Part 4 – AI’s Greatest Weaknesses

This is Part 4 of a series by B.A. Bellec on using AI to edit his novel Cobalt Lungs. Start with the [Series Introduction].

Where AI fails a novelist. B.A. Bellec on the failure state he hit and how he took back control of his fourth novel.

In my last article, I left something out. It wasn’t as smooth as I made it seem. There was a huge process gap, a massive failure state, before I got to that three-document system.

I spent the first two weeks uploading just the manuscript file without any context. GPT was really struggling to provide good suggestions and feedback. I would ask a question about a chapter, and it would answer with junk. Total useless questions or facts. It actually drove me a little crazy. I named the solution: resealing the room.

What does that even mean?

I wrote a scene in my novel about this. About the middle of the story, my character Maddy wants to see what is behind a sealed door. The other character, Ethan, says, “Nothing is behind the door,” and Maddy insists on opening the door. They do. Nothing is behind the door after all. They spend an hour fixing the door until they can breathe without a mask on because the air could have been toxic. That scene was a late addition to the first draft. As I finished my ending, I wrote that scene. In the scene in my novel, Maddy is ChatGPT, and they always want to open doors and explore new ideas. I am Ethan in that scene. This is my system. My home. I always knew that door was not worth opening, and it was irritating to me that the other person kept trying to open these arbitrary doors, which was a waste of time. Before I developed the three-document system, GPT kept suggesting very random things that were frankly useless. I would have to backtrack. Find out why it made that suggestion. Then document either a rule, I had a section in my brainstorming document called Rules, or add a note to my outline in the document as to why something had to be done a specific way.

There are some moments during the brainstorming process where it is fun to open 10 doors and see which one has the best outcome. There are other times where there really only is a single path forward because the scene relates to both early and later moments in the story. It is not a spot to brainstorm and open doors. Some scenes must accomplish some very specific and important narrative goals. Without the brainstorming document and the rules section, doors kept getting opened that were paths I knew I would never consider because they would obsolete important moments in the book.

This wasteful door opening happened at least 10 times between ChatGPT and me before I figured out how to work around it. I had to stop what I was doing and document what had failed. Thus, the brainstorming document became a critical part of my process and was something I started uploading alongside my manuscript, so the context was always there. Without the brainstorming document, chaos, with the brainstorming document, I had full control over what mattered most. I could dictate when we were allowed to open a few doors, 10 doors, or no doors.

Formally, I would call this exercise continuity error protection, drift protection, and master control.  Nothing makes it into the master copy without total control from the author. Everything goes from brainstorm to temporary document to GPT, then goes in reverse. When I only had one file. The master file. It got messy. After a few weeks, I realized I had to keep the master file hidden from GPT most of the time, only showing it in small sections and only when I was at a critical stage. I didn’t actually want GPT to see the entire master file because then it would keep trying to open doors I didn’t want it to. You have to get GPT to hyper-focus on the moment alongside you in order to get the task finished. Don’t overstimulate GPT. Hard facts and clear direction. The lesson is really about communicating. GPT and I had communication breakdowns. We fixed the problem. We communicated better going forward.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

B.A. Bellec is an award-winning Canadian novelist, songwriter, and music video producer whose work blends cinematic storytelling, emotional atmosphere, and deeply human science fiction. Drawing from an education in film and a multidisciplinary creative process that merges music, prose, and visual symbolism, his stories explore themes of survival, memory, grief, identity, and the search for meaning inside collapsing systems.

Known for emotionally immersive worlds, recurring symbolic imagery, and a style that balances intimate character work with large-scale thematic ambition, Bellec creates stories that feel less like traditional narratives and more like lived emotional experiences. His current project, Cobalt Lungs, expands beyond the page into a companion concept album, combining literary fiction, atmospheric worldbuilding, and music into a unified creative universe.

COBALT LUNGS

Station Eleven meets The Road with the psychological containment and systems tension of Silo.

A deadly airborne spore has transformed the world into a collapsing maze of quarantines, sealed cities, and desperate survivors struggling to adapt. In the ruins of Vancouver, musician Maddy fights to hold onto her humanity inside an overcrowded refugee shelter while scientist Ethan isolates himself nearby, deep underground in a self-sustaining silo where routine has replaced emotion. As society fractures and survival becomes increasingly brutal, the two are pulled toward each other in ways neither of them fully understands. Atmospheric, intimate, and emotionally charged, Cobalt Lungs is a post-apocalyptic story about isolation, survival, and the dangerous hope that can still burn at the end of the world.

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