…I need to restructure my review template.
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Humans complaining about AI copying human writing causing humans to change how they write to avoid sounding like AI because AI sounds like them.
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I will not give up my em dashes, and that’s a fact.
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Hey everyone,
I’m currently developing an interactive story, and like many, I’ve been experimenting with using AI to help with the writing process mostly to speed things up and deal with writer’s block.
Thing is, while it helps structure scenes or suggest ideas, the actual dialogue often comes out kind of flat. It lacks that natural flow or personality I want my characters to have. It’s like… technically correct, but not alive, you know?
So I wanted to ask:
How do you make your dialogue feel real?
Do you have techniques for getting into character voices? Do you use specific tools or workflows that help polish conversations?
I’d really appreciate hearing how other writers approach this. Anything you’re willing to share — tips, routines, even weird personal tricks - I’m all ears!
Thanks in advance!
You actually aren’t going to find many people here experimenting with generative AI to help with the writing process. A lot of us consider the way AIs are “trained” on the works of writers without their consent to be a form of theft, and feel that trying to substitute the output of an algorithm for the actual product of human creative work is lazy and insulting. Even if those concerns don’t matter to you, you need to know if you’re hoping to publish with Hosted Games that they absolutely will not accept your work for publication if it includes generative AI output of any kind.
If you want to get better at writing, you need to write. If you want dialogue that sounds “alive,” stop trying to get a machine to do it.
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I dont see a problem with using AI to help brainstorm an idea or start a research on a topic, but don’t use AI to write for you.
If you’re planning to put out a book as fast as you can to cash in the money, well, most writers don’t make bank in general, and in a niche market like Interactive Fiction even less. Maybe there’s someone earning enough to live confortably, but the majority of writers in this community are doing this because they love writing or have a story they are eager to tell. (And like @AletheiaKnights said, CoG won’t publish your story if you use generative AI.)
To answer your question, I first write the scene very “flat”, then I do a couple passes, at least one for each character in the scene and with break between each). At each pass I try to get into the head of only a single character and then fix the tone and wording. It’s a slow process for me (I’m not great at writing dialogue either, it’s even worse for quippy characters).
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If you cannot be bothered to write it yourself, why should anyone be bothered to read it.
GenAi has no positive applications, at all, stop using it wholesale. It cannot help brainstorming, it cannot help writing. Just stop.
As for actual writing:
Try instead to find what works for you in terms of how where and when you write. Are you more comfortable writing longhand first or typing it into a document directly? Do you plan things through the whole way or do you wing it? etc.
Dialogue comes easier when one doesn’t force oneself to approach writing in a way that doesn’t work for them.
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I agree with everyone above, so I’ll just add here that, from my point of view, the best way to get a character’s voice is to write that character. A lot, if it doesn’t come naturally at first - some do, some don’t.
I mean, that depends. You can get ideas anywhere. I’ve gotten an idea from hearing a pheasant (it was a very weird pheasant).
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Maybe you object to AI based on something else, but saying it’s not helpful at all is not true.
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Yes, generative AI can be useful for brainstorming or finding ideas for structures that otherwise would have escaped your mind completely. But it won’t magically make your work publishable if you don’t have an already good base at writing. You definitely shouldn’t use it to write in your place. In the end, it’s just a tool, it can’t improve on what doesn’t work at a fundamental level. And above all, you hit it pretty much at its weakest spot: creating dialogues that capture the nuances of chars personalities.
Aside from the other advices given here, which is no shortcut but to write more things using that character to get to know them better — acting the dialogues out loud is also a good strategy. Obviously, you should read with the kind of cadence/tone which your chars would deliver. Better yet in front of a mirror. Sprinkle dialogue with actions. Keep a nice rhythm between dialogue and action/reaction to make it more digestible.
Also, read more. Study from works that closely match what theme you’re aiming for in your story. Pay attention to characters that resemble yours, how they speak, how they react. A lot of amazing completed/WIP IFs from here, for example, that you can use as learning materials.
When all is said and done, write the dialogue down, and move on to work on something else for a few days until you forget about it. If it still feels adequate when you return to it again, you can use it as it is.
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No, it’s not helpful at all. There’s even been studies by now that have shown that people who use it for ‘brainstorming’ actively get less creative.
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- Please point me in the direction of those studies.
- Why the quotes around brainstorming? I think we have different definitions of brainstorming.
