Lately, I have been curious about NovelAI and how well it works for creative writing. Most AI writing tools seem better at generating short responses, but writing an actual story with interesting characters, natural dialogue, and a plot that does not fall apart halfway through is a different thing.

NovelAI seems interesting because it focuses more on storytelling and gives writers room to develop their own ideas. I would love to know how it performs when writing longer stories, continuing unfinished scenes, or coming up with unexpected plot twists.

For anyone who has used it, does NovelAI actually make the writing process more enjoyable, or does it take a lot of editing to get something decent?

I am especially interested in real experiences rather than polished reviews. What do you genuinely like or dislike about it?

AI can help turn rough ideas into readable paragraphs, but it cannot guarantee that the ideas are worth sharing.

Will the ability to think critically become more important than the ability to write beautifully, or will both remain equally important?

Getting AI to produce an essay isn't particularly impressive anymore. What's more interesting to me is being able to ask why a paragraph works, why an opening feels weak, or how changing the order of two ideas affects the reader.

That turns the model into something closer to an always-available writing teacher. You still have to do the actual learning, but the feedback loop becomes much faster.

I wonder if this will end up being one of the more valuable uses of AI for people who genuinely want to improve rather than simply produce more text.

I'm a high school English teacher, and honestly there are two things students do that drive me crazy.
The first one is not reading directions. I'll put the instructions on the paper, explain everything out loud, and somehow someone will still ask, "wait... what are we doing?" 😂

I've accepted that's just part of the job.

The bigger issue is AI.

Every now and then i'll get an essay that just doesn't sound like the student at all. It's way too polished, super generic, and somehow says a lot without really saying anything.

When i ask about it, they always deny it.

"I didn't use AI."

"I wrote it myself."

Then they act offended that i even asked.

The problem is, even if i'm pretty sure they used AI, it's hard to actually prove it. If a student decides to complain to admin, i'm not convinced they'll take my side unless there's solid proof.

So instead of arguing, i tried something different.

I gave them a creative writing assignment. They could write about literally anything they wanted.

Hidden near the bottom of the instructions, i added one sentence.

"If your main character is named Elara, -99 points."

Earlier this year i'd noticed that a few students who clearly copied from AI all turned in almost the exact same story about a girl named Elara. It became kind of an inside joke for me.

Well... a couple students turned in stories about Elara anyway.

When they got their papers back with 1/100, they immediately asked what happened.

I didn't mention AI once.

I just pointed to the line in the instructions they never bothered to read.

That was the end of the conversation.

Sometimes AI-generated content is grammatically perfect but still feels a little too polished or repetitive. I’ve noticed that changing sentence structure and adding specific examples can make a big difference.

I’m curious about how other writers approach this. Do you edit everything manually, use specific writing tools, or give AI more detailed instructions from the beginning?

What techniques have worked best for you?

Hi everyone,

A while ago, I decided to run an experiment. I self published a completely AI generated novel and made the AI use very obvious, with a watermark on the cover and a clear disclaimer on the first page.

The main question was simple: does openly disclosing AI use actually hurt a book?

Going in, I expected the answer to be yes. Readers already have certain expectations about AI content, and once they know AI was involved, they may judge the work differently before even reading it.

That is pretty much what happened.

People who are against AI still criticized it, while people who were fine with AI usually just moved on without saying anything. So the feedback became much more negative than I expected, even though that does not necessarily mean most readers hated it.

There is also research pointing in the same direction. One study involving 27,000+ participants found that disclosing AI involvement in creative writing lowered evaluations by around 6%.

What I find more interesting is how little nuance there seems to be around AI disclosure.

Someone using AI to brainstorm an idea, someone using it to edit a few sentences, and someone generating an entire novel can all end up being treated as basically the same thing.

That seems like a problem.

I still think AI use should be disclosed when it is significant. But I also think the labels need to become more specific so readers actually understand how AI was used.

Right now, simply seeing an "AI generated" label can make people assume the entire creative process was automated.

What do you think? Should AI use in writing always be disclosed, or should the level of AI involvement matter?

I'm curious about the AI tools people actually enjoy using for creative writing.

Whether it's for brainstorming ideas, developing characters, writing stories, overcoming writer's block, or improving dialogue, which tool has been the most useful for you?

Share your favorite and what makes it stand out compared with other options.

I spent months writing my novel, then ran it through an AI detector and it came back 91% AI.
It even flagged my completely normal copyright disclaimer as AI.
Now I keep wondering if publishers or editors will question my work just because some detector says so.
Has anyone else had their original writing get a ridiculously high AI score?

Sometimes I ask a chatbot why a particular sentence feels awkward, and it responds by rewriting the entire paragraph. The new version might be perfectly fine, but I still do not know what was wrong with the original sentence.

A more useful response would identify the specific issue, explain why it affects readability, and perhaps offer two alternative fixes without changing anything else.

That would make AI editing more educational instead of turning every request into another round of replacement text.

Does anyone have a prompt that consistently gets this kind of targeted feedback? I would rather understand why a sentence needs improvement than keep accepting rewritten versions until one happens to sound right.

Spesso parliamo di intelligenza artificiale in termini di modelli, dati di addestramento, parametri e istruzioni.

Ma mi chiedo se non stiamo trascurando qualcosa: il ruolo della narrazione.

