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.
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.
Once the file has uploaded, you’ll be presented with a button labeled ‘Generate Audio Overview.’ Press the button and wait a few minutes for it to process.
Proofreading
AI can review your story and make suggestions to correct spelling and grammar. However, you can ask it to go deeper, 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 through 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 the problem in bold text within square brackets.
[PASTE TEXT]
Show, don't Tell
Using the following prompt will help you identify places where the text is telling excessively (instead of showing).
Prompt Example
Act as a fiction editor. Read the following scene carefully and identify where the text is telling instead of showing.
[PASTE SCENE]
Subtext and Motivation Analysis
As the author, you know what motivates your characters. Use AI to see if those goals and motivations are coming across to the reader.
Prompt Example
Act as a fiction editor. Carefully read the following scene. Describe the subtext that is occurring in each paragraph. What motivates each character?
[PASTE SCENE]
Change within a Scene
Every scene within a story should describe some kind of change (either with the plot or with a character). AI can help you assess whether that change is plausible and effective.
Prompt Example
Act as a fiction editor. Read the following scene and describe the steps of the protagonist’s emotional change. Is his change plausible? Make suggestions to improve its effectiveness.
[PASTE SCENE]
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 fiction editor. Read the following story carefully and analyze it for possible inconsistencies, continuity errors, and plot holes.
[PASTE STORY]
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
What are the most common phrases in this story? Are any overdone?
[PASTE STORY]
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 fiction editor. Read the following [SCENE, STORY] and create a chart describing the protagonist’s character arc over the course of the story. Offer suggestions to improve the effectiveness of the character’s transformation.
[PASTE SCENE, STORY]
Scene Assessment (General)
Sometimes you want to get basic 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 fiction editor. Read and evaluate the following scene. Summarize the scene’s main beats, list the characters, and then provide an assessment of the scene’s effectiveness. Do not make any recommendations for changing it.
[PASTE SCENE]
Scene Assessment (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 fiction editor. Read the following scene and provide a score out of ten for the following aspects of the writing: dialog, setting, character development, conflict, humor, and show, don’t tell. Justify your scoring.
[PASTE SCENE]
You can rerun this prompt to get updated scores after you’ve made changes to your scene.
Scene Suggestions
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 fiction editor specializing in [GENRE]. Carefully read the following [SCENE]. Provide multiple suggestions on how to improve its quality, with each suggestion having 3 in-depth examples of how to accomplish this. Prioritize your recommendations.
[PASTE SCENE]