First AI Book
I wrote a book’s first draft with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and it was a very interesting experience. This week I’m going to share some of the journey with you.
First off, I had an idea for a book and wanted to write a fun book that was just kids having adventures. I’ve been rewatching/re-listening to the R.L. Stine Masterclass on Middle Grade writing. With this in mind, I wanted to write a Middle Grade adventure story and write it with an AI co-writer. So I did.
Where do you start?
With an idea of course. Where do ideas come from? The idea store, of course! :) In this particular case, the idea came from thinking about hiking as a kid. The idea was what if you went up the mountain as one person and came back as someone else. And, what if the mountain was the cause of a town’s bad luck?
A key for Middle Grade, according to R.L. Stine was to have fun kids that were interesting. So, I thought about the kids, what’s motivating them and what the problem is. Here’s the concept. This was 100% written by me:
Eric is a shy 13-year-old boy who wants to ask Anna out to the school dance but is afraid of rejection.
This story takes place in a town called Junction Hollow that is mostly abandoned.
Asking Anna to the dance is important because the school year is about to end and she's moving away. He thinks if he asks her to stay she will and regrets not asking his mom to stay when she abandoned his family.
He will gain the confidence to ask Anna by climbing the haunted Mirror Mountain. His older brother told him that legend has it that wishes can be granted at the top of Mirror Mountain.
Notice the structure here: WHO, CONFLICT, WHERE, WHY, HOW. This is the prompt to tell AI, here’s the content I want to write about.
I had a seed of an idea. Then I started asking my AI co-writer for some information.
Structure for Mortals (or AI…which I guess isn’t quite mortal)
I wanted to use a simple structure for the story. I’m a structure nerd with my presentations for work so I used the same structure which, is perfect to use when collaborating with AI.
The structure I used: The Hero’s Journey.
What does that mean for AI? It means that I can ask questions like:
Q: Introduce {character} homeland
A: Eric's homeland is a small town called Junction Hollow. It is mostly abandoned and the only people who live there are the ones who can't find a better place to live. Eric loves his home, but he also knows that it's not perfect.
One of the things that Eric doesn't like about Junction Hollow is that there is nothing to do. There are no shops, no restaurants, and no movie theaters. The only thing to do is explore the town or go on adventures. And that's why Eric has always loved Mirror Mountain.
Using a structure like Hero’s Journey or Save the Cat or Story Genius allows me to turn brainstorming into a Q&A session with AI. These structures easily break down to a series of questions that you ask yourself, your characters, your story to determine what happens.
Example: Hero’s Journey talks about “Call to Adventure” so the question is “What is the Call to Adventure”. Save the Cat talks about the Debate which is a reaction to the catalyst, the question for AI is “How does {character} react to {catalyst}”.
During this Q&A process is where I started discovering Junction Hollow has some major issues. What kind of town doesn’t have shops or movie theaters? The kind of town decimated by the main employer closing. This connected me to my own roots where there was a major factory in town that was a major employer. What if that employer closed and that was driving every out of town to find new jobs?
Notice how ideas are coming from the AI’s answers. Let’s see what else we learn about Eric.
Q: Who is {character} really?
A: Eric is shy ever since his mom left. When he was younger, Eric loved to play with the other kids in town. He would always try to keep up with his older brother and sister. But ever since his mom left, Eric has been different. He's more withdrawn and he doesn't like to talk to people as much. The only person that he feels really close to is his best friend Zach.
Eric feels like his mom would have stayed if he told her how he felt about her. Now, with Anna leaving, he sees a chance to avoid the same mistake he made that led to his mom leaving.
Oh, interesting AI…Eric has an absent mother and siblings. Hmmm…what can I do with that? In the story I dropped Zach and the sister but kept the brother (named Nico) and the absent mother theme.
Q & A kept going as we went through the various stages of the Hero’s Journey. A key thing is to remember, AI is just a collaborator. I throw away as much as I keep and sometimes what comes out is total trash. As an example:
Eric decided he hated Junction Hollow and ran away from be responsibility of making dinner.
Or…
Nico didn’t know who what when or how Nico knew then.
Well…that’s interesting but not going to make it out of initial drafting. But sometimes you get things like the following:
"I said," Eric clenches his fist. "leave him alone."
The hallway cleared as Eric stepped away from his locker. His black hair blew is an air conditioner breeze. His flannel shirt and jeans were loose fitting with worn out knees and elbows from standing up to bullies in Junction Hollow Middle School. Eric always wanted to talk bullies down but sometimes it comes down to fists and Eric felt that's where Jackson was going to take this.
That came from the prompt, “write an introduction to the story that has action in it”. There were other previous inputs that described the story, the characters and other things so the AI had to understand more than my “write an intro…” command. But, the content came out pretty good. I kept this and it is the very first thing people read in Chapter 1.
Beyond Commands : Chapters with AI
A critical learning was that I needed to consistently update my “brief”. Remember, originally I set the brief to Eric is a shy 13-year old boy… For each chapter, I needed to refresh the brief. I’d write an outline of the chapter, hitting a three-act structure.
