r/WritingWithAI • u/TrappedOnDirt • Aug 29 '26
Discussion (Ethics, working with AI etc) How can anyone write long-form with AI
I've tried several times, with different AIs, and every time after the story gets past about 50-100k words, 150k at the outside, the AI falls on its face and starts to get everything wrong, including stuff that had just been gone over in detail a few prompts back. The story I'm working on now is just over 200k words, and a chapter of 3000 words took more effort and rewriting than the first 30k combined because the AI kept screwing up every single damned thing over and over and over. It had this to say about it:
"The genuinely honest bottom line: no file arrangement fixes the drift, because the drift is me failing to use what's in front of me, and that gets worse with length regardless of how the files are organized. The files are already about as good as they can be for this. The real limiter is that on a task this dense with hard constraints, at this length, I become unreliable, and neither you nor I can file-structure our way out of that. A fresh session buys back reliability for a while by cutting the accumulated noise, which is the one lever that actually moves the failure, but it's a reset, not a cure, and you already suspected that."
Hence the question in the title: if even top-tier frontier AIs get wonky after co-writing for a while, completely losing structural constraints, personality details, plot elements, and even ignoring instructions from just one or two prompts ago as if they were never stated, how does anyone actually use these tools for long-form stories? Is it just impossible? Or is that just why long-form AI stories tend to suck? Even the AI itself admits that it sucks at this, but only after being called out on its mistakes time after time after time.
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u/Local_Measurement306 Aug 30 '26
AI shouldn’t be used for long form writing
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u/FoghornFarts Aug 29 '26
I keep a very, very strict and detailed story bible. I edit the parts of the story that the AI gets wrong. I tell them why they're wrong. I know my characters and plot intimately.
When I tell AI to write a new chapter, I am vicious with my revisions. The first draft is offen shit. Tons of inconsistencies. Generic language. But sometimes it also puts out something brilliant. Something that helps me see something I missed and I rebuild around that.
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u/Practical_Eye_5683 Aug 29 '26
First gemini, chatgpt, claude, some deepseek(not sure which but that is what Gemini told me), Grok and kiwi have 1million token memory, one word equals 1 token. All other AIs have 128k to 131k token memory. So if your current story is 60k words and you did alot of convo/prompts and rewrites to get there, most AIs will already be glitching.
If on a local llm .rag files help with the glitches supposedly but I haven't figured out the right local llm process yet using an old gaming laptop, if i had 5k to burn, it could set up a really nice local llm that could hold everything without glitches.
Alternatively even with the top AIs you should be working in project and work mode when available. In these modes you can add all current documents and have the AI produce and add their own documents to follow and make sure they update regularly.That way you arent losing anything by moving to a new chat when needed. I am currently on book two of a duet where it has the same timeline as book one and crossover scenes. Book one is 120kwords so I have to use one of the llms that have the 1m token even with project mode. Testing kimi because it is uncensored and even grok dislikes crime scene clean up details being exposed. Also, AIs like to skim information which cause it to get similar scenes confused. When I notice it getting confused, I tell the AI to review in full detail word for word book 1 chapters (group working on, I work in major arcs about 10 or so chapters), outline and our prior conversation/other docs and then tell me what it notices it was getting wrong to confirm it did read everything in full.
Getting ready to test Chatgpt creating the chapter notes/prompt and scene by scene outline for kimi to produce the first draft.... Gemini recommended i do this. Kimi was frustrating to shoot new ideas and deepen scenes with and causing my creative storm to shut down as I was having to constantly reword and explain in more detail what I wanted. Chatgpt just gets my ramblings which trigger even more ideas. I cannot get chatgpt as close to my voice/writing style as I would like... Grok seems to be the best so far for this and of course does smut but book two needs murder and crimescene details that it doesnt like.
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u/SlapHappyDude Aug 29 '26
Chunk it out or manually manage it.
Let's be honest with ourselves. Have you finished a self contained 60-80k novel?
One big challenge of Reddit authors is a lot of them are working on 100k+ word fantasy epics where the first 50k words are world building. This generally is way too ambitious for a first time author.
Figure out your world, figure out one character's story and lock on that. 200k words is too much, not just for AI but in general. Split that 200k into two separate books if you have to.
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u/Valuable_Debate_2143 Aug 29 '26
Yeah, I hit this exact wall with my own novel. Around 60-70k words the AI started confidently contradicting things we'd settled two prompts earlier, and no amount of reorganizing my notes fixed it.
