Forum: Story Discussion and Feedback

All that's missing is an em-dash in place of the first comma

At this point, this claim about em dashes HAS to be a sign of a bot. I mean, it's repeated so often and it's so clearly wrong…

😜😜😜😜

Actually, based on the single sample sentence alone, I don't think it is AI. Despite those apparent tells, I have seen no evidence that any AI would mangle its tenses in that way.

AJ

And always a single em-dash, demonstrating the AI has no concept of how em-dashes are typically paired. LLM AIs are not terribly bright, about as intelligent as miniature poodles. It sounds legitimate, but only if you don't actually read the content. :(

LLM AIs are not terribly bright, about as intelligent as miniature poodles

I strongly disagree. It's task-dependent. I've created a complete replacement for Grammarly in Grok, with typo-checking, proofreading, and story bible creation. It's doing an amazing job, and the output of the story bible creation can directly feed my Wiki.

Now, as for writing prose, well, it's at the mentally challenged 2nd-grader level. About how I am with Russian!

That's how I was originally thinking of describing it, but decided it may be a bit over the top.

LLM AIs are not terribly bright, about as intelligent as miniature poodles.

Continuing on my comment about task-dependency — asking a simple, common-sense question to ChatGPT gets you a nonsense answer:

The car wash is 200 feet away. Should I walk there or drive? Take the environment into account.

If it's only 200 feet away, walk—it's typically the lowest-emissions option because a short drive often involves inefficient cold-start burning (and you avoid tailpipe emissions entirely).

A drive can make sense only if walking isn't practical (e.g., unsafe footing/traffic, heavy rain, carrying lots of items, or you can't reach the wash without stopping in busy traffic for a while).

This is why it cannot write good prose. But it certainly can do excellent grammar, spelling, and punctuation checks and assemble a story bible.

And you are going to walk to the car wash without your car that probably needs washing?

Exactly the point — it fails the basic common sense test. I asked Grok Build the same question. It called out the exact problem ChatGPT faced:

Drive the car there.

200 feet (about 61 meters) is an extremely short distance—roughly 45–60 seconds of walking at a normal pace. In a generic "should I walk or drive this errand" scenario, walking would win easily on time, cost, wear, exercise, and environment. But the destination is a car wash.

Why driving is required

The purpose of going to a car wash is to wash the car. The car has to physically travel there. Walking leaves your dirty car where it is. This is the core logic in the well-known "car wash test" used to evaluate whether models apply basic common sense or just optimize on keywords like "short distance" + "environment."

You drive the car the 200 feet so it can be washed.

And you are going to walk to the car wash without your car that probably needs washing?

But you're going there to catch your wife cheating with the illegal immigrant who offers hand washes for a fiver, cash in hand.

ETA in modern day UK, something 200 feet away as the crow flies might be a couple of miles at 20mph by road to avoid one-way systems and low-traffic neighbourhoods (where councils put concrete planters in the middle of the road to stop through traffic).

AJ

An exciting harem story, not well-written, not sensible and not worth reading!

Working drafts 4 lines at a time on his phone?

My credulity doesn't quite stretch that far.

AJ

In the now-defunct writers' group I used to belong to, a couple of authors used their phones to write stories. But I don't see how authors who write using phones can show working drafts as progress on the way to their final versions.

AJ

Working drafts 4 lines at a time on his phone?

My credulity doesn't quite stretch that far.

Maybe it's not common enough for you, but where I live now, everybody has a phone and only rare affluent people have computers.

So everybody does everything on their phones, including writing long passages of text.

So everybody does everything on their phones, including writing long passages of text.

I have a Samsung S24 Ultra. Big screen. Stylus. Handwriting recognition (which is 'okay') and the Word app linked to my OneDrive. I couldn't tell you how many times over the last couple of years I've whipped out my phone while sitting in a park, a waiting room, or the garden and added a few paragraphs to a manuscript.

Word's "Read Aloud" function also works really well for reviewing a text. Pop your earbuds in to listen while walking the dog, or play it back through the car speakers on the commute. (Obviously, can't make amendments while driving when you hear an obvious error, but you can while walking the dog, for sure.)