AI-Assisted Story Writer (1099 Contract)

Crazy Maple Studio is a fast-growing company based in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, focusing on mobile gaming, reading, and streaming. We are proud to have a global team that drives our innovation and success across diverse markets.

Our flagship platform, ReelShort, is the #1 vertical streaming app in the U.S., with over 8 million DAU, delivering bite-sized episodic content that keeps viewers hooked. Other standout products include Chapters, where users shape immersive stories across drama, fantasy, and romance, and My Fiction, a platform for consuming and creating serialized romance.

We’re proud to be recognized as one of the Global Most Loved Workplaces 2025, reflecting our commitment to innovation, creativity, and an employee-first culture.

Position Overview:

As an AI-Assisted Story Writer, you will create short, high-hook, pay-per-chapter stories for mobile readers, working hand in hand with external AI and our in-house AI story system. Our system guides every story through a proven pipeline; your job is to steer that process with strong editorial judgment, push every story past "good enough," and turn out titles that readers pay to finish.

This is an ROI-driven role. Every story you deliver goes into live testing, and its results (ad performance, reader conversion past the paywall, and return on ad spend) are the main measure of your success. 

The ideal candidate is a commercial storyteller first: someone who instinctively understands hooks, cliffhangers, revenge payoffs, romance tension, and why a reader taps "unlock" on the next chapter. You are comfortable using AI as a creative partner, you know when to trust it and when to override it, and you are energized rather than intimidated by data.

Key Responsibilities:

• Use AI story system to write complete short stories of roughly 20,000 words, from title and logline through final chapter, delivered on schedule.
• Develop stories from a wide range of source material, including one-line ideas, trending topics, web novels, user-generated content, and existing hit stories.
• Approve story direction at each checkpoint: genre track, core reader expectation, paywall placement, and chapter-by-chapter emotional pacing.
• Edit and polish AI drafts so the final prose is vivid, emotionally specific, consistent in voice, and free of generic or repetitive AI patterns.
• Write high-impact titles, loglines, opening hooks, and paywall moments designed to drive ad clicks and reader conversion.
• Review testing results for every story you deliver, utilize retest reports to diagnose what underperformed, and revise promising stories that fall short of targets.
• Track your own story performance and apply what you learn to each new title.
• Stay current on trending tropes, hit stories, and reader tastes across short fiction, web novels, and short-form video drama, and bring new story ideas to the team.

How Success Is Measured:

• Test pass rate: the share of your stories that meet or beat performance benchmarks in live testing.
• Return on ad spend (ROAS): how efficiently your stories turn marketing spend into reader revenue.
• Reader conversion: how well your opening and paywall turn readers into paying readers.
• Output and turnaround: consistently delivering finished, test-ready stories on schedule.
• Revision impact: how much your rewrites improve the results of underperforming stories.

Requirements

• Minimum of 2 years of writing experience in commercial fiction, such as serialized fiction, web novels, Wattpad, Kindle Vella, romance publishing, short drama scripts, or a similar medium.
• A portfolio that shows strong commercial instincts: fast-paced plotting, emotional payoffs, and hooks that keep readers turning pages.
• Strong command of romance, revenge, family drama, and suspense, including popular tropes and what readers expect from them.
• Hands-on experience using AI writing tools (ChatGPT, Claude, or similar) in a real writing workflow. 
• Excellent editing skills and the judgment to spot and fix flat, clichéd, or illogical AI output.
• Comfort with a results-driven environment where performance data shapes priorities and compensation.
• Ability to read and act on basic performance metrics (click-through rate, conversion, ROAS).
• Comfortable writing young adult and adult romance and drama, which may include sensitive and triggering content.
• Native or near-native English writing ability for English-speaking Western readers.
• Strong attention to detail, self-direction, and the ability to manage multiple stories at once under deadline.
• Flexibility to work across different time zones and communicate clearly in a remote team.
• Eagerness to learn and thrive in a fast-paced startup environment.

Nice to Have:

• Experience writing for pay-per-chapter apps or short-form video drama platforms.
• A track record of stories or titles with measurable commercial results (reads, rankings, sales, or conversion).
• Experience writing ad copy, hooks, or marketing content for fiction.
• Bachelor's degree in Creative Writing, English, Journalism, Film, or a related field.

Benefits

Compensation: $3,000. This is an independent contractor (1099) position with an initial one-month term.

Crazy Maple Studio, Inc. provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws.