You’re Using Story Engine Wrong: 13 Tips to Write GOOD Chapters

Tips for Using Story Engine in Pseudorite

In this video, Jason the Nerdy Novelist provides tips for using Story Engine in Pseudorite to write better and faster using AI. He emphasizes the importance of optimizing the style box and shares 13 tips to get the most out of Story Engine.

Optimizing the Style Box

• The style box is crucial for getting quality work out of Story Engine.

• Heavily optimize the style box by trying different things that work and avoiding what doesn't.

• Ask Chat GPT or Claude to mimic your style and incorporate key bits into the style box.

• Add additional style information above the beats to further customize your writing.

Other Tips for Using Story Engine

• Use the 30 a month tier plan which gives you 90,000 words per month.

• Generate a synopsis, characters, outline, story beats, and finished prose from your brain dump details.

• Use pseudonyms when generating character names to avoid repetition.

• Use "avoid" commands in the style box to prevent certain types of writing from appearing in your work.

• Use "prefer" commands in the style box to encourage certain types of writing in your work.

• Use "always" commands in the style box to ensure specific elements always appear in your work.

• Use "never" commands in the style box to ensure specific elements never appear in your work.

• Use "more" and "less" commands in the style box to adjust the frequency of certain types of writing in your work.

• Use "replace" commands in the style box to replace certain words or phrases with others.

• Use "add" commands in the style box to add specific elements to your work.

• Use "remove" commands in the style box to remove specific elements from your work.

Conclusion

• Story Engine is a powerful tool for writers looking to write better and faster using AI, but it requires some optimization and customization to get the most out of it.

Tips for Using Story Engine

In this section, the speaker provides tips on how to use Story Engine effectively.

Additional Style Information

• Add extra style information about the beats to give it more reinforcement.

• Rewrite things in the style box that you don't want.

Be Specific with Beats

• Be super specific with the beats and optimize them.

• Use all 2000 words allowed in the beats section or at least get it up to a thousand.

Don't Expect Perfection

• Don't expect perfection from AI-generated content.

• Enter something specific if there's something you want.

Use Proper Names Instead of Pronouns

• Use proper names instead of pronouns in the beats to keep everyone straight and keep AI on task.

Bring Your Own Character/Outline/Beats

• Bring your own character, outline, and beats so that you don't use up the words in Suderrite.

Tips for Using AI to Write Fiction

In this section, the speaker provides tips on how to use AI to write fiction.

Writing Process

• Regenerate characters only when necessary to save words for the final prose.

• Use another tool like Chat GPT or Claude to get information about character and outline if you can do two subscriptions.

• Use free version of Chat GPT during brainstorming phase but edit outputs that it gives you.

• Enter synopsis and character information yourself for better quality output.

Prompts

• Use prompts such as realistic dialogue, avoiding mushy descriptions and dialogue, lots of drama between characters, concise and descriptive language style, show don't tell, and deep point of view in Story Engine to improve writing quality.

Character Description

• Mention a character's vocal/dialogue style in the character description section.

Editing Output

• If AI is consistently doing something you don't like, ask it not to do that thing.

Tips for Using AI in Writing

In this section, the speaker provides tips for using AI in writing.

Pay Attention to Consistent Mistakes

• Pay close attention to anything that you see the AI doing consistently in a way you don't like.

• Find a way to either say "don't do that thing" or "do this instead."

• A master storyteller or writer who knows what makes a good story is always going to generate a better story than someone who doesn't and is using AI to just pump out a story real fast.

Be the Continuity Director

• You are the continuity director and cannot rely on AI yet to remember everything from past events.

• Story engine is one of the best tools for having it remember things like characters and outlines, but it doesn't really remember what came before it.

• Include all relevant information from book one so that it can accurately write book two.

Make a Strong Cliffhanger

• Make sure to give specific instructions for ending with a cliffhanger.

• The character literally ends the scene hanging off a cliff, which is an example of something specific that is a cliffhanger.

• Add instructions such as "end the book at the cliffhanger and don't go beyond that scene."

Understand Strides

• Pseudorite works by processing beats in groups of two.

• Separate them visually with spaces as reminders.

Reminders for Writing Story Beats

In this section, the speaker discusses the importance of providing reminders in story beats to help the AI understand where we are in the scene and where everyone is located. The speaker also emphasizes that it's essential to process one or two beats at a time and not necessarily remember what happened in the previous ones.

Providing Reminders

• It's crucial to provide reminders in story beats about who the characters are, where we are in the scene, and where everyone is located.

• Processing one or two beats at a time can be helpful as it isn't necessary to remember what happened in previous ones.

• Fleshing out these beats in a way that is friendly to AI will give you an intuitive sense of what needs to be written down in prompts.

Adding Information to Prompts

• Prompts can include style information, emotions associated with specific beats, or any other relevant information.

• These prompts are more like commands than story beats because they guide the AI on how to proceed with generating text.