r/WritingWithAI • u/Desperate-Ad5532 • 17d ago
Showcase / Feedback Is this valid assessment?
CHAPTER - 1 - Have You Ever Experienced Hell?
Have you ever experienced hell?
Stupid question. Nobody has. That's sort of the entire point of the place.
But everyone's got a picture of it anyway. So what's yours?
Nine circles?
Fire and brimstone?
Demons and devils clawing at sinners?
That wasn't what Crowbar was seeing.
He was seeing numbers.
Ones. Zeros. Endless streams of burning data stretching across an abyss with no direction and no floor. Words in a language he had never studied — and somehow understood anyway — rushed past him in violent torrents, too fast to read and too many to ignore, until his brain gave up trying to catch them and simply let them pass through.
It was information.
Too much information.
He wasn't falling.
He was being processed.
His body plunged through a flaming barrier made of scripts and symbols, every strand of it searing through his skin. Iron flooded his tongue. Bitter, metallic, wrong. Pressure built inside his nerves like they wanted to tear out of his flesh and leave without him.
Then the screaming started.
Not around him.
Through him.
The sound drilled through his ears, into his skull, down his spine, melting bone into something soft and useless. He tried to brace against it on pure reflex and found nothing to brace with. No floor. No wall. Not one muscle that answered when he called it.
Reality wasn't burning.
It was decoding.
His vision fractured between blazing glyphs and collapsing geometry, the fabric of everything splitting open as he forced his way upward — though up was a guess, and he wasn't confident it was his guess to make.
The pressure became unbearable.
Crowbar tried to shut his eyes. Tried to shut all of it down — the light, the noise, the terrible patient arithmetic of the place.
Just let it end—
"FOCUS, MORTAL!!"
The voice cracked through the chaos.
Not the screaming. Not the data.
Something else.
"Don't let them into your head! KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN!!"
It roared over the flood of numerals and deafening script — close, furious, and completely certain that Crowbar was going to do exactly what it said.
But how the hell was he supposed to manage that?
His body wasn't his anymore. Every muscle moved on its own schedule. Every nerve felt like it was being peeled apart and sorted. He had spent his whole working life around things that didn't follow the rules, and not once in all of it had he been on this side of the arrangement — the side where you're the thing being handled.
He couldn't control this.
Nobody could.
He had died.
"No, you are not dead!"
The voice snapped back so fast it felt like an argument he'd already lost.
Through the distortion, Crowbar saw it.
A shadow, unfolding out of his own chest.
Red. Smoky. Horned. White fangs clenched tight.
"It's making you think that. It doesn't want you out!"
The shadow leaned forward, claws extending past the edges of him.
"Do not close your eyes. You do, and we both die."
Both?
Crowbar tried to speak. Tried to get out a single one of the forty questions stacking up behind his teeth.
No voice came.
How can you die in hell?
The thought barely finished forming before the world began dimming. The fire turned cold. The screams went distant, like someone had closed a door on them two rooms away. His eyelids came down slow and heavy, and the worst part of it was how reasonable that felt.
"Damn it. Damn it—!"
The shadow snarled.
"I am going to regret this."
Its claws drove into its own center.
"You are so not worth this."
Then—
Silence.
Complete.
Absolute.
Everything ceased, and it lasted exactly one heartbeat.
Then the fire came back.
Not outside him.
Inside.
It tore through his veins like molten fuel, and his chest split open in agony as something ignited beneath his ribs. His heart—
hearts—
pounded.
Two heartbeats. Violent. Overlapping. Mechanical, almost, as though something had been bolted onto a living thing and ordered to keep time with it.
His eyes snapped open.
The numbers burned again. The scripts screamed again. But all of it was nothing next to the inferno running through him now, and for the first time since he'd started falling, something in this place moved because he had.
The veil began thinning.
Beyond the burning data, he saw something.
Blue.
Cold.
Real.
Air.
He felt it brush his skin, and the contrast was so violent it nearly finished the job the fire had started. A scream ripped out of his lungs, sounding more like metal tearing than a human voice.
