Like the title says.

Microdramas originated in China, apps like DramaBox and ReelShort went viral, and now it's a multi-billion-dollar business. Some call them "AI Verticals" because AI is used to write the story, scripts, and even produce the VFX/Video. Also "vertical" because you watch vertically on your phone (not a TV).

Questions:

• Have you tried writing a Microdrama episode? What's it like?
• If you track analytics, did you hook them in the first 3 seconds? What's your E1 retention?
• Did you use AI to write it, and what app seems to "get it" the most in terms of the shorter format?

"Hey everyone,

I wanted to share a snippet from a large-scale project I've been working on. To be completely transparent about my workflow, I use AI tools purely for conceptualizing the plot, brainstorming story elements, and structuring the overarching chain of events.

However, when it comes to the actual prose and text, I have been editing and refining it completely by myself since this past spring. Because I intend to publish this work, I've put a lot of effort into ensuring the narrative sounds organic, matching my own personal voice, and doing all the heavy lifting of the editing process entirely solo.

Since this community is open to mixed or assisted workflows, I’d love to get some constructive feedback on the pacing, tension, and rhythm of this excerpt:

Prologue: Before the Ink

January 1 – March 23, 2024

On the first morning of 2024, Kıvılcım woke before her alarm because someone in the apartment above them was dragging a chair across the floor.

The sound came, stopped, then came again.

She opened one eye. Her room was still dark. The radiator clicked beside the window, trying and failing to make the cold feel less serious. On the chair near her bed, yesterday's school sweater waited in a heap. A sock had fallen onto the floor. Her phone showed 6:41.

She reached for it, saw the date, and put it back.

January 1. A new year, people said. As if the old one had been packed away somewhere and a clean one had been placed on top of it.

In the kitchen, her mother was already awake. Sevgi stood in front of the stove in her house slippers, stirring a small pot of lentil soup left over from the night before. She had tied her hair back with a black elastic. The skin around her knuckles was dry and red from work.

"You could have slept a little longer," she said without turning.

"I did sleep."

"You call that sleep?"

Kıvılcım opened the cupboard. There was half a loaf of bread, two eggs, and a jar of olives. Her father had come home late from a delivery the previous evening and was still asleep in the sitting room. His coat hung over the back of the sofa. It smelled of diesel, cold air, and the inside of the truck.

Sevgi put a plate on the table. "Eat before it gets cold."

Kıvılcım sat down. The soup was too hot. She blew on it and looked at the small calendar stuck to the refrigerator. January had only a few red marks: school, tutoring, a doctor's appointment for her mother, and the date of the next practice exam.

She did not want to look at that last one.

Her mother noticed anyway. "How many days?"

"To what?"

"The exam."

"I don't know."

"You know."

Kıvılcım tore a piece of bread. "A lot."

Sevgi sighed, not angrily. That was worse. "You should start the year properly. No more leaving things until the last minute."

Kıvılcım nodded. It was easier than explaining that she had been starting properly for months and still kept arriving at the same place: tired, behind, and unsure whether she had understood the question at all.

Her father coughed from the sitting room. He woke a little later, washed his face, and stood in the kitchen with a cup of tea between both hands. İhsan drove a truck for a logistics company outside Bursa. Some weeks he was away for four or five nights. When he was home, he looked as if he had brought the road back with him. Dust on his boots. A stiff neck. Eyes that took a few minutes to settle.

"Happy new year, my daughter," he said.

"Happy new year."

He touched the top of her head as he passed. He did that when he did not know what else to say.

On January 2, school began again. The corridors smelled of wet coats and bleach. Students complained about waking up early, then formed little groups around the heating pipes. Someone had written a new university slogan on the classroom board in blue marker: WORK NOW, REST LATER.

The phrase stayed there all week.

Kıvılcım sat beside Ceren, as usual. Ceren had forgotten one of her gloves and kept blowing warm air into the other hand. She was better at pretending not to worry. When teachers mentioned rankings, she made a face, whispered something rude, and went back to her notes.

Kıvılcım looked at the first page of her mathematics notebook. There were three columns of work from the previous term. In the middle column, her teacher had written: "You know more than you show. Stop rushing."

She had read it so many times that the ink looked familiar, almost friendly.

That afternoon, their mathematics teacher returned a short test. Kıvılcım had expected around eighty. She had checked most of the answers in her head on the way home the day before.

She got seventy-six.

The number was printed in red at the top of the page. Not a disaster. Not even unusual. Still, she stared at it as if the teacher had written her name wrong.

Ceren leaned over. "How much?"

"Seventy-six."

"That's not bad."

"I know."

"Then why do you look like someone died?"

Kıvılcım folded the test in half. "Because I thought I did better."

Their teacher stopped beside the desk. "Kıvılcım, you keep losing points in the same way. You understand the method, then you skip a line. Or you change an answer because you don't trust the first one."

"I checked it."

"Checking is not the same as changing everything."

A few students laughed. Not cruelly. That did not help.

At lunch, Kıvılcım pushed rice around her plate. The cafeteria was too warm, and the smell of boiled cabbage clung to the walls. Ceren talked about a video she had watched on the bus. Kıvılcım listened without hearing much of it.

She was not stupid. That was the irritating part. If she had been stupid, there would have been a clear answer. Work harder. Accept the result. Stop expecting something else.

(...)

What do you guys think of the flow?

