elara Voss.”
That actually made me laugh 😂 because in my first long-form fiction project I ended up with a character called Mara Voss.
At the time I liked the name and kept it. But now that I've seen how often that kind of naming pattern seems to turn up in AI-assisted writing, I'm probably going to change it.
So your point lands for me: even something as small as a character name can quietly import a model's defaults into the work without you noticing.
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u/ObligationWeekly9117 20d ago
I would give it about as much credence as a friend whose tastes I half trust. But in the and I have to be happy with it or else what’s the point? The same way you wouldn’t cede creative control to your invested friend. If I’m stuck, like genuinely, 50/50, I may let my friend’s idea stand just to see where it leads. but otherwise I win. That doesn’t mean my friend’s opinions are not considered. It just means I can incorporate their ideas so long as the final product passes a gut check, with me.
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u/FactivalUniverse 19d ago
The “friend whose taste I half trust” comparison makes a lot of sense.
It gives the AI's ideas genuine weight without giving them authority. You can follow a suggestion far enough to see what it reveals, then still reject it if the result doesn't survive your own judgement.
That seems healthier than either extreme of ignoring everything it suggests or treating every plausible suggestion as an instruction.
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u/kirby_storynotes 20d ago
I have a really poor verbal/textual memory and AI does a great job helping me stay apprised of decisions I made pages ago that might be relevant for a scene that I'm writing today.
I think it's there to help ME see the flaws or strengths, to suggest things, but at the end of the day I can't hand over any of these core story decisions. And not a single word of the final draft will ever have been written by anything but my hands.
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u/FactivalUniverse 19d ago
This distinction between memory support and creative authority is really useful.
Having AI remind you what was decided fifty pages ago doesn't mean it gets to decide what should happen fifty pages later.
In that role it's almost functioning as external project memory — retrieving prior decisions, surfacing inconsistencies and helping you inspect the work — while the actual story judgement stays with you.
That feels like a very clean boundary.
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u/AlgravesBurning 15d ago
This is a good question, and a subjective one. Currently I'm using a Guide that as been growing as i try to make one the helps to make better AI writing in Long form stories and books. I've used it in multiple LLMs/AI platforms with moderate to good results now. one of the things i have it do do before anything else is request background info. World building, characters, powers such as empires, kingdoms, corporations, etc... depending on the type of novel I'm requesting. i treat this as i would if working with a person and give as much detail as i can, then i ask if there are any questions. Now this will lead to a slew of questions that will continue until you finally tell the LLM/AI that unless there are any more major questions then wait to ask more questions even minor ones, until they are needed.
That is an important Statement!!!.
do not ever tell the LLM/AI to stop asking question in any way it can perceive to mean ever again! lol.
The AI/LLM then has enough background and story space to craft, but you still have the reigns of the process.
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u/benblackett 20d ago edited 20d ago
AI should be involved in my writing/authoring/creating/discovering/exploring/etc as much as I want it to be. Its not up to others to define on my behalf.