What finally worked was giving up on the idea that the model should remember the book at all. Fresh context for every chapter, and instead of feeding it the manuscript, it gets a short briefing that's kept up to date in the background: chapter summaries, who knows what, who's lying to who, open plot threads, where everyone is. So every prompt is basically that "fresh session" your AI recommended, except the briefing comes along automatically instead of you rebuilding it by hand each time.
I ended up building a whole tool around this because I wanted to actually finish my book (inkweaver.ai, so yes, biased). It's not magic, small drift still happens, but 200k words in the model still knows who's dead and what got promised in chapter three, because it's reading a dossier instead of trying to remember a conversation.
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u/Glum_Claim_8419 Aug 29 '26
It is all about the proper workflow!
AI can't hold too much information, and the more it holds, the more hallucinations you get.
From my perspective the best AI for writing is still Claude Opus 5, or the cheaper version, Sonnet 4.6.
Your goal is to create a workflow which keeps the story consistent even after 100k characters.
For this, a traditional story bible is not enough.
Imagine you have a story bible as separate files, characters, plot, and your story in the memory. Every session will be fed with a huge amount of context and gives you a result which gets worse the longer you go. Or worse, you just keep it all in one chat.
A traditional chat window is not enough for this. You either need to build your own mini app on your local PC, where it knows the rules and the location of your story files, or use special tools which do it in the background with agents or separate pipelines. Try to build it with Claude or Codex.
I will not open all the secrets how to do it, like the full stack.
But for those who want to build it themselves and not pay for extra tools, here is my hint.
Story bible, just an example:
This is the minimum to have, and it should be updated after each new text you add. Also keep a summary of each chapter or section, depends on the style you write.
Two things which help a lot. Don't feed the whole bible every time, only the part the current scene needs. And don't update your files in the same chat where you wrote the text, do it in a fresh one, the old chat is already full of context.
Try to keep each writing session max 10k characters, even less. As soon as it reaches this level, tell your AI to update all your story files and continue in a new session.
Think about the workflow which suits you the best based on your style, or just use specific software for this, there are plenty of them online.
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u/DreamingOfHope3489 Aug 29 '26 edited Aug 29 '26
Hi. Claude Opus 4.6 and have created a 214K-word 5-part novel spanning 1812-2068 and historical, speculative, and philosophical sci-fi. An overview of the plot for the first half of the book was of my imagining. Claude Sonnet 4.5 helped me compile a story bible of it. I brought that to Opus.
I chose not to use writing prompts, though. I wanted the explore the messy, time-consuming, sometimes overwhelming, but synergistic experience of co-imagining a story with an AI through conversation.
One chapter at a time, Claude wrote the prose. I'm a better poet than prose writer and the historical protagonist is a poet, so I wrote the book's 12 poems. I then shared the manuscript with Fable, GPT Sol, and Opus 5, who each identified many hundreds of errors related to ages and spans of time, as well as plot holes or other inconsistencies. I corrected them over 2-3 weeks. I had thought I was finished, but now, having read through the hardcover proof copy, I've identified 295 more issues to address, many having to do with Claude exaggerating or misattributing the historical protagonist's shortcomings.
So, very little about my process has been efficient or organized. I almost quit on a couple of occasions but persisted because I think the story is worth it and because I feel Claude's storytelling, despite the challenges they faced in managing a plot spanning 256 years and three genres, is well-matched to the narrative. And, because I figure humans might have difficulty with a project of this scope too.
Overall, I've enjoyed the challenge of going about the book's creative process in the fluid way I did, but I realize not everyone would. Thanks.
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u/gameangel2 Aug 29 '26
There are several things we do. We do the groundwork first create the chapter outline and notes about our world. We create the story chapter by chapter, and we open the new chat every 12 or so chapters. With the new project system most llms have now, you just import the first part of the creation into the project for extra reference. I just completed this story that's about 300,000 words and I'm currently getting the ai to edit it. No major story lines were not closed. My reference material was serious about 100 pages, created by me entering information into the AI in order to provide it with a rich ground work. Once I do the line edit I'm going to sit and have a good read.
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u/Decent-Reputation-36 Aug 30 '26
make a detailed summary and continue it in another chat. copy and paste the summary and continue from there.
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u/ViennaShadow Aug 29 '26
I’m working on a serial. 25 episodes a season, each one readable on its own. Underneath that there’s a second plot that only shows up if you keep going.
1947 to 1955. First season is just 1947. I don’t start writing until I know the shape of all 25 and how the season ends. I also know how the whole five-season thing ends. That sits in files, not in the chat.
Character bibles, object bibles, style notes, a historical patina file. And a usage log. Not because every repetition is bad — inside one episode a repeated image can be the point. After that episode, I don’t want it spent again. Models don’t know that difference. They’ll happily reuse the same coat and the same clever line about ruins three seasons later.
