Writing Physicality with ChatGPT

Using Joe Abercrombie to Inspire ChatGPT

“Flying Schoolgirl,” by David J. Germain with Midjourney V4

Introduction

(Note: if you’re looking for some quick tips to get started writing fiction with ChatGPT, click here.)

In a pervious article, I focused on using ChatGPT for descriptive fiction writing. In this piece, I will shift focus to characters’ physical reactions to their environments.

Rather than use ChatGPT’s standard descriptions, or tell it to write “in the style of” another writer, I’ll analyze some Joe Abercrombie’s great fiction using ChatGPT, then use that analysis to inspire better “twitching and flexing.”

Twitch and Flex

One way of thinking about fiction is as Motivation-Reaction Units (MRUs). Something happens that motivates a character, the character reacts, and that triggers a new motivation. Consider the following example:

Dave smells some waffles. He feels hungry. His stomach rumbles. He reflects on his body fat percentage. He acts, eating the waffles anyway.

Observation. Feeling. Physical Reflex. Mental reflection. Action.

Sometimes, this loop can take place over several months of a character’s life. They are plans — “should I attempt a diet?” But in the action/thriller/horror/erotica genres, these loops are often moments of time. The character sees a thing, experience an involuntary emotional/physical reaction without any plan at all.

I think of these as “twitching and flexing,” the raw physicality of fiction, and they are the topic of this article.

Typical ChatGPT Physicality

First, let’s take a look at ChatGPT’s direct version of a twitch/flex scene. Here’s the prompt:

Write a story. A frightened girl walks through an abandoned house. Suddenly, the floor beneath her breaks. She’s dangling from the broken floorboards. She struggles up and runs from the house. Use first person present tense.

“Derelict Stairwell,” by David J. Germain with Midjourney V4

Here’s the result:

I walk through the abandoned house, my heart pounding in my chest. The walls are peeling and the air is musty. I can hear strange creaks and groans coming from the floorboards beneath my feet. I try to ignore the fear that’s growing inside of me and continue on, determined to find a way out.

Suddenly, the floor beneath me gives way and I find myself dangling from the broken floorboards. I cry out in terror and struggle to pull myself up, but the wood is old and splintered, and my fingers slip. I feel a wave of panic wash over me.

But then I remember why I came here. I came here to find my sister, who disappeared into this house. I won’t give up now. I gather all my strength and try again. This time, I manage to pull myself up and scramble to my feet. I turn and run as fast as I can, not looking back until I reach the front door.

I burst out into the fresh air, gasping for breath. I look back at the house, still standing tall and ominous, and I feel a shiver run down my spine. But I know that I’ve escaped and that I’ll never come back here again. I’ve found the courage to face my fear, and I’ll never forget that feeling.

The results are surprisingly physical. She “shivers” and “scrambles” and “panic washes over her.” But it suffers the usual ChatGPT problems — it veers off (“to find my sister”), it uses similar sentence patterns, and vanilla vocabulary.

Joe Abercrombie’s Writing

Abercrombie’s writing is very physical, filled with objects in motion, and his characters are constantly twitching and flexing and gaping in shock as their worlds tip over and catch fire.

A fine example is Half a World. In the story, Brand and his companions are carrying their galley, the South Wind, up and over a land bridge. They’re yanking on ropes with sweaty hands, and then they lose control of the galley.

There was a flurry of wingbeats as a bird took to the sky and the South Wind lurched forward, one of the men on the other side shrieking as his rope tore across his shoulders and spun him around, knocking Fror sideways, the sudden weight dragging the rest of the men over like skittles.

Brand saw Koll leaning in with his pitch, staring up in horror as the high prow shuddered over him. He tried to scramble clear, slipped on his back under the grinding keel.

…

He bounded off the track in a shower of old leaves, dragging his rope around the nearest tree, a thick-trunked old beast with gnarled roots grasping deep into the hillside.

Folk were screaming over each other, timbers groaning, wood snapping, but Brand paid them no mind, wedged one boot up against the tree and then the other. With a grunt he forced his legs and his back out straight, leaning into the rope across his shoulders, hauling it taut so he was standing sideways from the trunk like one of the branches.

If only he’d been made of wood too. The rope twanged like a harpstring and his eyes bulged at the force of it, hemp grating against bark, slipping in his hands, biting into his arms. He clenched his teeth and closed his eyes and gripped at the rags around the rope. Gripped them tight as Death grips the dying.

