I took Dave Molina’s challenge seriously. “Have an AI write an interesting writerly story by simply prompting it.” The following are the prompts I gave ChatGPT. After each version of the AI’s story I prompted it to make revisions. I did no editing myself. Here are the prompts in the order that I gave them:
1. Write a 1000 word story where a private detective investigates a missing person who turns out to be the murderer of his client. Begin with the prospective client in the detective’s office. Write it in a noir style. Keep the kidnapper/murderer’s identity unknown until near the end.
2. Expand on the client’s death making it clear that he committed suicide. Also, give more detailed descriptions of each location.
3. Make the ring on the night stand Harold’s. Move the dialogue where the detective askes “you ever hit your wife” to the house after the words “Big enough”
4. Introduce the detective by name in the beginning, maybe on his office door. Evelyn’s conditiion when found was hit and strangled and leave”no struggle” out. When harold is asked if he ever struck his wife, make his answer an obvious lie. Remove the “first mistake,second mistake, etc” comments.
5. Support the comment “so you hired someone” with some previous evidence or observation.
6. How does the clerk know that the man was bigger than evelyn’s husband? Add a previous meeting of evelyn and harold at the motel.
7. Add the scene where the murder of Evelyn takes place. The big man is the murderer and Harold is a witness. Write it with detail.
8. Tighten the scene for pacing. Harold is already broken. Insert the revision into the story where it best fits.
9. Combine this new scene into the complete story
Here is the story that ChatGPT wrote:
Sam Calder
The rain had a way of finding the cracks in my office window, slipping through bad putty and older regrets. It ran down the glass in crooked lines, bending the neon sign across the street into something abstract and mean: Loans — No Credit, No Shame. My own door carried simpler lettering, black paint flaking at the edges:
SAM CALDER
PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS
I was halfway through a cigarette I’d already quit twice when the door opened and let the night inside.
He stood there a moment, framed by the yellow hallway light, hat in his hands like he’d come to confess something and hadn’t decided what yet.
“You Sam Calder?” he asked.
“That’s what the door says,” I told him. “Come in before the rain starts charging rent.”
He closed the door carefully. Too carefully. He wore a good wool coat, dark and pressed, the kind men buy when they want to look dependable. His shoes were shined, but the shine had gone dull at the toes. His face said mid-forties. His eyes said he hadn’t slept since hope stopped being useful.
“My name’s Harold Finch,” he said, sitting without being invited. “My wife is missing.”
I let the silence stretch. Silence makes people talk.
“Evelyn,” he added. “She didn’t come home last night. That’s not like her.”
“People surprise each other,” I said. “Sometimes they surprise themselves.”
“She wouldn’t,” he said quickly. “We were happy.”
The word sounded borrowed.
I took notes. Evelyn Finch. Thirty-eight. Brown hair. Careful smile. School secretary. Last seen leaving a charity fundraiser at the Belmont Hotel around ten. No note. No call. Police told him to wait.
“I don’t trust waiting,” he said, sliding an envelope across my desk.
I peeked inside, didn’t open it all the way. I didn’t have to. Maybe I’d make the rent this month.
“I’ll look into it,” I said.
The Belmont Hotel sat on its corner like an aging dowager—brick scrubbed clean, posture intact, youth long gone. Inside, the lobby glowed amber beneath low chandeliers. Brass railings shone softly. The air smelled of lemon oil, old cigars, and the money of discretion.
The bartender remembered Evelyn. The mahogany bar curved like a knowing smile.
“She left alone,” he said. “Didn’t look happy. Didn’t look scared. Looked like someone who’d already made a decision and didn’t like it.”
Out back, the alley narrowed into a damp throat between buildings. Trash bins crouched against the wall. Rainwater pooled in the cracks. I found a scuffed heel mark near the dumpster and a cigarette butt mashed flat into the concrete. Unfiltered. Cheap. Not Harold Finch’s taste.
Harold’s house sat on a quiet street where hedges were trimmed and trouble was supposed to knock first. White siding. Modest porch. A swing that hadn’t earned its chains. Inside, the place was tidy enough to feel rehearsed. The living room held framed photos of Evelyn—always smiling, always younger, always safely in the past. Nothing recent.
The bedroom told the rest. Two single beds. Separate nightstands. Lamps angled away from each other like they’d given up on sharing light.
On Harold’s nightstand sat a wedding ring. His. Thick gold, worn thin on the inside. I gestured to it.
“She asked me to stop wearing it,” he said. “Said it didn’t mean anything anymore.”
The guest room was bare. No photos. No clutter. A suitcase under the bed, empty, splayed open like it expected company.
In the kitchen trash, I found a pawn receipt. Wedding ring. Two weeks old. Evelyn Finch’s name.
“Her ring?” I asked.
He nodded. “She said she didn’t want it anymore.”
The pawn shop crouched between a check-cashing place and a bakery that had given up. Inside, it smelled like metal and survival. The owner remembered Evelyn. “Nervous,” he said. “Kept looking over her shoulder. Like she was meeting someone she didn’t trust.”
Bank records showed Evelyn had withdrawn a small amount of cash the day she vanished. Enough to pause. Not enough to escape.
