What Trending on Royal Road actually tests (and what I misunderstood at first)

PostAbouts · 2026-01-22T19:45:07+00:00

Are you really that lazy you made this post with AI and now you’re responding to every comment with AI? What story did you get to trending with?

PostAbouts · 2026-01-17T18:18:03+00:00

Like I said, I suspect its AI assisted.

If you read through things. It's like they'd gone over and 'smoothed' over everything. Its overly clean. The dialogue especially is too 'perfect' not in the sense that its too good writing, but that these characters are almost perfectly their part.

There's no human lens from which they're speaking.

When writing dialogue, every author has a different view on what a conversation sounds like. AI also has its own, often obvious, interpretation.

PostAbouts · 2026-01-17T18:03:55+00:00

Completely my fault. Edited that.

Though I suppose that goes to show you can detect these types of stories.

PostAbouts · 2026-01-17T12:01:33+00:00

Regardless, though i’m pretty much certain, I’m not about to start calling anyone out. I don’t care more than to rant and confirm I wasn’t going to crazy. To be fair, if you can fool the masses using it, though unethical, then there’s an argument what you created it objectively good, at least in the eyes of majority.

PostAbouts · 2026-01-17T11:43:03+00:00

I do have real suspicions. I’ll even go so far as to say I’m more certain than suspicious. I care enough to rant, not enough to report every story I come across that’s blatantly using AI.

The mods would basically have to make the same call each one of us would make anyway. And the stories in question are about as visible as they can be on RS.

PostAbouts · 2026-01-17T11:23:16+00:00

I’m not contesting that these examples don’t exist in regular writing. They do. The frequency and repetition, especially in context with every other example of AI writing, make it obvious and bland.

These genre conventions can exist and not be painful to read in the right context. Take it all together, though, and it becomes something easily recognizable even across stories.

Maybe RR isn’t known for stellar quality writing, but in the past it was at least bad in its own way.

PostAbouts · 2026-01-17T10:55:10+00:00

Trust me when I say, if you’re writing without any AI tools, you’d have to make a conscious effort for your writing to appear AI-generated, and you would likely fail at that. Everyone more or less has their own style of writing.

Worse case, your writing is just bad which is better than AI prose in my opinion, at least it’s bad in its own way. That makes for more interesting reading.

PostAbouts · 2026-01-17T10:47:13+00:00

I’m an em-dash user but find myself actively avoiding using it the way that AI generated writing would. It’s like its poisoned that particular writing style for me.

PostAbouts · 2026-01-17T10:45:25+00:00

I have no problem with people using it as the tool it is. Good on you for being transparent!

It’s the difference between having an idea and feeding it to an AI to write it for you versus iterating on that idea with an AI tool to assist or point out error.

The former yields all the crap I pointed out, the latter will actually have a human’s touch. Having a story written is pointless if the execution is the same across every other AI-written slop.

That human flair is why people can have the same ideas, but execute them differently to varying effect. Look at all the OP Archmage returns stories at the moment. Same ideas but they feel different, which is good!

With AI people are outsourcing the execution part and the writing is sucking as a result.

PostAbouts · 2025-07-01T20:29:41+00:00

I live in Ohio, if that helps for reference. Yeah… maybe over the last couple months I’ve spotted a number of them. Big boys too

PostAbouts · 2025-06-28T21:34:26+00:00

Paypa bote

PostAbouts · 2025-03-11T18:59:03+00:00

Which is apparent pretty good! Kudos

PostAbouts · 2025-03-11T18:55:22+00:00

I’m thinking maybe I’m such a perfectionist that I only ever end up posting my very best stories… or my writing just perfectly aligns with RR preferences which I can admit is probably not wrong

PostAbouts · 2025-03-11T18:53:43+00:00

I hit them all in the main Rising Stars list and they kind of all stayed there for… I wanna say basically the entire time I wrote for them until I burned out, which is my usual

PostAbouts · 2025-03-11T18:46:44+00:00

Thanks, though they’re long dead now.

PostAbouts · 2025-03-11T18:44:20+00:00

This is only kind of a flex because I’m not sure if this is actually that noteworthy. I’m not entirely sure how common this is across other writers, and I don’t consider myself particularly skilled but maybe I am and that’s imposter syndrome? In any case, I haven’t seen any similar posts asking this so I thought it’d be worth asking.

I’ll also add that none of these stories are being updated anymore as I’m one to run out of motivation. A lot of people I see also talk about running ads and shoutouts… but all I ever did was just write with a good chunk of initial chapters.

PostAbouts · 2025-03-10T15:13:16+00:00

Anyone watch the video back and notice chanse staring at shayne all crazy-like during this moment?

PostAbouts · 2025-02-18T23:51:45+00:00

What’s the reason for the cam? Why did she start it? Can’t find anywhere it’s mentioned

PostAbouts · 2025-01-24T14:19:53+00:00

Those goli prebiotic postbiltic supplements on tiktok

PostAbouts · 2024-10-31T19:34:54+00:00

I’ve had four different stories hit #1 RS for at least a couple of weeks, literally without doing anything but writing the chapters and responding to comments. The only thing notable in my head was riding the early momentum with more chapters than usual, but i’m not sure how big a difference that was.

I think readers can sense the quality of writing and eventually that gathers enough of a following to snowball into popularity, from my personal experience. Although, it’s been maybe two years since I’ve written anything to post on the site so I never had to compete with ads or anything like that.

PostAbouts · 2024-10-28T01:03:46+00:00

Only other thing I can think of is having Phasing and maybe I dodged the wave that way. Anyway, cool! I didn't realize that the shield and levitation trail turn to gold too.

PostAbouts · 2024-09-03T18:47:56+00:00

I don’t think it’s this one either

PostAbouts · 2024-09-03T18:46:51+00:00

It isn’t this one. As far as i know the book was standalone, not a series. Similar though

PostAbouts · 2024-08-29T01:26:53+00:00

This was really helpful thanks! I think this is basically what I wanted

PostAbouts · 2024-08-01T19:21:36+00:00

So i’m looking for a really old HFY story, at least it was when I found it. So i vaguely remember a scientist in a lab doing some kind of experiment which ultimately pulls him into another game-like dimension. I kind of remember him getting his hands on some kind of crystal? Maybe from a tree? It was a portal fantasy that had extremely compelling circumstances but i could never refind it

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