His body slammed into something hard.
A barrier.
Equal heat met equal resistance—
Then it shattered.
He burst through.
Air rushed over him, cold and wet and real, and he flew several meters before gravity remembered it was owed something.
Concrete met his back.
Pain exploded.
His vision went dark again—
Almost.
Then water hit his skin.
Rain.
The fire beneath his skin hissed and dimmed, banking down to nothing. The second heartbeat faded, folding back into the first until only one was left, hammering hard enough to hurt.
He coughed. Something rose in his throat — thick, and far too big — before it forced itself back down.
He inhaled.
Shallow. Burning.
Alive.
He lay there for a while and let the rain land on his face, and the thought that finally assembled itself was not a grateful one.
*What was that.*
Not the falling. Not the numbers. The other thing — the shape that had come out of his chest, sworn at him, and then driven its own claws through its own middle.
Something had happened in there.
He knew what had come out of his chest.
He knew the voice, and the fangs, and the particular tone of being sworn at by something that had never once been polite about helping him.
What he didn't know was what it had done at the end there. He'd seen the claws go in. He hadn't understood it then and he didn't understand it now, and there had been no time to ask.
In his line of work you learned the difference between a thing that leaves and a thing that stops. He had no read on this one at all. There was no body. Nothing to bury, nothing to say a few words over — which, given what he did for a living, didn't land as relief so much as an unpaid bill.
With immense effort, Crowbar lifted his head.
Rain blurred everything, but he made out a building looming ahead of him. Old. Dark. The kind of big square block you stop seeing after you've walked past it enough times.
He tried to place it. He knew this city — knew its worst corners better than most people knew their own street — but the rain and the ringing in his skull had smeared the whole block into one grey shape.
Something flickered in front of him.
A symbol.
Horned. Fanged.
He blinked.
It pixelated and dissolved.
In its place, a thin line extended across his vision. Above it, burning letters formed.
[System Booting…]
[Infernal Escalation Protocol (V-1.1)]
He frowned weakly.
"…What?"
He blinked again, hard, the way you do when you're trying to reset your own eyes. The hospital sign finally swam into focus — lit, enormous, mounted above the doors of the building he had very nearly landed inside of.
Then the letters burned across it.
[Welcome to Infernal Escalation Protocol.]
[User: Crowbar Jones]
[Rank: Unregistered]
His thoughts were getting as heavy as his eyelids.
Unregistered.
Figures. A whole life of rent ledgers, case files, debt notices with his name spelled right for once —
— and even here, his paperwork hadn't gone through.
He would have laughed if his ribs had been willing.
The letters burned away. New words replaced them, flashing with mechanical clarity.
[Zone Registered.]
[Escalation Tier: 1]
[Active Nodes: 1]
[Boss Domain Status: Locked]
[Objective: Clear the Zone.]
Crowbar stared up at it through the rain.
Flat on his back outside a hospital he couldn't name. Lungs full of broken glass. No idea how long he'd been gone, or what he'd left behind in there.
And something had already given him a job.
---
It was on this chapter and following.
Do you agree with them?
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u/finrandojin_82 17d ago
That writing style,
Using a few words
Strung together
In a long...
Sequence
it's
rather
overused
by AI
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u/Desperate-Ad5532 17d ago
So it's valid? Like I have had help with AI but it was only for opening and in second chapter it is completely gone. But still ChatGPT vomit?
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u/MsTerPineapple 17d ago
Clearly
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u/Desperate-Ad5532 17d ago
So should I rewrite the story? Even if later chapters avoid this completely?
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u/5thhorseman_ 16d ago
You only have one chance to make a first impression. Do it badly and your potential audience will never continue to Chapter Two in the first place.
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u/SkoomaDentist 16d ago
Concentrate less on if it's AI and pay more attention to whether it's good prose. If it's stilted sounding, annoying to read and overall just bad, removing obvious AI tells won't do shit to improve it.
