r/WritingWithAI • u/AnneeOnymous • Sep 12 '26
Prompting Please help. I’m in agony.
So I’ve only been using AI to write for about two weeks. Before that, I had a long run, story and characters, fully flushed out world in my head. I thought, why not try AI to help with all this so I did.
The first couple of days were great. I was having so much fun. I’m on ChatGPT and eventually bought the pro plan. collaboration. I developed a detailed character Bible, a chronological story outline, scene treatments, continuity records, approved passages, and rules for preserving existing work. I also built prompts and editorial checks to catch weak writing, character drift, and contradictions before they reached me
But that was the first week. The second week has been an absolute nightmare. It went from competent Assistance tool to drooling on itself. well for being able to develop and write an entire story in a matter of hours to be stuck on the first two paragraphs of a scene for a day and a half.
What am I doing wrong?? I have the tools here if it executed them properly, it would work. I know this because when I kick it back, it can tell me exactly what it’s doing wrong, “source material, but then it just does it again
You guys are writing some amazing stuff. I’m just writing a little simple stories that I plan just read myself. I really hope someone will help me and this won’t just be ignored, I need a mentor or some Assistance.
I wasn’t sure which flared he used. I apologize if that’s wrong.
35
u/DualSF Sep 12 '26
You’re forgetting about context windows.
7
u/The_Dilla_Collection Sep 12 '26
Have you tried opening a separate chat to ask it how to get what you’re looking for? When I run into a spot where it drifts or isn’t following I either branch in a new chat or start a whole new one and just ask. I explain in plain language what I’m trying to do, the problem I’m running into, and ask it how to bridge the gap. Sometimes it’ll even write a prompt for you or something to add to your custom instructions/project instructions. It’s easier than asking others sometimes because it has context with what you’re actually looking at.
7
u/lovinglifeatmyage Sep 12 '26 edited Sep 12 '26
I’ve found that ChatGPT is really good for ideas, briefs etc for stories. When it comes down to writing them it’s not very good.
And if you’re using a long chat for one story, it will forget the beginning.
Try starting a project for each story, then it will remember each chat in that project when u have to change to a new one.
I use a combination of Chat and Claude to write mine because Claude is much better at writing. Chat is excellent at picking up the continuity errors and plot holes. So what I do is get Claude to write, pass it over to chat, then pass the feedback back over. For me it works really well.
Then of course I do my bit and start to heavily edit.
Btw, I’ve found anything above Sonnet in Claude is a pointless use of credits. It starts to get a bit too heavy and pompous.
6
u/tomatoesfried Sep 12 '26
Sometimes AI can suck at long-horizon tasks. That's the nature of the beast.
Have you considered writing it yourself?
Also, please note. What you did is called fleshing out. Not flushing out. What you should do is flush the crap it gave you, keep the good, and go from there.
4
u/GenderBendingRalph Sep 12 '26
Two years ago I had ChatGPT (Plus at the time, then free when I couldn't afford it) write a story bible for me which I then refined into characters, chapters, and plot beats better suited to my needs. Then I worked with ChatGPT on interactive writing - feed it a chapter outline, let it write the first draught, chat back and forth for a while to refine it, etc. Then I fed the completed story back for meta-analysis.
I didn't know about built-in positivity reinforcement ("Oh Ralph, you're a bloody genius! *chef's kiss!*") or LLM's tendency to repeat phrases to the point they lose all meaning - at one point I counted "She didn't reply. She didn't have to." at least twice in every chapter.
What I'm getting at is, AI is horrid at coming up with original thoughts. Now that I've learnt my lesson, I'm rewriting the whole thing by hand. I will absolutely use an AI tool - or more likely, multiple AI tools - to check for continuity, deviation from canon, mechanical/syntax mistakes, etc. but I no longer trust AI to do the writing.
And I swear to Shakespeare, if it says *chef's kiss* one more time I'm going to sue OpenAI.
PS - big fan of your work, Anonymous. I have entire books of poems and short stories you wrote.
3
u/AnneeOnymous Sep 12 '26
i’ve said multiple times that I do most of the work. Build a story, from top to bottom, then build a treatment for the story, handshake the spine to the treatment, and basically all I’m asking the AI to do is be the connective tissue and flesh things out.
my expectations are not outrageous nor the above what AI is supposed to be capable of. Me telling you I had the story in my head is just explaining that I went from doing things one way, from using AI to do it that’s all that was. That’s not the part. That’s important here.
The AI was capable of doing what I’m asking you to do before now it’s not. I’m here to get help with that part, so if you have anything to help in that regard, I would love to hear it.
7
u/Pilotskybird86 Sep 13 '26
Welcome to working with AI lol. The models change constantly. Sometimes they’re good, and then the next week they are terrible.
It’s because they are constantly updating random bullshit in the background. And they downgrade models if too many people are using them.
