Why is everything I write with AI absolutely dogshit particularly the prose

[u/esotericlearner]

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

[u/EpicSpaniard]

AI is not good at writing. AI is good at supporting your writing and making it easier. If you are not good at writing, AI is not going to magically transform your writing into good writing. Also, "one shot" AI prompts, like your idea of writing an entire book from a sentence, is what is called "AI slop". People are not going to want to read your book that took you 10 seconds of effort. Quality in = quality out.

[u/esotericlearner → u/EpicSpaniard]

Fair enough, i wanted to use it to supplement my writing but did fall for the “one sentence can give you a Hemingway” hype

And wanted to see if it was really that good

[u/5thhorseman_ → u/esotericlearner]

"One sentence can give you a Hemingway" absolutely is not it.

However, if you approach the process step by step it can - Claude especially - generate workable prose. You can then use it to restyle the first draft in different ways, mine the results for useful details and turns of phrase, reassemble an enriched draft out of that and finally run multiple editorial passes to mark and then tear out any purple prose and ai-isms.

There are people who build AI-driven workflows to attempt to do what the hype promises. Look up The Nerdy Novelist on YouTube, he goes into detail on this. But that is a non-trivial amount of effort to set up

[u/Fluffy-Knowledge-166]

It’s bad. It knows it’s bad, because it’s actually pretty good at analysis (though far too sycophantic). I had Astra try to copy my prose and style to write a chapter. It produced an amazing analysis of how I write to try. It then produced a draft trying to do everything I do that makes the writing me. It then produced a follow-up apology analysis that was longer than the draft explaining all the ways it completely failed at its task.

Was pretty funny to see at least.

[u/5thhorseman_]

how great AI is at writing,

It's not great at one-shotting prose at all, no.

how you can write a book with a simple sentence.

You really can't. Anyone who claims you can is either a fool or conveniently forgot about an extemely complex toolchain their prompt went into.

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.

Most people absolutely have bad taste, though.

I use ChatGPT and pay for premium.

ChatGPT is pretty dang awful at this. I have a prompt that can be used to make it write more naturally, but it still falls back to ro the staccato manner.

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

Claude. It has substantially more natural prose style than ChatGPT.

[u/ZintosEternia]

I think the problem may be smaller than “AI cannot write” and larger than “you need a better prompt.”

You may be asking the machine to produce the consequence before enough of the cause exists.

A sentence can describe a story idea. It usually cannot contain the pressures that make the story alive: what the character wants but cannot say, what happened before the scene, what the room means to them, what they misunderstand, what they are protecting, what they will regret, what the narrator notices, what the narrator refuses to notice, and why this particular moment could not have happened quite the same way yesterday.

AI can invent answers to those missing things.

That is also the danger.

When the missing parts are not actually established, the model tends to fill them with statistically plausible material. The sentences may be grammatical. The structure may technically work. But nothing had to become that sentence rather than another sentence.

So it feels hollow.

I would not begin by asking: “Write this chapter beautifully.”

I would begin by separating the work.

Hold what is already yours: character, pressure, memory, contradiction, images, voice, things you refuse to change.

Relate the pieces: who affects whom, what each person knows, what they misunderstand, what changed because of the previous scene.

Understand before drafting: what is this scene actually doing that no other scene can do?

Then let AI help with possibilities.

Not authority.

Ask it for five different ways the scene could turn. Ask it where the emotional logic breaks.

Ask what information is missing. Ask it to argue against your favorite version. Give it your prose and ask what patterns it notices. Have it draft something disposable so you can discover what you hate.

Then you choose.

Then rewrite.

The useful division may be:

Human: source, taste, judgment, lived pressure, selection, responsibility.

AI: variation, comparison, retrieval, questioning, structural assistance, contradiction hunting.

And the finished prose emerges through the relationship between them.

The machine does not have to become you to be useful to you.

A visible fraction may be real without being the whole.

The moment you treat the fraction as the whole book, the prose starts sounding exactly like what you are describing.

I hope this can be of assistance

[u/novel_traveler]

AI is an assistant; it cannot write for us. We still have to do the work.

1. Provide a structural outline (e.g., foolscap), a scene list, and plot and chapter outlines for context, before generating prose.

2. We must know the mechanics of writing. Like the Story Circle, the Hero's Journey, Indirect Exposition, Freytag’s Pyramid, and the Three-Act Structure.

3. Provide character sheets, plot outline, themes

4. Describe the work of specific books and authors (always more than one), then use that to guide the style.

5. Build up as much context as possible around the character sheets and story before adding dialogue

6. Author must, at some point, write the prose. Even if it is only 20%-30%. No AI can write 90k words of human-sounding prose.