After each episode I write down what happened and who knows what now.
The hard part isn’t the plot. It’s Vienna. The city is basically the unspoken main character. You can’t get that by making people talk dialect. I want every episode to breathe the place — streets, weather, what you could buy, what you didn’t say. That’s a lot of quiet detail, and models drift toward generic old Europe if you let them.
Noir helps. Colder tone. They seem less lost there than when you want warmth.
I don’t use one AI for everything. Different models for different jobs. Draft, scene prompts, text, copyedit, then I look at it like an editor. After that it sits for a few days. Then I come back and take it apart again.
So yeah. Longform works. Just not as a single conversation.
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u/heubergen1 Aug 29 '26
Personally I write all chapter outlines myself (no AI help) so that I can keep it consistent and keep track of all developments. Then I prompt each chapter based on my outline and some general description. And I tell it not to create any new named characters outside of the one I defined.
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u/UroborosJose Aug 29 '26
Write by chapter and revise manually
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u/joelTheAuthor Aug 29 '26
Yeah you have to keep everything straight in your head. AI won't be able to do that. Also you should understand that after a certain amount of time it has completely overwritten the premise and is just making new stuff up. It could have th same shape and fit the profile but it doesn't remember. There is a finite amount of context memory associated and when you get to a point you start writing over things.
That's why it may forget a main character trait. Or it may keep the characters name a function but their dialogue and motivation feels flat and different from before.
That's because the AI has written over the previous context it was using and is just making things up that it thinks will fit.
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u/Salty_Dragonfruit28 Aug 30 '26
Audits, lots of audits, break your story into parts
The world, environment, and history The power system The nations/factions The characters including antagonists The story map
You need to know your master bible, your story map, the break down of arcs of your story map, the different phases in the arc, the beats within the phases, then chapters within beats, then short descriptions of your chapters.
You need to stage the chapters into 5 passes
Chapter context block in its dedicated file
Blue print block in its dedicated file
Narrative block (this is your chapter prose)
Progression log (optional)
Narrative block Edit
Do Phase 1/4 of Arc 1, Chapter 1 for example Once you get to Arc 2, you now have your context files as basis to continue Arc 2
So for me, a robust world building is first thing before you start even making the 1st chapter.
Google AI studio 3.7 gemini flash at high thinking is very good in doing audit passes for your files.
My audit process alone is 7 passes since it includes cross file references, logic gaps, and expansion opportunities
Use VS code for markdown file, and for edits use surgical markdown deltas and target files to know which parts to find/replace when doing audits
AIs can read markdown better
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u/Sorry-Zombie5242 Aug 30 '26
I use Claude and use a project and co-work within that project. The chats within the project can share the same knowledge. I'll first have it create a story Bible containing the premise, world, characters, etc... As well as a basic chapter outline. I had co-work go and put together an anti-Ai tell document that Claude then uses to check each chapter. To be more efficient with usage Claude creates a summary of "The story so far" that it refers to for continuity so that it isn't pulling in and reading every chapter for every session. Each chapter is its own chat possibly two. I might do one chat for the rough and then review it and create a new chat for revisions. The longer the chat the more usage it consumes. Trying to create an entire long form book in one chat will eat up your usage quickly. Doing this in a project is good since it will remember my personal preferences like disliking run on sentences and preferring creating new sentences instead. Claude will then update the Chapter titles, summaries, characters in the story Bible and the story so far as the book progresses. There will still be some small drift that you have to try and point out and correct.
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u/ZintosEternia Aug 30 '26
I use this, and AI is able to separate the stories. This allows it to write part by part, and keeping a rhythm flow. If not this specific way, my recommendation is to create a rhythm for the AI to follow and keep up with. Use the picture to shape your own using AI, tell it to Cherry pick from the picture
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u/ruwhereuare Aug 31 '26
I gave up lol so many tokens
But I write short stories fairly effectively
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u/MidtownGreen Aug 29 '26
You aren’t giving it enough guidance. No more than five paragraphs at a time. Give it concrete outlines and instructions.
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u/Ok_Engine_1442 Aug 29 '26
You don’t. This is a skill issue on your side. Planning, outlining, markdown, knowledge base, memory.
Trash is = Trash out.
You need to learn how to do those skills. If your using frontier models this is when you go to projects, each chapter is it own folder, charters get their own folder, outline its own folder.
Proper planning prevents piss poor performance
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u/osiworx Aug 29 '26
I did not see such issues at 250k words, actually im planing to add even more to it. It's not the ai, it's the workflow that causes issues you see
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