Fleshing out Characters with ChatGPT
Write a Novel with me using ChatGPT — Part 4!
Now that I have a general outline settled down and a broad vision for my horror novel, I’m going to do what I always do at this stage of my writing.
I’m going to take the hazy shell of those characters and give them flesh, bones and a shard of glass they need to heal throughout the ordeal I’ll be dragging them through.
Fleshing out the Protagonist
Here is the little information we have so far for our protagonist:
- She is a young historian
- -Her name is Emily
- She has a secret or hidden link to the small town and the mill where the malevolent spirit rests in wait.
Not much, but plenty to set the imagination in motion! I don’t feel like I particularly need the input of ChatGPT to flesh her out, but since this is the whole purpose of this experiment, I will still include AI to produce a description of my protagonist.
Here’s the prompt I gave the bot and the results.
This isn’t a bad portrait for Emily, but it still doesn’t feel like she can cast a shadow just yet. I’m overall agreeing with her age and I like her description enough, as well as the way her brother calls her a “ghost hunter”.
Emily still need a job, a way for her to earn a living and finance all that exploring, though. I’m deciding to again ask ChatGPT to help me in this by giving me a few option of career for her that will mesh well with her lifestyle and her penchant for exploring abandonned places. After all, secret connection or not, the young woman has bills to pay and food to put on her table.
Here’s what happened when I asked ChatGPT to provide me with career choices:
As you can see, ChatGPT gave me viable options to chose from, potentially saving me hundreds of hours! Since I can feel the potential for tension filled scenes and hidden clues contained in having Emily work as an author, living in the modern world on content creation, blogging and self-publishing.
This also has the added bonus of being a world I am familiar with. I can already envision a shy, introverted girl with a razor sharp mind and a tenacious spirit that will surprise everyone around her with her refusal to pack and leave, abandonning the project at the first ghostly haunting.
To completely flesh her out, we need one last ingredient, one that will make her root for her and that will make us grind out teeth when she makes mistake.
She needs a shard of glass, right there in her curious, adventurous heart. I’ve decided to direct ChatGPT to create a shard of glass for Emily, one that will be tied to her lonely lifestyle (something I’ve just decided she is) and that will be linked directly to the theme of reconciling with historical truth.
As you can see, I asked the bot a very specific type of shard of glass, one that is linked to the theme of the story, which is to reconcile with historical guilt. I feel the shard of glass ChatGPT gave me is appropriate. Maybe not the most creative one I’ve ever seen, but it’s appropriate and I will have plenty of occasion to exploit the idea of guilt, hidden sins and reconciliation with the past in regards to Sarah’s death (this is the name I just gave her!)
When I gradually reveal the shard of glass at the heart of Emily’s heart, I will be including this event and its ramification into her life and the resolve of this old wound will be related to the resolve of the exterior conflict, which is the defeat of the malevolent spirit.
Asking DALL.E to give me a portrait of my protagonist
This part is one that is an almost nescessity for me. I used to spend hours online, trying to find a portrait, image, anything I could get my hands on, to represent my characters. I keep these images in a file on scrivener and I come to gaze at them from time to time when I think about my main character.
A face gives your character a shadow like nothing else and I wonder if DALL.E, ChatGPT’s image creator, can give me what I need to see, feel and care for Emily.
Here’s what I did and the result:
Conclusion
Honestly, I’m pretty blown away by the process so far. To be honest, I would have refined and made iterations if this wasn’t an experiment, but this is actually fun!
I now have a well fleshed out protagonist, a shard of glass and a portrait to gaze at from time to time. Granted, she’s a generic beauty with an unremarkable face, but it’s a good enough portrait for me to keep going. After all, I am a writer, not a visual artist, so all I need at this stage is a support for my imagination.
And notive something? DALL.E even included the locket!
Coming next in Part 5: the rest of the crew!
