So just sharing my lived experience following this fractal method. I pay for chatGPT plus I don’t pay for Claude

I really put a lot of effort into the 40-chapter outline. Garbage in garbage out so it’s clear this is a BIG deal. I used ChatGPT 4o, o1, and Claude Free 3.7 sonnet to generate a 40-chapter outline based on my synopsis. I took the best from all three to make a single outline. And then I peppered in personal details from my unique lived experience so I’d really care about the story.

I had 4o and o1 make character profiles of my 4 characters and I took the best parts of each ones summaries.

I took the style prompt word-for-word and didn’t bother with “custom instructions” I think that takes too long.

Then I’d start a NEW conversation to do part 1 of the advanced story beats prompt. But I’d preface it with the entire 40 chapter outline before that. I put this into Claude free 3.7 sonnet, 4o, and o1. All three took this massive prompt.

The problem with Claude free is it complained already that it was “full” before I could even do part 2 of story beats. So I gave up on Claude after that. So forget prose writing. Even doing the story beats it started to choke on the free limits. Was useful for outline though!

4o and o1 both worked and then I did prompt 2 of story beats and pasted the output of prompt 1 and voila I had 12 story beats for chapter 1.

Then I pasted those in my SuperPrompt which included the whole 40 chapter outline, characters, style, did NOT have viewpoint or setting I’m too busy for that, and of course chapter beats. I asked for 50,000 words like the instructions say even tho it’s only chapter 1 I want.

O1 worked like a charm and gave me a full 2500 word chapter! This is the holy grail. This is why Jason Hamilton likes Claude anyways cuz it gave whole chapters.

4o only gave 600 words and the first 2 or 3 beats. It was willing to give me the rest, and it did, but I had to prompt it for the next 3 beats and the next 3 beats and I don’t have time for this I work full time and have a wife and dog and two kids. I don’t even have time to read my ai-generated novel I load it into a word doc and have the word app on my iPhone read it to me while I’m driving!

So I abandoned Claude and abandoned 4o and just made 12 story beats chapter by chapter with o1. If I had more time I’d generate 12 story beats for each chapter with 4o as well and compare the two lists of 12 for each chapter but it was hard enough as it is to take the time to merge three 40-chapter outlines into 1.

So with o1 I was able to generate 15 chapters of prose until I hit my 80 messages/week limit and can’t use it again until 4/20. But I don’t care I won’t have a chance to write again until after Easter anyways I’m so busy with other responsibilities!

So far I listened to the first three chapters of my book at 2x speed on word app while driving and even then that took 30min. WOW does AI love using booming thunder of a storm as a metaphor gonna need ChatGPT to cut that out or make that more concise, but otherwise it is so FUN to listen to my story come to life even in an AI voice.

Idk if anyone has any thoughts or comments on my work flow. It’ll already be effort to generate the remaining 25 chapters, remove the “chat response” words from my word doc, use AI to fix my chapters to be more concise, fix plot holes myself, use 4.5 to generate chapter art, generate a cover, and upload to Amazon as an ebook and a paperback and a hardcover. But I’m having fun! I thought I couldn’t write at all with a two year old and an infant but with this method, this community, and AI tools it is possible 💪