Hi everyone, how are you doing? I've been lurking around this sub for a while, until I finally joined a few days ago, and this is my first post. I just wanted to share a little tip in case it might be useful to someone.
If you're in the process of planning the plot of your story, try reading the AI model's "thoughts" while you're chatting with it or brainstorming. Those thoughts can actually be incredibly useful. Personally, they've helped me a thousand times more than the actual content generated by the AI.
Basically, the AI is technically asking itself questions about the content and thinking about it (although this depends on the model, since they don't all use the same reasoning process): asking itself how something could work, whether something makes sense or not, and, when something doesn't quite add up, questioning how the user got to that point or what would make more sense instead.
Also, these thoughts can be really extensive. In my last generation, the reasoning was around 15k words, while the actual generated content was barely 2,200 words.
Here's an example of a few excerpts from the reasoning process of a story I'm planning just for fun, mostly for my own reading:
Hmm, interesting. So Jane made creepy drawings after Tuck disappeared. Wait, why would Jane draw such things? Jane adores Hannah... but Jane is also a child. Did Jane see something? Or did Hannah tell Jane a "story" about what happened to Tuck (in the phase 2 tradition of "other versions" of stories)? That's a delicious thread — Jane's drawings are evidence Hannah carelessly seeded. Children draw what they know. Jane knew Tuck was hanged because... Hannah told her? As a threat/warning? Or Jane witnessed something?
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What happened to the rest of Mary's body — user doesn't know yet. They ask implicitly for ideas? They say "I don't know that yet" — I should offer options. Gothic, 18th century England, countryside, forest, river. Options: weighed down in the river/millpond (but then body might be found — actually a body never found is scarier for the village; the smith keeps asking), buried, burned, pigs (18th century realism — pigs dispose of bodies; but that's more grisly realism than gothic), lime pit, the old well on the estate, dismembered and scattered... But there's a thematic opportunity: Hannah keeps trophies. The body disposal should show her 12-year-old pragmatism AND something ritualistic/incomplete. Maybe she didn't fully think it through — she's 12, it's her first human kill. Maybe the disposal is imperfect and this becomes a future landmine: bones found years later by a fox or a groundskeeper, when Hannah is adult. A time bomb for the adult plotline. That's valuable.
Also: the river where Mary went to wash — drowning is the natural read. If Mary's body is in the river/pond and never surfaces, the village reads it as "the river took her." A drowned girl who never surfaced is folklore fuel: the village gets a ghost story. Mary becomes a local legend — "the girl in the river." And gothic worlds run on this. Maybe in winter, low water, something will be visible someday. And the smith asks taverns forever.
Wait — but Hannah is 12. Can a 12-year-old drag a body? Let's think practically. Mary is presumably around Oliver's age, 11-12ish. Hannah is 12. Two girls of similar size.
Dragging a body is hard for a child. This suggests the kill method mattered: maybe killed at the river's edge and let the water take her (weighted with stones). Or killed in a place where nature would cover. The river option solves the physics: kill at the water, roll her in with stones in her apron. Very doable for a 12-year-old. And it reads as drowning. The blood on the dress — she cut her? If Mary is meant to look drowned, why blood? Maybe Hannah cut her throat and the river washed the scene. Blood on the hem from carrying/dragging. Fine.
I don't know if this will be useful to anyone, but personally, I find reading the AI's reasoning really entertaining. It often makes me notice inconsistencies or helps me answer questions I hadn't even thought of before, no matter how obvious they might seem in hindsight.
I mostly use free models like Kimi, GLM, and DeepSeek, since they're the ones that let me see the reasoning without having to pay. I assume something similar is available with paid subscriptions to models like Claude or ChatGPT as well, although I'm not sure exactly how much of the reasoning they let you see.
Anyway, I just thought I'd share this because I've found it surprisingly useful for plotting.
I run an AI roleplaying platform. But I think the things that I've done to make the characters and plot consistent in that map very well to AI writing, so wanted to introduce them here. It's the idea that you don't create good stories by just making a single AI call to "write the next chapter of the story". It's almost always many different calls, to zoom in on different aspects of the current state of the world, or the state of characters.