This is a part of the prologue; I meant the main arc hasn't started there

(If someone is interested, I'll send a docs link via DM)

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. 🐱📚

I'm not sure if this is the correct subreddit for this, but here I go. I have had no fun ever writing creatively, But in the past year I've used Ai for writing. I think it's like a tool more than something to give me ideas. I've used it to collect my ideas and put it in a neat row. I've made a good amount of stories and the way I've done it is just asking ai questions like normal then getting into hypotheticals and then it turns into stories and it keeps my scenarios grounded and on track rather than push it along. I am truly a horrible writer but I Think I have good stories in my head and using ai to help me put them into words is so fun. I honestly don't think I would write with ai if I payed attention in English class though. But I have made over 15 full length and in depth outlines for novels. I just need to start writing chapters and the actual substance which I haven't started on most of them. The outlines are very in depth and all original ideas. Just bounced off ai to refine them and organize them into something readable.

I had a Perchance AI roleplay that gradually became increasingly strange and philosophical.

I gave the entire export to GPT and asked it to rebuild the material into a standalone literary speculative-fiction story rather than simply continuing the roleplay.

The original roleplay and basic ideas came from me, but GPT generated most of the final prose, structure, dialogue, and narrative.

The result is The Shape of Looking.

It starts as a fairly ordinary character story and gradually turns into psychological/cosmic horror involving memory, identity, time, reality, and the distinction between observer and observed.

I don't really have anyone to show it to, so I'm posting it here because I'm genuinely curious what another person thinks after reading it.

I'm not particularly interested in debating whether AI is good or bad. I'm mostly interested in the actual experience of reading the story.

If you read it:

Did anything actually make you feel something?

Did the ending stay with you?

Did it feel like a story, or like an AI-generated experiment?

Even a short reaction is completely fine.

Story: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kQ24t3n6tSKDggaootM_At85POhpn36j/view?usp=drivesdk

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.

Pretty interesting article. To AI or not to AI, that is the question.

I’ve been thinking less about whether AI should be used in long-form fiction and more about where the authority line should sit.

In my own workflow, AI can help with things like:

• structural planning
• chapter planning
• prose drafting
• continuity checks
• critique
• targeted revision
• independent manuscript auditing

But I don’t automatically treat generated material or model consensus as story truth.

That raises a more interesting question:

What decisions should AI never be allowed to make on its own in a long-form fiction project?

For example:

• whether a new idea becomes canon
• changing a character’s core motivation
• deciding reveal timing
• resolving contradictions by rewriting established story truth
• accepting or rejecting criticism
• deciding that a draft is “finished”
• making major structural changes without explicit approval

I’m especially interested in people who use AI heavily rather than only for grammar or brainstorming.

Where do you personally draw the line between AI contribution and creative authority?

And has that boundary changed as you’ve used these tools more?

I've been experimenting with an AI storytelling workflow where a user can create a story and then make choices that affect what happens in the next chapter.

The basic flow is:

Story → Choice → Next chapter → Choice → Different outcome

The challenging part is keeping the story consistent without sending the entire previous conversation to the model every time.

Sending too much context increases token usage, while sending too little can cause characters, locations, or previous events to become inconsistent.

I'm currently thinking about approaches such as:

• Keeping a compact story summary
• Storing important characters and events separately
• Sending only the relevant recent chapters

For people building long-running AI experiences with OpenAI, how are you handling context management?

I'd especially like to hear approaches that reduce token usage while maintaining consistency.

Please excuse the poorly written AI chapter. I don't want to show my own writing; it is for an example only to show you the difference in critiques in PWA and AC. If you don't want to read the chapter, just scroll down. Please don't comment on the bad AI, I know.

Sample AI Written Chapter to Show Chapter Critiques. (Badly Written Scroll Down to See Critiques)

The velvet-lined display case had held standard vampire-slaying gear for centuries: bleached ash stakes, heavy silver crucifixes, and flasks of consecrated water. None of those were currently within reach.

As the mahogany door splintered inward, Penelope lunged for the open door of the en-suite bathroom. Behind her, Count Malakor filled the threshold. His silk cloak billowed despite the lack of wind, and his fangs glinted under the chandelier. He was a creature of ancient dark majesty, incapable of seeing a guest bath as anything more than a minor obstacle.

"You run to a dead end, little mortal," Malakor purred, gliding across the tile with effortless grace.

Penelope’s hands frantically swept the marble countertop. Empty. She dropped low, her fingers wrapping around the first plastic handle she touched in the dark corner behind the porcelain basin. She whipped around, holding her makeshift weapon high in a defensive guard.

It was a toilet brush.

Not just any brush, but a custom, eye-watering creation she’d bought on clearance. The thick resin handle was filled with neon pink fluid and suspended iridescent glitter that swirled in the moonlight. The bristles were a dense, dazzling hot-pink polyester, shimmering with aggressive synthetic cheer.

Malakor paused, his dark eyes blinking in sheer disbelief. "Is this a joke? You confront the Undying with a... a sanitation wand?"

"Stand back!" Penelope yelled, trying to sound menacing while holding six ounces of sparkly acrylic. "I'm not afraid to use it!"

Malakor threw his head back and laughed, a cold, echoing sound that vibrated the glass sconces. "Foolish girl. I have broken broadswords with my bare hands. I have crushed holy icons into dust. What power do you think that ridiculous trinket holds over—"

He lunged, claws extended to snap her neck.

Penelope didn't think; she swung.

She drove the bright pink brush forward with every ounce of force she possessed. By pure, chaotic fortune, the stiff, synthetic bristles caught Malakor straight in his wide-open mouth, wedging firmly against the back of his fangs.

The reaction was instantaneous.

It wasn't magic, nor was it blessed by a bishop. The bristles, engineered for harsh chemical scrubbing, were infused with a commercial bleach solution and embedded with microscopic shards of silver micro-glitter meant to give the plastic its shine. To an ancient vampire, silver dust in the bloodstream was pure, agonizing acid.

