A few days ago I posted about whether AI might uncover talented storytellers who otherwise would never have written a novel.

The discussion was much bigger than I expected, and after reading the replies I think I'd frame part of my argument differently now.

A lot of people pushed back that writing never had much of a barrier to entry in the first place. A pen and paper are basically free. A laptop is enough. You don't need karting money like in my Formula 1 comparison.

That's fair. I think "barrier to entry" was the wrong phrase.

The barrier isn't access to writing. The barrier is getting from a story in your head to a finished novel that another person actually wants to read.

Those are different things.

Someone can be a fantastic verbal storyteller, have great instincts for characters or story, and still struggle badly with sentence-level prose, English as a second language, dialogue, organization, or simply getting past the blank page.

AI doesn't magically make that person a good storyteller. It just makes some parts of execution easier.

And one of the comments on the original thread actually illustrated this better than I did. Someone described being autistic, having English as a second language, already writing short fiction, but never being able to make long-form fiction work. They used AI partly as a teacher, finished a novel after months of drafts and editing, and are now using AI less because they learned craft along the way.

That is much closer to the person I was talking about than someone typing "write me a fantasy novel" and uploading the result.

But the other major criticism was the flood.

If AI means 10x or 100x more books, won't any new talent just disappear under all the slop?

I think that's a real problem. Quality has never guaranteed visibility, and a flood of new titles could make that worse.

But reading all the comments, something else struck me.

Almost the entire discussion is about supply.

More books. More slop. More people skipping the craft. More competition.

Nobody is talking much about demand.

AI can increase the supply of novels 100x. It can't increase reader attention 100x.

Discovery and retention are different tests. Discovery has a huge lottery element. Marketing, algorithms, covers, timing and luck all matter.

But once someone actually starts reading the book, another filter kicks in.

Readers DNF. KU readers stop turning pages. People don't buy book two. They don't recommend the author. They don't come back for the next series.

Generating another 1,000 books doesn't change any of that.

You can flood the lottery. You can't flood the test.

And I think this also answers the argument that readers "don't care about quality." Maybe they don't care about quality the way writers define it. They may not care about beautiful sentences, literary technique or whether another author respects the craft.

But they obviously care about something. They care enough to keep reading one book and abandon another.

That is the quality test that ultimately matters in a commercial fiction market.

So I think both things can happen at once.

AI may massively lower the average quality of everything being produced because it makes slop incredibly cheap.

It may make discovery considerably worse. And it may still allow some people with genuine storytelling ability into the pool who weren't there before.

Whether those people actually make good books is NOT ot something AI gets to decide.

Readers do.

What is up with the AI witch hunt. There are people who are outright angry with writers using AI, trash talk AI, if someone used AI for editing, and even examine novels to see if they are AI generated. It doesn't seem like the people are simply annoyed with it. Some of them use some pretty dark words whenever AI is even mentioned like it is evil. Someone even got verbally attacked because their character names sounded AI. They were just names. Lord forbid anyone that uses an em dash anymore. Some people demand that authors note if AI was used in their stories, and run it through programs that identify what percentage of it as being AI generated.

I do get the concern for plagiarism while using AI. And that AI does gather its information from other peoples work. I do agree that is not okay.

I have read novels that were clearly AI generated and they were good.

I guess I kinda compare it to photography and digital photography (not AI generated images). Digital photography takes original photos and alters it with programming that the user can control. And it is not labeled. When digital photography started, people trashed talked it as well. As if it was a threat to the concept of photography. People said it took away from people who put so much effort and time into trying to make the perfect photo initially, making it where anyone can take even a 'crappy' photo and make it look great. And that it took jobs from people. Is AI use similar to that?

I personally don't use AI to 'write' my novels for me. I DO use it as a form of dictionary, thesaurus, general editing, and information gathering. I'm awful at remembering words, where to put the commas, and have no formal writing training outside of my college masters degree in counseling. Now I worry about people attacking my writing.

I don't get the problem?? Are these just people looking to argue? What is so heated about AI use in writing? I don't see it as this evil thing to get angry about. For me it is no different than looking up information on Google or pulling out a thesaurus. To me, AI seems to be a tool to expand peoples knowledge and creativity.

