> But if you even need to write that long-ass prompt, might as well just write the story yourself!

Nah, that's just restating the infamous 'how to draw an owl' advice:

https://casnocha.com/2010/11/how-to-draw-an-owl.html#comment...

The thing is, that "long-ass prompt" is step 1, and LLM then draws "the rest of the fucking owl" for you. That's quite a big difference to doing it all yourself.