Comment by logicallee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by logicallee | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised.

For my own entertainment, I've tried to have ChatGPT write a science fiction story a few times, but its stories weren't entertaining.

The main problem is that it sounds like it is summarizing. For example, here is a typical start to one of its stories:

" In a world much like our own, a team of scientists were working on an experimental device known as the Gravitational Wave Interferometer. They had been working on the project for years, but had been unable to make it work. The device was designed to detect the subtle ripples in space-time caused by gravitational waves, but it required an incredible amount of precision and sensitivity."

That's fine, but it sounds like the summary of a story rather than the story itself. It's telling rather than showing. For comparison here is the intro from the popular book The Hunt for Red October:

"Captain First Rank Marko Ramius of the Soviet Navy was dressed for the Arctic conditions normal to the Northern Fleet submarine base at Polyamyy. Five layers of wool and oilskin enclosed him. A dirty harbor tug pushed his submarine’s bow around to the north, facing down the channel. The dock that had held his Red October for two interminable months was now a water-filled concrete box, one of the many specially built to shelter strategic missile submarines from the harsh elements. On its edge a collection of sailors and dockyard workers watched his ship sail in stolid Russian fashion, without a wave or a cheer."

This sets the stage in a more interesting way than ChatGPT does.

What kinds of prompt strategies can I use to make ChatGPT's stories sound more like storytelling and less like a synopsis or summary? Can someone share a specific prompt?

Interesting and I believe valuable observation.

Stories are entertaining when they raise the expectations of the reader or viewer and make them wonder how a difficult situation could possibly resolve. Entertaining means you keep on reading because you are curious about what will happen next.

But language-models just produce an average over the many texts they have been trained on. While each story they read had their own "expectation loop", when you average over many such stories the expectation-raising disappears, like multiple waves interfering and disrupting each other.

The output of ChatGPT is bland, because there is no single author behind its output, who could "feel" whether the story was entertaining enough to be published. ChatGPT of course can not "feel" anything. It can not evaluate its own output as to will it raise curiosity in its readers. ChaptGPT has its model of language and texts, but not a model of what its texts MEAN and thus no model of how readers might react to it.

Still not nearly as beautiful written as the Hunt for Red October, but I wrote this on ChatGPT:

“Set the scene introducing a protagonist in a Soviet missile depot in the 1980s Soviet Union in the style of Tom Clancy. Make it ominous, descriptive and imaginative.”

And got:

The Soviet missile depot was a forbidding place, set deep in the heart of the country's vast and unforgiving landscape. It was a place where men spoke in hushed tones and shadows seemed to lurk around every corner, where the hum of electricity and the beeping of computer terminals were the only sounds to be heard.

At the heart of the depot stood a solitary figure, a man with a weathered face and piercing eyes that seemed to see straight through you. He was dressed in a drab olive uniform that was stained with grease and sweat, and he wore a cap with a red star on it, the symbol of the Soviet Union.

His name was Ivan Petrov, and he was a veteran missile technician with over twenty years of experience. He had spent his entire adult life in the service of the Soviet state, and he knew every inch of this place like the back of his hand.

As he walked through the maze of tunnels and corridors, he could feel the weight of the world on his shoulders. He knew that the missiles stored here were capable of destroying entire cities, and that the fate of the world might one day rest on his shoulders.

The air was thick with tension and uncertainty, and Ivan felt a sense of foreboding that he could not shake. He knew that the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse, and that the future was uncertain.

But he also knew that he had a duty to his country, and that he would do whatever it took to protect it, even if it meant sacrificing his own life.

As he stood before the missile control panel, his fingers poised over the launch button, he could feel the weight of history bearing down on him. He knew that this moment would define the rest of his life, and the fate of the world.

In that moment, Ivan Petrov was the most powerful man in the world, and he would do whatever it took to protect his country and its people, even if it meant unleashing the most destructive force in human history.

Some parts of that were pretty good, thanks for sharing.

>> " In a world much like our own, a team of scientists were working on an experimental device known as the Gravitational Wave Interferometer. They had been working on the project for years, but had been unable to make it work. The device was designed to detect the subtle ripples in space-time caused by gravitational waves, but it required an incredible amount of precision and sensitivity."

I think the problem with ChatGPT's output in this case is that it's not really a story, or even a summary of a story. It's possible the summary of the start of a story, but where is the ending? What happened with the Gravitational Wave Interferometer? Did the team of scientists make it work, after all? Was it eaten by space sharks? Was it engulfed by the sun going nova? Did Nurgle hold a wedding feast on the planet? How does the story end? How does it even continue?

But, if the story had an ending, it would make decent flash fiction, in my humble. In fact I like to write very short stories like that, that sound like summaries. It can work- but it has to be a summary of something interesting to read. A story with a beginning but no middle or end doesn't cut it.

You can tell it to do dialogue heavy stories, which helps a little, and tell it to rewrite what it just write to have more dialogue. Ultimately it's a very limited tool for fiction writing I've found.

I've had success with some promopts but for others it just falls into vague nonsense like "In a flashback a hero fights a villain." Telling it to come up with some more specific than "a bad guy" often doesn't work.

Have you tried asking it to rewrite more in the style of a particular author, or to flesh out story elements in detail or with a bit more vagueness rather than like writing a blurb?

Yes, I've tried both strategies you mention (write in style of ___; flesh out elements in detail rather than like a blurb.) It didn't really work. At best it writes like your sibling comment shows. While it's pretty good, as that example shows, it still includes lines like "The air was thick with tension and uncertainty" which is just a summary of its prompt ("ominous" in this case) rather than showing something ominous.

Off-topic, but try https://old.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/

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