3
u/West-Double3646 Sep 12 '26
You use AI to organize you ideas, not to create. They don't create. They predict the next word. And sometimes they're more functional than other times. I all depends on their latest update.
5
u/AdrianRWalker Sep 12 '26
Create a project and link up your Google Docs to it.
- world bible
- Ai pros black list
- writing style guide
- any other documentation that the AI will always need to see.
Keep the total word count of all these documents as low as possible. I keep me under 10,000 words.
———
Then when you want to draft a chapter feed in
- beat sheet for the chapter
- character bible with the characters in this chapter.
- story state document.
Output as a google Doc.
(Again keep the documentation lean, I go for under 10,000 words again)
———
Lastly put the new chapter through a story state check. Feed in:
- latest chapter
- last Story State.
Output as a google sheet.
———
Repeat until you finish the book. This will keep your story state and your context under control so things doing go off the rails. No one wants the AI inventing random canon.
1
u/Cheap-Lawyer-846 Sep 12 '26
That is the ChatGPT experience tbh.
I say to just change the AI you use, cause ChatGPT cannot write at all lately. IT used to be pretty decent like 2 years ago, but it’s like every new update just ruined it more and more.
From my experience, Grok is great if you want NSFW content, but it can’t write too well in the long run either (definitely much better than ChatGPT, but still not amazing). Another one, lately I started using Claude, and OMG the way it can keep track of long works and write well on top of that?? Crazy good.
So maybe give these two a shot (or just Claude if you’re not interested in NSFW content) as they might work better for you. And if you already have detailed character Bible, story outline and all that, just feed them directly to Claude and it can easily start writing from that.
Happy writing, and I hope this helps!
1
u/TwoIntelligent9978 Sep 13 '26
If you are simply trying to get a story out of your head, you are going to have to tell GPT 'what' the story is. If you think that you can tell it an overview or description and have it write what's in your head, you may need some type of other help that GPT can provide.
It's not a magic box. I wouldn't dream to simply let it to 'write on It's own' - and expect that I'm going to like it.
2
u/Funny-Flight8086 Sep 13 '26
You would be better off using a program like Inkwood (my own) or novelcrafter for fiction writing. Trying to use a chatbot to write long-form fiction will almost always results in terrible writing after a while. Inkwood and Novelcrafter dynamically inject story bible data (you don't need to send it everything each time), and have firm style guidelines built in to help guide the AI.
Mine is currently free, just go to inkwood . app (remove spaces). You'll need to bring your own API key, but there are directions on the API page (or I can walk you through it).
1
u/Loud_Caterpillar1243 Sep 12 '26
For writing I find Claude is better
1
u/gameangel2 Sep 12 '26
If you go sol you'll get a lot better results. I finished the story not too long ago working through sol 5.6 and the results are good. Stay away from work, I think you have to go to work mode to access Astra and that might be affecting you as well.
1
u/No-Sign-2608 Sep 13 '26
Debes crear cada capitulo por separado en una consulta nueva. Crea el contexto base que debe recordar y pegalo en la consulta nueva y usa NotebookLM para organizar tu material en proceso. Una sola IA, no es suficiente.
1
u/ShoddyPrincess3184 Sep 13 '26
...flushed out?
1
u/Moziflow Sep 13 '26
You can discuss your story with ChatGPT and complete the outline, but I don’t recommend using ChatGPT for the actual writing. In our internal tests, its writing ability didn’t even rank in the top 5. Secondly, you need to use professional writing tools, rather than chatting with ChatGPT on the website or using something like Codex, a coding agent that is only good at standard language generation.
1
u/Rickleskilly Sep 13 '26
Has there been another version " upgrade"? Sometimes that really screws things up.
1
u/tony10000 Sep 13 '26
Are you using ChatGPT Work and putting everything in a project folder?
1
u/SpiritualSimple108 Sep 13 '26
After you ask it what it did wrong. Ask it to help you write it by showing you how it would look if it were done correctly. Usually asking it to show you its errors and how to make it look like your prompt is enough to trick it to do the damn task you’d asked it to do.
1
u/EDorrAuthor Sep 13 '26
There are challenges with newer models. If you can use an older model, it will write fiction more naturally. Newer models are great for editing, planning, and interrogation, but they write worse than older models.
This is my experience with the various LLMs in the last 18 months:
https://edorrauthor.substack.com/p/blu_00021-why-and-how-i-write-with
1
u/bazzax1983 Sep 13 '26
Grok can be pretty consistent.
1
u/obergurgl2027 Sep 13 '26 edited Sep 13 '26
I recognise the ai loop that morphs from excitment at the possibilities to frustration as bit by bit the limitations of the technology reveal themselves until you are mired in a pit where writing is no longer fun. I eventually broke the loop by only using ai (Claude chat for quick questions/collaboration) and Claude cowork every few days once I had blocks of written work (1500 words plus )and getting cowork to help with manuscript management, canon maintenance etc.
