Stepping away from Benchmarks and Code, what models are you using for Creating writing projects

All anyone ever talks in this sub is about x new model having x benchmark scores and how well it can code. Or some new tech to increase t/s for qwen.

So I wanted to go back to the roots of this sub and talk about how well local models can write.

I am not going to mention closed source models, this discussion is for open weight models only.

I don't have the best machine, so I am limited in what I can use locally.

So far I have mostly been running Gemma 31b finetunes. I have a finetuned system prompt for creative writing that I have refined over time. This is mostly for long form story writing and not RP. I use it to write Sci Fi and Fantasy novels and short stories and sometimes fanfiction.

I also have created a creative writing harness using Pi. It's mostly for self correcting and getting rid of AI slopisms.

Gemma 31B Mero-mero-v2 has so far been my favourite. It writes well, its does not feel lobotomized and its mostly uncensored. It's instruction following is okay, sometimes it makes mistakes and gets the character traits mixed up but my creative writing harness takes care of this.

Qwen 3.8 27b finetunes, Disappointing, I guess the base model is really fucking bad for creative writing purposes and even with finetuning you can only do so much. It does follow instructions quite well but its writing is just terrible.

Muse Glimmer 30b, this one is an interesting one, sometimes it will give really good prose but sometimes it will respond like a 2b model, the variance seems to be super high for some reason. Maybe something to do with chat template, I am not sure. Anyway I think even when bad it's still better than Qwen.

Gemma 4 26b4a, pretty good but gets beaten by its bigger bother Gemma 4 31b. I do use it when I want faster responses and to check for issues with my initial scene beat prompts.

Gemma 31B Artemis, drummer's finetune, eh, I was a bit disappointed with this. Seems like its more focused on RP rather than long form story writing. Also got refusals which I did not get with the mero finetune.

So that has been my experience writing with some local models. What are you guys using for local creative writing projects? Have you guys tried a creative writing harness?

I just want to mention quickly my writing process before I end this post, I write using an outline and scene beat prompts that are hand written. So far AI has been extremely disappointing in being truly creative and still requires a ton of hand holding to not write the most cliché ridden drivel.