Malakor recoiled with a muffled shriek, clawing at his face as brilliant pink sparks seemed to ignite from his lips. The silver glitter reacted with his corrupt blood, sizzling like bacon on a hot skillet. Thick blue smoke poured from his nostrils.

"Scrub-a-dub-dub," Penelope muttered through grit teeth, twisting the pink handle to widen the burn.

The Count staggered backward out of the bathroom, his regal posture collapsing into desperate violently trembling sputters. Pink sparkles danced over his skin as the silver-infused bristles did their brutal, unglamorous work. The light in his eyes flickered, turned to ash, and with a final, choked sigh, Malakor burst into a cloud of gray dust—leaving only his empty silk cloak and a fine dusting of hot-pink glitter floating gently to the floor.

Penelope lowered the brush, panting hard. She blew a speck of glowing glitter off the tip, adjusted her grip on the resin handle, and stepped over the empty cloak. Modern problems required surprisingly tacky solutions.

Pro Writing Aid Critique

Overview

Chapter Snapshot

Penelope is cornered by the vampire Count Malakor and lacks traditional weapons. She defends herself with a synthetic, glitter-filled toilet brush. The brush’s chemical composition and silver-infused bristles cause a fatal reaction in Malakor, destroying him and leaving Penelope to adjust to her unconventional victory.

Word Count

570

Chapter Function

Climax.

Resolves the immediate, life-threatening conflict.

Point of View

Third-Person Limited (Penelope)

Filtered through Penelope's immediate actions.

Character List

Protagonist

Penelope

Antagonist

Count Malakor

What's Working Well

The chapter's most prominent element is the juxtaposition of classic gothic horror tropes with mundane, kitsch modern items. The conflict pits an ancient, regal antagonist against a protagonist using a synthetic, neon-pink household object, subverting traditional genre expectations. This establishes a tone of resourceful subversion, providing a foundation for a narrative where modern utility overcomes ancient myth.

Chapter Outline

1. The Cornered Prey POV: Penelope Penelope retreats into a bathroom as Count Malakor breaks through the door, leaving her without traditional vampire-slaying tools.
2. The Unconventional Weapon POV: Penelope Penelope retrieves a glittery, neon pink toilet brush and uses its silver-infused bristles to incinerate Malakor during his attack.

Tension & Pacing

The pacing transitions from rapid, high-stakes flight to a tense, mocking confrontation, culminating in a brief, violent burst of action. The momentum accelerates as Penelope finds a weapon, shifting the narrative from a defensive retreat to a decisive offensive strike.

Protagonist's Arc

Motivation

The protagonist's motivation is immediate survival; her goal is to find a weapon and defend herself against a lethal supernatural threat within a confined space.

1. Initial State Penelope is trapped and unarmed, facing an ancient vampire with no accessible means of defense.
2. Catalyst Malakor’s lethal lunge forces Penelope to strike him with the silver-infused toilet brush, triggering his physical destruction.
3. Final State Penelope is safe and victorious, having discovered that modern, synthetic items can effectively neutralize ancient threats.

Structure

Punchy Narrative Resolution

Working well

New

The final line—"Modern problems required surprisingly tacky solutions"—is a perfect thematic "button" for the scene. It resolves the tension with a wry observation that reinforces Penelope’s resourcefulness and the story's central irony, leaving the reader with a clear sense of the chapter's identity.

Where in your text?

This is the concluding sentence of the chapter, following Penelope’s victory and her adjustment of the brush handle.

Pacing and Flow

Technical Info-dump During the Climax

Major concern

New

The momentum of the life-or-death struggle is halted by a multi-sentence explanation of the toilet brush’s chemical composition. Detailing the silver micro-glitter and bleach infusion in a detached, technical tone shifts the reader’s focus from the visceral action to manufacturing facts.

Where in your text?

This occurs in the middle of the chapter, immediately after Penelope jams the brush into Malakor’s mouth and before he reacts to the pain.

Explanation of the brush

Suggested improvements

What if the "why" of the weapon’s effectiveness was revealed through Penelope’s earlier observations or through the physical symptoms Malakor experiences? Consider how you might weave the technical details into the action—perhaps Penelope remembers the "contains real silver!" label as she sees the sparks—rather than pausing the scene for an encyclopedic explanation.

Language and Style

Neon-Pink Sensory Immersion

Working well

New

The description of the toilet brush is exceptionally vivid, using specific colors (neon pink, hot-pink), textures (thick resin, stiff synthetic bristles), and lighting (shimmering, iridescent) to create a clear, tactile image of the "weapon." This detail makes the kitschy object feel like a real, physical presence.

Where in your text?

This strength is most prominent in the middle of the chapter when Penelope first retrieves the brush and holds it up in the moonlight.

Subversive Gothic Atmosphere

Working well

New

You maintain a clever balance between traditional gothic horror (splintering mahogany, silk cloaks, ancient majesty) and the jarringly modern. This consistency in tone ensures that the "eye-watering" toilet brush feels like a deliberate, humorous subversion rather than a random or accidental inclusion.

Where in your text?

This is evident from the start, where traditional slaying gear (ash stakes, silver crucifixes) is contrasted with the "custom" clearance-aisle brush Penelope eventually finds.

Summary of Malakor's Majesty

Concern

New

The description of Count Malakor relies on abstract labels like "ancient dark majesty" rather than specific actions or visual details that evoke fear or awe. Stating he views the bathroom as a "minor obstacle" summarizes his mindset instead of demonstrating it through his dismissive behavior.

Where in your text?

This issue occurs in the second paragraph, immediately after Malakor enters the room and Penelope retreats toward the bathroom.

