3 ways to use AI to tell better stories

AI is an accelerant, not a replacement

Hey — it’s Nathan.

I’m shocked. Last week, The Writer’s Guild struck a deal to end the strike. And they even agreed to use AI (in many situations).

So today you’ll see how I use AI in both long-form writing and in short-form for Twitter and LinkedIn. The 3 main ideas are:

• Infinite Outline Generator
• Expert Editor
• On-Call Artist

If something piques your interest, shoot me any questions you’ve got.

Hope you enjoy.

You can set up a ChatGPT account and generate 100 newsletters, Twitter posts, or even book chapters in less than an hour. It’s like a flooding river — fast flowing, unpredictable, and dangerous.

Yet it’s horrible at making the most important decision. Picking what to write in the first place.

You’re still the most critical piece. Your taste, your discernment, your unique human ability to say “yes, that’s the story I’m trying to tell.”

In his essay The Cup of Coffee Theory of AI, Billy Oppenheimer explains it like this:

AI, completely detached from reality, will have a hard time making things that connect with people. It’s something of a hybrid between the Harvard grad student in the movie Good Will Hunting, who can regurgitate page 98 of Daniel Vickers’s Work in Essex County but can’t come up with any thoughts of his own, and Will Hunting, who can give you the skinny on Michelangelo — life’s work, political aspirations, his relationship with the pope, sexual orientation — but can’t tell you what it’s like to stand in the Sistine Chapel and look up at that beautiful ceiling.

With that in mind, here are 3 ways you can use AI to help you tell better stories:

1. Infinite Outline Generator

You don’t want AI coming up with story ideas from scratch. You want to give it guardrails, then let it do what it’s best at — generate a slew of concepts very quickly.

You can use this prompt with any story structure. Here, I use the Hero’s Journey:

Once it’s trained, you give the AI your sub genre and plot archetype. These, plus your chosen structure, act as the guardrails. It then gives you a potential plot, like this:

I then had it generate 5 more plots based on the same sub genre and archetype. You can view the entire chat here.

The goal isn’t to find the perfect plot. The goal is to generate enough plots that you’re almost guaranteed to have a few good ideas hidden in there.

For instance, I love this setting for a story: Dystopian Renaissance Venice, where music is controlled and monopolized by a tyrant known as “The Maestro.”

Most of the plot ideas are meh. Very average. But a few will stick out to you. That’s when your discernment, your taste, your artistic intuition takes over.

Then you can combine plot points from each of the plots you’ve generated until you find yourself with a story that pulls at you to tell it. But instead of the process taking you 3 months, it takes 90 minutes.

None of this is exclusive to writing fiction.

If you’re writing short form copy for a website or social media, you can use a similar prompt. Replace the Hero’s Journey with a copywriting framework like AIDA (Attention Interest Desire Action). Then use the AI to help you generate tons of copy ideas. Again, most will be meh but a few will be great.

This prompt comes from 90-Minute Novel Outline, where Nicolas Cole and I teach it paired with the 3 Act Structure.

2. Expert Editor

AI’s writing feels like the cheap version of C-3P0 is behind the keyboard. Says sorry a lot, bland word choice, and can’t stop talking in cliches.

But it’s a top-notch editor. Here’s how I edit almost every piece of writing with AI:

• Tone Adjustment: I have my go-to tone and style, but AI can quickly show me what others might sound like. You can prompt, “Re-write this in a more formal tone.” You can use any type of tone you’re interested in trying and it’ll do it for you while keeping the essense of your writing intact.
• Cliche Hunt: One of the AI’s strongest suits is spotting overused phrases. You can prompt, “Identify and suggest replacements for any cliches in this text.”
• Feedback Loop: Instead of accepting the AI’s suggestions immediately, ask “Why?” For example, “Why is this rephrasing better?” or “Why do you prefer this story pacing?” When you keep digging, often you come up with an even better alternative.

There’s a million ways to edit with AI, but those are 3 I keep coming back to.

3. On-Call Artist

Recently, I’ve used MidJourney to create images of fictional places in my books and different ideas for this newsletter.

Having an image makes creating vivid descriptions 10 times easier. If you wanna test MidJourney, I put together a free 5-minute crash course on MidJourney.

Here are 3 guidelines you can use to create useful images:

• Keep it Short: From a technical perspective, MJ gives each word in a prompt a weight. The total weight of a prompt always equals 0. So, to get better results, use shorter prompts where you’re hyper-specific with each word you use.
• Experiment with Style: MidJourney can adapt to any artistic style. For instance, “A Baroque-inspired castle under a starry night” verse “An Art Nouveau inspired castle under a starry night” gives you drastically different results.
• Tap into Mood and Emotion: Force yourself to tag each image with a mood. At the end of your prompt, tack on one more word. “Somber,” “Uplifting,” “Humorous.” Any of those will give your image a unique spin.

Remember, AI is an accelerant. Not a replacement.

Nathan

PS. These are my 3 go-to AI tools. No affiliation, I just use them daily:

• Claude — Better results for more creative work.
• ChatGPT — Copywriting, editing, workout ideas, travel ideas, etc. An everyday assistant.
• MidJourney — The best image generating AI tool on the market.

Each has a solid free tier and, if you go with paid, won’t cost more than $20 per month.

I hope you enjoyed that.

If you want to become a better storyteller, try my free newsletter with 80,800 others.

1 storytelling tip each Saturday morning: https://www.worldbuilders.ai/subscribe