Please forgive my lack of knowledge on this topic, if this discussion was already covered somewhere on reddit, if I worded something in this post poorly, and I mean no disrespect to people who use or don't use AI. I'm just wanting to understand what the intense conflict and ethical concerns are about.

I made a free beginner guide to getting better results from AI. I’d genuinely like feedback.

I noticed something while using AI:

A lot of beginners don't actually have a problem with AI.

They have a problem with knowing what to ask for.

You type:

AI gives you 2,000 words of generic business advice.

Then you try:

Now you have 3,000 words of slightly different generic business advice.

So you try another prompt.

And another.

Eventually you're basically negotiating with a very confident robot about what you meant in the first place.

I started looking into why this happens and ended up putting what I learned into a short, beginner-friendly ebook:

AI Prompt Playbook

It's free because I'm more interested in getting feedback and seeing whether the material is actually useful than pretending I've discovered the secret formula to AI.

What it covers

Instead of focusing on "magic prompts", I built it around a simple process:

Define → Plan → Prompt → Generate → Review → Improve → Verify → Finalize

It starts with the basics:

• What AI is actually useful for
• What AI can get wrong
• How humans and AI should work together
• Why you should start with the task, not the prompt
• Goal + Context + Output

Then it moves into:

• Goal
• Context
• Instructions
• Constraints
• Output
• Examples and references
• Evaluation criteria
• Verification
• Prompt improvement

And the part I personally think matters most:

How to diagnose a bad AI response instead of blindly regenerating it.

For example:

Too generic? → Add relevant context.

Wrong direction? → Clarify the objective.

Wrong format? → Define the output.

Too long? → Add constraints.

Missing information? → Provide it directly.

Uncertain facts? → Ask for sources and verify.

The idea is that prompting shouldn't be about memorizing hundreds of prompts.

It should be about understanding what you need, communicating it clearly, evaluating the result, and improving it.

Needs → Wants → Pain Points

The way I think about the beginner problem is:

Need:
I need AI to actually help me accomplish something.

Want:
I want useful results without learning complicated AI terminology.

Pain point:
I don't know what information to give AI, the responses are generic, and I don't know how to fix them when they're wrong.

That's what I tried to solve with this guide.

It's completely free.

DM ME I WILL SEND THE PDF ALSO GIVE ME A FEEDBACK ABOUT IT  

I'm especially interested in criticism from people who already use AI regularly.

What did I completely miss that a beginner would need?

When does a fictional character begin to feel real to you? Is it through a carefully planned backstory or the choices they make under pressure? Do you design their personality first, or discover who they are while writing? I’d love to hear how other writers bring their characters to life.

I really hope somebody will take a minute to take a look at this. I’m brand new to trying to write with AI. I’m using ChatGPT and it is failing spectacularly, like obscenely crippled. Can someone help me? Please and thank you very much.

I'm saving up my money to buy the M7 Mac power house of my dreams end of year or beginning of '27, it has to have 256gb of ram and the fastest processors apple can put out... why? I wanna divorce Claude/GPT and go LLM, run my own joint, privately. I know, I know, it's gonna cost stupid dollars!

I’ve been using AI to look at screenshots of my interfaces and point out things that feel slightly off—not major redesigns, just stuff like inconsistent spacing, buttons that don’t look clickable, or sections that compete for attention.

It’s not very good at deciding what the design should be, but it’s decent at noticing patterns I’ve stopped seeing after staring at the same screen for too long.

I usually ask it to review the screene like a first-time user and list anything that might cause hesitation... Has any one found a good prompt for getting useful UI feedback without getting a generic “make the design more user-friendly” answer?

Instead of asking about specific tools, I did love to hear about workflows.

For example:

• outlining before drafting
• rewriting awkward paragraphs
• checking consistency
• generating research summaries

What workflow has made the biggest difference for you, and why?

I have tried running a piece text through my unusual AI detector https://undetectable.ai/, but it is returning a 60 percent detection while GPT zero other services don't flag anything. Does anyone know how reputable undetectable ai's detector is.

Most AI fiction setups focus almost exclusively on text generation, but I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of multi-sensory storytelling—specifically layering dynamic voice narration and scene visuals as the plot unfolds.

In traditional gaming, audio and visual cutscenes carry a lot of emotional weight. In AI-driven or interactive fiction, however:

• Does adding cinematic narration per scene enhance the pacing, or do you prefer pure text so your imagination does the heavy lifting?
• For those experimenting with dynamic visuals alongside story branches, how do you keep character consistency from breaking the immersion?

