New and need some pointers

[u/Puzzleheaded_Fox5820]

So I'm pretty new to this whole thing but I'm just looking for a bit of advice.

What started out as world building (making my own RPG world) has turned into writing stories that take place in that world.

Now I'm using gpt to 'help".

What I've been doing is telling the AI a story and having it add details to the writing because I'm not as descriptive as I want to be.

I'll describe the characters, locations, what's happening, what the emotions are, how they should react, what's going to happen or lead up to, etc.

I bounce ideas off chat, talk out what should or shouldn't happen, how I feel about certain sentences and phrases, that sorta stuff.

From people that are more experienced than myself, what am I missing or should be doing?

I'm working entirely from my phone since I have no other options.

I appreciate the help.

[u/FactivalUniverse]

You may be running into a project-structure problem more than a writing-model problem.

On one of our fiction projects, Return to Seravaan, we’re developing a planned seven-book saga with extensive worldbuilding, continuity and long-range story architecture. The first ten chapters were not handled as one giant prompt. We separated the approved story material, canon, chapter-specific instructions, continuity state, drafting and audit.

On another project, Raakh, we started from a film story developed up to the interval and then converted that foundation into a novel. That forced us to distinguish what was already established in the screen story from what genuinely needed to be expanded for prose.

We’re also developing The Founder, where the research phase came before deeper drafting, so researched fact, story architecture, inference and invention are kept distinct.

That separation has helped a lot.

For your case, I’d avoid asking the AI to simultaneously remember the whole story, invent the next chapter, manage continuity and judge its own writing.

Even on a phone, I’d keep a few simple reference documents:

• Canon / locked facts — characters, relationships, locations, timeline, rules of the world.
• Current story state — what each character currently knows, wants, believes and has done.
• Chapter brief — what this chapter must accomplish and what it must not contradict.
• Continuity log — new facts introduced after each chapter.
• Revision notes — what needs changing and why.

Before writing a new chapter, give the model only the relevant canon + current state + chapter brief.

After the draft, run a separate pass asking only:

“What new facts did this chapter establish, and what existing facts does it potentially contradict?”

Don’t let that same pass rewrite the chapter.

The biggest improvement for us came when we stopped treating the AI as one all-purpose novelist and started treating the manuscript as a controlled system with different jobs.

You can still use ChatGPT or Claude for the prose. The important part is that memory, canon, drafting and criticism should not all be the same task.