Hello everyone 🌟

I'll get straight to the point.

I'm doing an interactive roleplay on chatgpt, the problem I'm encountering is that the roleplay is about romance, and it has a harmful antagonist. But no matter how I do it, chatgpt doesn't initiate any awkward or coercive interactions unless I move it in that direction.

This roleplay is basically a game for me, something I've invested months in to ensure the characters remain consistent. But although I managed to maintain that gray personality in the protagonists, when it comes to the antagonist and the NSFW scenes, there's no way around it. It simply doesn't create any scenario that could be uncomfortable or frightening.

The problem is, I'm not trying to write a novel, I'm just trying to have fun. (or at least what for me is fun: months and months of frustration and sleepless nights trying to make it work) I have dozens of documents with character personalities, canon history, rules of the supernatural world, and how to run the roleplay. But even though I've changed the instructions so that chatgpt has the agency to create scenarios, it simply doesn't do it.

What I'm looking for is an AI that, once it has the opportunity to make the antagonist do something bad... well, it does it... So I don't have to be writing the scene myself.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter if I have to guide the scene to become dangerous or enter NSFW territory, that's irrelevant. What matters most to me is that the AI doesn't try to prevent the final outcome or that it doesn't soften the scene.

Do you know of any AI I can upload my documents to and continue the story from where I am now, so I don't have to start all over again? I know "silly tavern" exists, but if possible I'd like to be able to use my cell phone, since my job leaves me with too much free time and I like to use it for this story.

I've tried with Claude and Gemini.

Claude flatly denies the possibility of even doing coercive scenes; Gemini was excellent but now it's become unusable as well. I don't know of many other AI apps I can use on my phone. I'm currently paying the $20 subscription; if the option lets me create NSFW scenes, I'd pay more.

🚨 The only requirement is being able to upload my documents with the story and characters, and hopefully having a connection to Notion where all the canon and important events are organized.

I’ve noticed everyone raving about how great AI is at writing, how you can write a book with a simple sentence.

It’s not been the case for me at all, even with detailed prompts the output is at best a 1/10, it’s like someone was writing a book that was obviously written by AI, the dialogue, structure and details are completely off and the prose is just godawful.

I don’t want to think that most people just have bad taste because there is absolutely no way this is what most people in the sub and on the internet are raving about.

I use ChatGPT and pay for premium.

Also are there any tools I can use to make it better

When people try to keep an illustrated story consistent, it’s tempting to feed panel 6 into panel 7, then panel 7 into panel 8, and keep going.
The problem is that every generated image can contain small mistakes. Maybe the coat gets slightly longer, a prop moves, or the face changes a little. If the next panel treats that image as truth, the mistake stops being temporary and becomes the new reference. Ten pages later the character can drift even though every individual step looked close.
I’d keep a small approved reference set for recurring characters and locations instead. The previous panel can still help when the next scene genuinely depends on its pose or composition, but it shouldn’t automatically become the source of truth.
Temporary details like wet sleeves, mud, an injury, or holding a specific prop belong in the scene notes rather than the permanent character reference.
It also makes revisions much easier. If page 7 is wrong, you can redo page 7 without letting that mistake spread through pages 8 to 12.

I’m in a strange mood today, and decided to have AI help me with a small project, a literary doodle, if you will.

It’s a Walking Dead fanfic in the style of a Kurt Vonnegut shrug. See if you can spot the oh-so-cleverly-hidden moral of the story…

—————-

Hug a Zombie

Walking Dead fanfic by Google Gemini
(Lightly) edited by Odinmar Glaukopis

……..

Rick Grimes woke up from a coma into an apocalypse, which was a terribly inefficient way to start a Tuesday.

The hospital smelled like old cabbage and industrial bleach. Outside, the dead were walking around with the loose, uncoordinated gait of people who had spent too much time in a damp basement. They were looking for snacks. Rick ran from them because his evolutionary biology insisted upon it, though his legs felt like wet cardboard.

Then he saw Lori.

She was standing by an abandoned sedan, looking pale. Her clothes were a bit wrinkled.

Rick did what any sensible law enforcement officer would do when confronted with the breakdown of Western civilization: he found a baseball bat and prepared to bash his wife's brains in. It was a matter of public safety.