-Half a World, Joe Abercrombie

ChatGPT will not be replacing Abercrombie just yet.

As a fan of Abercrombie’s dynamic writing, I have collected a series of examples and organized them. Three of his go-to physical reactions are:

Fear (“…The fear had hold of her now, swelling with every breath.”)

Shock(“[He] gave an ungainly cough as he was swallowing and spilled some wine down his jacket.”)

Effort(“[She] strained, every muscle trembling, but she was held helpless as a fly in honey.”)

I will focus on these three categories for the remainder of the article.

“Frightened Explorer,” by David J. Germain with Midjourney V4

Analyzing the Selections

As in my previous Descriptive Writing article, I first import a series of examples and called them [Joe Description] so that I can refer to them throughout the chat. I create a separate chat for each of the physical reactions because I want to analyze them separately. Then I asked ChatGPT a series of questions:

You are an expert in fiction writing and natural language processing(NLP). You’ve been teaching writing for over 20 years. Analyze [Joe Description] for style, voice, and tone.

Identify the most noticeable differences between [Joe Description] and typical fiction writing.

As an NLP expert, focus on lengths of sentences, use of punctuation, and the use of parts-of-speech to differentiate [Joe Description] from typical descriptive writing. Please provide specific numbers. Longest sentence, shortest sentence, average sentence length. Please do the same for clauses.

As an NLP expert, please analyze the types of verbs, nouns, and adjectives used. Compared to other fiction, is there anything unusual?

If you wanted to instruct another AI to write like this, what instructions would you give?

In addition, I would often ask small follow-up questions:

What makes the language “visceral”?

What makes the language “gritty”?

Does [Joe Description] use be-verbs more than typical fiction?

I then compile these results into short paragraphs. You can do this manually or ask ChatGPT to do it for you.

Take all of your answers from this chat and compile them into a single answer. Avoid repetition. Do not include specific examples of word choice.

Prompt for Fear

Here’s the prompt for Fear:

Overall, convey the POV’s fear and panic in a visceral way. Use descriptive nouns, sensory adjectives, and action verbs to create a sense of immediacy and intensity. Appeal to the reader’s senses.

Use descriptive concrete nouns to refer to physical objects, creating an immersive physical atmosphere for the POV. Use lots of sensory adjectives that highlight sensory details. Describe physical sensations to create a sense of being in the moment.

Use emotional adjectives and the verb “feel” to convey the physical sensations of fear as a raw and intense emotion. Use action verbs to convey a sense of movement and physicality. Minimize be-verbs.

Minimize punctuation to create a sense of immediacy, urgency, tension and suspense. Vary sentence length (6 to 58 words) and clause length (6 to 25 words).

“Frightened Explorer 2,” by David J. Germain with Midjourney V4

Prompt for Shock

Here’s the prompt for Shock:

Create a three-sentence paragraph that uses two types of sentences to convey the POV’s sense of shock. In both types of sentence, clauses should be simple and straightforward. Word choice should be simple and straightforward, with the majority of words being common and easy to understand. Use concrete language with specific nouns and verbs to convey shock.

The first type of sentence should be 12–25 words, using internal thoughts and emotions to convey the POV’s reaction of surprised shock. These sentences may also be more action-oriented and provide specific details about the events and actions of the characters.

The second type of sentence should be short (no more than 12 words). These sentences are terse and abrupt and lack descriptive language and internal thoughts.

Prompt for Effort

Here’s the prompt Effort:

Use simple vocabulary to convey the physical struggle of the character, emphasizing actions and physical sensations rather than thoughts and emotions. Sentences should be gritty and intense, with a realistic sense of hardship and danger. Use rich language to increase the sense of immediacy. Use sensory adjectives to convey real physical sensations and immediate experiences of the POV. Use descriptive adjectives to create imagery and evoke a sense of danger and struggle of the POV, emphasizing the physicality of events.

Combine two types of sentences into a paragraph describing an effortful struggle. First, use a short sentence to describe the environment, creating a sense of the physicality and immediacy of the events.

