Comment by Douglas Richardson (douglas-richardson) on GPT4 is capable of writing decent long-form science fiction (with the right prompts) · 2023-12-19T14:49:21.333Z · LW · GW

I used ChatGPT for a similar purpose and found the same idea. If asked to write an entire story it balks: "That's a tall order, Dave..." but it will gladly provide a detailed outline for the premise, with constructive ideas about character development, tension, etc.

Then, I discovered if I asked to only write one chapter at a time, promting the basics of each, it wrote some thorough and imaginative stuff. Better promps, better result, such as: write plausable scenereo, include unusual chacteristics, create a likely foil, etc. Almost all of it has to be rewritten, but I had 30 pages in a couple hours – a framework with some ideas I hadn't  considered, which is so much better than looking at a blank page.