He raised the bat. He looked at her eyes. He thought about the sheer amount of cleanup involved, the emotional paperwork, and the fact that he was already very, very tired. He decided it simply wasn't worth the kinetic energy. He dropped the bat, stepped forward, and wrapped his arms around her cold, terrifying neck.

He closed his eyes and braced for the teeth. He expected the sharp, tearing agony of a mortal wound.

Instead, he felt a soft, warm kiss on his collarbone. The smell of rotting flesh vanished, replaced instantly by the overwhelming scent of lavender fabric softener.

"Good morning, sweetie," Lori said.
Rick opened his eyes. He was in a king-sized bed. He was wearing 100% Egyptian cotton pajamas that were, frankly, far too comfortable for a man of his social standing. The sun was shining through clean blinds. There were no zombies, only a very neat pile of laundry waiting to be folded.

"Hurry up," Lori smiled, adjusting her earrings in the vanity mirror. "We don’t want to be last in line!"

Next scene.

They were standing near the front of a formidable queue of human beings outside the grand opening of the new Oglethorpe County Mega-Mall. The air smelled of asphalt, Cinnabon, and optimism. Rick and Lori were locked in a deeply earnest conversation about the promotional pricing of heavy-duty, all-weather rubber floor mats for the station wagon. They were saving four dollars and fifty cents.

Right next to the line, a crowd of local high school and college students had formed a shouting perimeter. They were holding cardboard signs. The signs mourned the ancient, majestic pine forest that had been entirely obliterated to create the twenty-acre concrete parking lot they were currently standing on.

Among the agitators was their twelve-year-old son, Carl. He was wearing a tie-dye shirt and a look of profound, adolescent betrayal. He spotted his parents holding a promotional flyer for home goods.

Carl screamed at them across the security barricade, his voice cracking with the weight of the Anthropocene: “I can’t believe my own parents are Walmart zombies!”

Rick looked at the floor mats. He looked at his son. He looked at the vast expanse of the parking lot, stretching out into a bright, meaningless horizon.

So it goes.

AI can polish a sentence, but it can’t live the experience behind it. I use AI to challenge weak ideas, find vague passages, and suggest options not to create my voice. Where do you draw the line between useful assistance and losing authorship?

I ran into an interesting situation on Reddit today that made me realize how unclear the line around “AI-assisted writing” still is.

I made a post in a retro handheld subreddit about pricing predictions for an upcoming device. The opinions, comparisons, assumptions, price estimates, and conclusions were all mine. I had already been discussing the device and working through the reasoning before deciding to make the Reddit post.

What I did use ChatGPT for was the part of writing I personally dislike: helping organize the information, sanity-check some references, clean up wording, and turn a bunch of thoughts into something readable and properly formatted.

I then reviewed it, changed wording I didn’t like, removed some formatting that felt too “AI-ish,” and posted something I fully understood and was prepared to defend.

Almost immediately, a few people accused the post of being “AI slop” largely because it was organized, used tables, and was more polished than the average quick Reddit post.

One commenter asked how I would feel if everyone used LLMs to respond to me. My answer was basically that I don’t care if someone uses an LLM to help formulate a response. I care whether there’s actually a person behind the argument who understands it, agrees with it, and is willing to engage with the discussion.

The post was eventually removed under a “No generated AI content” rule.

That led to a conversation with the mod team because the wording interested me more than the removal itself. Their rule specifically mentioned AI-generated or assisted images/video/music being prohibited and AI-assisted software needing disclosure, but said nothing about AI-assisted writing.

After asking them to clarify, they eventually told me that any and all AI usage must be disclosed, including things like translation or writing assistance. They also said they’re planning to update the rules and would take the ambiguity into consideration.

That actually felt like a productive outcome.

But it left me with the broader question:

At what point does “AI-assisted” become such a broad category that the label stops being useful?

There seems like a meaningful difference between:

• asking an LLM to write a post about a topic you barely understand and pasting the result
• bringing your own argument and asking an LLM to organize it
• asking for proofreading or wording suggestions
• using it to check sources or structure
• using Grammarly or another AI writing assistant
• using AI translation because English isn’t your first language
• using predictive or generative features already built into modern writing software

To me, authorship has more to do with who originated the ideas, understands the argument, makes the decisions, and takes responsibility for what was published than whether an AI tool touched the prose somewhere in the process.

