I suspect (but don't know) that this had to be edited somewhat heavily or generated in isolated chunks: I've generated a lot of fiction with Claude and it has a chronic issue of overusing any literary device one might associate with good writing once it appears in the context window

I think if you left it to its own devices, some of the narrative exposition stuff that humanized it would go off the rails

Yeah, there's a lot more work and personal touch that went into this (and the previous piece) than just "write prompt -> copy/paste into substack".

It's really interesting to hear about others that have been exploring generating fiction with Claude. I clearly need some more work based on some of the comments, but it has been really interesting discovering and coming up with different techniques both LLM-assisted and manual to end up with something I felt confident enough about to put out.

I'd be curious to hear more about your experience!