Second, use a run-on sentence to describe physical exertion, with descriptive phrases and clauses that create a sense of movement and intensity, physical sensations and experiences, a lot of action verbs with adverbs to add more intensity to the physical struggle. Use repetition of certain words or phrases to create a sense of tension and struggle. Keep the pacing fast and intense, avoiding long descriptive passages and focusing on the action and physical sensations of the characters.

Third, use a short sentence to describe the environment, creating a sense of finality and abruptness.

“Broken Floorboards,” by David J. Germain with Midjourney V4

Using the Abercrombie Analysis

To use these prompts, I start a new chat and break my story into three separate sections. Here’s my first prompt:

Write five sentences about a frightened girl walking through an abandoned house. Mention the floorboards. Use first person present tense. Overall, convey the POV’s fear and panic in a visceral way… and clause length (6 to 25 words).

I include my entire “Fear” prompt here. I have noticed that results are better if the entire detailed prompt is included in a single request. I re-generate the response a few times, copying the responses into a notepad file.

Next, I tell the AI to forget my previous prompts because I don’t want it using “fear” writing in the “shock” section.

Forget all previous prompts.

Now I write the “shock” part of my story.

Describe the experience of floorboards breaking beneath a girl’s feet. Use first person present tense. Create a three-sentence paragraph that uses two types of sentences to convey the POV’s sense of shock….

Again, I include my entire “shock” prompt here, re-generate the response a few times, then tell the AI to forget my previous prompts. Now it’s time to write the “effort.”

Describe a girl struggling to pull herself up from a hole in broken floorboards. The floor crumbles as she struggles to get up. Use simple vocabulary to convey the physical struggle of the character, emphasizing actions…

I include my entire “effort” prompt here, and re-generate the response a few times.

At this point, I have a notepad file with a few versions of each section. Here are two examples:

My steps echo in the silent house, floorboards creaking beneath me. I try to keep my breathing steady, but the air is thick with dust. My heart pounds in my chest, hands shaking. I feel like I’m being watched, like any moment I’ll hear a sound behind me. The floorboards groan, and I freeze, every muscle tense. I can barely breathe, waiting for something to happen. I force myself to keep moving, step by step, until I finally reach the door.

Here’s the second example:

With each step, I feel the floorboards of the abandoned house protesting beneath my feet. Every creak, every groan makes my heart race faster. My breaths come in short gasps, choked by the dust that clouds the air. Shadows loom around me, making me feel like eyes are following my every move. A scream is trapped in my throat, ready to burst forth at any moment. I fear the floor will give way at any second, sending me plunging into the darkness below. I struggle to keep my composure, to put one foot in front of the other. Every step is a battle against my own fear, but I keep moving forward, driven by the desperate hope that I’ll make it out of this place alive.

There are bits and pieces of each that I like so I cut and combine the AI’s writing into a single section. Remember, the AI is a tool, not a writer. The best results will come when you massage what it gives you.

The Results

Here’s the final (edited) result:

My steps echo in the silent house, floorboards protesting beneath me. Every creak, every groan makes my heart race faster. My breaths come in short gasps, choked by the dust and decay that clouds the air. Shadows loom around me, like eyes following my every move. I force myself to keep walking. Sweat trickles down my neck as I take another step.

“Ah!” The floorboards buckle. Then break, and I’m falling, grabbing at the edge, cling to the splintered boards, my heart pounding as shock takes hold. Wood crumbles in my hands.

Dust and debris rain down into darkness beneath me. My legs kick frantically in the air as I cry out in frustration and fear, my fingers slipping, scraping against rough edges, my muscles aching from the effort as I hoist myself up, heave myself over the lip and collapse onto the unstable floor, gasping in the musty air.

The abandoned house looms above me, silent and still.

“The Looming House,” by David J. Germain with Midjourney V4

Conclusions

The AI produces the best fiction writing when it has short projects to work on (“a girl walks through an abandoned house”) and very detailed style instructions (ten sentences describing how Joe Abercrombie writes “fear”).

Don’t accept the first result it gives you. Regenerate a few responses and give the AI additional directions (“try again but vary sentence lengths”).

Don’t expect the results to be ideal. ChatGPT is often overwrites some sections (“searching for my sister”) and underwrites others (“I try then succeed…”) Edit what it gives you.

So far, I’ve created several dozen of these “analysis prompts” aimed at triggering a certain writing style from the AI. I recommend building up a collection of detailed prompts that work for different types of writing. If anything, it’s a great way to study your favorite writers.