BoM/TWS Message Forum

Looking at your Google Docs: They seem close to the kind of instructions that I give Chat. I'm not exactly clear on how you're feeding these instructions to Chat. You can upload them as docs, but you can also give those sorts of instructions to Chat in the message interface. Probably 6/12 vs. 50% in terms of efficiency. :shrug:

Here is how I have been using Chat to review/assess long-form works (including ~50K word novels):

1. Open a chat and tell Chat (in chat) that it is to write a chapter-by-chapter plot summary of a novel that I will feed it one chapter at a time. I then feed it the book one chapter at a time, and copy and save off locally each chapter summary. (NEVER trust Chat to compile such things into a single document. 70% of the time it will, but 30% of the time it will do the kind of overwrite that imaj ran into.)
2. Edit Chat's resulting plot summary locally so that it captures/emphasizes what you want the summary to capture.
3. Open a new chat and tell Chat (in chat) that it is to write character summary/profiles of characters in a novel that I will be feeding it one chapter at a time. Ask it to continually update the profiles based on what it has read.

IMPORTANT: After about 10K words of reading, Chat will start to overwrite earlier character information in favor of later character information, thus erasing any complexity that came from character development. THEREFORE: About every 10K words, I ask it to display all character summaries, and copy them off locally. I do this every 10K words or so.

EDIT: It is also possible to upload the full document you want Chat to read, and ask it to make profiles/summaries of all (or some named subset) of the the characters. This is much more efficient, but the resulting profile will be sketchier, and you might have to make several passes through the material asking it to develop those summaries in various ways.

5. Either I edit the resulting character profiles myself, or I feed them back to Chat and ask it to combine them into a summary of each character.

Now I'm ready to get an evaluation.

1. I upload the plot summary and character profile sheets, and explain to Chat that I will be feeding it a novel one chapter at a time, and that the summary/profile sheets are there to anchor it and orient it within the story.

NOTE: THIS USUALLY WORKS VERY WELL, though Chat can still be kind of a birdbrained reader. Even with a plot summary in front of it and an English Lit graduate student's analytical skills, it has an approximately 5th-grade ability to notice nuance and implication in terms of plot. Tell it that the bad guys are on their way to X in one chapter, and in another chapter mention that the good guys on their way to X, and unless the book itself actually mentions these two facts in close proximity, Chat might not do the math: that the bad guys and the good guys are on a collision course.

2. I then ask it to make separate, detailed passes of each chapter (or block of chapters) as I upload them.
a. One pass for it to assess plot: is it dynamic, developmental, etc.
b. One pass for characters: are they dynamic, developmental, engaging, etc.
c. One pass for prose: style/tone/mood/voice

Etc. You can make up your standards for what you want it to look for.

Also, if you want it to be your toughest critic (though even here it tends to be pretty light), tell it you want MFA Mode = ON.

These passes can all be done sequentially in the same chat. Or, if you upload the summary+profiles docs each time, you can do each pass in a different or subsequent chat.

This method does mean you have to give Chat instructions each time you make a summary, a set of profiles, a pass, etc., but the instructions can be pretty short -- Chat is good at anticipating the work wanted. Also, you run fewer risks of Chat getting confused about what it should be doing, looking at, etc. Chat is not very good at multitasking, and if you ask it in close succession to do very different jobs, it can have what looks like a nervous breakdown.