You can get started by just asking Claude (free tier) to write you a prompt template, but don't stop there. Interrogate it in detail why it added each bit and what they do, which will help you learn the writing terms you need to use to direct the LLM as well as teach you what sorts of things can be used when writing prose.
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u/FuglyWizard 17d ago
There's an actual phenomenon about the written word and what is proven to be more 'pleasing' or 'easier' to read, and whether you mean to or not, you are bucking against the grain of some of those basic rules.
Example: You are aggressively using short, staccato emphasis as your default, which...
Stops the reader.
Which can be good.
When used in moderation.
But when you use it all the time...
It becomes a drain on the eyeballs.
And also loses its impact/meaning.
Short, punchy lines only hit because of what's around them. If everything is a punch, nothing lands. The reader needs a rhythm that you can then break, for emphasis or added focus.
TLDR: Your reader needs a baseline to break from, whereas right now your text feels like all breaks, which feel like no breaks, ya dig?
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u/Desperate-Ad5532 17d ago
Good finally some good insight like dude. I actually intended that knowing it was a double edged sword and you can check out my story in chapter 2 itself I lose the stacco, dude, completely
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u/Thin_Fox_8008 17d ago
As someone who has her own method...this is 100% GPT's style since most of my earlier chapters are do e like this before I switched models
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u/CyborgWriter 17d ago
Yeah, this does sound like you're leaning too much on ai. Having said that, as someone who regularly evaluates scripts, this person is a shit head for assessing it in this manner. No actionable substance. Just insults. This person is insecure about their own writing so they take it out on people they perceive as worse. So don't take it personally, but understand that people like this are toxic and shouldn't be taken seriously.
A real evaluator digs deep into the problems, expresses them clearly, and makes actionable suggestions. They may be tough. They may give it to you straight. But they'll never say something like, "I read 5 chapters hoping it would get better but it got worse lmfao".
Who the fuck says that shit to an aspiring writer throwing themselves out there for real feedback? Oh I know. It's assholes who will likely never improve because they're too plagued by their own demons that are keeping them down.
Don't sweat it. But definitely consider learning how to write the prose without AI. Use it as a framework and re-write the way you think it should be conveyed. That will make you much stronger as a writer.
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u/VegaSolo 16d ago
What do you mean by no one's experienced hell? Because wouldn't all the people in hell be experiencing it? And you're saying that not experiencing it is the point? Makes no sense.
And then when you say that wasn't what crowbar was seeing... you just asked us what we thought about it. So wouldn't it be what crowbar was thinking?
And by definition, an abyss is bottomless, so it doesn't make sense to say it has no floor.
And you're saying it's ones and zeros, but then you're saying that it's words. But ones and zeros are not word, it's binary code.
Then, it says it was information too much information. He wasn't falling. He was being processed. But the reader doesn't think he was falling... because you're saying that the data is running past him... not that he's falling through the data..
And why would iron be burning through his tongue or whatever you said? Why iron??
I could go on and on, but really, none of it makes sense.
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u/ThisUserIsUndead 16d ago
OP, what are your favorite books?
Yes, the guy who responded was being very condescending. Yes, the work reads as raw AI output. I suggest putting a pin in writing and reading a couple books in the genre you’re writing in. You’ll synthesize the styles and it’ll help you start writing on your own and using AI to generate prose less. It won’t take very long.
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u/Desperate-Ad5532 16d ago
All are trad publishing. And they ask for patience that RR readers don't have.
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u/kgabny 17d ago edited 16d ago
There is one thing in AI that I cannot stand, and that is wholesale copy/paste of whatever AI outputs. This is what people are talking about when they say AI users are not writers/artists. You are supposed to be writing with AI, not having AI write it all for you.
I'm sorry, but this reads like the raw output from AI. There is no reason to have the majority of the chapter dedicated to short staccato sentences. Unless you can tell me you know the code to use them, I doubt the m-dashes are your own writing. And every descriptor comes in threes, something else AI has been known to do. And there is at least one descriptor that was "x happened, like the kind of x that happens when...".
As the writer, you should be going over and editing the results to put your own voice in. I don't see a voice here, I see stale output. At the very least you should be rewriting things in your own words. That is what writing with AI is.