Brainstorm could be something like asking it to list common tropes for Lovecraftian horror. This is something I would have done myself looking up at tvtropes.com and a Google search, but the AI can do that for me in a minute whereas I would spend at least an hour making a compilation like that otherwise. Then just reading the trope list I start getting some ideas. Sometimes, I use RPG oracles to brainstorm and I don’t see the difference from that to this. - Brainstorm is not the only thing I mentioned. Maybe you don’t particularly find brainstorming helpful, but it’s definitely helpful when researching.
An example of research I did a while ago; The villain in one of my stories had the ability to secrete poison. I wanted it to be plant related (it makes sense in the story), so I spent days looking up poisonous plants and their effects, but I never found one that satisfied me, then I gave in and listed the effects I was looking for to ChatGPT and asked which plants had poison like that. After a few minutes I had found the perfect one. The Oleander tree (which wasn’t even on my radar before). It fit so much. First because the character was Japanese and second because a lot of the meaning of the Oleander tree fit so much the theme of the character (which wasn’t entirely clear to me before, but the Oleander helped me flesh out the character further). After that I was sold, there’s no gain fighting against it.
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I’ll appalaud you if you manage to get out of tvtropes in an hour.
I could see how it might affect creativity though, it could be the same effect as with calculators - I know from personal experience, that the more I use a calculator, the worse I’m counting numbers in my head. Also the more I use a dictionary when I’m reading English, the less I understand without, and I start forgetting/doubting even words I’ve known for years.
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Preface: I care a lot about writing and have been writing books for a decade. I have not published anything professionally, although a small handful of people have read what I have written and like it.
Personally, I think that writing is best understood as communication between you, the writer, and the reader. And the idea that a algorithmic word predictor, which is what a large language model or AI is, to be clear, could be producing what I’m reading from you would make me immediately lose interest in your IF, book, or any other form of fiction. If you can’t be bothered to write a thing yourself why should I be bothered to read it?
As other people here have already said, the biggest way of getting better at getting a character’s voice is practice and editing. Write, read what you wrote (I do it out loud) edit and repeat as necessary. Other than that there are some tips and tricks but they will vary in what you find useful, like any sort of workflow. Personally I like to listen to people IRL a lot and imagine my characters as them. If I am writing in a coffee shop, for instance, and I decide to make a character work in customer service I might try to picture the tired slightly cranky barista talking, and write to capture that tone of voice, that word choice. If I am writing a lonely but tough character maybe I’ll put on an old western and try to listen to a cowboy there, imagine the words he’d choose.
Hope that helps, as others have said, I encourage you to avoid LLMs, and good luck!
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When you’re constantly leaning on AI to generate ideas — then yeah, you’ll stop wrestling with the challenges of writing yourself, which is where the most creative breakthroughs happen. It’s one of those tools that risks becoming a crutch if you’re not intentional about when to step away from it. The key is knowing when to let it assist and when to tell it to back off so your own ideas can take the lead.
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I understand the desire to “have written something” and wanting to enjoy the positive feeling you get from a section of work being finished. And goodness knows writing long projects like the titles released by CoG/HC/HG is a lot of work. But someone using an LLM instead of their own skills to brainstorm, draft, or edit is getting in the way of developing those skills.
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I’ve been having a little bit of cognitive dissonance with the discussion about using AI in writing, and I’ve been wondering why, but it finally clicked.
The times I’ve played with AI Dungeon I did’t want to write something. I wanted to read something. (It wasn’t satisfactory, but the hallucinations were fun.)
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Regardless of how you feel about Brandon Sanderson or his prose, his essays are very good and available for free on YouTube:
Other than that, for dialogue I recommend studying screenplays and scriptwriting. Many useful tips for how to connect the character with the reader in fewer words and how to make the character shine through dialogue alone. Good luck.
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What prompt did you use? And which model were you using to help with your writing process.
AI is still a tool. And the outcome highly depends on how you structure your ask/prompts.
I’m not going to tell you not to use AI for the writing process. Practicing to write for yourself is useful if you want to improve your craft.
And there are so many YouTube videos and online writing tips to help you with writing.
AI is not a magic bullet, you still have to learn what makes a scene good through trial and error.
For me, reading other stories, reading writing blogs and watching YouTube videos helps me improve my writing. I don’t accept the advice of people without any critical thought. I still have to decide whether the tip they’re giving me fits my writing style.
That goes with AI too. I use AI for brainstorming or looking up interesting books that could help me with my setting. But I don’t accept everything it spits out. You still have to check its source or whether its ideas fit your story.
So I guess, trial and error is what will make you improve your dialogue writing.
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Thank you for your response. I will do my best to take your insights into account in my future work.