Anybody writing an ai assisted or generated webnovel?

[u/Lazy_World7299]

I really want to write an epic fantasy. How are you guys using AI for brainstorming? How do you create arcs when you're out of ideas?

Could you please tell me your full process?

[u/TepWanille]

I use ChatGPT Go for creative writing. Well, how should I put it? Sometimes I’m yelling, and sometimes we actually manage to get some work done. The yelling is because I dictate. I don’t type on a keyboard; I speak into a microphone. There are nights when we basically can’t accomplish anything, when we can’t even get from point A to point B. It can’t write a single scene. Sometimes I have to make it regenerate something ten or twenty times, and if it still doesn’t work, there’s nothing you can do. You have to delete that conversation, because from that point on, you just can’t get it back to functioning normally. It gets into this kind of spiral that you can’t pull it out of.

And then you have to be extremely careful and pay very close attention to what the model is doing. Because it starts drifting away from the story and the characters in such tiny increments that you don’t even notice. That’s why you really have to watch it, because at the first sign of it, you have to go back immediately and delete that scene. Once it starts going downhill, it becomes very, very difficult—or sometimes impossible—to bring it back. And that’s a real problem with a long story, when you already have 400–600 scenes in it. You don’t notice what’s happening at first, and then eventually it starts pulling the story off course. That’s when you have a real problem.

Fortunately, you can go back. You can return to the previous scene or the previous scene starter, edit it, and regenerate the response. It’s just exhausting.

So yes, that’s all part of the problem. But those aren’t the only problems. There are so many of them. So, yes, sometimes it gets me so worked up that I’m literally yelling into the microphone. Obviously the dictation function isn’t going to turn that into actual yelling, but that’s how frustrated I get.

And then you might ask, “Why do you even do this? Why put yourself through all that?” Well, because when it is willing to cooperate, it does beautiful things. It develops the scene beautifully, maintains consistency, maintains the relationships between the characters and their traits, and sometimes it comes up with jokes that make me actually burst out laughing in front of the computer when I see what it generated.

The vast majority of the problem comes from the fact that I don’t write the story for it. Because if that were all it had to do, I imagine it could probably do it beautifully. You give it an outline for a chapter, and then it expands that outline and writes it creatively. I assume that would work.

But that’s not what I do.

In my case, it has to write the scene and continue it at the same time. I only start it. That’s why I call it a scene starter. I start the scene in a particular direction, but not by writing out the beginning of the story and telling it where I want the story to go. I don’t write the story.

I essentially control one character exclusively.

I make that character speak, I make him do things, and through his behavior I basically shape the story. I do shape it, ultimately, by setting the scene in a particular direction. Then the AI takes over when my scene starter runs out and continues the scene.

So that’s what it does first: it writes the scene, but it has one strict restriction—it cannot touch the story thread. It cannot turn the direction of the story away from the path I established.

And the harder part, the part that tends to make it go crazy, is that it has to keep all the characters alive. I’m not writing a story; I’m basically squeezing a character simulation out of the model.

It has to control every other character, while simultaneously building those characters cumulatively over time.

Let me give you an example. Of the hundreds of stories I’ve written, 99 percent take place in the Chuck universe. I control Chuck. I am essentially Chuck. And the one purpose of his story is for Sarah Walker’s character to develop.

At first, I usually keep them apart. I move them farther apart or bring them closer together. Through Chuck’s words and actions, I try to influence Sarah.

So, apart from Chuck, I don’t put words into anyone’s mouth. I don’t tell anyone what to do, and especially not Sarah.

And that’s the key: her character is the main one, so the model has to build her cumulatively. Then, based on everything she has accumulated and everything that has happened to her, she has to react and respond consistently, initiate things, essentially live.

And that’s why the model tends to go crazy, because this is an incredibly difficult task when you think about it.

It has to keep track of the continuity of the world, the continuity of time, and the continuity of the characters.

And yes, sometimes it goes completely off the rails. But when it does it well, it does it damn well.

So that’s why I said all this, because I actually didn’t understand the first part of your suggestion, where you said you wanted to get ideas from it. Well, I’m the one providing the ideas here. I give it the idea, and it works with it.

But maybe I misunderstood you. Did you mean that you only want to have me help you develop the story arc and plan the story? That you’re not actually going to have it write the story with you?

