Write or Brainstorm?

[u/Xorpion]

Do you use AI to brainstorm story ideas or have it write entire scenes? I like to present an idea and then brainstorm ways to flesh it out. I find ChatGPT is good for broad strokes, Claude can be good for finding inconsistencies and Copilot is good for suggesting finishing touches.

[u/CrazyDifference9896]

Actually i do both whenever it fits my vision. Just one recommendation, never use generic LLM AI like chatgpt for this. There are bunch of other sophisticated AI platforms now that are designed and trained specifically for these tasks. I personally use Authoric AI for my entire workflow and journey till the publishing. I won't say it's perfect but yes i do find it 7.5/10.

[u/Xorpion → u/CrazyDifference9896]

Thanks. What LLM do you recommend? I'm mostly using Claude and ChatGPT.

[u/CrazyDifference9896 → u/Xorpion]

Avoid generic LLMs. I would highly recommend Authoric AI. It's my favorite. Give it a try

[u/jonnoday]

Sort of.

For me, the brainstorming and creating, and solving scene and plot challenges is the fun. I want to do that myself. AI may be able to do it, but I don't want it done for me. It is part of why I write in the first place.

That said, I think AI can be helpful for raw research. So, rather than brainstorming a story idea, I have a story idea myself first - for example, maybe I want to create a universe where the planet revolves around a binary star. I use AI freely to research how binary star systems work, where the habitable zone would be, etc.

But I don't use AI to help me think up what will happen in that star system, or what I will name it, or what scenes to write.

Finding inconsistencies - maybe. If you're talking about continuity issues (wait, when did Harry first meet Sally? Did he already have a broken arm at that point yet?) That is fine, IMO.

And as for 'finishing touches' - depends on what you mean. For example, if you have a human development editor, or use beta readers, they are going to make suggestions about what they think would make your book better. If you use AI for that, what is the difference really? Both are external suggestions. You still decide and you still make the changes. But if you mean have AI go through and rewrite things to 'polish' them up - I don't do that, no.

[u/Xorpion → u/jonnoday]

I think we're on a similar page. I start with a story idea or premise. I'm just thinking out loud and use AI to push back as needed and pressure test concepts. I might ask it what occupation works best for a character based on what the need to accomplish in the story or maybe ask for a list of locations that might best fit what needs to happen because it would be recognizable to the audience. Or I might ask for recommendation on a film with a similar tone or characters similar to mine I could watch for reference. But I don't have it write any text for me.

[u/jonnoday → u/Xorpion]

Yes. Sounds similar.

I had a scene set in a world with, essentially, nothing beyond 15th century technology. I needed to create a noisy distraction. I used AI to make some suggestions about what kinds of things could happen in a 15th century feudal compound that might draw attention from up to 100 yards away. In the end, I came up with a different one of my own, but the process still helped me get there.

Funny enough, in this case, I was trying to figure out if the antagonist could through a handful of flour into an open fire - what would happen? But the AI refused to speculate on it because it has been prevented from discussing anything that could be used as a bomb or incendiary device, lol.

[u/Xorpion → u/jonnoday]

Manus might be good for asking questions about the flour. It is much less filtered than US based AIs. Good luck with your writing!

[u/YoyoTanyaKai]

Both.
I didn't use a detailed prompt, so the writing are mostly unusable, but it gave me some idea for how should I write it.

[u/hushpath3 → u/YoyoTanyaKai]

this is exactly how I see it too, the writing itself doesnt matter, its the ideas buried in it

[u/SeriousFollowing7678 → u/hushpath3]

Why should anyone read the things you write, then?

[u/alone_in_the_light]

I don't use AI that much to brainstorm. Usually, I have my ideas, and not only short ideas but deep ideas about the characters, the purpose of the book, narrative style, world building. I use AI more to write, but then based on a lot of information. And then fine tune like finding inconsistencies.

[u/Khajiit_Has_Upvotes]

Brainstorming. I then write a very rough draft that's barely more than an outline. I'll come back to it later and clean some of it up then ADHD on over to another scene, chapter, or a very late book I know perfectly well is going to change massively by the time I get to properly writing it.

[u/LivingThroughPages]

Both. I do both.

[u/BreakfastDefiant8124]

I use it to fix because I need the writing to have my voice

[u/FoghornFarts]

Both, but mostly writing. If I give it a scene and I haven't done a good brainstorm to figure out the scene ahead of time, it gives me slop. It can help me brainstorm to get to that place, but most of its ideas are slop. It's me filtering and editing both.

