终于学会用ChatGPT写小说了! (English)

Generated: 2026-06-21 02:21:34

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Finally, I Found the Right Way to Use AI to Write Novels!

Guess what happened the first time I used ChatGPT to write a novel?

I stood there with my hands on my hips, all confident, and tossed it this prompt: "Write me an urban fantasy novel, protagonist is a programmer."

And then? I kicked back, waiting for a blockbuster to roll out.

What it gave me was an opening chapter—protagonist wakes up, brushes his teeth, washes his face, takes the subway. Three thousand words in, and I still had no idea what his superpower was. I snapped at it: "Are you serious?"

It didn't even flinch. It just wrote me another version.

This time, the protagonist woke up and made himself a cup of coffee first.

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Seriously, out of all those online tutorials teaching you how to write fiction with AI, eight out of ten are garbage. That might sound harsh. But I've been writing columns for ten years—surviving the shift from print to new media. I've seen every tool there is. Last year I started messing around with AI novel writing, tried over a dozen different tools, and hit more potholes than I've eaten grains of rice.

Then I figured something out: Most people can't write good fiction with AI, and the root problem isn't the AI—it's the approach.

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Pitfall #1: You treat it like a ghostwriter, it treats you like a fool

See, the mistake I made at the start is the classic one—I threw a prompt at the AI and waited for magic to happen.

Isn't that like asking someone who's never read web fiction to sit down and write a web novel? The result was that heavy "AI taste"—clunky, hollow, and always throwing in some unnecessary nature description.

Then I tried 笔灵AI (Biling AI). That thing is interesting. It doesn't just give you a chat box like ChatGPT—it has dedicated long-novel templates. World-building, character relationships, chapter outlines, distribution of "thrilling moments"—all fill-in-the-blank style.

The first time I filled out a system-flow novel setting: protagonist is a delivery driver, and the first task the system dumps on him is "deliver 100 orders in 30 minutes." The draft it generated was still formulaic, but at least the opening had conflict, suspense—you could actually read it.

Now, did you catch the key point here?

When you use AI to write a novel, you have to build the scaffolding for it. Then it can shine within that framework. Let it run wild? It's just a slightly advanced random text generator.

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Pitfall #2: Trying to swallow the whole meal in one bite? Choke on it.

I had a long-form novel once, built a pretty complex infinite-loop world. When I got to about seventy or eighty thousand words, the plot fell apart—the protagonist was supposed to level up in one dungeon, but by the time I wrote another dungeon, I'd completely forgotten the foreshadowing I'd planted earlier.

Honestly, I was broken at that point.

So I threw the entire outline into DeepSeek. A lot of people look down on it—they say the text it generates is too dry, like writing a business proposal. I admit, it's not great at "emotion." But its logical ability is absolutely killer. It sorted through the interests of all the factions in my story, and even gave me a well-reasoned explanation for why the villain made such a stupid choice.

After that, I started using it as my plot consultant. When I'm writing a long novel and hit a hundred thousand words, I always drop the latest outline into it to check for contradictions or character-breaking.

But here's the thing: expecting it to write the whole thing in one go? Not happening.

Current AIs have a common flaw: the longer the context, the more errors they make. Ask it to write a thousand words, it can make them shine. Ask it to crank out a hundred thousand words in one go, it'll forget the protagonist's name by chapter three.

I tried a clunky approach myself—I broke the novel into 100 chapters, set a core plot point and word count for each, then had the AI generate one chapter at a time. After each chapter, I saved it, and before starting the next one, I pasted the previous chapter's summary in as reference.

It's a rough method, but it works.

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Pitfall #3: Take it as-is, not change a single word?

The craziest thing I've seen is people pasting a few thousand words straight from the AI onto a web fiction platform and claiming it as their own novel.

If you actually do that, I can only say you've got some nerve.

AI writing has a certain style—it leans toward quick-gratification web fiction. But things like character emotions and those key "money scenes"—you've got to revise those yourself. Otherwise, readers can smell the formula from a mile away. Think about it—does a reader feel the same way about a formulaic description as they do about a vivid, flesh-and-blood inner monologue?

I've tried content from 笔灵AI, and honestly, its "web novel flavor" is stronger than most other tools—fast pace, dense thrill points. But does that mean you can publish it straight away? No way!

I generally use AI as a draft generator. For example, I've written a chapter where the protagonist is about to fight the villain, but I have no idea how to describe the fight scene for maximum impact. That's when I let the AI write a version first, laying out the action, rhythm, and mental state.

Then I revise.

How exactly do I revise?

First, details. AI tends to write movements in templates—"threw a punch," "kicked him away." So I change it to: "The moment his fist clenched, his knuckles cracked, and a bead of sweat dripped off his chin."

Second, emotion. AI can't write a character's inner struggle. It just writes "He was very angry." But when someone is angry—do they tremble or go silent? Do they throw things or hold it all in? That's something you have to decide.

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Some people will say: That's way too much trouble! Isn't AI supposed to make things easier for us?

That sounds reasonable, but we need to think about one question: Why are you writing a novel in the first place?

If all you want is to make a quick buck, churning out web novels with some tool, then sorry, I gotta burst your bubble—no AI out there right now can fully replace a human author. Every review says the same thing: AI-generated text is weak at emotional expression, and it flops when it comes to the big dramatic scenes.

But if you genuinely want to write a novel that's your own, and you're just stuck at some point, then AI is a great helper.

Here's my current workflow:

Step one: Use 笔灵AI to build the framework. Fill in the world settings, character profiles, and a hundred-chapter outline. Once that's done, you've got a solid foundation.

Step two: Use a general-purpose LLM as a plot consultant. After finishing a major plot beat, feed the latest progress into it and let it help you find holes.

Step three: Write the actual prose yourself. AI only provides the first draft or reference material. The real writing is still mine.

Step four: Run the finished chapter through AI for self-checks. Contradictions, wrong character names, unresolved foreshadowing—AI is great at catching these things.

Think about it—for all those writers who produce great work, whether they write by hand or with AI help, what's the deciding factor in the end?

It's their understanding of story, their insight into human nature, their sensitivity to language. AI is just a tool. It can't think for you about "why this character would make this choice" or "how to write this emotional scene so it truly moves the reader."

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Let me be straight with you:

Stop believing that crap about "one-click blockbuster novel generation."

No one who actually makes money writing novels does it purely with AI automation. But if you're willing to put in the work and treat AI as a time-saving assistant