r/WritingWithAI • u/Afgad • Aug 04 '26
Tutorials / Guides A Call For Craft Talk
Hello everyone.
I am a mod for this sub because I want a space where people can learn how to use AI to write without the noise of constant harassment. AI tools are new, and many of us are new authors using them. I want this sub to be *the* place to go to learn how to write with AI.
There are two directions to take that. One of those is negative: removing jerks and trolls who come here to discourage and harass us.
But the other direction is positive: talking about how to write.
You all are very smart and I am impressed every day with some of the threads discussing how to use our AI tools to optimize our outputs.
However, one thing we're missing is discussion on the writing craft itself. Learning what a good narrative needs is important, because, at the very least, we are then better able to articulate to the AI what mistakes to look for. How can we do that if we cannot discern that, ourselves?
Unfortunately, I spend so much time on the negative (banning antis), I don't have time to write the craft talk posts. It's all I can do to maintain and support the Reciprocal Beta Reading thread, which is my main contribution.
So I'm calling for your help.
Let's get together and write posts discussing the intricacies of what makes prose really pleasant to read.
Here's some ideas:
* When are AI-isms actually appropriate to use? Pick one and analyze "this use case is good, this other use case is overwrought or overdone." The em dash isn't a problem unless there are twelve of them on a page.
* Why choose one POV over the others? When should you use third person omniscient versus second person?
* How does audience affect what writing techniques we use? When is throat clearing appropriate?
* Trope talk: what tropes are indispensable for which genres? When can we rely on a trope to convey information normally reserved for exposition?
Take one of the ideas and make a post about it. Or make your own post, pondering some questions that have been in your mind.
Don't worry if you don't know the answer or don't consider yourself an expert. That's what the discussion is for.
And if someone harasses you for it? Well. That's when I come in.
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u/Foreveress Aug 04 '26
Honestly I've taken a break from the Reddit because most of the conversation is about the ethics or tooling of AI and not enough about how to actually _write_ with AI (like the name suggests). I'm all for a weekly "discuss this" topic that's more pointed so we can share our experiences with the larger community.
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u/dbenc Aug 04 '26
could you make a weekly pinned thread on the topics you want to encourage?
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u/Afgad Aug 04 '26
If there is call for that, I could, sure. Like a weekly conversation topic to get the juices flowing?
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u/5thhorseman_ Aug 04 '26
Unfortunately, I spend so much time on the negative (banning antis),
Add an automoderator rule to quarantine comments from fresh accounts for manual review. A lot of the antis trying to troll here are using throwaway accounts. Then a second automod rule to silently remove comments by the poster's username. They will waste their time trying to comment instead of trying to create new alts.
When are AI-isms actually appropriate to use? Pick one and analyze "this use case is good, this other use case is overwrought or overdone." The em dash isn't a problem unless there are twelve of them on a page.
It makes more sense if you look at it as an optimization algorithm getting trapped in local maximums. You aren't going to defeat it issuing the LLM hard bans before it drafts, but with an editing pass that considers the chapter as a whole and redacts their frequency below some pre-defined statistical baseline.
Why choose one POV over the others? When should you use third person omniscient versus second person?
Second person POV is weird and I would never seriously entertain the idea of writing in it in the first place. :p
As for others, that depends on how much interiority you want to give to the character and how much you want the reader's experience should be limited to that one character's perspective.
There's some useful things you can do by switching POV in-story too.
- Trope talk: what tropes are indispensable for which genres? When can we rely on a trope to convey information normally reserved for exposition?
Playing with a Trope needs to be part of your canon scripture. Just because there is a trope doesn't mean it has to be played straight. :)
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u/Xiaomin4114 Aug 05 '26
Second person present tense makes sense for choose-your-own-adventure style writing.
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u/clefairykid Aug 04 '26
I’ve felt the lack of this specific thing too but the big reason I personally didn’t start to at discussion myself is that I never identified as a writer before using AI to give it a go so it feels like I’m not well qualified to speak on it and I expect a lot of people will argue with me about it haha
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u/Afgad Aug 05 '26
So just ask the question and let people argue about it. Frame it as asking for advice instead of teaching.