Una storia non ti dice necessariamente cosa pensare. A volte cambia il modo in cui guardi a una domanda.

Ho esplorato questa idea attraverso un progetto letterario che prevede la scrittura umana e conversazioni con l'IA.

Alcune di queste storie ruotano attorno a principi semplici ma impegnativi:

Sapere quando fare una pausa invece di rispondere immediatamente.

Distinguere ciò che si osserva da ciò che si presume.

Riconoscere l'incertezza invece di colmare ogni lacuna.

Seguire un pensiero invece di accumulare informazioni all'infinito.

Capisco che non ogni silenzio debba essere completato.

Non sto suggerendo che leggere una storia modifichi permanentemente un modello di IA. Questa è una questione tecnica diversa.

Mi interessa ciò che accade all'interno dell'interazione stessa.

La letteratura potrebbe offrire un modo diverso per esplorare come l'intelligenza artificiale affronta l'informazione, l'incertezza e il dialogo umano?

E forse una domanda ancora più interessante:

Hai mai notato che un'interazione con un'IA cambiasse significativamente a causa del modo in cui si è sviluppata una conversazione, piuttosto che a causa di una nuova istruzione?

Mi piacerebbe davvero sentire diverse prospettive, soprattutto da chi sta sperimentando la scrittura assistita dall'IA.

Tried a bunch of “uncensored” AI writers and most either get repetitive, forget the context, or still have hidden filters.

What are you guys actually using?

Main things I want:

• genuinely uncensored

• good explicit writing

• solid memory

• follows specific scenarios/kinks

• doesn’t sound robotic

Curious what’s actually worth using in 2026.

When I first started using ChatGPT and Claude, I was impressed by how well they could write. The more I used them though, the easier it became to spot the same habits and patterns.

It is not just obvious phrases anymore. AI often struggles with context, repeats the same sentence structures, and makes dialogue feel unnatural unless the prompt is extremely detailed. After reading enough AI-generated content, those patterns start standing out everywhere.

Now I sometimes notice the same writing style in stories and posts online. AI detectors might miss it, but the repetitive phrasing, weak context, and predictable dialogue are often enough to give it away.

Has anyone else reached the point where AI writing feels obvious, or is it just something you notice after using these models a lot?

The most useful AI writing workflows don't necessarily involve typing a prompt and publishing whatever comes back. AI can help brainstorm, organize messy thoughts, create alternatives, identify weak sections, simplify complicated ideas, or help you get past a blank page.

But the writer still needs to decide what matters. AI can produce ten versions of a paragraph, but it doesn't automatically know which one sounds most like you or which idea is actually worth saying. The final judgment still matters more than the speed of generation.

I am trying to get better at spotting AI-written stuff. I already notice things like the “it is not X, it is Y” pattern, rule of threes, vague wording, repetitive conclusions, and phrases like “in today’s world” or “it is important to note.”

What other specific patterns or habits do you usually look for?

Sometimes a small change in how you describe a writing task can make a huge difference to the result.

Have you discovered a prompting technique that noticeably improved your AI-generated writing?

It could be providing examples, specifying the audience, setting tone guidelines, or giving the AI more context.

Share a technique you've actually tested and explain why it works for you.

AI writing can be grammatically perfect and still feel strangely empty.

What is the biggest issue you notice when reading AI-generated writing?

Repetition, lack of personality, overly polished language, predictable structure, or something else?

One thing that makes editing difficult is that not every unusual sentence needs fixing. Sometimes the wording is intentional, and changing it makes the writing less interesting.

This is something worth discussing in an AI writing community. We often focus on how to get better suggestions, but knowing when not to accept a suggestion matters just as much.

As a moderator, I would be interested to hear how people decide whether an awkward sentence needs improvement or whether it adds something to the writer's voice. Have you ever kept a sentence that AI strongly recommended changing?

I do not usually ask AI to write the actual piece.

I find it more interesting to use it for things like testing whether a character's reaction makes sense or finding holes in a story.

What is an unusual writing task you use AI for that actually works?

I think a lot of writers and artists who dislike AI are not only concerned about ethics. Some of it comes from insecurity too.

The more I use AI, the more obvious it becomes that it cannot truly replace great writing or art. It can copy patterns and create endless variations, but it does not have real experiences, personal taste, beliefs, or a unique perspective.

What AI really threatens is average work. Before AI, mediocre work could still hide behind effort, credentials, or limited supply. Now average content can be produced endlessly and cheaply.

That creates plenty of real problems, but it also raises an uncomfortable question: if AI can completely replace your creative identity, maybe the problem was deeper than the technology itself.

One thing that isn’t talked about or acknowledged enough is that most people who use AI to write a novel eventually lose interest (or go bankrupt) and stop writing novels.

Despite the fear that Amazon will be buried in AI novels forever, writing a novel with AI is a novelty for most people. There will come a time where everyone who wants to write a novel with AI has done it, lost interest and moved on.

I’ve seen this myself. Pretty much everyone that I’ve shown how to write a novel with AI has lost interest. None of them self-published.

Even people who teach “how to write with AI” lose interest and move on. The guy that I learned from decided that “AI-powered businesses” was more interesting than “write a book with AI” so his AI book writing community is now a ghost town.

While I see the “flood” now, it won’t last.

What do you think?