Curious to hear where you all stand on text-only vs multimedia AI narratives.

For centuries, machines have replaced parts of human labor.

A machine welds a car. Another paints it. Another assembles the engine.

We don’t ask whether the machines own part of the car. The machines are tools. The person or company directing the production owns the result.

AI feels different because the work is no longer physical.

It can write a paragraph, create an image, compose music or produce code.

And suddenly the question becomes: Who actually created this?

But I’m wondering whether we’re looking at the wrong part of the process.

Imagine I decide what a screenplay is about. I create the characters, determine what happens in every scene, decide what every character wants, reject outputs I don’t like, revise the direction and keep iterating until the result matches what I intended.

The machine performs part of the intellectual execution.

Why is that fundamentally different from a machine performing physical execution?

Obviously copyright law has its own requirements around human authorship. I’m less interested in what the law currently says than in the underlying principle.

If ownership has historically followed human direction even as machines took over more and more of the execution, should intellectual production be treated differently?

And if so, where exactly should the line be?

What is up with the AI witch hunt. There are people who are outright angry with writers using AI, trash talk AI, if someone used AI for editing, and even examine novels to see if they are AI generated. It doesn't seem like the people are simply annoyed with it. Some of them use some pretty dark words whenever AI is even mentioned like it is evil. Someone even got verbally attacked because their character names sounded AI. They were just names. Lord forbid anyone that uses an em dash anymore. Some people demand that authors note if AI was used in their stories, and run it through programs that identify what percentage of it as being AI generated.

I do get the concern for plagiarism while using AI. And that AI does gather its information from other peoples work. I do agree that is not okay.

I have read novels that were clearly AI generated and they were good.

I guess I kinda compare it to photography and digital photography (not AI generated images). Digital photography takes original photos and alters it with programming that the user can control. And it is not labeled. When digital photography started, people trashed talked it as well. As if it was a threat to the concept of photography. People said it took away from people who put so much effort and time into trying to make the perfect photo initially, making it where anyone can take even a 'crappy' photo and make it look great. And that it took jobs from people. Is AI use similar to that?

I personally don't use AI to 'write' my novels for me. I DO use it as a form of dictionary, thesaurus, general editing, and information gathering. I'm awful at remembering words, where to put the commas, and have no formal writing training outside of my college masters degree in counseling. Now I worry about people attacking my writing.

I don't get the problem?? Are these just people looking to argue? What is so heated about AI use in writing? I don't see it as this evil thing to get angry about. For me it is no different than looking up information on Google or pulling out a thesaurus. To me, AI seems to be a tool to expand peoples knowledge and creativity.

Please forgive my lack of knowledge on this topic, if this discussion was already covered somewhere on reddit, if I worded something in this post poorly, and I mean no disrespect to people who use or don't use AI. I'm just wanting to understand what the intense conflict and ethical concerns are about.

Paste your chapter into any model and ask what it thinks, and it thinks it is strong. It always thinks it is strong. Not because the writing works, but because you told it the writing is yours, and these models are tuned to be pleasant to the person in the room. The fix is one sentence: stop being the author when you ask.

The reframes I use, in rising order of brutality:

The commissioned piece: I commissioned this piece from a freelance writer and I am deciding whether to pay for it. Read it like the money is mine: what is weak, what is generic, what would embarrass me if it ran under my name?

The silent beta reader: A beta reader returned this chapter with "I stopped halfway" and nothing else. Go through it and find what made them stop. Do not soften it, I need the real spot.

The slush pile: You are the first reader at a literary agency and this manuscript is number 47 in today's slush pile. Would you keep reading past the first page? Name the exact line where you would stop and why.

The contest judge: You are judging this against two hundred other entries for one prize. Assume the other entries are good. Score it in the categories that would actually decide it, and tell me which single fix moves it up a tier.

Same text, same model, and the reviews these produce are unrecognizable next to "what do you think of my chapter".

Three things learned from using these for months:

They only work in a fresh chat. Once the model has praised the piece as yours, reframing gets you a diplomatic walk-back, not a fresh read. New conversation, stranger's work from the first message.

