AI-Assisted Screenwriting: Common Mistakes In Storytelling Prompts And How To Avoid Them

Effective prompts & strategies to use ChatGPT in story development

In the past, I’ve shown examples of how to use ChatGPT to create scripts and demonstrated basic prompt techniques as well as advanced strategies for using AI-powered text generation in the context of story development.

In this article, I want to highlight what I think are the most common mistakes we make when using ChatGPT for script writing and pre-production. I hope this list is useful for anyone looking for a collection of basic examples of how we can overcome things that prevent us from making our prompts more effective. We will cover:

• missing context
• querying conventions
• restrictions without alternatives
• missing output structure
• missing segmentation

Common mistakes

Here’s a list of common mistakes to avoid to make your prompts more effective. Note that these are not stand-alone, ready-to-use prompts, but rather parts of a toolbox from which you can build your individual strategy (depending on your project and working style).