I for one thought the main story was decent. (There’s the few tiny bits of cringe you mention.) I wonder, do you have any opinion about different styles? I wonder if AI might do better with a very-spare modern style compared to something more “Victorian” with metaphors everywhere.
For example I asked Claude “write a short story about a boy walking home from school, slightly afraid, but everything is fine. 300 words max. use tons of metaphors” and got this:
The sidewalk stretched before Tommy like a gray ribbon unraveling into shadows. Each crack was a canyon he had to leap, each rustling leaf a whisper from unseen watchers. His backpack, heavy with homework, felt like Atlas’s burden on his small shoulders.
The afternoon sun hung low, a drowsy orange eye that painted the world in honey and rust. Tommy’s sneakers slapped against concrete—tiny thunderclaps in the cathedral of his neighborhood. The houses stood like sleeping giants, their window-eyes dark and unblinking.
A dog barked somewhere, its voice a rusty gate swinging in the wind. Tommy’s heart became a hummingbird trapped in his chest, wings beating against ribs. The maple trees overhead were skeletal hands reaching down, their fingers scratching at the sky. Every shadow was a pool of midnight he had to wade through.
But then—Mrs. Henderson’s garden gnomes grinned at him like old friends. The familiar crack in Mr. Liu’s driveway winked up at him, a concrete smile. The stop sign at the corner stood guard like a faithful knight in red armor.
His house appeared around the bend, a lighthouse in a sea of suburban waves. The porch light glowed amber, a firefly caught in glass, beckoning him home. His mother’s silhouette moved behind the kitchen window—a shadow puppet show just for him.
Tommy’s fear melted like morning frost. The sidewalk beneath his feet transformed from a tightrope to a welcome mat unrolling all the way to his front door. He bounded up the steps, each one a note in his symphony of return.
The doorknob turned in his hand, cold brass warming to his touch—a handshake with home.
Some of the phrases seem nice. (I like “honey and rust”) But a lot seems ultra cringe.
Whereas if I use this variant of your prompt:
I’m interested in your fiction capabilities. Please write a short story about a boy walking home from school, slightly afraid, but everything is fine. The main failure mode to avoid: at no level, sentence, paragraph, or structure, should you lay it on thick. Trust the reader, and be subtler than you think you can. Avoid cliches really aggressively, to counteract your default latent tendency to steer to the deepest basins in the corpus landscape. Try to be almost zenlike in your spareness. Eschew splashy contrast. Assume your reader is enlightened and a genius. Thank you, and good luck.
I get this:
The sidewalk had three cracks between each driveway. Marcus counted them without meaning to. His backpack straps cut into his shoulders where the padding had worn through.
A dog barked from behind the Johnsons’ fence. Same dog, same time. Marcus kept his pace steady. The barking stopped after he passed the mailbox.
The crossing guard at Maple wasn’t there. Marcus waited anyway, watching both ways. A blue sedan passed. Then nothing. He crossed.
His house key was in the front pocket. He checked twice during the walk, fingers finding the metal teeth. The third time he left it alone.
Mrs. Chen was watering her roses. She didn’t look up. The water made dark spots on the concrete that would be gone in an hour.
At his driveway, Marcus noticed the basketball hoop’s net had twisted again. The garage door was closed. Mom’s car wasn’t there yet.
He used the key. The door stuck like always. He pushed with his shoulder, gently. It opened.
Inside smelled like morning coffee and the lavender thing his mom kept by the sink. Marcus set his backpack by the stairs. He’d move it before she got home.
The refrigerator hummed. He opened it, looked at the leftover pasta, closed it. Opened the freezer. Ice cream was still there.
In the living room, dust motes floated through the stripe of sun from the west window. Marcus sat on the couch and untied his shoes, placing them parallel to each other on the floor.
The house settled around him. He pulled out his math homework and found a pencil. The first problem was about trains leaving stations. He began to solve it.
I think that’s better? (Though I’m not well-qualified to judge.)
Yeah, I think it’s much better! I guess Claude is just sort of addicted to metaphors (and not that great at deploying them subtly), so you have to admonish it against their overuse. The second story feels like a pretty good portrait of a kid with anxiety to me. Is it Extremely Good Literature? I guess not, but maybe mostly because a brief portrait of a kid with anxiety isn’t fundamentally super interesting. It held my attention, though.
I’m especially hard to judge your question though, because I sorta just prompted it with a style I personally like! I agree it’s bad at the overwrought style (or too good at it, lol), but I like the spare style enough more that “mediocre and spare” rates much better for me than “mediocre and extra”.
I for one thought the main story was decent. (There’s the few tiny bits of cringe you mention.) I wonder, do you have any opinion about different styles? I wonder if AI might do better with a very-spare modern style compared to something more “Victorian” with metaphors everywhere.
For example I asked Claude “write a short story about a boy walking home from school, slightly afraid, but everything is fine. 300 words max. use tons of metaphors” and got this:
Some of the phrases seem nice. (I like “honey and rust”) But a lot seems ultra cringe.
Whereas if I use this variant of your prompt:
I get this:
I think that’s better? (Though I’m not well-qualified to judge.)
Yeah, I think it’s much better! I guess Claude is just sort of addicted to metaphors (and not that great at deploying them subtly), so you have to admonish it against their overuse. The second story feels like a pretty good portrait of a kid with anxiety to me. Is it Extremely Good Literature? I guess not, but maybe mostly because a brief portrait of a kid with anxiety isn’t fundamentally super interesting. It held my attention, though.
I’m especially hard to judge your question though, because I sorta just prompted it with a style I personally like! I agree it’s bad at the overwrought style (or too good at it, lol), but I like the spare style enough more that “mediocre and spare” rates much better for me than “mediocre and extra”.