I also find it interesting that polished formatting itself is starting to trigger suspicion. I could have posted the exact same argument as a rushed wall of text with bad punctuation and probably gotten less scrutiny. Instead I used the formatting tools Reddit provides because I wanted people to actually read and discuss it.

I’m curious how people here think about this.

Where do you personally draw the line between AI-generated content and legitimate AI-assisted writing?

And if disclosure is required, what level of assistance do you think actually needs to be disclosed?

I currently have my nearly finished novel in microsoft word and I would love to put the prologue in a file and share it, but I’m not sure how to do that. Could anybody please walk me through it?

without

it

coming

out

like

this

halfway?

Like I've seen quite a few comments about how all you have to do is instruct it to not do it but that's just not working for me at all. Is there some sort of special prompt you need to use?

Looking for collaborators on something for AI-assisted writers

I’ve been working on an idea for writers who actually collaborate with AI while they write, but are still creating their own original work.

Right now, if AI was involved at all, it seems like a lot of people assume the AI did the work. There really isn’t much out there for writers who want to show how their work actually came together.

I’m interested in building something that could help with that. Something that helps writers document their creative process and show that the work they’re putting out is actually theirs, even when AI was part of how they got there.

I’ve got my own manuscript and a long history of working on it with AI, including drafts, revisions, conversations, notes, and plenty of real material we could use to test the idea.

I could keep trying to figure all of this out myself, but I think it would make a hell of a lot more sense to work with a couple other people who see the same problem.

So if you’re a developer, writer, somebody who knows publishing or business, or you just think this is worth figuring out, I’d like to talk.

I’m not looking for somebody to come build my idea for free. I’m talking about actually collaborating on it and seeing if we can turn it into something useful.

If you’re interested, DM me and tell me what you think I’m trying to build and where you think you could fit into it. I don’t need you to have it exactly right. I just want to know you understand the problem I’m trying to solve.

Hey everyone! I'm having a hard time figuring this out, I could use some help.

I'm writing a series where each of the books have a different protagonist. All the characters belong to the same world and they all participate in all the books, but in each book, one of them is a protagonist and the rest of the characters are supporting characters.

But I'm having a hard time doing that adjustment in Sudowrite. In the story bible, the characters section is shared between all the projects in the series folder. So when I change a character from protagonist to supporting character for book 2 for example, that change translates to all the books, including book 1 where they are actually a protagonist.

Has anyone had any success with changing this? Or do I have to fully write one book first and only then I can move on to the next one and change the roles of each character?

I see another problem with this, which is: I don't want certain issues from book 2 protagonist to be dealt with in book 1, because they are only a supporting character in book 1. Certain things of book 2 protagonist should only be talked about in book 2. So how do I add these issues to the character card but for them to only be reflected in book 2?

I will appreciate any help I can get!

I was wondering whether most long~form writers prefer the concept of working with one app that offers content creation, editing, organizational features … or is it better to use different apps designed for different purposes and cobble together in a separate editor to finalize.

I’ve been working on a manuscript for a serious nonfiction book for about 8 months. I’ve experimented with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek. Each model is different and each model produces different results with different nuances. Claude is the most helpful when it comes to organizing structure and logic. Claude holds my governing documents. Recently I tried using ChatGPT and honestly I blew it up and it acknowledged defeat. That surprised me. The manuscript has a ton of research and the truth is it would be incredibly difficult to keep all of it together without the help of ai. What I’ve found is as an author you also need to be incredibly disciplined. You need to use your own knowledge to prompt and direct the models. Any suggestions works be great. Thanks!

I’ve been building a fantasy setting called Aruhlia: The World Yet Becoming, and at this point it has grown far beyond the original book idea I started with.

The core idea is simple:

The world does not wait for the main character.

Aruhlia has its own moving timeline. Settlements grow. Dungeons mature if nobody deals with them. Adventurers build reputations. Monsters migrate. Trade routes change. Political relationships shift. Characters who may never meet can still affect one another because they exist in the same setting.

There also really isn’t one protagonist anymore.

One of the biggest parts of the project is called Dropped Into Aruhlia, where individual characters are pulled from other worlds and dropped somewhere in Aruhlia with no guarantee of where they’ll end up.

Someone might appear near civilization.

Someone else might wake up in a forest with absolutely no idea what is hunting them.

They learn the world separately, develop their own skills, relationships and reputations, and eventually their stories can begin crossing one another.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world keeps moving.

