ChatGPT failing to to meet word count over and over past 3-4 months

ChatGPT and Creative Writing Coach are both failing to meet the requested word count in my book chapters. I’ve paid the $20 subscription for 2 years, and about 3-4 months ago, this issue started. I then upgraded to the $200 Premium service (which I may now cancel), and it still failed. When I tell it that the word count is still only 1200 words, it repeatedly apologizes and again fails. What’s going on?

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I had the issue before few days. You probably ask to do it again the count and same mistake. I fix whit "You are not write there is not right you making mistake. Also do the counts in one chat only for that and ai will be inprove about counting. I hope that will help you

Hello, and thanks; however, I have used those prompts and questions. I have started a new chat, and nothing has helped with this ongoing issue for 4 months, so I think I may need to cancel my subscription and find a better AI for writing.

It happens most of the time at least for me (I use the free version) because it is hard for the LLM I suppose to comprehend the word count. Did you try selecting reasoning and then trying, It might resolve the issue but not sure.

ChatGPT cannot count words or produce word-count-limited text - #16 by joseicarobc is a great community post you can check out that discussed this same issue and how it can be resolved.

Hope this helps :slight_smile:

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Something has been severely broken on Chatgpt. I’m also long-time Plus subscriber waiting for a fix. Pro tier also being affected is quite unexpected news to me.

This should be an easy programming fix and big waste of time trying to write with it, I’ll be looking for another writing AI.

Mahalo & Blessings

First of all: there is no better writing tool.

Secondly blaming a hammer because you hit your fingers when trying to hit a nail doesn’t really hit the nail.

If you wanted some help on how to learn how to use the tool you could have asked politely.

In fact you can still do that.

What exactly is your problem?

Hi there, I would have agreed until four months ago. I started writing about 2 years ago, and Chat helped me write about 11 books, which was awesome. I bragged about it. While writing chapters, I’d suggest changes in tone, etc., including the desired word count, and all was well; it followed perfectly. Then, about 4 months ago, when asking to expand a chapter to 1500-2000 words (which I had done with the same prompts over and over successfully), it would send back a chapter and say, here’s your revised chapter now 2500. And it would be 1200 words. I would then say, “This is 1200 words, not 2500, correct this.” And it would reply with an apology, and then again and again send 1000-1200 words. The dialogue was both comical and frustrating, as communicated with this super-smart AI. I explained to it (trying ChatGPT and Creative Writing Coach) that I’d checked the word count in my Microsoft Word, and it agreed I was right. It said it would count the words manually but could not get beyond 1200 words. So, I upgraded from $20 monthly to $200, hoping that would fix the issue. But, no, still no chapter beyond 1200 words. Now I’m told to let it write the chapter in sections of 1200 words. So, this is like the Twilight Zone. I know it had previously written longer chapters, and this must be a programming issue. I’m a writer, not a coder, and I don’t have time to keep this going, so I will look for another writing AI.

Ask it to give you and outline of the next chapter of 10 paragraphs.

then prompt.

give me paragraphs 1…
then 2
then 3…

you can also feed it 2 and 3 and tell it to fill up the story inbetween

I got a tool for that. A novel writer. If you want to fully automate it…

OK, I’ll try that. And what is the other novel writer you mentioned? I’m now writing a non-fiction book, and so far, it has been great outlining the chapters, but the word count issue has been frustrating.

I have sent you a private message

By the way I just fiddled around with o1 and got it to do this:

etc…

So to write a book you just need to select what you want :wink:

I mean of course when using the API and a GraphRAG in the backend you can easily expand this to write an EPOS per day… haha

and it will auitomatically make an epub from it so no need to do any manual work except for handing it to the publisher (which can be automated as well)