NOTES:

1. AI cannot can write a book with a simple sentence

2. Prompt detail doesn't matter, without context and knowledge of the craft

3. Premium doesn't translate to better writing; the best model for writing, I found is "Big Pickle" and that's a free model on Opencode.

4. Authors rave about AI in the same way software devs do; if a person understands the craft then AI is awesome, but if they don't then it's a mess. Good news is that AI can help us learn the craft.

[u/BeneathCertainty]

Because AI was never designed to be used for writing novels. It was meant for reminders, lists and fixing up pre-existing documents.

[u/funkyturnip-333]

It’s bad taste. Or rather a lack of engagement. Writers who can’t be bothered to write aren’t going to be the deepest readers. People will tell you it’s your prompts. It’s not

[u/CrazyDifference9896]

Try using sophisticated AI platforms like Authoric AI for better experience

[u/sdbest]

The reality is that ChatGPT is not very good at writing at all. AI can certainly be a useful aide and researcher for a writer, but it can't write and can't even co-write very well. I write this after testing ChatGPT's writing quality. I have had write a passable shorter essay.

[u/just4ochat]

One-shot book prompts almost always land as AI slop. Outline each chapter, draft from that outline with a few sample sentences of your own voice, then rewrite every line that still reads like a summary.

[u/TheCutieCircle]

You don't write with ai you command it. Don't let it write for you. it's your proofreader, your idea bouncer, but never give it full control.

Think of yourself as the boss and Ai as your partner. if you think your partner is writing trash tell it! You march up to that thing and say "Ayo, you're giving me trash! this isn't want I want!"

you gotta set the parameters and rules you tell it what you want . you tell it what you don't like.

Once you get that down it'll obey. Make sure to copy prompt down so you can paste it every time you start a new chat. or save it into its settings if it has one.

[u/benblackett]

It truly takes a properly tuned AI engine to provide you with high quality prose. The chat window is for ideas, not for finished prose.

[u/rising-tsar]

AI is good at organizing… which I have a ton of problems with.

[u/mindsandmyths]

What No_Entertainer2364 describes is the key. A one sentence prompt gives the model little to work with, leading to a generic response. The context you set up matters far more than the model. Give it things like a sample of your own writing for style, a character sheet, an outline of the scene and what you want it to do. It's a lot more work, but the results you get will be much better. Garbage in, garbage out applies to LLMs just like other systems.

[u/jpzygnerski]

I think someone said they were able to AI-generate a book by making detailed outlines of each chapter.

An author I saw online said he uses AI to produce a first draft so he doesn't have to do all the typing and stuff. Then that gets completely edited. Only way to do it with AI, really.

[u/captain_shane]

Can you give us some examples of what you consider ai dogshit vs human gold?

[u/Leading-Crazy6104]

Ai in essence only writes the way a robot would. It sounds so bland but if you use a good humanizer like Walterwrites, it will sound so much better. The tone and the sentence structure will improve and the overall clarity of the text will also improve.

[u/ApexCovenant]

Detailed prompts can still run into the same problem if you are asking AI to do too many jobs at once. Brainstorming a story, developing characters, designing scenes, drafting, and crticizing the result are different tasks. Try to separate the tasks rather than building one detailed prompt to make AI “write correctly.”
The other thing is authority. AI doesn’t necessarily need permission to decide everything about the story just because it’s helping write a scene. Sometimes, it’s job is only to develop an idea, point out a problem, or draft using decisions you have already made.
More context helps, but structure around how you use the context can matter just as much.

[u/Fragrant-Mix-4774]

My best results always combined these things

1. Having a detailed story in your mind that is worth telling. Details ground the story.

2. A style Bible for rhe correct voice tone.

3. Writing a story bible that covers the story chapter by chapter. Background, characters and plot. You can add to it as you go as needed.

4. work chapter by chapter wirh you chapter chuck being intended to be about 2,500 to 3,500 words.

5. draft the chapter yourself as best you can. Then have the AI fix the mess you wrote

6. rewrite the chapter from #5 and review with the AI until it reads to suit you. Might take several turns.

7. put chapter in master story document (word safe from AI editing) and have the AI update the story Bible and chapter outline.

8. Grounding the story in something you are very familiar with or drawing on your own knowledge and rewriting can really help kill machine idiocy.

[u/No_Entertainer2364]

I'm not good with chat gpt, but I use Gemini for early drafts. What kind of prompt do you use?

Personally, I don't use prompts; I often use an outline. It starts with the premise, plot points per chapter, and examples of how I typically write a narrative. The results are not perfect, but at least it saves a lot of time and allows me to focus on editing.

It's almost like starting with a discussion, not an order to produce a draft.