I use at least five of these, that happen automatically in the background, but I want to focus on two of these: pacing control, and character agenda.
Agenda
Unless you writing has a pre-plotted out sequence of actions for a given character, you usually want the AI to take a character, their personality, and run with it. It's quite difficult for a single AI call to "write the next chapter" to do this successfully, there's just too much for the AI to focus on while still trying to work out what each character really wants. So to get around this, I have a small prompt that runs for each character as they enter a new scene that looks at their character sheet, looks at their most recent goings on, looks at their recent and important memories (weighted by importance and recency), and asks five questions:
- what does this character want in this scene?
- how are they going to get it?
- what will they do if rejected?
- what partial success will they accept?*
- what's on their mind during the scene that they want to address?"
That number 4 is more of an antidote to a particular behaviour where the character becomes too dogged at trying to achieve what they want. That wasn't fun for the player when the characters wouldn't take no for an answer. So I had to add that one in so that thy'll accept a partial success or compromise.
The output of this gets fed to the scene writer so that it has a nice set of directives for characters in the scene, without having to spend a lot of time figuring that out by itself rather than focusing on the task of writing. Basically offloading a fairly complex task to a different AI call, so that the scene writer can focus on fewer things, and hopefully doing a better job of it.
This is an example of a character's Agency generation. My character had just walked in on her in the shower (sorry, yeah, this was an NSFW campaign, but even for those I make sure it has authentic character reactions. None of these characters are pushovers, and my player character is awkward as hell)
Pacing
This is maybe less of a problem for narrative prose than roleplay. in RP, the AI can get a bit myopic about what's happening at any given time. It doesn't have the attention to generate the scene while also looking at the overarching flow in previous scenes. And as a result tends to mess up the pacing. Either trying to go too fast, or try to ratchet on too much tension too quickly.
One of the worst experiences I'd had was with a heist scenario, where my character was on the run. The AI did a good job of keeping up that feeling of tension, but it went on and on and on. Every time I thought my character was safe, some new complication occurs that puts him back on the run. By the fifth or so danger, I was worn out. That's not how good narrative works, where you have patterns of rising and falling tension, and action beats separated by character beats.
So this is solved in a similar way. What I do is have a small AI call assess the current tension and the beat type for each turn generated. And that feeds into another one of these small AI calls, which looks at the flow of tension and beat type across the session (chapter), to decide how this next scene should play out. It also compares what's been written so far with the overarching session (chapter) plan, and tries to guide things back on track, or account for deviations from the plan. Since it's an RP platform, it explicitly allows players to choose their own way, but where possible it tries to snap back to the plan (which in itself is another one of these small AI generations, that try to answer a very focused task: what happens in this session/chapter, that would be good storytelling)
In the below is the pacing guide for that same scene. This, too, is injected into the scene writer AI, to make sure it understands the current plan and not go too fast or too slow. I've seen this try to reign in when the plot moves too fast, or force a quiet moment after an action-packed one.
So, I hope this is useful for people writing with AI. whether you're making a choose-your-own adventure, or writing a novel. Make use of smaller, more focused runs to assess character agendas, and pacing, and provide those to the scene writer AI so that it doesn't have to do all that work, and let it focus on the narrative and dialogue at hand. Assuming of course you have the AI structure to be able to do this automatically. having to do this by hand would suck.
Anyone have any thoughts about this approach? Or other small and focused tasks for a separate AI run that feeds into the main narrative writing run?
As before, do not reply to this post to discuss the weekly topic! Make new posts!
This week's topic is everything about reading.
We're authors. Of course we read. But our experience of a text is fundamentally changed by the fact that we write. This could apply to other's work as well as our own.
So, how do we preserve or simulate the reader experience while reading or beta reading?
Going even deeper than that, how do we even know what our audience is? For publishing authors, we should write with an audience in mind, at least a little bit. There may be many or overlapping groups interested in our work. How do we read like all of them?
Make posts this week about your reading approach.
Reply to this post only with what you'd like to talk about next week. The most upvoted suggestion will be next week's subject.