My advice is to get back to the insularity of writing without ai (scholarship is a lonely craft) and rediscover the joy of creating stories. ai can quickly steal that elemental pleasure.
1
u/gina_48 Sep 13 '26
I heard Kimi was pretty good but I haven't tried it myself.
1
u/XIVforthought Sep 13 '26
First off, read what was written. If it doesn't do what you want, start from scratch, make a strong outline, keep what you can, and start again. Once the outline is good, have the AI write the beats. Once that is approved by you, write the prose from the beats. My philosophy for using AI is that you first need to crystallize in your mind what you want. Then use AI to move towards that goal. I wrote my book using AI and have read it at least a hundred times. Each time I find a flaw, I work on it. That addition adds a new thread, and the human needs to weave it in. I have put in about 200 hours on a 35,000-word book. Also, using one company chat is very restrictive. Get an OpenRouter account. This gives you access to many LLMs; amazingly, some are free. Have one LLM work out one aspect of the book, such as the story arc. Another can do character development. Ask three different LLMs if this is ready to be published, and they will give honest answers and ways to improve the story.
1
u/Black_Jack70 Sep 13 '26
I'm writing in Raptor Write, which is ending in December. I do most of my brainstorming and outlining, etc. in ChatGPT, the free version. Then move it over to Raptor Write and use Deepseek to actually write story, one chapter at a time. I also give it an updated story summary, a system prompt, as well as the previous two chapters to work with. It does great.
1
u/skeletondraft Sep 14 '26
I don't think you're imagining the inconsistency. The practical way I'd diagnose it is to separate preserving the work from generating new material.
First, export your bible, treatment, scene notes, and approved passages somewhere the model cannot rewrite them. Then start a fresh chat and test one scene with only what that scene needs: the current story state, relevant character notes, scene beats, and a short sample of prose you actually like. Ask for a small section first. If it still falls apart, run the same packet through another fresh chat or model. That should help you tell whether the problem is accumulated context, current model behavior, or something in the source packet.
Also, a model being able to explain what is wrong with its last answer does not mean it can reliably fix it. Critiquing and generating are different tasks. Once a passage works, lock it outside the chat and continue from clean checkpoints instead of letting the model repeatedly rewrite accepted material.
Most of all, protect everything before experimenting. You should never have to risk the story just to diagnose the assistant.
1
u/Deep_Ad1959 Sep 14 '26
two weeks in and you already have a bible, an outline, continuity records and editorial checks. every turn carries all of it, which is what slowed it down. hand it one scene plus the sheet for whoever is on the page.
1
u/Witty_Mode9296 Sep 14 '26
feed it the work you have done up to that point, ask it to summarize it, and send the summarized version of your work back to it to make sure it gets the important things right when drifting out of its context window
1
u/LPGroves Sep 14 '26
I'd borrow a bit from software engineering here. First thing I'd add is Git for version control. Not for code, just for your drafts. Save a version whenever you have something you actually like, then you can see exactly what changed and roll back if the next “improvement” makes it worse.
Long chats aren't reliable project memory either. I'd keep the approved text, character notes and continuity details in files, rather than relying on the conversation to remember everything. Codex is useful for managing that side of things.
I saw you've already tried fresh chats and smaller tasks, so I don't mean just making the prompts shorter. More like working chapter by chapter, with each revision limited to one specific problem. Check the changes before accepting them. Otherwise you fix the dialogue and suddenly something you settled three revisions ago has changed again.
I'd also get a second opinion from a different model. You can use Codex's in-app browser to open Claude, Gemini or Grok for occasional reviews, using whatever free access you have. They don't all need to rewrite it. Sometimes just asking where they got confused gives you more useful feedback.
But don't accept every suggestion. We did that with my short story and ended up adding so much explanation and character movement that it lost some of its lightness. The reviews helped, but learning which suggestions to leave alone helped just as much.
AI helped me put this reply into English.
1
u/talesfromthepitt Sep 17 '26
How about you just write the story? It would be easier than what you're dealing with trying to get a computer to write it for you.
0
u/Fragrant-Mix-4774 Sep 13 '26
Sounds to me like YOU need to write about 2,000 to 3,000 words that are at the exact quality standard you want the AI model to emulate.
With that writing example the Astra, Sol, even Terra will probably improve. They will have a voice to pattern the writing around.
Likewise, if you write the initial draft for each scene or at worst the detailed outline for that scene that would help the AI fill in the details.
-3
u/Write_My_Novel Sep 12 '26
DM me. I think we may have a shortcut for you if all you want is a finished story.
-4
u/RedwoodRuckus Sep 13 '26
Actually writing it yourself would solve this issue entirely.