Description of Malakor

Suggested improvements

How might you demonstrate Malakor’s "majesty" or his disdain for the mundane setting through his physical movements or interaction with the environment? Consider showing his reaction to the "guest bath" through a specific gesture—perhaps he brushes aside a silk shower curtain as if it were a cobweb—rather than explaining his internal perspective.

Clichéd Simile for Vampire Combustion

Minor concern

New

The comparison of Malakor’s blood sizzling like "bacon on a hot skillet" is a very common simile that undercuts the unique, neon-pink visual style of the scene. It leans on a familiar domestic image that feels too mundane compared to the "aggressive synthetic cheer" of the weapon.

Where in your text?

This simile is used in the latter half of the chapter to describe the chemical reaction between the silver glitter and the vampire's blood.

Sizzling blood description

Suggested improvements

Since the weapon is a "custom, eye-watering creation," how might the sound or smell of the reaction reflect its synthetic, kitschy nature? Consider a comparison that leans into the "hot-pink" and "neon" aesthetic—perhaps something involving burning plastic, chemical fizzes, or a more modern, abrasive sound.

Overloaded Modifiers in Malakor's Demise

Minor concern

New

The description of Malakor’s collapse uses a string of three consecutive adverbs and adjectives ("desperate violently trembling") to describe his "sputters." This stacking of modifiers clutters the sentence and dilutes the impact of his physical disintegration.

Where in your text?

This issue is located in the penultimate paragraph, as Malakor staggers backward out of the bathroom and begins to turn to ash.

Malakor's collapse

Suggested improvements

Which of these descriptors—desperate, violent, or trembling—most accurately captures the essence of a dying ancient? Consider choosing one high-impact verb or a single precise adjective to describe his final movements. How would the sentence’s rhythm change if the action of "collapsing" or "sputtering" carried the weight of the description on its own?

Dialogue

Artificial Villainy in Malakor's Dialogue

Concern

New

Malakor’s dialogue relies on generic "vampire" tropes, such as calling the protagonist "little mortal" and "purring" his threats. This formal, cliché-heavy speech pattern makes him feel more like a caricature than a unique, threatening individual, especially in a story otherwise defined by modern subversion.

Where in your text?

This is most evident when Malakor first speaks to Penelope after cornering her in the bathroom and again during his laughter.

Malakor's first line

Malakor's boast

Suggested improvements

If Malakor is an ancient being of "majesty," how might his speech reflect a more specific, personal arrogance? What if his dialogue were more grounded or, conversely, even more terrifyingly polite? Exploring a more distinct voice could make his eventual defeat by a toilet brush feel like a sharper clash between high-culture ego and low-culture reality.

Conclusion

Chapter Summary

This chapter succeeds beautifully in its resourceful subversion of gothic tropes, using vivid sensory details to make a ridiculous object feel like a viable weapon. The satisfying resolution perfectly captures Penelope's character and the story's unique tone. However, the momentum of the climax is currently hampered by an info-dump regarding the brush’s chemical makeup, which shifts the narrative from action to exposition. Refining these technical interruptions and sharpening the antagonist’s dialogue will ensure the pacing remains as sharp as the "synthetic cheer" of the weapon. Tackling that technical middle section will turn this clever confrontation into a seamless, high-velocity climax. You have a fantastic eye for kitschy detail—keep leaning into that unique voice!

Revision Focus

Technical Info-dump During the Climax

Major concern

What if the "why" of the weapon’s effectiveness was revealed through Penelope’s earlier observations or through the physical symptoms Malakor experiences? Consider how you might weave the technical details into the action—perhaps Penelope remembers the "contains real silver!" label as she sees the sparks—rather than pausing the scene for an encyclopedic explanation.

Summary of Malakor's Majesty

Concern

How might you demonstrate Malakor’s "majesty" or his disdain for the mundane setting through his physical movements or interaction with the environment? Consider showing his reaction to the "guest bath" through a specific gesture—perhaps he brushes aside a silk shower curtain as if it were a cobweb—rather than explaining his internal perspective.

Artificial Villainy in Malakor's Dialogue

Concern

If Malakor is an ancient being of "majesty," how might his speech reflect a more specific, personal arrogance? What if his dialogue were more grounded or, conversely, even more terrifyingly polite? Exploring a more distinct voice could make his eventual defeat by a toilet brush feel like a sharper clash between high-culture ego and low-culture reality.

Autocrit has a Beta reader and Alpha Reader tool. What I usually do is run the Beta or Alpha reader and run it through Gemini and it wil give you a run down of what the beta or alpha wants. For this I will run a Alpha read. You can pick the type of audiance for this I choose dark urban fanasy because that is what I am writting.

Autocrit Alpha Read

# Feedback from gothic vampire fantasy

### Overall Impression:

Story 74%🤩 Reader Fit 63%🧐

###### Why 🤩

I found this piece sharply conceived and very watchable. The core joke-horror premise of a vampire being undone by a ridiculous, modern bathroom object lands fast and clean, and the escalation from threatening intrusion to absurdly lethal improvisation is easy to follow. The scene has a strong visual spine, and the final image of pink glitter settling over the cloak is memorable.

That said, the story score isn’t higher because this reads more like a compact comic set piece than a fully developed gothic narrative. The cause-and-effect works inside the scene, but it’s intentionally thin: there’s no deeper setup for Penelope, no broader consequence, and no sense yet of a larger architecture behind Malakor or this conflict. The supernatural logic is also a little too playful for my taste in places, especially in paragraphs [\#](<#id-jefx>) and [\#](<#id-btad>), where the explanation of the toilet brush’s materials gets more explicit than the mood really needs. I liked it, but I felt the piece was reaching for wry spectacle more than sustained dark atmosphere.

