How to generate a story with AI

1. Give it a situation, not a subject

The single biggest difference between a flat story and a good one is what goes in the idea box. "A story about loss" is a subject. There is nothing in it to write. "A man keeps renewing his dead wife's library card" is a situation, and it already contains a character, a habit, a reason and an ending you can feel coming.

A useful test: can you picture someone doing something? If not, the idea is still a theme. Add a person and an action and try again.

You can also leave the box empty. The generator will pick a situation itself, and it is a reasonable way to see what a genre sounds like before you commit an idea to it.

2. Pick the genre by what it has to do

Genre is a set of obligations, not a mood. A mystery owes the reader a fair answer. A thriller owes them a clock. Flash fiction owes them a turn in under five hundred words. If your idea is a question the reader will want answered, choose mystery even if it is set on a spaceship. If it is two people who cannot say something, choose drama even if there is a monster in the house.

3. Treat length as a structural choice

Short, at around 350 words, holds one scene. Medium, at about 800, holds a turn: something is true at the start and not at the end. Long, at roughly 1,600, has room for several scenes and a genuine reversal in the middle.

Asking for a sprawling saga at Short does not compress it, it summarises it, and summary is the flattest thing prose can do. Match the length to the size of what you asked for.

4. Use More options when you have a plan

Leave them alone on the first attempt. Once you know roughly what you want, they earn their place. Written for sets the age the story is pitched at, which is the fastest way to get something you can read to a child. Character names are used exactly as you spell them, so the story can be about someone real. Point of view changes the whole texture: first person lets the narrator be wrong about themselves, which is often the most interesting thing in a short story. Ending lets you aim at bittersweet or open rather than accepting the tidy version. Character names stop the model reaching for its favourites. Words to avoid is the blunt instrument for anything that keeps creeping in.

5. Generate three times before you judge it

The model samples from many valid continuations, so the same settings give you a different story each time. The second attempt is often better than the first for no reason you can point to. Three costs you a minute. Press Write another and keep the one that has something in it.

6. Then edit it, because it is a draft

Three edits fix most generated stories. Cut the first paragraph, because models warm up and the real opening is usually the second one. Replace the names with names from your own life. Rewrite the last two sentences, which is where any generator is at its weakest and where a reader decides what they thought of the whole thing.

Everything on the page is editable in place, and your changes save as you type. If the story stops somewhere interesting, Continue this one picks it up in the same voice and you can tell it where to go next.

A note on using what it writes

The stories are yours. Publish them, sell them, build on them. Two honest caveats. AI output is not always eligible for copyright protection, which matters if you plan to license the work, so check the position where you are. And if you are submitting the work as your own writing for a course or a competition, do not. Use it to find the idea, then write the thing yourself.

Questions about any of this can go to support@storygenerate.io.