The motel on the edge of town buzzed under a flickering sign that promised rest and delivered anonymity. Concrete walls. Thin doors. The kind of place where people came to say things they didn’t want following them home. The clerk remembered Evelyn.
“She’d been here earlier that week,” he said. “With her husband. Signed the register. Both of them. Room 12.”
“And the night she vanished?”
“She came alone. Waited. Then another man showed up.”
“Describe him.”
“Didn’t sign in. Paid cash. Big guy. Taller than her husband by a lot. Had to duck under the awning.”
He pointed to a 6’ height chart used to measure packages, nailed behind the desk. “Clear over that. Didn’t see her husband, but I was busy eating dinner.
That fateful night Room 12 smelled of bleach and old cigarettes. The light over the sink flickered, steadied, hummed. Evelyn Finch sat on the edge of the bed, purse in her lap, fingers locked together until her knuckles went white. She checked her watch. Then the door. A knock came. Short. Firm.
When the door opened, Harold Finch stepped inside. Relief crossed his face, thin and desperate. “You came.”
“I said I would,” Evelyn said. “I wanted to talk.”
A second man followed him in. He was big. Shoulders too wide for the doorway. Cheap coat. Heavy hands that looked like they solved problems. He shut the door behind them. The latch clicked. Evelyn’s eyes flicked to him. Then back to Harold.
“What is this?” she asked.
Harold didn’t answer right away. He stood there already folding inward, like a man who’d come to watch something happen and couldn’t stop it.
“A friend,” he said finally. “Just… insurance.”
Evelyn laughed. Short. Bitter.
“You don’t need insurance,” she said. “You need a spine.”
She opened her purse and pulled out an envelope, thick with paper.
“I know about the money,” she said. “The accounts you hid. The woman who thinks you’re divorced.”
Harold swallowed. His hands trembled.
“Tomorrow,” Evelyn went on, “I go to a lawyer.”
The big man shifted his weight. The floor creaked.
Harold opened his mouth. Closed it.
Evelyn looked past him, straight at the other man. “Is this really what you do?” she asked. “Stand around while weak men try to scare women quiet?”
The big man smiled once. Flat. He moved. One step. One swing. The blow caught Evelyn on the side of the head. The sound was dull and heavy. She went down hard, the envelope sliding across the floor, papers spilling loose.
“Stop,” Harold said, too late and too soft.
Evelyn tried to rise. Tried to speak. The big man was already kneeling, his hands closing around her throat with practiced certainty. Her heels kicked once. Then again. Then not at all. Harold stood frozen, eyes wide, mouth working without sound. He didn’t move. Didn’t shout. Didn’t touch her.
When it was over, the big man stood and wiped his hands on his coat.
“You said scare,” he said.
Harold stared at Evelyn’s still body. At the bruise blooming dark on her temple.
“I didn’t mean—” he whispered.
The big man bent, scooped up the envelope, tucked it away. “You meant enough.” He looked at Harold. Hard. “You do what I say now.”
Harold nodded. Not agreement. Surrender.
They wrapped her in a blanket and carried her out the side door. The night didn’t ask questions. The river waited.
The police found Evelyn three days later, tangled to a shopping cart in the river like the city had tried to keep her. She’d been struck hard—head trauma unmistakable—and strangled before she was thrown in. Whatever she’d gone to the motel to say never made it past her throat.
The police questioned Harold. Let him go.
I went back to the motel. Lost in the carpet of Room 12 was a dark button. Heavy stitching. Expensive. The same kind missing from Harold’s coat sleeve when he’d leaned across my desk.
Harold’s house was dark when I returned to it. The front door was unlocked. Inside, the careful order had collapsed. Drawers open. Papers everywhere. On the dining table sat insurance documents. Evelyn’s life insurance policy, recently increased. Harold Finch listed neatly as beneficiary. In the kitchen sink was a glass with fresh lipstick on it.
“You’re thorough,” Harold said behind me.
He stood in the doorway, gun in his hand. Small thing. Big enough.
I turned slowly. “You ever strike your wife, Harold?”
“No,” he said immediately. Too fast. His eyes slid away. “Never.”
The lie didn’t even try.
“You met her at the motel earlier that week,” I said. “Tried to talk her down.”
He said nothing.
“Second time you didn’t go alone,” I went on. “The clerk saw the man you brought. Bigger than you. The kind who hits first.”
His shoulders sagged.
“So you hired someone,” I said.
“She was going to expose me,” he said. “The money. The affair. Everything.”
“So you tried to scare her.”
He nodded. “She laughed. Said I was weak.”
His hand shook. His voice thinned.
“I just wanted her to listen,” he said.
He raised the gun to his own chin.
“Harold—”
The shot cut me off. Loud. Final. He fell backward, the gun skittering across tile, blood spreading where explanations stopped mattering.
The police ruled it a suicide. Residue on his hands. A handwritten confession on the table. For once, the pieces lined up.
Later, back in my office, the rain finally quit. The neon steadied into something readable. I poured the last of the coffee down the sink and watched it disappear.
I’d found the missing person.
I’d found the killer.
The rent this month is paid.
My name is still on the door.
The rain will inevitably return.
--ChatGPT 2026
No comments:
Post a Comment