If R1 one-shotted this then I revise my opinion somewhat. This doesn't give me a gut "this is awful" emotional reaction (although I don't think it's good - it's pretty cliche, and I found my eyes glossing over pretty quickly).
I was somewhat turned off of DeepSeek (the first few questions I gave it, it returned 100% hallucinated answers). But maybe I'll have to look into it more, thanks.
I regenerated a page a few times but yeah, I gave no other instructions besides that. Also I approached things page by page. That was 3 pages.
It's cliche but this was the prompt:
I want you to write the first book of a fantasy series. The novel will be over 450 pages long with 30 chapters. Each chapter should have between 15 to 18 pages.
Write the first page of the first chapter of this novel. Do not introduce the elements of the synopsis or worldbuilding and story details too quickly. Weave in the world, characters, and plot naturally. Pace it out properly. That means that several elements of the story may not come into light for several chapters.
I had a lot of success with it coming up with decidedly not cliche world building elements after I arranged a sort of interview style interrogation (It asked me questions about what I was looking for generally and generated world building elements along the way).
However, once you start giving a lot of information about the world etc in the prompt as well then the pacing gets weird.
I was somewhat turned off of DeepSeek (the first few questions I gave it, it returned 100% hallucinated answers). But maybe I'll have to look into it more, thanks.