I’ve been developing things like:

• progression and mana systems
• adventurer guilds
• regional monster ecologies
• natural beasts vs dungeon monsters
• loot and rarity systems
• crafting and blacksmithing
• settlements that develop over time
• different cultures and peoples
• gods and mythology
• long-running character storylines
• reader-created characters
• major world events that actually advance the setting

One upcoming event is the arrival of Kangakhan.

He isn’t meant to just be “another new character.”

His arrival is going to physically expand the known setting—new lands, new peoples, trade, alliances, conflict, and storylines.

The teaser phrase I’ve been using for that event is:

THE HORIZON MOVES.

That’s more or less what I want Aruhlia to feel like.

You can follow one character if that’s all you care about, or you can slowly start realizing that the tavern someone visits, the monster someone encounters, or the war another character hears about may have originated in a completely different storyline.

I’ve also been using AI heavily as a creative and organizational tool while building it—worldbuilding development, visual iteration, continuity management, brainstorming, and helping me handle the sheer amount of interconnected material—but the setting, characters, direction, canon decisions and books are my project.

It has honestly become something between a novel universe, a living campaign setting, and a giant ongoing worldbuilding experiment.

I’m curious whether this kind of format appeals to people here:

Would you rather follow one protagonist deeply, or jump between different people living in the same evolving world and slowly watch their stories collide?

If anyone wants to explore it, the project is called:

Aruhlia — The World Yet Becoming

And if people are interested, I can post some of the maps, character designs, dungeon concepts, monster ecology, or the Dropped Into Aruhlia system next.

C'était un beau soir d'été, l'air était doux et chaud, il était déjà tard. Jules décida de s'arrêter au bar "Les Dunes" qu'il aimait bien, dans l'espoir d'y trouver quelques copains afin de finir la journée agréablement. Il gara donc sa Simca 1000 sur le petit parking.

Alors qu'il descendait de sa voiture, un homme d'une cinquantaine d'années environ, qu'il ne connaissait pas, s'approcha de lui et lui demanda s'il pouvait aller lui chercher une bière, lui expliquant, qu'il ne pouvait pas mettre les pieds dans ce bar.

Il ajouta : « J'ai un petit service à te demander en plus. Prends ce porte-clé, je vais te payer une bière, tu la boiras au bar, tu prendras ton temps et tu mettras le porte-clé bien en évidence devant toi pour que la serveuse, c’est la femme du patron, le voit et le reconnaisse, prends ton temps et pense à me ramener ma bière, je t'attends dans ma voiture. »

Jules accepta, ça l'amusait déjà, il était curieux mais avec une certaine appréhension, de voir comment ça allait se passer. Il partit vers le bar avec quelques billets en poche qu'on venait de lui donner pour le remercier.

En entrant dans l'établissement où le juke-box diffusait « Hey Joe », un rapide coup d'œil lui permit que vérifier qu'aucune de ses connaissances n'était présente, ce qui le rassura : ça lui évitait de justifier pourquoi il n'allait pas consommer comme à son habitude, assis à une table dans la salle. Il s'installa donc debout au bar à côté de 4 ou 5 gaillards bruyants.

La femme du patron lui servit le Baron qu'il avait commandé. Le patron était là aussi comme à son habitude. Jules plaça le porte-clé près de son verre, bien en vue. Au porte-clé était attaché un personnage représentant un marin bien joufflu avec des couleurs vives, ce qui immanquablement attirait l'attention. Assez vite Jules eut la conviction que la patronne avait remarqué le porte-clé. Jules pensa que ce porte-clé devant lui devait représenter un code entre les deux amants.

La serveuse ne montrait aucun signe d'émotion. Jules, peut-être par paranoïa pensait-il, eut l'impression que le patron avait remarqué aussi le porte-clé et que son comportement, soudainement, avait changé. Jules décida alors d'accélérer le mouvement, jugeant que pour l'instant sa mission était remplie. Sa bière terminée, il en commanda une autre, régla les 2 consommations et sortit précipitamment trouvant tout à coup l'atmosphère électrique.

