Show HN: 1667, a terminal UI for writing fiction with language models (1667.ai)

What you would become, in effect, is the fictional Soviet 'writer' from Sam Kriss' 2011 short story 'The Machine'.

https://samkriss.com/2011/10/01/the-machine/

I do not think there is anything to aspire to in that.

i also made an app for my writing process and quickly realized it was a distraction from the actual work of writing

Maybe add in some different "AI reviewer" type things, one to read broadly for enjoyment and give feedback, another as an editor to fine-tune particular sections. Even with these it should provide feedback, not re-written sections.

But I love the TUI approach and keeping things simple and organized for you, so you don't have to bother with all that. Bonus if it had some nice LaTeX / epub / PDF / html reader output.

Not sure why you're getting so much hate. Internet is already chock-full of slop, a new TUI-based tool is not going to make it measurably worse.

This is spectacularly wrong headed. If you want a book with your name on it for adulation or career reasons, but lack the interest, time or talent to produce one - hire a ghost writer. Writers are affordable and plentiful.

Similarly if you have a hyperspecific interest, kink or genre preference - use your position as a presumably well remunerated tech person to hire a writer to cater to it. Trust me, we need the patronage.

If you're looking for the pleasure of writing, you will unfortunately have to undergo, as all writers have through history, the process of suffering and discovery that we call writing.

Will be interesting to see where you take this. I'd love to see more experimentation around AI tooling and UX to support creativity.

Seems a bit low to me. Yeah, I know that's way bigger than a book, but surely there is conversation, iteration history, etc

There isn't even any tracking or account setup with the OP's software?

I'm curious if you have your own creation that doesn't use LLMs at all that you think everyone can benefit from?

We should encourage people to create software even if they use AI to help them.

Calling something 'slop' without any further arguments or constructive criticism for the OP isn't in the spirit of HN.

The strength of feeling in those comments - such as this one - is really interesting:

>"you've missing [sic] the entire point of writing fiction."

Some would argue that if art makes you feel anything this strongly, it's 100% doing its job. Maybe you're not missing the point at all!

I'm interested to try it out, and perhaps build some features on top of what it's doing already. I've been using trees a lot for the novel I've been working on for the last couple of years, but haven't managed to find the best way to visualise them in a UI, so I'm excited to see what you settled on. Trees can get really unwieldy really fast, with basically infinite combinations - especially if you're working at a very granular level.

I'm curious about anyone else here who has run into the same or a similar problem, and how they approached it. There are more plausible paths through this manuscript than I can personally hold in my head, which is quite different from approaches I've used in the past, where structures have been more formalised and deviation from them was thus quite limited.

Thanks for sharing this!

I had it working and then realized that no matter how hard I put walls up between my artistic abilities and the llm was impossible.

The llm’s interference would eventually corrupt my own thinking process.

I tossed it and know anything I write will stand apart from GenAI.

For 'context priming' I'd like to see a tool that supports this. Not just alts and variations, but an assistant or companion that challenges what's already on the page, and sometimes doesn't even look back at what's been thrown out.

Forgetting can be just as effective as capturing.

The article describes a much more practical reason to avoid using LLMs for writing fiction - you could lose a book deal if you do (and you have a desire to publish for money). There are probably ways to achieve the same end result without going through a publishing house, but I imagine they aren't quite as lucrative nor able to provide the funds up front like a publisher can.

What I would really like is a fiction writing tool that helps me brainstorm and research as I'm writing specific topics. for example I would write certain things I would click on it highlight and say go do research it'll go do research on that particular line come back to me and then present me with the analysis and also how I should reframe that line I think that in my opinion is going to be super helpful I wish somebody would build a tool for that.