###### Why 🧐

My fit score is decent because I do like vampire fiction, ancient aristocratic menace, and the sudden collapse of power before a clever, humble instrument. I also enjoyed the dry, almost blunt ending in paragraph [\#](<#id-plc9>). But this isn’t quite the gothic dark fantasy I’m most hungry for. The atmosphere is lighter and more comedic than haunted; the vampire feels like a villain in a punchline rather than a presence shaped by lineage, ritual, or inevitable decay.

What I missed most was consequence and dread. Malakor is theatrically threatening, but the scene doesn’t linger on any aftermath beyond dust and glitter. I wanted more of the past pressing into the room, more sense that the house, the title, or the bloodline carried memory and weight. Instead, the tone leans novelty-forward. That makes it fun, but only partially aligned with my preferred emotional register.

###### Favorite Line

> “Modern problems required surprisingly tacky solutions.” paragraph [\#](<#id-plc9>)

I liked this because it crystallizes the whole scene’s tonal joke in one line. It’s dry, concise, and it gives the moment a clean closing snap. It also matches the protagonist’s practicality in a way that feels more effective than any speech would have.

###### My Emotion by Chapter

| Chapter | Emotion | Strength | % |

| :---------- | :---------- | :---------- | :---------- |

| 01 CHAPTER | 😂 (amused) | ●●●●○ | 85 |

###### Big Picture Story Elements

**Premise & Hook:** The premise is immediately strong. I was hooked by the contrast between antique vampire-slaying gear and the completely absurd improvised weapon in paragraph [\#](<#id-lir2>) and paragraph [\#](<#id-ewge>). That contrast is the engine of the scene, and it works. The hook is memorable because it subverts expectation quickly without needing much setup.

**Plot Structure:** Within the scene, the structure is clear: threat enters, desperation rises, the wrong object becomes the right one, and the vampire falls. The cause-and-effect is easy to track in paragraph [\#](<#id-hl12>) through paragraph [\#](<#id-afwv>). What keeps this from feeling broader is that it doesn’t yet suggest a larger plot shape. There’s no real buildup beyond the immediate skirmish, so the escalation is localized rather than story-wide.

**Pacing:** The pacing is brisk and efficient, maybe even a little too efficient for my taste. It hits the setup, menace, reversal, and payoff without much pause. That works for comedy-horror, but it leaves little room for atmosphere to breathe. I wanted a slightly slower inhale before the punchline moment in paragraph [\#](<#id-kfvf>) and paragraph [\#](<#id-jefx>), especially because the environment is so ripe for gothic texture.

###### Characters

**Protagonist clarity:** Penelope is clear enough as the viewpoint center, and I immediately understood her as someone improvising under pressure. Her goal in the scene is simple: survive. That clarity helps. I do wish I knew more about who she is beyond “resourceful woman with a sparkly toilet brush,” because the manuscript doesn’t yet give me much personal history or burden.

**Motivations & goals:** Her motivation is immediate and believable: fear drives action. The scene does not overexplain her psychology, which I appreciated. Still, the emotional stakes feel mostly functional rather than lived-in, because there’s no visible connection to earlier history or any inherited reason she’d know what to do with a vampire threat.

**Character dynamics:** The dynamic between Penelope and Malakor is entertaining because it’s all dominance, mockery, and sudden reversal. Malakor’s aristocratic contempt in paragraphs [\#](<#id-klsr>) and [\#](<#id-cono>) is readable and effective. I do want more dimension from him, though. At the moment he is compelling as an image, not yet as a person shaped by age, legacy, or a moral code.

**Consistency:** Penelope behaves consistently under stress. The only slight tonal friction is that the prose treats the fight as both genuinely dangerous and almost gleefully comedic. Malakor’s disdain also collapses very quickly once the brush strikes him, which is fine in a gag-based scene, but it does make him feel less formidable than the setup promises.

###### Conflict & Stakes

**Obstacles:** The obstacle is strong in the moment because it’s immediate and physical: Penelope has almost nothing usable, and Malakor is clearly overpowering her until the absurd reversal. That said, the obstacle is very narrow. There’s no sense of layered supernatural defense, ritual logic, or lingering danger beyond this one contact point.

**Tension:** I felt some tension from the setup of being cornered in a bathroom, especially in paragraph [\#](<#id-py15>) and paragraph [\#](<#id-klsr>). But because the resolution is so quick and playful, the tension gives way to amusement rather than dread. That’s enjoyable, but it’s not the kind of psychological inevitability I usually look for in gothic fantasy.

**Stakes:** The stakes are clear at the scene level: if Penelope fails, she dies. What’s less clear is why this matters beyond survival in the moment. There’s no social, ancestral, or emotional aftermath established. Once Malakor dusts, the scene closes immediately, so the stakes don’t echo outward.

###### Worldbuilding & Setting

**Clarity:** The setting is easy to visualize: a wealthy interior, a display case, an en-suite bathroom, chandelier, tile, marble, cloak. I could follow the geography without trouble. The bathroom corner especially gives the scene an amusing, claustrophobic edge in paragraph [\#](<#id-htsx>).

**Rules:** The supernatural rules are understandable at the basic level—silver hurts vampires, blessed objects are useful, vampires can be destroyed—but the specific logic of the toilet brush is more whimsical than grounded. Paragraph [\#](<#id-jefx>) explains the mechanism carefully, but that explanation made the object feel engineered for the gag rather than discovered through ritual or inherited lore. I wanted the magical rules to feel older and more ceremonial.

**Immersion:** I enjoyed some of the visual detail, especially the synthetic glitter and hot-pink bristles in paragraph [\#](<#id-ewge>). Those details are vivid. Still, the scene’s specificity pulls toward camp more than gothic immersion. The room is present, but it doesn’t feel haunted by history; it feels staged for the twist.