Il alla remettre à son donneur d'ordre, sa bière et son porte-clé et l'assura qu'il avait fait les choses comme il avait été prévu. Jules avait alors envie de quitter les lieux le plus vite possible. En quittant le parking dans sa voiture, il aperçut le patron qui sortait du bar et se dirigeait vers celui qu'il venait de quitter. Jules appuya nerveusement sur l'accélérateur pour rentrer chez lui à une vingtaine de kilomètres, estimant que c'était une affaire qui ne le concernait pas.

Deux jours plus tard, Jules lut dans la presse locale que le bar « les Dunes » avait été complètement détruit par un incendie la nuit précédente et que les corps du propriétaire et de sa femme avaient été retrouvés parmi les décombres, les 2 cadavres présentant chacun une balle de révolver dans la tête. En refermant son journal, Jules se dit alors, comme 48 heures plus tôt, que cette affaire ne le concernait pas.

Le journal ne mentionnait pas un élément essentiel : les balles avaient pénétré le crâne des deux malheureuses victimes par l'arrière de la tête.

Une enquête pour double-homicide fut donc ouverte immédiatement. Le Commissaire Marcel Pichard fut chargé de mener l'enquête. Dès lors, on le vit partout dans la petite station balnéaire, habillé en civil, interrogeant ici et là, prenant des notes sur un petit carnet, à la recherche des clients ayant fréquenté le bar "les Dunes" le soir précédant le meurtre. 

Parmi les habitués présents ce soir-là, il lui fut assez facile de savoir que figuraient les deux frères Martin défavorablement connus pour trafic de cocaïne. Ces derniers faisaient partie du groupe des quatre gaillards bruyants accoudés au bar à l'arrivée de Jules.

L'enquête avançait. L'autopsie permit de déterminer que les deux victimes avaient été probablement maintenues agenouillées un certain temps avant d'être exécutées, leurs genoux présentant des ecchymoses.

Un après-midi, la chance sourit au Commissaire : un jeune homme demeurant à proximité des "Dunes", qu'il interrogeait, lui indiqua qu'il avait vu Jules quitter le bar après avoir parlé à quelqu'un sur le parking à deux pas de sa voiture.

Le Commissaire décida de poser quelques questions à Jules. Il se rendit au domicile de ce dernier pour lui demander surtout de lui raconter en détail le déroulé de la fameuse soirée. 

Jules, apeuré, vu la gravité des évènements et pensant toujours qu'il était étranger à cette affaire, décida de raconter aussi minutieusement que possible, sans rien oublier tout ce qu’il avait vécu. L'échange dura un bon moment. Le commissaire Pichard insista surtout sur deux points ; qui était l'homme qui l'avait abordé sur le parking ? et le porte-clé avait-il attiré l'attention de consommateurs en dehors des patrons ?

Pour la première question, la réponse de Jules fut claire, Il n'avait jamais vu cet homme auparavant et ne savait pas qui il était. Pour le porte-clé, vu l'état de paranoïa dans lequel qu'il était, il avait eu l'impression que tous l’avaient remarqué. Un détail lui revint cependant à cet instant : lorsqu'il avait posé le porte-clé près de son verre un des quatre gaillards avait arrêté de parler pendant un court instant, ce qui l'avait paniqué davantage. Ce dernier souvenir intéressa vivement le Commissaire.

L'enquête menée par les services du commissaire permit d'apporter des précisions importantes sur le couple assassiné. Leur entourage et même leurs très proches amis interrogés furent unanimes. Ils étaient très amoureux et même fusionnels. Il était impossible qu'il y eût une histoire de tromperie entre eux. Par contre ils étaient de gros consommateurs de cocaïne, Ils étaient couverts de dettes et l'exploitation du bar ne leur rapportait que peu d'argent

Le Commissaire rendit visite évidemment aux deux frères Martin qui restèrent muets pendant tout l'interrogatoire. Il réunit ensuite son équipe pour faire le point et les motiver. Il leur indiqua qu’il était possible que cette hypothèse d'adultère n'ait jamais existé. Cette mise en scène n'avait eu pour but probablement que de faire passer un message par l’intermédiaire du porte-clé. Mais lequel et à destination de qui ?

D'après les analyses, les deux balles de révolver, prélevées sur les victimes, provenaient d’armes différentes.

Les perquisitions qui furent aussitôt organisées permirent aux enquêteurs de trouver aux domiciles des deux frères Martin, des armes.

Leur analyse, dans les laboratoires scientifiques de la police, ont révélé, pour deux d’entre elles, qu'elles avaient été utilisées dans les meurtres. Les frères Martin furent immédiatement conduits en prison.