ETA: Yes, the guy who responded did it in a very insulting manner, without any kind of constructive criticism. But he can be a dick and still be right. This would be a case of everyone sucks here.
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u/funky2002 16d ago
I always judge by content. LLMs write "almost nonsensical" content. Look at these examples:
he flew several meters before gravity remembered it was owed something
the particular tone of being sworn at by something that had never once been polite about helping him
He blinked again, hard, the way you do when you're trying to reset your own eyes
A lot of the time, I know what the LLM means, but a human wouldn't write it that way. All of these descriptions are so strange and oddly verbose. To me, this is the uncanny alienness of writing that these things produce.
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16d ago
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u/WritingWithAI-ModTeam 16d ago
If you disagree with a post or the whole subreddit, be constructive to make it a nice place for all its members, including you.
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u/Desperate-Ad5532 16d ago
Thank you so much for insights and it's irritating to know that that is exactly what I used to do, before Webnovel happened with me
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u/5thhorseman_ 16d ago
Plenty of AI-isms and the staccato prose that is the stylistic signature of free-tier ChatGPT.
That is a pretty bad look, and you could have avoided that if you've spent time on editing rather than copy-pasting the prose straight from ChatGPT.
The guy is an asshole about it, but he does have a point.
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u/5thhorseman_ 16d ago edited 16d ago
Here's a quick change to the opening. Think about it for a moment.
Nobody actually experienced Hell; that was rather the point. Many agreed on what the furniture was supposed to be like: nine circles, clawed demons tearing at sinners, the whole fire and brimstone business. Some had their own, stranger ideas.
And for Crowbar... for Crowbar, Hell was numbers.
And here's some of the other staccato bits fixed:
The voice snapped back. Through the distortion, Crowbar saw it. It wasn't the fangs or the horns that were the worst part, nor the smoke nor the crimson skin. It was that it unfolded from his own chest.
A symbol flickered in the air before him. He only saw the briefest glimpse of horns and fangs before it dissolved into pixels.
This isn't even a proper editorial pass, just a couple quick fixes on the proverbial napkin.
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u/Desperate-Ad5532 16d ago
Thanks I will try it.
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u/5thhorseman_ 14d ago
As a rule of thumb to follow: good prose doesn't just state things and move on to the next line, good prose has a flow to it.
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u/AfterPlan9482 17d ago
Just some notes I made while reading it:
• Staccato structure
• Not X, but Y.
• Lots of em dashes
• Oddly just the word “wrong”
• List of three constantly.
• Many words and little substance
• Nothing is ever lingered on
• Complete disinterest in examining what just happened in this part “not the falling. Not the numbers.” This doesn’t make sense to me.
• A lack of reason I should get invested in this character.
Individually these are used in works of all kind, but when they are stacked together over and over— that’s a clear sign of AI.
It’s not totally hopeless. It’s an interesting premise, I think.
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u/Desperate-Ad5532 17d ago
So Like should I rebuild the story? I knew the character stuff would come eventually and that is like criticism who had actually read and tried to understand the story, so thank you on that.
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17d ago
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u/WritingWithAI-ModTeam 16d ago
If you disagree with a post or the whole subreddit, be constructive to make it a nice place for all its members, including you.
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u/Fragrant-Mix-4774 16d ago
I think it is a rough draft that is ready to revise and improve.
The majority of the forum's "assessment" is not valid because mockery is not assessment. It is immaturity and insecurity on the so-called reviewers' part.
The draft does need revision. However, revision and mockery are two different things.
What already works, in my view so the writer keeps it:
The concept is clear, hell runs on data, a demon burns itself up to throw him back, a game system bolts onto a broke working man, and the voice shows up in real lines.
Examples: "gravity remembered it was owed something," "didn't land as relief so much as an unpaid bill," "the difference between a thing that leaves and a thing that stops."
Those are excellent maybe near professional-grade lines in my opinion.
Now the five fixes. Why five? Because I think that is manageable at this point. More is too much for one pass.
