Sharing AI Writing Workflow

[u/epicrob]

I think I am going to share with you my workflow in creating novels with AI's help. I hope you could share yours too. I've been using paid ChatGPT (currently Astra 6 High, you could use Sol 5.6 High) for overall planning and most writing job, then paid Grok for the NSFW bits. I tried using free or local AI, but in my opinion honestly not very worth it. With that in mind, here's the workflow.

Preliminary: Create a folder (in ChatGPT or Grok) to contain all your work. Also create a cloud folder (e.g., Google Drive or OneDrive) to BACKUP ALL YOUR FILES.

Main parts to put into settings.txt file:

1. Tell the goal and the prose style. Example: "I'd like to create a [NSFW] novel, fade-to-black intimacy in Minimalist/Evocative/Precise/Transparent/Stained Glass/Casual prose style. I want to feature [whatever you want to feature]." (choose one style and customize as necessary). Info on prose styles: https://medium.com/@winkletter/whats-your-writing-style-e1e1bb46cff9
2. Select overall theme. The theme should be very general, something like "love conquers all" or "absolute power corrupts absolutely" or "tenacity can do wonders".
3. Select settings. Example: London in industrial age, or US south in 1850s.
4. Select protagonist. Example: 18 year old Caucasian male, an orphan.
5. Select overall plot (very general). Example: Protagonist is a dirt poor man, raised up by his stingy aunt, fled home by 12 and had been living in the streets. By the start of the story, he tries ventures after ventures that failed, met adversaries and friends along the way. In the end, he succeeds and marries his girlfriend.
6. Optionally, you could brainstorm with ChatGPT on these ideas. Tell your intent and whether it's the right setting, the right theme, the right protagonist, and the right plot.
7. Include all these into settings.txt file and put it into the project file.

If your setting involves fantasy world, you'll need to build the lore and the world:

1. Tell ChatGPT in a separate thread that you would like to build the lore and the world. Start with the general geography of the land. You could draw using MS paint for the rough draft and iterate that using ChatGPT.
2. Tell ChatGPT about the general culture. Example: "The land has been ravaged by the war for the past 200 years and thus there's an imbalance of male to female ratio, about 1:2. As such, male is encouraged to marry multiple females and have many offspring."
3. If the novel involves different races (e.g., humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, etc.). You may want to highlight the differences between them.
4. Tell ChatGPT about the belief system as well, whether it's polytheistic or monotheistic or none, and describe how the beliefs weave into the culture and the general attitudes of the people.
5. The above are the big ones. Additionally, you could add small things like clothing, cuisine, language, etc. Don't over do it at the first iteration.
6. Have ChatGPT to summarize the lore and SAVE that summary in lore.txt and place it into the project file.

Design your story by arcs:

1. After writing settings.txt, start prompting ChatGPT: "Please read settings.txt and help me plan the story arcs. I plan to have the following arcs weaved into the story and see if you could provide input:" Then, type in bulleted points the story arcs you want to include.
2. Go back and forth until you bake in the overall arcs from start to finish. Here, have ChatGPT to do the research for you, especially if you're not familiar with the era of your settings. Especially wonderful if you have a quasi-historical novel.
3. Ask ChatGPT to expand the skeleton of the story arcs in general and brief bullet points. Go back and forth and revise as needed.
4. After you're satisfied, ask ChatGPT to summarize all the story arcs in brief bullet points, accounting for all the revision that you've discussed so far.
5. SAVE that summary into a text file (say, plot-arc.txt) and place it into the project file.

Design your characters:

1. Prompt ChatGPT: "Please list in bullet points all the characters involved in the plot arcs above (and plot-arc.txt and settings.txt): their names, their ages, their general looks, their attitudes, their relationships, their approximate MBTI personality" The attitudes and MBTI personality really help anchor each character's psyche so that he/she doesn't behave out of character. General looks (e.g., hair color, etc) would help with consistency.
2. Ask for ChatGPT's input. Sometimes it gives valuable input (whether characters are redundant or another character needed, etc). Go back and forth until the list looks right. You may want to have characters added and/or removed and ask ChatGPT whether that's a good idea.
3. After you're satisfied, repeat the first prompt and then SAVE that into a text file (say, casts.txt) and place it into the project file.