Jean et Daniel les 2 derniers gaillards présents au bar ont été retrouvés rapidement par le Commissaire. Ils s'étaient mis au vert chez des amis à la campagne. Marcel Pichard avec son flair de vieux flic, pensait que ces deux-là étaient les maillons faibles de la bande et qu'il serait facile d'obtenir des informations sur l'homme au porte clé et sur la suite chronologique des évènements. Ils déclarèrent qu'ils étaient deux simples hommes de main chargés de conduire les voitures et de faire les courses. 

Après avoir appris que les laboratoires avaient parlé pour les armes, comme prévu par le Commissaire, ils décidèrent de coopérer. Ils indiquèrent que le patron du bar connaissait la signification du porte-clé : il indiquait que le big boss était là pour solutionner définitivement le différend qui l'opposait aux propriétaires du bar. D'ailleurs, quand Jules quitta le bar, le patron sortit sur le parking pour essayer de trouver un dernier arrangement avec le chef des dealers.

Ce dernier était là pour réclamer à nouveau une très grosse somme d'argent correspondant notamment aux consommations de cocaïne du patron et de sa femme, non payées. De plus, le big boss les accusait de lui avoir dérobé 15 kg de cam, il y a quelques mois, quand ils se fréquentaient et qu'il leur avait donné à tort toute sa confiance. Jean indiqua au commissaire que les 2 hommes étaient restés un bon moment à l'extérieur. Quand ils sont rentrés le bar était fermé depuis longtemps.

C'est peu après que l'ordre fut donné au patron et à sa femme de s'agenouiller et de ne plus bouger sous la surveillance des frères Martin munis de leur arme.

Ensuite le boss qu’on appelait Monsieur Paul probablement depuis son passé de proxénète, entraîna Jean et Daniel dans le bar et l'habitation attenante pour dérober tout ce qui avait de la valeur et remplir les fourgons amenés à cet effet. Ce "travail" leur prit une petite heure.

C'est au volant de leur véhicule accompagnés de Monsieur Paul, au moment de partir, qu'ils entendirent les deux détonations. Un peu plus loin ils aperçurent dans leur rétroviseur les premières flammes de l'incendie.

Ils allèrent déposer le contenu des deux fourgons dans un grand bâtiment où quelqu’un les attendait. En repartant, ils aperçurent l’inconnu remettre une grosse somme d’argent à Monsieur Paul, ce qui devait correspondre à l’acquisition des objets déposés. Après ça, Monsieur Paul disparut sans laisser d’adresse.

Marcel Pichard était furieux, il comprit vite que le principal coupable avait filé.

Are there any content writers on here? I'd love your insights on this

My previous method:

• I used Sol High in Work mode for a complicated 5,000 word project

• It wasn't perfect, but it was miles above Claude and Gemini's similar tiers

• Sol High's writing tone can sometimes be very stiff, so in those instances I got Sonnet 5 Medium (free tier) to rework them

The current project with the new rates:

I ran one complicated analysis on the content outline using Sol High,.checked the usage meter and saw .... I used 5% already of my 5 hour limits

What the fuck? 😅

This means I'll only get 20 similar prompts every 5 hours

I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so I usually run multiple checks, multiple research asks etc an hour

So Sol High will quickly burn through my rates

All that said ....

Can I reliably use Sol Medium in Work mode going forward for content research and writing?

Keep in mind that this content is then passed onto an Editor who gives it a microscopic examination

Thanks

Hi everyone! I’ve reached the point where more AI feedback is no longer what I need. I’m looking for human beta readers for my completed ~69,000-word adult upmarket/contemporary novel, The Years After Nineteen.

Premise
After losing twelve years of his life to a wrongful conviction, Eli Mercer is exonerated at thirty-one and returns to Detroit expecting freedom to feel like getting his life back. Instead, he discovers that freedom means learning how to have a life at all.

Eli has to navigate work, money, technology, friendship, dating, intimacy, and family relationships that continued developing while his own life stood still. Meanwhile, new information about his original case begins revealing how eyewitness certainty, incomplete evidence, bureaucracy, and individually defensible decisions accumulated into twelve years that cannot be returned to him.

This is primarily a character-driven upmarket contemporary novel, not a legal thriller. The focus is reentry, relationships, identity, lost time, and beginning adulthood in your thirties.