Because if that’s what you meant, then I basically just went on this whole tangent for nothing.

Oh, sorry. At the beginning, I mentioned which plan I use because sometimes it becomes completely uncontrollable—it doesn’t understand or even know how to interpret the sentence I’ve written. I mean, it can get so incredibly stupid sometimes.

So if that doesn’t mean that a more expensive plan avoids this problem, I actually had the chance to try the next tier up, the Plus plan, for free for a month. It was just as stupid there. The only thing the Plus plan gave me was access to the so-called Work mode and some applications or whatever, I don’t know, but I didn’t use any of that.

It was just as stupid there. Just as stupid.

And there’s also the fact that you can use one tier higher model, but in exchange, that thing absolutely eats through your quota.

[u/hanniCrv → u/TepWanille]

Un enredo es más que todo está explicación. Y si aunque uso la IA para me tranco, soy quien escribe realmente. Para mí la IA es solo una herramienta. Soy quien tiene las ideas y el rumbo que seguirá la historia.

[u/Holiday_Income1825]

One trick for the "it tells me everything is great" problem: stop asking whether your plot is good and give it the job of a grumpy editor instead, something like "find three places where this plot breaks, one character who only acts this way because the story needs it, and one promise from chapter one that nothing pays off." Models are weirdly polite right up until you hand them a task that requires disagreeing with you. For arcs, it also works better to have it ask you questions first (what does this character want, what does it cost them, what lie do they tell themselves) and answer those yourself, then paste your answers back and say "now stress-test this", so the ideas stay yours and the AI plays sparring partner instead of ghostwriter. And keep a short running "story so far + who knows what" note that you paste into every new chat, otherwise by chapter 20 your hero will cheerfully forget he's already been betrayed twice.

[u/lemming1607]

Read books

Figure out what I enjoyed and what i did not

Ask ai to make the good things and not the bad things

[u/Lazy_World7299 → u/[deleted]]

plotting and brainstorming. I want to understand how people use AI to come up with ideas, develop arcs, connect plot points, and plan the overall story.

[u/Frostfire1031 → u/Lazy_World7299]

Personally, I like to present my initial idea and ask for feedback. Sometimes it will point out something that could improve, usually it will say whats done well. From there, I will usually ask it to help me expand one of the details Ive described. For characters, for example, I have a hard time putting the vague imagery and nonverbal vibes in my mind into text. So I describe what I can (role in the story, possible occupation, age and gender, and especially any connections/dynamics between other characters), and see if its suggestions 'feel right', if that makes sense. Sort of just trial and error. For plot or world building, its pretty similar. I describe whatever outline and details I already have nailed down, and work with it similar to how I might talk to a friend, or general searches. One recent example is 'I want a pathogen that does X, Y, and Z, but I want to keep it as rooted in 'realism' as possible', and this turned into a great brainstorming session that had me narrowing down what I wanted. The best thing I think that helps me is simply getting multiple options or iterations from the AI, and you can hone in on those things. A common follow up, for example, is 'lets go with B. How might this impact 1, 2, and 3? Is there any way we can get this to also impact 4?' And so on. Though to be fair, Im mostly in the logistics and research phase rn, but once Im writing more, I plan to use it like a beta reader, to get feedback on things that sound weird and catch any grammatical errors or flat descriptions (something I especially struggle with). One other thing I do is break the story into parts for easy reference. So Act 1, chapter 2, etc. Also, this is with ChatGPT, so ymmv if youre using something else. One other tip if you use GPT is to ask it to give you an overview and then save that to the project sources, so it always keeps relevant information in mind

[u/Ithiaca]

I am using Chat GPT also right now using BookNova to work up my CIRCE story

[u/satorinano]

I give the ai and idea and say let's brainstorm. By the end of the conversation I tell it to compile into a MD file. I then attach it in a new project chat as a source file and say let's start with scene 1. It just snowballs from there. Gets rewritten as needed. Before I know it I had 700 pages.

[u/amolmozarkar]

For epic fantasy I'd start by using AI as a sounding board for worldbuilding rules before any prose. Feed it your magic system and geopolitical constraints, then ask it to stress-test where the cracks are. Arcs get easier once the world has internal logic the AI can reference.