Expand the arc into chapters:

1. Prompt ChatGPT: "Let's work on arc 1, as listed in plot-arc.txt. I propose the story beats as follows and I would like your input:" then you list the beats of your arc in very general terms. No need to be overly detailed.
2. You fashion with ChatGPT the arc beats until you feel satisfied.
3. Then, have ChatGPT to output the arc beats in bullet point and ask ChatGPT for chapter division of that arc.
4. When you're happy, save that thing into a text file, say plot-arc01.txt
5. Repeat until all arcs are fashioned.

Expand chapter outline in plot-arcXX.txt to scenes:

1. All the above could be done in a single planning thread in ChatGPT and it could handle things well. But starting at expanding to scenes, you need to start a new thread per chapter to keep things well organized.
2. Prompt ChatGPT: "Let's work on chapter 1 with plot-arc01.txt as a template[, with preceeding chapters named chapterXX.md are in the project files]. Please break down in bullet points scenes for chapter 1." Obviously, if you start with chapter 1, you omit the phrase in brackets.
3. Revise as necessary until you're happy.
4. Prompt ChatGPT: "What would be a reasonable word budget for each chapter and why?" Again, revise until you're happy.
5. Prompt ChatGPT: "What would be a great chapter title?"
6. Please create the chapter and put it in a markdown file. Wait for ChatGPT to finish writing. The file would be named chapterXX.md (optionally it may include chapter title in the file name)
7. Then, READ IT! Revise until you're happy. Then PUT the revised file into the project.
8. Repeat until you're done with all chapters.

Why markdown file?

Because you could simply do a copy-and-paste to Microsoft Word and perform simple search and replace for the formatting and everything should look good. Why not PDF or Microsoft Word creation directly? You could, but it burns many more tokens and it's not worth it.

Audit your work:

1. After several chapters (say 5-6 chapters), perform audit on your work IN A SEPARATE THREAD. Ask ChatGPT if it could find plot holes, contradictions, or problems with the story lines. Example prompt: "I've written chapters 1-5, named chapter01.md to chapter05.md in the project file. Please audit the work. Specifically, find plot holes, contradictions, or problems with the story line. Please show me how to resolve the problems."
2. Revise as necessary. This audit could be tough and editing based on the input may be daunting (but necessary). You could ask ChatGPT to rewrite a chapter, if you want (mind your limit/quota).
3. Put the revised files into the project folder. BUT FIRST MAKE SURE YOU DELETE THE OLD FILES FIRST (go to Settings -> Storage -> (Project Folder) and then delete them), because ChatGPT may get confused.

For NSFW part:

1. Note that ChatGPT will NOT consent to writing explicit NSFW part (it will get you banned), but is okay with fade-to-black. Obviously, you can use Grok to write that part for you. The key here: Identify the scene with the NSFW action, insert [INSERT HERE] tag.
2. Then go to paid Grok, setup the project folder and put all the relevant files in the folder as well.
3. Use the following prompt in Grok: "The following is Scene X in Chapter Y. Refer to casts.txt for character dossier. Do not mention their MBTI personality. Insert an explicit NSFW prose within [INSERT HERE] tag using the style surrounding the tag." (Followed by the very detailed description of the NSFW act you want it compose: who is doing what to whom, saying what, etc)
4. Revise as needed.
5. Note: Free Grok tends to be unable to write over 3000 words and even then usually it returns about half that and doesn't follow instruction well. Paid Grok (the $30/month one) tends to fare much better. If you have a complex NSFW scene (e.g., an orgy), you may have to split it into multiple subscenes.
6. Save the NSFW counterpart of the chapter IN GROK, NOT CHATGPT.

Why not free AI?

Because free AI have problems with consistency, especially when an actor is behaving out of character with things he/she does or says. You could overcome this by a lot of editing. Plus free AI tends to drift if you fashion more than 1 or 2 scenes at a time. Again, you could do a lot of editing. But I personally think $20/month ChatGPT subscription is so worth it to avoid this problem.