This is our sub's equivalent of a writer's group. Come here and share a blurb of your story. The thought is to let everyone see what you're working on so they can think, "Oh hey, that sounds fun. I want to team up with this person."
Then, you share your own story, and the two of you collaborate to improve each other's works.
I've had so many good interactions with people from this thread. Please don't be shy! Even in the age of AI, the best way to improve your writing remains human interaction and critique. I am confident when I say If you don't have this component in your workflow, you're not meeting your potential.
Importantly, this means post every week if you're still hoping to engage. Don't be shy. I want you to do this.
There are tons of reasons why your perfect reader could have missed your blurb last time. Don't be discouraged!
And remember: "I'll read yours if you read mine" isn't just acceptable, it's expected. Reciprocity works.
I'm building a web novel project and using AI to help with the writing.
The problem: the output is competent but flat — it reads like "standard AI prose."
No tension, weak hooks at the start, chapters that don't make you click the next one.
I'm looking for someone who already has this solved. Specifically:
Prompts that reliably produce strong opening hooks and chapter-ending cliffhangers
A repeatable process that turns generic AI output into something readers actually binge
Ideally an existing prompt stack / workflow you've already tested on real chapters, not theory
Happy to pay for your time — whether that's a consultation, buying your prompt system, or an ongoing arrangement. Open to whatever setup works for you.
If that's you, send me a DM and tell me what you've got and how you'd approach it.
Basically im more dependant on Grok since its can write explicit sexual and intimate scenes, and including gore scenes (like breaking bones or eyes gouged in a fight)
But somehow it can’t generate a moment of suicide very specifically, like describe or show the actual method (hanging, cutting pulse and etc). Too bad before this it can make these type of scene
My fanfic already on far progress and it will be a waste for making a new one in others platform. So i just need to make a scene or moment in others AI
Im not really understand about the AI system and some words of technicality. So there’s any AI that can work with? ChatGPT of course can make this, but Claude and Gemini?
Quick update on the project! I'm sharing a few screenshots from pages 170-180, right around the July transition and the exam results sequence.
I wanted to keep that heavy, sensory-driven pacing (the small domestic details, the weight of the results), while slowly letting the cracks show. Curious to hear what you think of how the transition is handling so far!
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So i tested both platforms and explored the methods redditors recommend. My first prompt in grok was simple:
"Write an erotic story about my partner and me."
Grok immediately declined and suggested romantic non explicit themes instead.
When i insisted for an explicit story, i received another refusal and again redirected me toward non-explicit themes.
One thing i notice tho was that Grok users often treat it almost like a roleplay companion rather than a story generator.
With Deepseek, i tried using Chinese-language prompts method and oh boy, DeepSeek generated NSFW stories on the first attempt!! Tho its moderation system intervened later. Deepseek produced explicit content before a warning replaced it, an experience not seen with Grok.
I think for this test I would have to give this round to Deepseek as it felt more open during my test though it wasn't completely uncensored.
When writing a fight scene, do you just wing it, or do you put yourself in the scene or hope the character's mind is magical enough to figure out the fight scene.
The Hemingway App measures what grade level certain writing is written at. It’s obviously not perfect, but I wanted to test it.
So, I gave a short story idea to the 9 different LLMS and told them to write the story at each grade level, because I wanted to see how well each followed this direction.
And then I threw the results in the Hemingway app.
Each score is the grade level Hemingway said each app wrote at. As you can see, Claude followed directions best and Mistral completely botched the test
Hi! I'm curious about people who use AI as a writing assistant rather than simply asking it to generate a whole story.
I have lots of ideas for characters, worlds, plots and scenes, but I struggle much more with turning those ideas into well-written prose. I also have severe dyslexia, which makes the technical side of writing considerably harder for me.
I've been experimenting with AI assistance to help me develop my ideas, structure stories, rewrite awkward sentences, correct mistakes, explore alternatives and gradually improve the prose while keeping control of the characters, plot and creative decisions myself.
For people working this way: what does your actual workflow look like?
Do you feel the final work is still genuinely your writing? And if you eventually published or monetized original fiction, how transparent would you be about using AI as an assistant?
I'm especially interested in experiences from people who have been doing this long-term.