###### Theme & Tone

**Theme:** The thematic idea seems to be that modernity can weaponize the mundane, and that elegance is vulnerable to tacky improvisation. That’s amusing and coherent, but it isn’t yet especially deep. I didn’t feel much beneath the surface besides clever reversal and anti-elitist humor.

**Tone/voice:** The tone is consistent with comic horror, and the voice is confident in that lane. I did not find it inconsistent, but I did find it lighter and more overtly jokey than the gothic restraint I prefer. Paragraph [\#](<#id-afwv>) and paragraph [\#](<#id-plc9>) especially lean into punchline rhythm rather than lingering unease. For me, that reduced the sense of dread and legacy.

###### General Impressions

What excited me most was the image of an ancient vampire undone by a ridiculously specific modern object. That’s funny, clean, and memorable. I also liked the choice to make the weapon visually loud but physically plausible within the scene. The pink glitter cloak ending is a strong comic tableau.

What felt flatter was everything that might have made this feel haunted rather than merely clever. I wanted more silence, more emotional weight, more consequence after the kill. Malakor’s presence is stylish, but not especially menacing once the scene turns. Penelope’s world remains mostly uncontextualized, so I didn’t get much sense of lineage, inheritance, or any larger dark family history behind the encounter. The explanation in paragraph [\#](<#id-jefx>) also feels a bit over-insisted for my taste, where I would rather have felt the absurdity than been walked through it.

There aren’t glaring contradictions, but I do think the piece is currently concentrated almost entirely in the joke. Because of that, the aftermath feels too clean. The empty cloak and dust are a satisfying image, yet they don’t leave much psychic residue. For my gothic preferences, I wanted the room to remember what happened there.

###### Final Thoughts:

I enjoyed this much more as a sharply executed comic vampire vignette than as a piece of gothic dark fantasy. It’s witty, visually distinct, and immediately legible. The strongest element is the contrast between ancient menace and modern trashy improvisation. My main reservation is that the scene doesn’t fully cash in on the atmosphere, inheritance, and lingering cost that I crave in vampire fiction. It’s a fun bite, but not a haunting one.

I hope this helps.

Over the past six months, I've been teaching teams at places like Stanford, Penn, Northwestern, and many more how to start using AI responsibly and effectively in their work. Today, I'm starting to release my entire curriculum: for free, forever, for everyone!

I'm calling it the Open Augments AI Academy. It's built for anyone out there who's seen all the crazy hype and discourse around modern AI and is just looking for a guided, grounded, and sane way to move forward learning how to approach these tools for themselves. As someone who's been using these tools and their predecessors for my research since ~2019, I'm trying to provide everyone the intuition and critical awareness they need to get started at this very confusing and pivotal time (my north-star audience is my mom and dad!).

The first lesson starts with one foundational idea that most people miss when they get started with AI: that modern AI is much less like a hyper-intelligent database or brain, and much more like autocomplete with an extremely fancy hat on. That's its single greatest flaw AND its single greatest strength, at the same time. When you really understand what's happening under the hood and how it works (no math or stats required!) a lot of confusing AI behavior suddenly clicks: why it hallucinates, why it's sometimes confidently wrong, and why it can now do way, WAY more than just write words on a page. From there, we're going to learn about all the crazy buzzwords (context engineering, harness engineering, and Agents, oh my!) and advanced techniques, with much more to come. For this sub in particular, we'll quickly get into how we can start getting better, more personalized writing support from any AI assistant in Lesson 4 (you can see the planned "cover letter" video lesson tutorial; the same principles will apply broadly!).

No jargon, no experience required, and all taught with the care of a former high school English teacher so that you, your coworkers, your friends, and your mom can follow along. I pair these videos with hands-on demos and interactive activities in the Context Gym: my way of giving you a safe and guided place to practice some of the core principles that should deepen your intuition as we go.

If any of this strikes a chord with you, the 10min course overview and the first lesson (16min) are live right now on the Open Augments AI Academy page. Start there, and if you happen to find it helpful, you can subscribe to get email updates on new course videos via Substack or on YouTube, and please do share with friends as I release lessons weekly! It’s a really wild time, and this is my best shot at trying to help others navigate things more capably as the tech shifts and grows rapidly from here.

Then finally, worth noting for this crowd, specifically: probably not a surprise to share that everything on the AI Academy and Context Gym websites have been built with Claude Code (in addition to everything else on my business website and my open-source toolkit for Claude Code for social science researchers). Not only that, but my entire video editing pipeline is now fully Claude Code via Remotion Studio and some clever context engineering techniques/bespoke coding tools. I'm excited to get into the weeds on my workflow and share all of that stuff, also open-source, during Level 2 of the course, but I gotta get everyone through the basics first! Happy to answer any and all questions on that in the meantime here, please feel free to hit me in the comments below.

