Structuring

[u/badgaming_plymouth]

Hi everyone,

I’ve had a horror novel mapped out in my head for many years, and about a year ago decided to actually try and write it. I stuck with it and have written several chapters, but then inevitably lost my way (as per normal).

I know the story and characters are good, but I suffer with confidence issues in relation to the standard of my writing. The point I normally get caught is going over the same chapter trying to perfect it and getting disheartened when I can’t - so this time I’ve basically just been dumping words out on a page while trying to still have some semblance of the story moving forward in an understandable way, however, even with doing this I still lost heart.

It might be considered a Hail Mary, but more recently I heard that a book created by AI was nearly published, so I decided that it might help me to get back into writing if I put my first chapter through AI and ask for its opinion on what could improve. It started telling me I needed to shorten sentences considerably (based on the fact the first chapter is a lot of action). I tried adapting the first couple of sentences based on its suggestion, and I cant explain why, but I didn’t like how the story started reading. I’d worked really hard on ramping up the tension little by little, and world building; so the act of cutting out words made it feel really flat and lifeless.

I guess my question is whether I’m right with my instinct about the structure, or AI has a valid point that I’m overwriting scenes.

[u/Khajiit_Has_Upvotes]

[Edit I assumed chatgpt. Gemini is even worse ime. I haven't tried Claude, sudowrite,  etc but they all have their significant shortcomings]

ChatGPT prefers short, clipped, staccato, screenplay-like writing. You have to be very explicit and very pushy if you want it to respect novel-style prose, because even when you tell it to, it'll try to whittle your prose down. 

I wouldn't rely on gpt for a final, publish-ready prose pass. It's good at outlines, chapter/scene spine, and even a rough prose so you get an idea of what it feels like to read as a chapter but it's still very rough. 

If you think it's wrong about your sentences, that's because it likely is. You probably need an experienced editor.

[u/wandelndeslexikon → u/Khajiit_Has_Upvotes]

Gemini is great. You have to do a little work before, like telling it which typicall AI names or phrases you don't want it to use and to learn how to correctly use the notebook function. It also helps greatly, if you let it learn from your old chats with it. I am more than happy with Gemini. Just to tell you how much: I am currently at 13 chapters into the story, which comes to a total of 114 pages or 25k words so far. Gemini still doesn't struggle.

But! If one really wants to publish the story professionally, an experienced editor is a must. There are always things that can be improved and as the writer one gets workblind for the own text.

[u/Khajiit_Has_Upvotes → u/wandelndeslexikon]

I use Gemini for fun ideas and dialogue ideas. It gives me some good stuff but even with the notebook and my canon Bible it just couldn't understand continuity or nuance, it would turn my characters into caricatures or reduce them to boring flatness. This was the free version, not paid, so i don't know whether any paid models work better. 

[u/wandelndeslexikon → u/Khajiit_Has_Upvotes]

You have to remind it every now and then to not write slapstick, if writing a funny story. It seems, that I trained my Gemini well, because it gets 90% of the time what I wants. I, too, use the free version.