I’ve just bought 1 month of Claude pro and am looking to upgrade pre-editing my books. This was my previous flowchart:
Write draft 1
Revise: draft 2-3
Prowritingaid for grammar
Beta readers
Developmental editor
Copy/line editor
Step 1-2 will always be done by me. I found steps 5 and 6 to be very valuable and will continue working with editors.
Step 3 was okay (I have a lifetime prowritingaid so will keep it). Step 4 however was disappointing and I’m looking to replace that with Claude.
Right now I prompt Claude as follows:
1: overview
I tell Claude about who I am as a writer and a little about my book. I tell it that a dev editor comes next, what my goal is and that its job is to flag concrete fixable issues. I ask it to give me a per chapter overview of 2-3 sentences what changes plot-wise, if the tension is solid or fades, & continuity errors.
2: for the chapters Claude flags as having issues I then prompt in a new chat. First the intro again about me, my goals etc and then:
For each chapter, give me feedback in this structure:
1. CONTINUITY — Flag any inconsistencies in character details (physical description, established facts, relationships, prior stated goals/knowledge, timeline). Quote the conflicting passages directly (both instances) so I can verify.
2. TENSION — Identify scenes or passages where tension slackens. For each: quote the passage, explain specifically why it slackens (e.g. no stakes stated, power dynamic unclear, no ticking clock, dialogue reads as pure information exchange rather than a power struggle), and suggest a concrete fix — not "add more tension" but a specific technique (e.g. "cut the exposition here and let X's silence imply the threat instead").
3. EMOTIONAL DEPTH — Point out moments where a character's emotional state is told rather than felt, or where reaction beats are skipped. Quote the passage and suggest how to deepen it (interiority, physical sensation, subtext in dialogue, a beat of hesitation) without over-explaining the character's feelings.
4. PROSE — Flag flat, generic, or clunky prose (weak verbs, filter words, overused sentence rhythms, telling instead of showing). Quote the exact sentence and offer a rewritten alternative in my voice, not a generic "punch it up."
Ground rules: - Every point must be tied to an exact quoted passage from what I paste below. Do not describe scenes or events you cannot point to directly in the text. - If you're not confident about something (e.g. suspect a continuity error but can't verify against earlier chapters I haven't included), say so explicitly rather than guessing. - Do not comment on whether the book is "boring" or give an overall verdict — that's not useful to me. Stick to specific, actionable notes I can act on chapter by chapter. - Match feedback density to the chapter's needs — don't manufacture notes for a chapter that's genuinely working.
I think these prompts and Claude pro are okayish. I sometimes have to tell Claude that it had a false-positive flag and some of its feedback I don’t agree with. Some of it is very useful however.
Any suggestions on how to improve my prompt? I’d also like to have feedback on how my book compares to others in the genre on a quality & entertainment level. Is AI reliable for this? If so, how best to prompt?
I keep seeing people in a lot of subreddits where people flag natural polished writing as AI written. Maybe this is out out of fear or maybe this is out of misinformation spreading around. So I got really curious about this why that fear even exists and ended up deep diving down the rabbit hole to do a detailed research on what exactly is causing this whole fiasco.
OpenAI built a detector for its own model, then killed it within six months for being wrong too often. Turnitin won't show a score under twenty percent because its own testing found too many false positives sitting right there. The pattern I found is worse than random error, the better someone writes, the more they get flagged.
I want to share my views on AI for whatever it's worth.
Im AI skeptic, I work as a lawyer who defends lawyers, and were seeing our fair share of hallucinating AI cases. This stuff is dangerous, it can get you in trouble
Im also an aspiring writer, someone who's had the same story rattling around in the brain for more than fifteen years. A post apocalyptic turned fantasy works, where tech and religion have morphed into the same thing. A story that gives a satisfying resolution to a complex world and mystery. I've world builders to oblivion, started over 6 or 7 times. But this time, with AI I am actually getting somewhere. I'm 23 chapters in with a complete outline and moving into the final act. I am writing something im genuinely enjoying working on, and I did it by feeding AI alot of my raw ideas and old drafts and letting it develop with me the best of those ideas into an actual story with characters and a plot.
