We’ve all got one. That brilliant story idea that started with a bang. You wrote 10, 20, maybe even 50 thousand words, the characters felt real, the plot was humming along… and then, you just… stopped.
Life got in the way. You hit a plot snag. A shinier idea appeared.
Whatever the reason, that manuscript now sits in a folder, a ghost of a story you still love but can’t seem to finish. It’s a common struggle, and it’s frustrating. But what if you could bring in a co-writer to help you pick up the thread? A co-writer who could learn your voice, understand your plot, and help you get to “The End”?
This is where generative AI, specifically our Easy Peasy Book Machine (EPBM) process, becomes more than just a tool for starting new stories. It can be the secret weapon you use to resurrect your works-in-progress.
The “Trick” That Unlocks Your Stalled Story
The magic of the Easy Peasy Book Machine (EPBM) lies in its structured, step-by-step process. Normally, we ask the AI to generate a premise, then characters, then an outline before it starts drafting chapters.
But what if you already have those things?
Simple. You just give them to the AI.
In our full course on the EPBM, we call this “tricking the AI.” You set up the prompt just like you would for a new book, but instead of asking it to generate the foundational elements, you just plug in your own. As our instructor Stacey explains, “I find the easiest way is just to make it think it created it… It will read it, think it wrote it, and just move on to the next step.”
The AI isn’t really being “tricked,” of course. It’s a large language model following instructions. By providing the premise, characters, and existing chapters as context, you’re simply giving it all the information it needs to pick up where you left off.
How to Prep Your Work-in-Progress for the AI
Getting your half-written novel ready for this process is straightforward. You’re essentially organizing the information you already have into a format the AI can easily understand.
Step 1: Formalize Your Premise & Characters
First, you need to create documents for your premise and characters, just as the AI would have.
For the Premise: This doesn’t need to be a perfectly crafted, query-ready paragraph. It can be a simple “brain dump.” Just get your ideas out there. What’s the story about so far? Who is the main character? What is their central conflict? Where do you think the story is headed? Just put all of that inside the [PREMISE] containers, and you’re good to go.
For the Characters: If you already have character sheets, great! If not, just make a list of the characters who have appeared in your story so far. You can even use the AI for this part. You can feed the AI your completed chapters and ask it, "Make me a list of all the characters that appear in this story with a very brief description of their role."
Step 2: Structure Your Existing Chapters & Outline
This is the most important part. You need to give the AI everything you’ve already written so it can learn your style.
The AI will read your completed chapters (Chapter 1, 2, 3, etc.) and analyze your sentence structure, pacing, dialogue style, and tone. Once it has seen these chapters that are written in your voice with your words, it will continue and try to match that voice and writing style.
What about the outline? You have two great options:
If you have an incomplete outline: Just provide what you have. The EPBM prompt tells the AI how many chapters the book should be (e.g., 10 for a novella). When it sees you’ve only provided an outline for three chapters, it will automatically pick up where you left off and finish the rest for you.
If you have no outline: No problem. Use the AI to create summaries of your existing chapters. Then, compile those summaries to form the beginning of your outline and let the AI generate the rest.
Hitting “Go” and Finishing Your Book
Once you have your documents set up — your prompt, your custom premise, your character list, your outline, and your completed chapters — you’re ready.
All you have to do is ask the AI to start writing the next chapter.
For example, if you’ve written three chapters, you’ll simply tell it to start the process for Chapter 4. It will read everything you provided and, as if it had written the first part itself, seamlessly continue the story. It’s an incredibly powerful way to overcome writer’s block and finally get that story out of your head and onto the page.
This technique is just one of the powerful ways you can adapt the Easy Peasy Book Machine to fit your unique needs as an author. The full course dives even deeper, showing you how to modify the process for different genres, handle the context window limitations of novel-length projects, and even create automatic writing sequences.
You don’t have to let those brilliant stories languish. At the Future Fiction Academy, we give you the tools and techniques to not just start stories, but to finish them.
Ready to turn your AI into the ultimate co-author? Join the Future Fiction Academy today and gain access to the complete Easy Peasy Book Machine course, our powerful Raptor Write software, and a community of forward-thinking authors just like you!