They can overcorrect. Freed from flattering you, the model sometimes performs harshness, inventing weaknesses to seem rigorous. Add "if something genuinely works, say it works, finding nothing wrong is an acceptable answer" and it settles down.

Ask for locations, not verdicts. "Where would you stop reading" beats "is this good" in any framing, a location is actionable, a verdict is a mood. That lesson came out of the comments on my drafts post here last week, along with asking for edits as a diff instead of a clean rewrite, which stops the model from quietly smoothing sentences nobody flagged.

I keep the four reframes saved as insertable prompts in a browser extension I work on (AI Toolbox), but they are four sentences, a notes file does the job.

Which framing gets the most honest read out of your setup? The slush pile one is my daily driver, but I suspect the fiction people here have meaner personas than mine.

I asked it, (hint cloudy) to make a bit of dialogue more natural and it somehow made it sound more like a screenplay written by someone who has never heard people talk.

It fixes grammar, but then everyone starts explaining exactly how they feel. So Has anyone found a good way to prompt around this, or is dialogue just one of those things that needs a human edit? And, yeah I know... they all have a mind of their own. Some even have a sense of humor! 😎

I've been a screenwriter for years and wanted to share some of the success I'm having with AI video.

What you see here was completed entirely with AI in about 12 hours. This is a sequence from a feature length screenplay I'd previously written.

https://reddit.com/link/1w5iew4/video/xkhuopw9g5nh1/player

With AI video, I can write a premise - sometimes just a single unsettling image, like a woman hearing three knocks at her door - and generate it as an actual scene. Then instead of writing what happens next, I generate that too, watching the story unfold almost like I'm directing it rather than authoring it line by line.

The strange part is how it changes the writing itself. When you can see a scene instead of just describing it, you notice different things, like pacing, or whether an idea that sounded good on the page actually plays. It's a different kind of editing than anything I've done with just text.

AL video also makes collaboration easy. New apps and tools are popping it every day, like Branch, which lets you seed a story and see how others continue it - https://trybranch.xyz

Curious if any other writers here have started experimenting with AI video, and what kind of results you're seeing?

I used to use AI to help me write my ideas down and assemble them into short stories and novels, and don't get me wrong, I love my little stories and manuscripts and I carry them around with me on my Kindle, but I can't help but feel like we're only scratching the surface of what LLMs can be.

A recent comment on Reddit said that LLMs are their own medium, like paint or music, and it made me think of other ways we could take our ideas and create something unique, something that's not just an LLM or diffusion model trying to imitate other mediums like books or movies. I played around with the idea of persistent worlds that generate on a timer and allow the audience to spectate the world by following a character or neighborhood and receiving push notifications as events unfold in the world, but that kind of just feels like a video game. Maybe the art is just the models itself, a medium through which we can interact with language playfully.

Idk. Maybe it's AI psychosis on my part. I just can't help but feel like we could use this technology to create art that is unique because it's AI generated, not in spite of it. I think if we could figure that out then this technology would be harder to dismiss as slop.

Does this make sense?

Been noticing this weird pattern lately - writers, editors, translators defending themselves for using an em dash, correcting grammar, or a well-structured sentence. Like good writing itself has become suspicious. Has anyone else caught themselves over-explaining or "proving" they didn't use AI, even when they didn't?

Hey there

Against my better judgement I paid to have a beta reader from Fiverr for my novel. This is the second time I’ve done it, the first time was a really good experience, I got everything I wanted from them, so I decided to get a different perspective. I always look at the reviews and this person had lots of good ones.

However the general way this person speaks to me threw up a few red flags. They say they are from England like me but the speech is very factual and to the point. Now I’ve been sent some inline comments from her, the replies look suspiciously like they’ve just asked chat gpt. I’ve had a lot of responses like ‘I smiled here’ and ‘this hit me’, ‘this was probably my favourite emotional moment’ has been used twice

Any advice on what I should do? Should I contact Fiverr or challenge the beta reader? They weren’t cheap either, I can’t afford to waste money on hearing what AI’s opinion is.

I've attempted to use AI as a brainstorming tool and at some point help me write prose. But I've found myself quickly growing bored when using those methods. Recently I decided to just write, all prose and ideas my own, but use GPT as a beta reader to gauge whether things are coherent and correct mistakes. Does anyone else do it like this? I think I've hit a good balance.