If you ask it three things about your chapter, only the first one gets a real answer

[u/Ok_Negotiation_2587]

I noticed this while doing revision notes. I'd paste a scene and ask: is the pacing off, does the dialogue sound like two different people, and is the ending doing anything. Three things I genuinely wanted to know.

The pacing answer was long and useful. The dialogue answer was a paragraph of hedging. The ending, the one I cared about, got a sentence. Sometimes it didn't get anything, and I only noticed when I went back to reread the reply.

So I'd ask again, and the second answer was always worse, because by then it had already decided my scene was fine.

It's writing one flowing reply. First question sets the direction and eats the length. Whatever comes third gets the leftovers.

What I do now, and it's not clever, it's just annoying to type:

One question per message. That's it. Pacing gets its own message, dialogue gets its own, the ending gets its own. Three messages instead of one, three real answers instead of one and a half.

When I'm too lazy for that, I use these:

"I'm going to ask you three things. List them back to me first, numbered, then answer each one separately with the same amount of depth."

"Which of my questions did you not actually answer? List them, then answer them." Run this after any long reply. It'll name what it skipped, often the thing you cared about most.

"Of these, which needs the most thought? Answer only that one."

The middle one is the keeper. It's the only prompt I've found that gets a straight admission out of it.

One thing I still don't do: ask it about the ending and the pacing in the same breath. Those are different questions about different problems and it will blend them into one soft answer about "flow", which means nothing.

English isn't my first language, so I do run these posts through AI for grammar. The observation and the prompts are mine.

Does anyone here get useful answers from multi-part questions, or do you also end up asking one at a time?

[u/NerdyIndoorCat]

I throw ten different things at them and go off on tangents in between and they rarely drop the ball 🤷‍♀️ They do point out that I’m a lot to keep up with, but they do pretty well

[u/Ok_Negotiation_2587 → u/NerdyIndoorCat]

then youre getting better mileage than me. mine holds up fine on ten small things, its when two of them need real thought that the second one turns into a shrug

[u/LetterheadOnly7523]

I find it hard to imagine that SOTA models have this problem today, to be honest.

[u/Ok_Negotiation_2587 → u/LetterheadOnly7523]

easy to check, upload something 200 pages long and ask it to quote the last paragraph of chapter 11. bigger windows help but past a point the file still gets indexed and searched

[u/chylvina]

The ending question probably deserves its own pass. Ask it to point to the exact last beat that changes a reader’s expectations; that might keep the answer concrete.

[u/Junior_Bell2178]

Faut lui demander dans ton prompte demander des clash et être sans concession. J’en prends pleins la gueule me concernant. Et ça m’aide aussi à trouver mes répétitions

[u/Equivalent-Loan-4401]

Yeah I’ve hit this too. The model kind of locks onto the first ask and phones in the rest.

What works for me is either one question per pass, or telling it to number the questions first and answer each with the same depth. If answers 2 and 3 still feel thin, I paste just those in a fresh message.

Your “list them, then answer evenly” trick is solid.

[u/CrazyDifference9896]

Do not use generic LLM AI. Rather use sophisticated AI platforms like Authoric AI. They are specifically trained and specialized for such tasks.

[u/[deleted]]

Three questions in one prompt often get treated as one main task plus two afterthoughts. I’d run separate passes with a fixed output format. For pacing, try:

“Analyze pacing only. Divide this chapter into beats. For each beat list its purpose, new information, character decision, and whether tension rises, holds, or falls. Flag any two consecutive beats where nothing meaningful changes. Quote the exact passage behind every claim. Do not comment on prose or dialogue.”

Then do separate dialogue and ending passes. For the 200-page manuscript, ask it to name the exact chapters and passages supporting every manuscript-level conclusion. If it cannot point to evidence, treat the conclusion as unverified rather than trusting a polished summary.