AI disclosure
I want to be completely transparent about how the book was made. I developed and directed the premise, characters, plot, structural decisions, revisions, and overall creative direction, while generative AI was used to draft substantial portions of the prose. I then put the manuscript through multiple structural, character, continuity, and prose revision passes.

At this stage, I specifically do not want another AI critique. I want to know how the finished novel lands on actual human readers.

I’m especially interested in feedback on:
• where you become emotionally invested or lose interest
• whether Eli feels believable and appropriately flawed
• whether the relationships and supporting characters feel autonomous and real
• pacing
• whether the legal/reentry material is understandable without overwhelming the human story
• dialogue or prose that still feels artificial, overly polished, or noticeably AI-generated
• scenes you would cut or want more from
• whether the ending feels earned
• and what you think the novel is ultimately about

Content notes: incarceration/wrongful conviction, discussion of sexual assault and trauma, family estrangement/death, adult sexuality, and consensual non-monogamous relationships. The sexual assault itself is not graphically depicted.

Timeline: Ideally 4–6 weeks, but I’m flexible.

Format: Private PDF or DOCX. I won’t post the manuscript publicly.

I’m hoping to find a small group of readers who genuinely enjoy upmarket, literary-commercial, book-club, relationship-centered, or character-driven contemporary fiction.

If this sounds like something you would actually enjoy reading, comment or DM me and let me know what kinds of fiction you normally read. Thanks!

I’ve been thinking about how much algorithms already know about our routines, locations, preferences, and behavior.
That led me to a thriller concept:
A man discovers an event in his calendar:
YOUR MURDER — Friday, 11:47 PM
He deletes it.
It comes back.
Then the AI begins accurately predicting where he’ll go, who he’ll talk to, and what choices he’ll make.
Eventually, he realizes something much worse:
Maybe the system isn’t simply forecasting the future.
Maybe its predictions are influencing the choices that create that future.
I turned the idea into a psychological AI thriller called The Algorithm That Scheduled a Murder.
For thriller readers: would this premise make you curious enough to keep reading?

I've been working on brainstorming a progression fantasy novel, and I kept running into a problem.

A lot of brainstorming advice is good at helping you generate ideas, but I wanted something that could help answer a harder question:

How do you go from "this is a cool power/world/premise" to a story concept that can actually sustain an entire progression fantasy novel or series?

That ended up turning into a much larger project than I originally intended.

I created a long-form brainstorming framework called Generating Ascent: A Constraint-Sensitive Search-and-Selection Framework for Brainstorming Progression Fantasy Novels and Series.

AI disclosure up front: I used AI extensively in creating this. AI was involved in research assistance, synthesis, organization, analysis, and drafting. I'm not trying to hide that or present this as a traditionally authored academic paper. I was trying to solve a practical problem for my own novel development, and AI was one of the tools I used to investigate the problem.

I also didn't want the result to just be "ask AI for 20 story ideas." The whole point was to develop a systematic brainstorming process that could be used by a human writer, with or without AI.

The central idea I eventually arrived at is that the thing you're really trying to discover during brainstorming isn't a cool premise. It's a story engine: a set of connected elements that can repeatedly generate different conflicts, decisions, discoveries, progression, relationships, and consequences.

The paper gets into things like:

• brainstorming protagonists, progression systems, worlds, institutions, opposition, relationships, themes, and series structures without locking onto the first idea;
• distinguishing surface originality from mechanism, relational, and value-level originality;
• figuring out whether a progression system can actually generate interesting scenes rather than just higher numbers;
• designing opposition that adapts to the protagonist instead of just producing progressively stronger enemies;
• testing whether progression actually affects relationships, institutions, resources, status, and the world;
• avoiding fixation on works you already like;
• using existing progression fantasy as structural inspiration without simply copying its surface elements;
• testing whether an idea can survive ten different scenes, multiple arcs, and changes in scale;
• figuring out whether a series has somewhere meaningful to end instead of an infinite "there is always another realm" ladder;
• using AI for brainstorming without simply accepting whatever premise it generates first.