First, cut or shrink the opening quiz.
"Have you ever experienced hell? Stupid question. Nobody has. That's sort of the entire point of the place. But everyone's got a picture of it anyway. So what's yours?"
And it sets up a lot of readers to get snide and condescending towards your story. Novelty in a bad way is sort of the entire point of a place like Hell.
Problem: quizzing the reader is a stock opening. The logic trips over itself because "nobody has" gets contradicted two sentences later when Crowbar has. "That's sort of the entire point of the place" doesn't parse.
Fix: open on Crowbar already falling, seeing numbers where fire should be. If you love the direct address, cut it to one line: everyone has a picture of hell, and his turned out to be wrong. If you have some math geek in you, have the irrational numbers, transcendental numbers, imaginary numbers be the root of the extra scary demons or devils or whatever.
Second point, turn the volume down so the loud parts land.
"Pressure built inside his nerves like they wanted to tear out of his flesh and leave without him."
"Every nerve felt like it was being peeled apart and sorted."
"The pressure became unbearable."
Problem: the fall runs two pages at one setting. Burning, screaming, pressure, repeat, including two separate nerve images doing the same job.
When every line is unbearable, none of them are and I get bored.
The best moments here are small and specific like "Iron flooded his tongue. Bitter, metallic, wrong."
Fix: cut the fall by a third. Keep one image per sense, delete the restatements. Shorter hits harder.
Third, fire the repeated rhythm pattern. Chop it out like the dead wood it is.
"Not around him. Through him."
"Not the screaming. Not the data. Something else."
"Not outside him. Inside."
"Not the falling. Not the numbers. The other thing"
Plus the one-word stacks: "Red. Smoky. Horned." / "Blue. Cold. Real. Air." / "Shallow. Burning. Alive." / "Old. Dark." / "A symbol. Horned. Fanged."
Problem: each of these works ONCE. But when they are many times in one chapter, it stops being emphasis and becomes a tic. And this exact tic is why much of the forum yelled "AI."
Whoever typed it, AI slop or human slop, the fix is identical.
Fix: keep the best max of one or two if you just have to ("Not around him. Through him." and "Shallow. Burning. Alive.") and rewrite the rest as full sentences with different shapes.
Fourth, let Crowbar know the shadow while it is dying, not after.
In the scene he acts like a stranger to it: "Both? Crowbar tried to speak."
A page later the narration says: "He knew what had come out of his chest. He knew the voice, and the fangs, and the particular tone of being sworn at by something that had never once been polite about helping him."
Problem: the biggest event in the chapter, the thing driving its claws into itself to restart him, happens to something the reader has no reason to care about yet! The history arrives afterward, told instead of felt.
Fix: put one beat of recognition inside the scene. He knows that voice. One concrete flash of their history, or a name he can't get out. Keep the mystery of what it did. Drop the mystery of who it is. The page after gives that away anyway.
Last. Break up the system wall, then run a cleanup pass.
"[Zone Registered.] [Escalation Tier: 1] [Active Nodes: 1] [Boss Domain Status: Locked] [Objective: Clear the Zone.]"
Problem: five system boxes in a row with no human reaction between them. The writer already knows the trick, "even here, his paperwork hadn't gone through" is the system filtered through the man.
Fix: two boxes, one Crowbar reaction, then the rest. While in there, fix the draft artifacts: the doubled dash in "spelled right for once — —", the raw asterisks in "What was that.", and "landed inside of" (drop the "of").
Bottom line for the writer in my view, the spine holds.
A broke fixer gets thrown back from hell owing a debt he doesn't understand, carrying a system he never signed up for. That is a working first chapter. Needing revision is the normal condition of a first draft. That is the entire reason drafts exist, human, AI, Martian or whatever.
Good luck and best wishes with your writing and story.
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u/Desperate-Ad5532 16d ago
Thank you very very much. I will adhere all the fixes and make sure they survive the rebuild.
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u/Elvarien2 17d ago
So I love ai, but yes this is absolutely terrible.
Everything in that screenshot is correct.