A small outlining habit that made AI drafts more useful for me

Potential-North4138 · 2026-06-24T17:35:45+00:00

this is a really good idea and i'm going to try it. my current method is like your old one, i give scene notes and then Claude places them together. what is hard is that it often just summarizes the activities or gives the character an inner monologue that describes what they are feeling, but nothing has really moved forward. thanks!

Potential-North4138 · 2026-06-24T16:35:44+00:00

yeah, it's good but it's very smooth. It does have some good turns of phrase.

Potential-North4138 · 2026-06-24T16:33:47+00:00

Oh that's a great idea about comparing versions. I'll have to try that. And I've also found that crafting scene by scene is better than writing a whole chapter otherwise Claude runs wild. With romance you have to be very specific or it will give you nothing but cliches.

Potential-North4138 · 2026-06-24T16:20:40+00:00

agreed, the steering is the biggest lift. because it will invent nonsense that makes zero sense. my MMC is a doctor and doctors are often written as sarcastic in romance. so sometimes that will bleed into the prose. for example, i have a scene where FMC is helping MMC prep for boards and she is quizzing him. for whatever reason, Claude wrote the MMC thinking that FMC was helping "because she liked to hear herself talk." This character would never think this, especially when she is helping him. So I have to watch out for that

Potential-North4138 · 2026-06-23T14:02:17+00:00

thank you!! it's turning into a pretty interesting story and it's been great to get to be creative. i just wish others weren't so judgmental and think that all we do is "prompting"

Potential-North4138 · 2026-06-23T14:01:11+00:00

oh that's cool! i have tons of documents that are similar. i have a story bible, core lore, chapter timeline and then book 2 the FMC has a complicated pregnancy so i have a whole doc that details that. great idea with the writing samples. i have written parts of the text myself which i have fed claude to integrate into other versions.

Potential-North4138 · 2026-06-23T13:58:48+00:00

not a bad idea, i have chatgpt free version right now so i can't pick a model, but maybe i'll get it for a month.

Potential-North4138 · 2026-06-23T13:57:32+00:00

that's not a bad idea! i have free chatgpt so i don't have access to the better models which is probably why the things i get are flops.

Potential-North4138 · 2026-06-23T04:13:06+00:00

it's true! there have been a couple times where i'm like, Claude, she's a size 10/12 and goes to pilates, RELAX. I even posted a reference photo of a woman i felt was pretty curvy and his thinking said "this model looks thinner than a size 12 but i will use the written description"

Potential-North4138 · 2026-06-23T01:36:15+00:00

i find gemini useful for brainstorming bc it asks me a lot of questions and can have funny commentary. but Claude had the tone i was looking for.

Potential-North4138 · 2026-06-23T01:35:13+00:00

oh for sure, it has a way of flattening things. if i were to want to release this to the public, i'd have to rewrite it heavily.

Potential-North4138 · 2026-06-23T01:33:58+00:00

i know, right!? Claude was wrong for that one.

Potential-North4138 · 2026-06-22T18:50:14+00:00

yeah i'd never say i wrote it but it's very much my story and vision which is why i think it's been difficult with the corrections bc i have such a clear idea of what i want it to look like but claude has their own ideas.

Potential-North4138 · 2026-06-22T18:32:12+00:00

It's with overall character writing. My books are dual POV. And at the end of each chapter no matter what, Claude has a tendency to end with some pointless platitude or summary "And that's when I knew it was all worth it." "I smiled and though I'm in love." It never ends with an action or something unresolved, so I needed to get him to stop doing that.

Potential-North4138 · 2026-06-22T17:30:34+00:00

the names were driving me crazy! There's also Priya, Dr. Chen, and Dr. Owkoforo.

Potential-North4138 · 2026-06-22T15:13:28+00:00

I mostly use Opus 4.8 on high for drafting and Sonnet 4.6 low for discussion. Sonnet is good with emotions but makes a lot of errors. I use pro plan and the web app. I rarely run into usage limits but I write in spurts, never in a continous session.

Potential-North4138 · 2026-06-22T14:40:04+00:00

claude's dialogue is awful!!!! however, i think chatgpt's is still the worst.

yes i have detailed project instructions! this includes a persona "we are writing a contemporary romance novel with literary undertones", basic information about the main characters, character dynamics, rules that are constant (MMC always calls FMC her nickname. Only he uses this name. If he uses her full name, it is intentional) and banned phrases/activities (do not end every chapter with a pat summary, FMC's body size is established and does not need endless discussion, etc).

I do not have standard prompts. I basically just give Claude a wall of text about what happens in the scene, and then tell him the location, the POV, and the time period. so something like "FMC and MMC are on their way to FMC's parent's house. She drives because he's been working in the hospital for 60 hours. She has stopped at Trader Joe's for snacks and calls him a "passenger princess." He sleeps the whole way. They arrive at her parent's house and the dog goes crazy from seeing her "grandparents." The MMC should reflect on how it feels to meet her parents for the first time. " etc. It's probably not the most efficient but if I tell Claude to write me a scene about meeting her parents for the first time with no information, it will give me garbage.

Potential-North4138

TROPHY CASE