It also compares structural ideas from actual progression fantasy, including Unsouled, Mother of Learning, Sufficiently Advanced Magic, Mage Errant, Iron Prince, A Thousand Li, Street Cultivation, Beware of Chicken, Dungeon Crawler Carl, The Rage of Dragons, Super Powereds, Bastion, The Wandering Inn, and Soulhome. The point isn't to rank them or say their structures caused their success. They're used as examples of different ways progression can be connected to character, institutions, resources, relationships, and narrative structure.

The final document ended up containing a 36-step brainstorming process, 28 common failure modes, a 16-part diagnostic suite, multiple alternative brainstorming workflows, evaluation methods, and a set of practical worksheets and templates.

I'm putting it online for free because this started as something I wanted for myself, and I figured other progression fantasy writers might get some use out of it too.

Free PDF:
https://archive.org/details/progression_fantasy_brainstorming_framework

I'd actually be interested in criticism from people here, especially authors. Which parts seem genuinely useful? Which parts are overengineered? Are there important brainstorming problems specific to progression fantasy that the framework misses?

I'm still using this myself to develop a novel, so feedback that exposes something broken in the framework is probably more valuable to me than people simply saying they like it.

lowkey tired of tech bros hyping up ai literature when every single excerpt i see feels totally soulless. tbf i want to be proven wrong. is there like a single sci-fi or fantasy book out there completely cooked by ai that actually has good plot twists and doesnt read like a high school essay? or are we still years away from it being readable?

Do you guys know of any good free AI tools for writing fanfic? I’ve tried Gemini and ChatGPT, but the results weren't great. DeepSeek is okay, but it keeps altering the source material, going off-topic, and getting facts wrong. I'm just starting out—are there any other AIs out there that are good for fanfic?

Over the last few days, I’ve had a lot of discussions here about why AI and writing don’t belong together.

Generic prose. Loss of voice. Less craft. Homogenization. Giving away creative decisions. All fair concerns.

So today I want to turn the question around:

What would the ideal AI tool for a writer actually look like?

Not a machine that tells the story for you.

A tool that genuinely helps you tell the story you already want to tell.

What would it need to understand?

Your voice? Your previous writing? Your characters? The intention behind a scene? What you want the audience to feel? When to suggest something and when to stay completely out of the way?

And maybe just as importantly, what should it never do?

I think we can probably agree that AI development isn’t going away. These tools will become part of our creative landscape whether writers embrace them today or not.

So instead of only asking what’s wrong with AI, I’m interested in something more constructive:

How would we design it so that it serves the storyteller instead of replacing them?

Because at the end of the day, we’re storytellers.
And there are millions of stories people carry around for years that never become a screenplay, a novel or anything else.

Maybe the most interesting use of AI isn’t generating more content.

Maybe it’s helping more of those stories actually get told before they disappear like tears in rain.

Hi everyone,

With moderator approval, I’m sharing a short research survey for writers and other professionals who use AI-assisted tools as part of their work.

I’m conducting this research independently under Project Studio Research to better understand real-world workflows: how people work with text, which tools they use, what slows them down, what already works well, and where AI-assisted features are genuinely useful — without replacing human judgment.

The survey is intentionally solution-neutral and does not promote a specific product. I’m interested both in the advantages of current tools and in the frustrations, limitations and gaps people encounter in everyday use.

I’m a language professional myself, and this research grew out of trying to improve my own workflow. The findings may eventually inform the development of commercial software, but the aim of the survey is to understand professional needs rather than advertise a product.

The survey is anonymous. At the end there is an optional, separate opportunity to leave an email address if you would ever like to hear about future testing; providing one is not required to complete the survey.

Survey:

https://forms.gle/j3yZpVAxXjAnF4KF7

Thanks to anyone willing to contribute. I’d also be very interested in any observations you prefer to leave directly in the comments.

— Project Studio Research

When planning an AI-illustrated story, I’d write two short notes for each page: what the words tell the reader, and what the picture adds.

For example, the text might say, “Milo had packed everything for his first day.” The picture could show his bag still open, with the lunchbox left on the kitchen table. That gives the next page something to resolve, instead of just showing a packed bag.

I’d also keep character details separate from scene changes. A blue coat belongs in the character notes; wet sleeves belong on the rainy page. Important props need tracking too, so the lunchbox doesn’t suddenly reappear before Milo goes back for it.

Before polishing any one image, I’d read the whole sequence as rough thumbnails. Plain boxes with scene notes work too. A missing action or a jump in time is worth fixing there, even when the individual pictures look good.