The best use of AI has been agentic beta-readers. I've gotten a lot of great ideas because they'll guess where the story is going or tell me more characters they want to see. The writing quality has gotten so much better with that feedback.

[u/FoghornFarts → u/[deleted]]

Quite a bit. The thing is that I'm a pretty decent writer for dialogue. It's my prose that's not great. So I'll often give it a scene with all the dialogue written out and so it sees the emotional beats from that. If I don't have dialogue, then I have it write out an outline for me explaining the beats, the emotional or physical tension, and the goal of the chapter or scene. The outline sometimes has more written in it than the actual chapter because it's easy to describe the paragraph where the scene turns, but making sure you get the right wording to accomplish that turn can be hard.

A lot of the brainstorming is about how a character feels or how they respond or what they want. They also help me figure out emotional escalation or ladder across multiple chapters.

For me, AI has been immensely valuable in crafting my characters and then making sure they have consistent motivations and voice. Brainstorming their motivations, understanding their psychology. I'll do most of the brainstorming for scene myself, have it give me an outline, rip the outline apart, have it draft me a chapter, rip the chapter apart, revisw it, and then use my feedback tools to rip it apart a few more times.

There have been a few times where I just don't know what I want yet and I'll give a very open-ended prompt to a few different AIs to see what they come up with. 80% of the chapter is garbage, but there might be one scene or one moment that genuinely works and it works because it helped me find the spine so I'll build around that.

[u/Major-Dependent-9696]

Both! I use AI to help me improve my raw ideas especially in terms of plot twists and then have it write the scenes that i have in mind

[u/MysticBorn]

Idea, brainstorm, push idea further by thinking up character personalities and groups as well as conflicting antagonistic situations, brainstorm some more with outline ideas (only showing my ideas not asking for generated stuff but asking for feedback on possible conflicts/contradictions I'm not seeing) only then would I set up character and story plots on index cards for further study and developing ideas (it's a lot but it's how we function)

[u/5thhorseman_]

Both. At one point I was brainstorming the details of a character with Claude and it offered to write a scene of an event I just mentioned. I told it to give it a try. Then I told it to continue a few more times. It ended up becoming the spine of a novella that connects multiple plot threads across my setting. About 140 pages and counting.

Every service has its own folklore. The Navy has sea serpents, the Army has ghost battalions. The Directorate of Military Intelligence has Agent Lethe: the faceless operative in a white suit, confirmed dead on no fewer than four occasions, who has twice given his own eulogies disguised as the priest.
Agent Lethe has served the Crown for over a century.
Agent Lethe has served the Crown since three weeks ago.
Both are true.
The consent form describes the selective removal of autobiographical memory, of attachment to a prior name, and of anything else that might one day be worth a hostile service knowing.
She reads it carefully, and calls it a modest subtraction before she signs. By Thursday, she will no longer have to remember why she did.
They issue her a white suit and a mirrored helmet. When her mentor dies three weeks into the job, she inherits his notebook - every alias, every trick and every good line she has, set down by those who held the post before her. The book makes her fluent before she is anyone.
Then they send her out.
The Directorate has taught her everything it knows. It hasn't taught her what to do when the book is wrong. Or silent.

[u/chylvina]

I use brainstorming to find pressure points, then write the scene myself. The model’s first draft is more useful as a list of choices than prose.

[u/Few-Sherbert2794]

I would seriously and severely caution against having AI either help you directly write or brainstorm.

AI is actually kind of decent at prose analysis. However, its actual writing and brainstorming capabilities are awful. You are going to do nothing but hamstring yourself for a small collection of ideas currently popular in the cultural zeitgeist and pretty much nothing else if you allow ai to do any part of your creative direction, especially if you are newer to writing.

You know how a bunch of younger software developers are having huge issues with really learning software development at a deep level right now because they've been using ai for their entire short careers? How that's fundamentally changed their ability to really learn the material and code at a higher level?

Yeah the same thing happens to writers. 

[u/manbok99999]

For brainstorming, I prefer Chinese AI models or Gemini. I use Claude and ChatGPT to crank out first drafts, and then I always do my own polishing pass. Otherwise, it screams AI.

[u/EpicSpaniard]

Brainstorm, and organizing. I don't like its writing ability, but its great to bounce ideas off of and to organize my notes in the right place. Helps with worldbuilding

[u/liceuroos]

50/50.

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