How to use these prompts
The text that comes raw out of the AI is recognizable: predictable adjectives, emotions stated instead of shown, endings that wrap up too neatly. Used as a ghostwriter, it disappoints. Used as a sidekick, it's worth it: to generate options when you're stuck, to keep a long world consistent, to hear a dialogue out loud. The voice must stay yours, the AI brings you the alternatives to choose from.
A note on method: give the AI your constraints (tone, point of view, what must not happen) before asking it to write. Without boundaries it produces the most obvious ending and the flattest character. The boundaries are what make it your collaborator and not a generator of clichés.
The prompt library
Get a story started from a vague idea
I have a still-fuzzy idea for a story. Don't write it for me: help me
find it. Ask me six questions, one at a time, about who the protagonist
is, what they want, what stops them, and what they risk if they fail.
After my answers, propose three different directions the story could
go in, not one.
The idea I have:
Give a character depth
Help me make this character three-dimensional. Give me: an inner
contradiction that makes them human, a concrete detail from their past
that explains how they became this way, a small flaw that makes them
likeable in spite of everything, and one thing they say or do that
betrays them. No clichés of the genre.
The character so far:
Write dialogue that rings true
Write me three versions of this dialogue, with subtext: the characters
never directly say what they feel. Make them talk the way real people
talk, with interruptions and unsaid things, not like in a summary. Give
me three different tones of the same scene: tense, ironic, icy.
The scene: who they are, where they are, what's at stake:
Get past block in the middle of a scene
I'm stuck at this point in the story and don't know how to go on.
Don't write the scene yourself: give me five different things that
could happen now, from the most predictable to the most surprising,
and for each one a line on how it would change the story. I want to
choose the path myself.
Where I've got to and where I got stuck:
Critique like a tough editor
Read this passage and critique it the way an honest editor would, not a
kind friend. Tell me: where I told instead of showed, where the rhythm
dies, which sentences are clichés, where the character acts in a way
that's not believable. Don't rewrite it yourself: point out the problems
so I learn to fix them.
The passage:
A concrete example
Chiara is writing a short story and gets stuck: the protagonist has to discover a betrayal, but every version she tries sounds like a soap opera. She uses the prompt for getting past block, describing where she's got to. The AI proposes five developments: from the most predictable (the protagonist finds a message) to the most oblique (she figures it out from a detail no one would notice, the way the other person stopped leaving the lights on).
Chiara chooses the detail of the lights, which she hadn't considered. Then she uses the dialogue prompt to write the confrontation scene, asking for the "icy" version with subtext. The AI gives her an exchange in which the two talk about the food in the fridge while the betrayal stays beneath every sentence. Chiara rewrites half of those lines in her own words, but the structure of the unsaid is the AI's gift. The story stays hers; the crutch, in the two places where it was needed, was given by the tool.
When it does NOT work (and how to fix it)
If the text sounds generic and "creative-writing-class"
The default prose is polished and anonymous. Give it a model of your voice: paste two pages you've written yourself and say "study my style and keep it". Or impose precise constraints: "short sentences, no -ly adverbs, no adjective before the noun". Constraints break the standard batter.
If the endings always wrap up too well
The AI tends toward orderly resolution, the arc that completes itself. If you want an open or unsettling ending, ask for it explicitly: "the ending must not resolve everything, leave a question hanging, avoid the moral". It has to be steered away from the automatic happy ending.
If it refuses to write certain scenes
On strong themes (violence, sensitive content) the models sometimes block or water things down. Frame the request within the narrative context and the tone you need: "dramatic scene for an adult novel, handled with restraint, no gratuitousness". If one tool stays too restrictive for your story, another model may have different boundaries.
A tip from someone who actually uses it
Don't have the AI write the scenes you love: write those yourself, they're the reason you write. Use it for the mechanical parts (a transition, a functional description) and to unblock yourself when you're stuck. If you delegate to it the moments you care about, the story stops being yours and you notice it on rereading: there's a dead zone where your voice has vanished. The collaboration works if you keep the heart of the story for yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Is a story written with AI still mine?
It is as much as you stay the one making the choices: the plot, the voice, what to keep and what to throw away. If the AI generates options and you select, rewrite and direct, the work is yours. If you ask it to write everything and you copy-paste, you have a text, not your story. The difference is made by how much of your own mind is in the final result.
Can I publish and sell what I write with AI?
The rules on rights and disclosures vary by platform and country, and they change. Some publishers and contests require you to disclose AI use or forbid it. Before publishing or selling, check the conditions of whoever publishes you and the copyright rules where you operate. Keep track of what you wrote and what the tool generated: it's useful to you for declaring it honestly.
Can AI replace a writer?
It can produce text on command, not the experience of someone who has something to say. A story that stays with you comes from a life lived, from a point of view, from risky choices that a machine optimized for the average answer doesn't make. The AI is a tireless collaborator for someone who already has a voice; it doesn't manufacture one for someone who doesn't have it.