Eric (or main character of the chapter) has a problem
Eric works through the problem
Eric resolves the problem creating a new problem
This made working with the AI co-writer really easy. At first I wrote one brief for the whole book. That really didn’t work and was clear once I got going. Just like I wouldn’t just tell a ghostwriter a single brief (that is less than 600 characters :) ) and expect them to envision the whole story, I needed to provide sign posts along the way.
As the story moved on, the sign posts became more and more precise. I found the more clear I could write the prompt the better results I got from the AI. This exercise also forced me to get better at writing prompts. which is the core to other writing skills like blurb writing (a short summary of what’s happening with engaging text).
When to stop using AI
I didn’t write the whole story with AI. In fact, I stopped 3 chapters before the end of the book (the book is currently 29 chapters). Why? Because I needed focus at closing the character and story arcs. That’s not what AI is great at. It is great at producing good content, fast. But, it doesn’t create “story”. It creates words in context. Maybe I’m wrong but I think story is more than words in context. There is some magic that isn’t easily captured.
AI can get you started, it can get you unblocked, but can it get you finished? I’m not sure about that last one. I’m leaning towards no.
But, is this writing?
Am I mechanically writing this story? Sometimes. There were large swaths of the story where AI took a nap and I just rolled. There were also areas where I hit the COMPOSE function and let the AI system rip for pages at a time.
I think this is a different kind of skill. It isn’t just writing. It is more like conducting. Yes, I am a creative and yes often I pick up the instruments but like a conductor I don’t just play an instrument, I play the orchestra. I work with the AI system and MS Word and my creative brain and my dictation tools to bring a story to life.
Is it writing? Is it something else? I don’t know yet.
Ethics of AI
This book will be released under a specific pen name for me and co-authored by a persona I’m going to build for the AI system. Readers will know AI had a hand in this story and I plan to use that as a marketing aspect too. I’m thinking a lot of middle school kids would want to read a book written by an AI system. But, we’ll see.
Adhering to the IEEE 7000 series of Ethically Aligned Design standards for Autonomous and Artificial Intelligence systems all AI content is stated to be co-created by AI. If you don’t see the note, then AI’s role was not in a co-creation role. With that said, any book where AI is involved, I’ll be listing that it was and how it was. I’m not sure where to put this in the book but figure it will be sprinkled about in the Forward, thanking the AI company in the Acknowledgements and noted on the copyright page.
Next time, I’ll post how I’m using AI for editing. We’ll talk about neat features like “rewrite this for X grade level” and “rephrase” and all that good stuff. Stay tuned. In the mean time…anyone who signs up for my newsletter this week will get Chapter 1 for this book: The Trial of Mirror Mountain. It is unedited and raw intentionally because I think you might be interested to see what came out of the AI system. And, I’m told maybe I should share something more. So, as part of the email with Chapter 1, I’ll also share a video on using AI image generation for creative inspiration.
I’ll show you how I made this image and how I go about using this image to create a story. AI can help you imagine things you haven’t imagined before and better, it makes your imagination into a photograph frozen and saved for you to dive into at anytime.
By the Numbers
Okay, so was it faster?
I have a day job and often night job :) It’s the same job but can often have late nights and weekend work. So, word zero to word 35,912 took 8 days. Two of those days I was in a conference all day and night and no writing happened because 14 hours of Zoom will fry your creative brain.
I didn’t keep track of the number of hours but some estimation here, I probably worked on average 1.5 hours a night over 5 of those days. The other 3 were weekend days and I do a lot of writing on those days comparatively, 4-ish hours each on average. I’m estimating about ~20 hours of work. Might have been a bit more but not much more.
Normally, it takes me a bit longer than 20 hours to get to 35k words. A lot longer.
But speed isn’t the value of the AI co-writer. The value was in the very unexpected directions AI took the story. I loved the surprises and challenges it posed to me. There were scenes I didn’t think about at all that really threw me through a creative loop. In the end, I think those loops led to a greater product than my original ideas.
The Drain
For Poetry Friday this week, I’m sticking to the middle grade adventure fun. This story is inspired by a place near the house I grew up in. A place I was told not to go…but we know how that turns out.
The Drain
I knew it was good
when I was told
not to go there.
Under the road
between my house
and the school was
the drain.
Big enough to fit through.
That’s what we thought
but Seth got stuck
trying to climb in.
Trying to show
he wasn’t afraid
of the noises in
the drain.
His belly can’t fit through.
He panics.
I pull.
He doesn’t budge.
But we don’t scream
or shout for help
because then
we couldn’t hear
the growling
snarling thing
pacing under his
dangling legs
in the drain.
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Special thanks to Jama this week for hosting Poetry Friday. Go check out her blog. It always makes me hungry to see her posts. They are gorgeous and delicious so grab a snack before you visit. Also, cover photo by Brixiv: https://www.pexels.com/photo/city-road-night-street-6240578/.
See you next week. Remember, avoid drains…