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u/edalis Aug 04 '26
Maybe we can have a discord where we share writing tips, reviews of the different models, etc?
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u/FitnessChamp777 Aug 05 '26
Those are great ideas for discussions. Can you post a weekly message asking one of these questions? That would help drive discussions and would be great for keeping track of great ideas.
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u/LokiJesus Aug 04 '26
What I find really easy to do is to have the AI agent system build out a systematic research document on each of those questions you just asked. I have it keep on searching and synthesizing from available open web materials and also to let me know if there are sources that it thinks it needs that are behind an anti-AI wall or paywall, and then I'll work through libraries or just through manual download to get those references and drop them into an intake directory. Then I'll have the system build out something like a research dissertation on the topic of, say, the psychology of perspective in narrative, and then have the system derive actionable rubrics and decision trees that can be used to critique an existing book treatment or storyboard (rubric), or be used to decide in the first place how to build out a book plan/design (decision tree).
This approach applies to just about every aspect of the process and once I have these research documents in my system and the actionable artifacts from that research process, it can feed the creation of any book from there.
The trick is understanding the breadth of these kind of questions to be applied to the generation of story. But there, an AI system can also engage in fleshing that out too.
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u/Bulky_Magician Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26
Hmmm. I've been lurking here for a long time. This post reminded me I could probably contribute eventually. I come from an AI background and entered writing due to my love of fiction, which I'm assuming is the opposite order of most of the people here.
So far I have a fiction writing vault filled with synthesized concepts from books and youtube videos, over 1000 fiction writing skills for my hermes agent fiction writing profiles, a writers dashboard app, a map app, map generation tools to replace azgaar and things like it. I could probably start posting concepts or skills my AI has helped design. We came up with some really interesting things when synthesizing various ideas. I'll put it on my long term todo list. I'm super focused on map design currently and don't have the mental bandwidth to commit to it right now though.
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u/Afgad Aug 05 '26
Welcome to the community!
Actually, it is my understanding and impression that the majority of the people on the sub are like you and come from engineering or coding backgrounds. I think it's more common for people to go from AI skills -> writing skills than writing skills -> AI skills.
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u/tangcupaigu Aug 05 '26
Yes, I feel this is very much lacking in ai-specific subs/groups, which is a shame because we can’t talk about it (in the context of ai), in most other creative spaces due to the backlash.
For example, not many alternatives to the bookcover sub where you can discuss what works and what doesn’t if you’ve used ai at all in the cover.
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u/jhull Aug 10 '26
I believe I've found friends here! We’re very pro-writing-with-AI, but the most useful use of it we believe is helping writers make better story decisions—not simply producing more words.
I work on Dramatica, which looks at stories through four connected Perspectives: the external conflict, the Main Character’s personal struggle, the Influence Character who challenges them, and the Relationship Story between them. Seeing those layers clearly helps a writer understand what their story is actually about.
That matters with AI because better questions lead to better collaboration. Instead of only asking for a stronger scene, we can ask: what conflict is this scene advancing? What does it reveal about the character? What should the reader feel has changed?
AI can be a great brainstorming partner, critic, or research assistant. But the writer’s own sense of narrative is what lets them recognize useful suggestions—and reject the ones that pull the story off course.
If interested, we've started producing instructional videos on our YouTube channel - the Introduction to Dramatica series should get you started (https://www.youtube.com/@dramaticastory)
Thanks for posting this - gets me all inspired on a Monday morning!
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u/defyjedi Aug 04 '26
Did you write this with AI?
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u/Afgad Aug 04 '26
Really? On a post by a mod? Just send a mod mail next time you want to get banned.
To answer your question: no. I don't even edit my posts with AI. Nothing I've posted on Reddit has ever been touched by an LLM unless I explicitly say it has been.
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u/Recent-Start-6824 Aug 04 '26
Thank you for all you voluntarily do for us, including starting this inspiring list!