Story Refinement with AI
Once you’ve written a paragraph, a scene, or an entire story, there are useful AI prompts you can use to help refine it.
High-Level Structure & Consistency
Prose, Style, and Mechanics
Scene Evaluation & Recommendations
Summarizing
One of the best uses of AI Large Language Models is in summarizing large amounts of text.
Suppose you’ve written a novel with fifty scenes. When it comes time to do revisions, it may be difficult to remember in which scene a certain event took place. It can be very useful to create a ‘reverse outline’ to easily understand the structure of your story.
Prompt Example
Depending on the size of your story, you may need to repeat the following prompt several times. I haven’t always had success giving it an entire story and having it separate the scenes automatically.
Summarize the following scene in one sentence.
[PASTE SCENE]
Audio Review
As a writer, it’s wonderful to be able to hear readers’ reactions to what you’ve written.
Imagine listening to a podcast with people discussing your story! Google Gemini offers this feature for uploaded documents. To upload a document, press the + button as shown below and then select a file from your computer or from your Google Drive.
Then write the following prompt. The audio generation will take a few minutes.
Create an audio overview of the attached file.
A more elaborate audio “podcast” is available in another free tool by Google called Notebook LM.
Character Arc
In most stories, the main character changes in some way over the course of the story (character arc). Your AI tool can analyze that character arc and offer suggestions to make it more effective.
Prompt Example
Act as a developmental editor. Analyze the following text and assess the protagonist’s character arc. Critique the transformation’s effectiveness and provide specific ideas to enhance its dramatic impact. Prioritize your ideas.
[PASTE SCENE OR STORY]
Consistency Checker
As a story gets longer, it’s easy to have some details slip through the cracks. Getting AI to check for plot holes and other problems is quick and easy with the following prompt.
Prompt Example
Act as a developmental fiction editor. Critique the following story for structural integrity, identifying all plot holes, continuity errors, and logical inconsistencies.
[PASTE STORY]
Visual Story Depiction
Of all the chatbots, I’m most impressed with Claude’s ability to “understand” a story. This prompt creates a visual diagram of the story. You can tweak the prompt to focus on different aspects of the story. Every time I run this prompt, I get a different result.
Prompt Examples
Example Output
(Click the image for a larger example)
Example Output
(Click the image for a larger example)
Proofreading
AI can review your story and make suggestions to correct spelling and grammar. However, you can ask it to go deeper by asking it to identify confusing phrases or overused words. Just like with different humans, different LLMs will find different things. It helps to proofread the same text using multiple LLMs.
Prompt Example
The prompt here includes some common issues, feel free to add additional criteria to the list.
Act as an expert proofreader. Read the following text carefully and identify all typos, grammatical errors, weak verbs, overused words, incorrect punctuation, and confusing phrases. Highlight all of these problems in bold text and explain each problem in bold text within square brackets.
[PASTE TEXT]
Finding Overused Phrases
Writers often have certain “crutch phrases” that often appear in their writing. Finding them is a very tedious task for humans, but easy for AI.
Prompt Example
Act as a copy editor. Analyze the following text for overused language and crutch phrases. Present a list of the phrases, a critique for each, and a revision for the surrounding text to eliminate the repetition.
[PASTE STORY]
Assessing a Story's Opening Line
A story’s opening line is important for making a strong first impression. This prompt uses one set of criteria from a YouTube video. As of this writing, Gemini and Copilot can access YouTube videos.
Prompt Example
Review the patterns for effective opening lines in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6L5Kjwfv8c
Assess the following first line of a [GENRE] story:
[FIRST LINE]
Show, don't Tell
Using the following prompt will help you identify places where the text is telling excessively (instead of showing). Note that the intent of this prompt is to identify, and not to fix the text.
Prompt Example
Act as a developmental fiction editor specializing in narrative technique. Analyze the following scene. Identify every instance of telling (instead of showing).
[PASTE SCENE]
Scene Map Analysis
As the author, you know your intentions. Use AI to see if your paragraph-by-paragraph intentions are making it onto the page.
Prompt Example
Act as a [GENRE] developmental editor. Analyze the following scene and provide a detailed scene map (a beat-by-beat analysis noting turning points and emotional shifts per paragraph).
[PASTE SCENE]
Scene Evaluation (General)
Sometimes you want to get general feedback on your writing. The first level is simply to ensure that your story is understandable by the reader. The following prompt will give you an initial commentary.
Prompt Example
Act as a [GENRE] developmental editor. Provide a diagnostic critique of the following scene: summarize the main beats, list the characters, and assess its overall effectiveness. Do not suggest revisions.
[PASTE SCENE]
Scene Evaluation (Specific)
Get an assessment of the effectiveness of your scene according to various criteria. The example prompt lists several aspects of writing to assess. Tailor the list to suit your story and the aspects where you want to improve.
Note: Different chatbots will give you different scores.
Prompt Example
Act as a [GENRE] developmental editor. Critique the following scene by creating a table that scores (out of 10) and justifies the effectiveness of: Dialogue, Setting, Character Arc, Conflict, and Show/Tell.
[PASTE SCENE]
You can rerun this prompt to get updated scores after you’ve made changes to your scene.
Scene Recommendations
The following prompt will give you general guidelines as to how you can go about improving your scene. Running this prompt in different chatbots will offer additional areas for improvement.
Prompt Example
Act as a [GENRE] developmental editor. Critique the following text’s structural and thematic quality. Make three suggestions for improvement. Prioritize your ideas. Do not suggest revisions.
[PASTE SCENE]