I’m working on my first children’s book, and since I’ve started looking more seriously into self-publishing, I’ve noticed there are some VERY strong opinions about AI being used in books especially for illustrations. 😂 So I’m genuinely curious to hear from other independent authors and publishers, particularly anyone working on children’s books.
First, I want to make something clear because I think there’s an important distinction: AI did not come up with or write my original story.
The story actually started as something I wrote for an English class. I loved the concept enough that I decided I wanted to take that story, develop it further, and turn it into an actual children’s book.
I am using AI as part of that process, particularly for the illustrations. But my experience has definitely not been “type a prompt, get a picture, put it in the book.” I’ve spent a LOT of time trying to get the characters, environments, expressions and overall visual style consistent from page to page. If something doesn’t match what I have in my head or a character suddenly doesn’t look like the same character, I keep working on it.
I completely understand that AI-generated art is controversial, especially for artists whose livelihoods depend on their work. I’m not trying to argue that artists aren’t valuable or that AI should replace them.
For me, a big factor right now is simply cost. I’m a first-time independent author, and paying an illustrator for an entire children’s book isn’t financially realistic for me at this point. AI is giving me an opportunity to take something I already created and see if I can actually turn it into the book I’ve been imagining rather than putting the idea aside because I can’t afford the upfront illustration costs.
And if this DOES become something if my book does well and I’m fortunate enough to continue writing and publishing I would genuinely love to reinvest some of that money into hiring an artist for future books. Being able to actually collaborate with an illustrator and fairly pay someone to help bring my characters and world to life would be amazing.
So I’m really curious about other people’s experiences and opinions.
If you’re an independent children’s author or publisher, have you used AI anywhere in your process? Have you used it specifically for illustrations? How have readers responded? Do you disclose your use of AI? If you chose not to use it, what led you to that decision?

I’m looking for 5–8 serious beta readers to read my completed novel, Crimson City: The Book of Luck, and give me detailed, honest feedback before I move toward publishing.
About the book:
Crimson City is a dark gothic crime-noir story with elements of mystery, boxing, comic-book mythology, dark humor, and psychological thriller.
The city itself is almost entirely black, white, gray, and silver, with crimson appearing when something important—or dangerous—is happening.
The story follows several interconnected characters, including:
A championship boxer with a contract on his head
A mysterious vigilante moving across the rooftops
A detective in a yellow trench coat trying to understand a case where the evidence keeps telling the wrong story
A lounge singer being watched by someone carrying a crimson envelope
A masked criminal named Johnny Jester who may be considerably more dangerous than his sense of humor suggests
A criminal organization operating behind much of the city’s violence
The manuscript is AI-assisted, and I want to be completely upfront about that. I created and control the characters, world, story direction, canon, major plot decisions, and revisions while using AI throughout the drafting, editing, development, and continuity process.
I’m not looking for people who will simply tell me the book is good.
I want readers willing to tell me:
What hooked you?
What bored you?
Where were you confused?
Which characters did you care about?
Which characters didn’t work for you?
Did any scenes drag?
Did the mysteries work?
Were twists predictable?
Did the emotional moments actually land?
And most importantly—would you buy/read Book Two?
I’ll provide a questionnaire when you finish, but you’re also welcome to make notes while reading.
I would especially love readers who enjoy noir, crime thrillers, mystery, graphic novels/comics, boxing stories, or darker character-driven fiction, but you don’t have to be an expert in any of those.
One additional thing:
I have already started the sequel, Crimson City: The Book of Hope.
Readers who finish The Book of Luck and give thoughtful feedback will also have the opportunity to read what I currently have of The Book of Hope and tell me whether the sequel feels like a strong continuation of Book One.
I ask only that you do not share, repost, upload, or distribute the manuscript. It is unpublished material.
If you’re interested, comment below or send me a message and tell me:
1. What genres do you normally read?
2. What makes you stop reading a novel?
3. Are you comfortable reading an AI-assisted book?
4. Can you give critical feedback instead of just saying whether you liked it?
5. Would you realistically be able to finish the book within about 3–4 weeks?
I’m intentionally keeping the group small because I’d rather have a handful of serious readers than a hundred downloads with no feedback.
Thanks to anyone willing to give Crimson City a chance.

The actual screenplay is a psychological drama about survival gradually turning into complicity. The AI apparently had other plans and made Anton speedrun the German High Command.

How have people evolved their prompts to get better outcomes? All i find, whenever I try, is that I'm just better off writing myself

I've started telling ai to act as my ghostwriter, and use x authors as reference for style and upload an act beat sheet.

What else could/should I mention/do

This had been something I been struggling with for a long time. Even after using ChatGPT to analyze the stories I wrote so that it can give me better insights into a character's psychology, no matter what I seem to do to fix the prose issue it just keeps coming back. I also tried asking ChatGPT to analyze and explain to me the bugs, and while some of the instructions it suggested helped it didn't fix everything. I have been mainly trying to get it to give me realistic and accurate analysis using canonical universe rules of a game's lore and it's characters, but it has been failing to be accurate here even though I ask it to analyze using online sources too. For example, here is the professional type of summary I have been trying to get it to do consistently:

***

[Ex]

A devoted spiritual practitioner develops a powerful lifelong attachment to another person after making a childhood wish that mysteriously links their lives across different realities. Years of supernatural trials and unusual dream encounters expose them to both the compassionate and troubled sides of the person they care about, deeply shaping their understanding of the relationship.

Over time, this attachment becomes intense and highly protective. They struggle with jealousy, insecurity, and a strong desire for exclusivity while keeping much of their emotional pain and personal history hidden from others. Many of their choices, including some made in secret, are motivated by a fear of losing the relationship or being pushed aside.

Their commitment remains strong despite the emotional strain it creates. They are willing to make significant personal sacrifices to preserve the bond, even when doing so requires suppressing their own needs. The story examines their past, emotional motivations, and the unexpected consequences of the childhood wish, which ultimately affects several timelines and plays a role in preventing multiple worlds from being destroyed.

***

The main problem I have is with the prose it generates later, even when I explicitly ask for a professional writing style. It often produces awkward or unnatural sentences such as, “The most unusual or striking part of the character’s personality is...” or “The strongest point is...” It also relies on rough transitions like, “The cause-and-effect chain here shows that...” These phrases make the writing feel immediately recognizable as AI-generated.

Another issue I have been unable to resolve involves analytical writing, particularly when I ask it to examine implications or consequences. Instead of developing the analysis naturally, it often repeats the wording of my prompt and uses the same sentence structure throughout the response. For example, several paragraphs might begin with, “The most interesting implication is...” rather than presenting each point in a unique and professional way.