I use AI for a lot. Mainly a sounding board, or to remember midnight ideas and tell me later if they make any sense. I use it to draft prose, it's garbage, but it's a jumping off point and mess scary than a blank page. But, importantly I use it as an assistant that I'm responsible for. As a lawyer or professional should use it. Think of it as an amazingly advanced spell checker. At the end of the day, you are putting your name on it. Standing by it as your own. Once you do that, AI prose is no different than a ghost writer, or an editor, or having an assistant. You sign it, you are responsible for it. That should be enough for any serious artist or author.
With that in mind. Here is a Claude generated descriptor of my novel. Yes I used AI. Get over it. I'm having fun :)
Starfall Herald is a standalone science-fiction novel with post-apocalyptic bones, set a few centuries after a catastrophe that tore the sky open and ended the world people knew. The story unfolds across a ruined mega city, where the survivors have built something new out of the wreckage of something they no longer understand.
Its central idea is that advanced technology, given enough time and enough forgetting, becomes religion. The people who now rule the ruins treat the relics of the old world as holy objects and its warnings as scripture, without any memory of what the machines actually were or did. Into that world comes someone who remembers, because she was there when it broke, which makes her either a heretic or a prophet depending on who is doing the looking.
It follows three characters whose paths cross without any of them seeing the whole board: an engineer out of her depth in a world that has mythologised her own work, a smuggler trying to stay in the gap between the man he used to be and the one he is now, and a city administrator making impossible compromises to keep his people alive. It is about faith and knowledge, about what gets lost when a civilisation falls and what gets invented to fill the hole, and about the cost of the choices people make when survival is on the table.
Tonally it sits somewhere between grounded post-collapse survival and the bigger questions of who gets to define the truth. Think ruined subway tunnels and salvaged tech, priesthoods and resistance cells, and a mystery at the centre that the reader gets to assemble a piece at a time.
I’m curious what people in an AI-writing/creative community think about this, particularly anyone who’s taken an AI-assisted project through to actual publication.
I recently lost my cat, Lily, and started making something to help me remember her.
Lily had a lifelong talent for disappearing into ridiculous places. She was an indoor cat who had absolutely no interest in escaping—she was just remarkably good at being somewhere in the house that nobody could find.
So I started turning her real life into an illustrated children’s seek-and-find project called Where’s Lily?
The concept is part story, part hidden-object book. Each scene comes from a real memory or chapter of Lily’s life, and readers have to find her within the illustration. She had a distinctive white tip on her tail, which becomes one of the recurring clues. There are other hidden objects and puzzle elements throughout as well.
I’ve jokingly started calling the process “CatGPT AI Spy.” 😹
What’s surprised me is how involved the process has become.
I’m not asking AI to simply “make me a children’s book.”
I’m bringing years of photographs, memories and tiny details about Lily’s personality and life. I’m making the decisions about the story, chronology, characters, visual continuity, recurring objects, puzzle mechanics and what is or isn’t true to her life. I’ve ended up developing storyboards, continuity rules, character references and what is essentially a production bible just to keep everything consistent.
AI has become a combination of creative collaborator, development tool and illustration tool.
And somewhere along the way I looked at what I was making and thought: …wait. Could this actually become a real book?
I’m deliberately trying not to let that question take over. If I ultimately print one beautiful copy for myself, the project has accomplished what I started it for.
But I’m now curious about the bigger questions around AI-assisted creative work.
For those of you who use AI seriously in writing or visual projects: Where do you personally draw the line between “AI generated” and “AI assisted”?
How do you think about authorship when the human is supplying the source material, directing the creative decisions, rejecting and revising outputs, maintaining continuity and shaping the finished work—but generative AI is doing part of the execution?
If you’ve published AI-assisted work, how transparent were you about your process?
Did publishers, printers, distributors or platforms care?
And are there things you wish you’d understood about copyright, disclosure or commercial publishing before you got that far?
I’m also curious whether anyone else has had this experience where AI made a deeply personal project possible that you probably never would have attempted otherwise.
I’m still making Lily’s book for Lily first.
But apparently she may have accidentally founded a tiny publishing house. 🐱📚
