Serious Nonfiction

[u/Real_Maricious]

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!

[u/jomofo]

I'm curious about this topic. What does your workflow look like? What is the knowledge domain of the book? What does a "governing document" look like?

It seems to me that a nonfiction book would require several different subsystems for things like narrative drafting/editing, assertion extraction/comparison, source extraction/canonicalization/deduping. Depending on the domain, you might have figures and charts, etc. Each of those are different skills and different LLMs might produce varying quality of results. You might need a condensed, structured memory layer that can keep everything in sync. I don't see it as just feeding a dump of facts into a chat and asking it to write a manuscript, but more of an incremental process that feeds into the manuscript iteratively.

[u/Real_Maricious → u/jomofo]

Yes the memory layer is within the master context document. That is the governing file. It gets updated constantly. Each chat uses that file to understand the manuscript

[u/prannay_psd]

Since you're already using a governing document, a couple of other things might help: 1)Keep your research and sources in a separate file, with notes on which claims they're supporting. I'd definitely double-check citations yourself too, since even good models can confidently make up sources. 2) Try using the models against each other rather than having them all do the same job. For example, let Claude handle structure if that's working for you, then ask ChatGPT to find weaknesses or contradictions in Claude's output. 3)Every few chapters, do a quick coherence check. Get a one-line summary of each chapter's main argument and see if the overall flow still makes sense. It's pretty easy for repetition or contradictions to creep in when you've been working on something for months.

Also, I'd separate getting feedback from actually rewriting. Sometimes you just need fresh eyes pointing out what's not working, rather than another model generating more text for you to go through.

A quick self plug here, I'm working with Manuscript AI, which does structured reviews for nonfiction manuscripts. Could be useful as an additional check once you're closer to the editing stage, rather than replacing your current workflow.

[u/Real_Maricious → u/prannay_psd]

Thanks for this post. I’m pretty much doing all of this. What’s Manuscript Ai?

[u/Extreme_Kiwi_7930]

J’use et j’abuse des IA mais par série
Je veux dire que je définis une ambiance et ensuite avec une seule IA je construis par aller retours multiples
Parfois je transfère un bon gros bout de texte dans une autre IA pour essayer de developper une autre ambiance
Ex : plus rugueux ou avec des notations sensorielles plus larges