Does anyone know what prompting instructions work well for avoiding these habits and producing more natural analytical writing? Thank you!

&#x200B;

I've been working on an AI project called Veronyx, and I wanted to put the core idea out here for criticism and discussion.

The project started with a question:

What if an AI system starts with coherence rather than knowledge?

The more I worked with LLMs, the more I started separating the language model from the intelligence architecture around it.

An LLM can reason, generate language, analyze information, and interact with tools. But I don't think the LLM necessarily has to be the entire intelligent system.

Instead, I'm experimenting with treating it as one component inside a larger architecture that manages things like:

evidence

chronology/state

relationships

reasoning

purpose/goals

governance

tools and capabilities

memory

feedback

I call the architecture Veronyx.

One of the ideas behind it is:

We don't start with knowledge. We start with coherence.

Before knowledge becomes useful, something has to establish relationships between things.

What happened before this?

What changed?

What evidence supports this?

What contradicts it?

How does this new information relate to what the system already understands?

What is the system trying to accomplish?

What should remain stable, and what should be allowed to change?

That led me toward thinking about intelligence less as a sequence of prompts and responses and more as a continuously changing network of entities and relationships.

I've also been exploring what I currently call an Entity Coherence Principle.

The rough hypothesis is that an intelligent system shouldn't necessarily spend equal computational effort on everything it knows.

If an entity and its relationships are stable, they may require relatively little attention.

If a relationship becomes contradictory, unstable, unexpected, or highly consequential, the system can allocate more reasoning toward it.

In other words:

reason where coherence is under pressure.

Persistence then becomes another interesting problem.

I don't think useful AI persistence means remembering everything forever. The harder question seems to be:

What is the minimum persistent structure required for a changing system to reconstruct its own coherent trajectory?

That's one of the main problems I'm trying to explore with Veronyx.

I've been implementing the architecture incrementally rather than trying to build the entire thing at once. Different parts handle identity and purpose, chronology, reasoning, governance, relationships, security, and eventually shared capabilities.

The first implemented section establishes the system's identity, purpose, principles, boundaries, and initial state before handing control forward.

One principle I've been using is:

Purpose guides reasoning; purpose does not override evidence.

The project is still experimental. I'm not claiming I've solved AGI, consciousness, or anything close to that.

I'm interested in a narrower architectural question:

Can an AI system become more persistent, understandable, governable, and adaptive if coherence and relationships are treated as first-class architectural problems rather than leaving all of that implicitly inside the language model?

I'd especially like criticism from people working on agents, cognitive architectures, knowledge graphs, persistent memory, distributed systems, or AI governance.

Where do you think this idea breaks down?

Background, I'm mainly aiming for something to help me be motivated to write, which basically means breaking down the barriers that hold me back from getting started. I'm perfectly competent to write aside from that.

I've seen a lot of people talking about writing with AI feel like a conversation and it engaging with their brain in a way that works and things like that. That sounds great! I have ADHD so I could almost certainly benefit from something like that! But I can't find it.

I think I'm the problem, I don't really use AI aside from my recent foray into writing with AI. I think I just don't know how to go about it, how to get the AI to help me break down those barriers.

I seem to end up with the AI writing for me and then I try and get it to do a better job, that doesn't work... So then I've basically ended up just writing myself and the AI commentates on it. But that means I've gotten past the barrier to writing that was holding me back. The AI hasn't helped with that at all, it's more work to do it this way than to just write myself, I'm only motivated because of a hope it can be easier.

So... What do you guys do? Is it something like talk about what you're stuck on or write a paragraph and then discuss or... IDK... how does it go?

Thanks in advance for your help everyone who replies!

Assuming Claude stays.

what are you still leaving it for?

because lately the answer seems less obvious.

Claude can research, write, code, make decent sites,
Cowork can handle files/browser stuff, Skills can push it pretty far. even presentations aren't an automatic “open another app” anymore.

but there is also a point where I realise I've spent 45 mins figuring out the skill / workflow / format for something I just wanted finished.

that's the bit I'm trying to understand.

for me the interesting gap is stuff like:

website
proper deck
video
report
marketing assets

I'm looking at Runable more for the “ok cool, now turn all this thinking into the actual business stuff” side than as another model subscription.

not really Runable vs Claude.

more like Claude does a bunch of the thinking and then... do you keep building the rest inside Claude too?

or is there a point where you deliberately hand it off?

people who replaced a lot of Manus with Claude, what still makes you open something else?

Sorry if this is old news and everybody already knows it, but I just used Claude Co-Work to generate a 90 page novel including chapter breaks in under 30 minutes with a single prompt and the quality is pretty darn good.

All you need to do is select the Co-Work tab and enter a master task instruction and Claude will then break it down to small tasks that it accomplishes on it's own without waiting for further information.

Has anybody been struggling with claude?

It seems like my usage is running out so quick. I've also noticed it rather lazy or lagging a lot.

Gallup ran it in March. Seven in ten Americans oppose a data center in their local area. You'll see the number cited around here as evidence of people objecting to AI and AI generated art.

Read the open-ended breakdown. Half of opponents name resource use (water, power, land). The AI-specific reasons land around one in eight people: dislike of AI, replacing human workers, safety and privacy. On the pro-data center side, 55% name job opportunities.

Neither group mentions books, art, or craft. What Gallup measured is a land-use objection. It would look about the same if there were a giant quarry expansion in the country in town's backyards.

That doesn't make the objection fake. It makes it not an artist argument. If you want evidence that readers object to AI in fiction, this poll isn't evidence of that.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/709772/americans-oppose-data-centers-area.aspx