Today we're going to be talking about the role of AI in writing and content creation. Specifically about writing both books and content that you create. Jamie, why don't you give us some insight into how I'd love to see the timeline like? How did you start with AI, when you saw what its capabilities were?
When I started with AI it was more for graphics, it was more for content creation, not for writing books. It was more for tag lines and ad copy and keywords and things like that.
And how did you find that it worked? You're a 7-figure author. You are very good at marketing books. How did you find that ChatGPT compared to the work that you did pre-AI?
Biggest difference is time. Where before it would take me hours to write lines or add copy, or even coming up with the keywords. And since AI, I can now do that, and in minutes.
And do you find that it stays true to your marketing pitch, or the tone that you're trying to create from your marketing copy?
Absolutely. And as time has progressed since the start of me using AI to now, AI has gotten better. So when I first started using AI it wasn't quite my tone, so I would still have to take whatever it created and then change it up. But now AI is able to match my tone and what I’m looking for.
Right? And I think that's really an interesting comment, because AI has changed. You know, we did our first course in March of 2023. And that was AI4 Authors. We are currently updating that course to include the new capabilities of AI, not just in the tools, but in the quality of the output in terms. So, we know there's a big discussion about AI used in creativity. In terms of actually writing the prose. There are lawsuits. There are debates. There are cancel clubs. There's a whole lot going on around that.
So, how did you investigate the capabilities of writing with AI? And I mean, asking ChatGPT to write a book. How did you first approach that?
When I first started working with AI to write a book, it was simple tasks, like character names or different aspects of world building research. That type of information is what I used AI for. Now I use AI for really building out my outlines. Creating complex world scenarios for my books. So now it has more complex capabilities that you can use to add to your outlines, to your world building, and to your character development. That's where I use AI mostly.
So do you use it to write prose?
I do not use it to write my actual words in my books. I mean, that's why I'm an author. I like to write. But I do use it to help me build out my outlines, fill in gaps. really dive into my characters, get to know them better. and research, different aspects of the world. I'm trying to create.
And what are your primary go to tools?
I use ChatGPT a lot. That is actually the first tool that I'll go to. I also use Canva a lot. Canva has a lot of cool tools. With AI for graphic design, especially with graphics, because I really am a visual person. I like to see my character. See what they look like in different aspects, and you can put that right into Canva now and it will create the characters for you. So you have a visual, and readers love seeing those, also.
Yeah, I think that's interesting. Because I did a video on our YouTube channel today about mood boards, and what they're for, and how they work, and why every author should start their book with a mood board. And I don't mean start the actual book, I mean, start the ideation of your book. Like you, I'm a very visual person. and there are a lot of capabilities within AI to inspire you visually. You don't have to use it for your cover. You don't have to use it for marketing, but you can use it to help you visualize your characters better, and drive that imagery that you're going to be writing about later.
And that is definitely one of my favorite components of AI.
Yeah, I love it, too. How do you see AI fitting into your publishing workflow with where AI stands today? We know it's changing on a day by day basis. But where does it fit into your workflow? In a really simple way from beginning to end? You have a book idea…
I have a book idea. I will usually drop that idea into ChatGPT. And I will start building my characters. I always start with my characters. They usually tell me the story. I'll start throwing in things like it's a dragon shifter who lost their parents and they find themselves dropped into a Fae world or something like that. And then I build from there, and I just keep dropping random information that comes to mind. From there I build my characters.
That's great writing advice right there, you know, because a lot of people will start with plot. And it's really about how the character reacts to their parents Passing away? What action do they take? And what's their psyche? Back in the day we used to have these complicated forms of character description and now what I do is, take my character description cheat sheet and I drop it into ChatGPT, and tell it in general to create my werewolf character. I've done this in front of live audiences before, and then it will fill in all the blanks. Then I get to pick and choose what is their greatest hope? What is their greatest fear? What is the character’s true self? And it'll give me ideas. And I think that's a really important point to make, because ChatGPT is not writing your book. It's giving you ideas that you can then pick and choose, or modify, or change, to help flesh out the story that you want to write.
Absolutely. And this kind of goes back to one of our previous podcasts where we talked about creating your own GPT where you can actually drop those forms right into your own GPT, so it's saved there. So when you go to create your characters in the future it already has all that information there waiting for you about what you need for your character development. How it would react, its emotions and things like that. Whatever you have on your old school description form, you can drop that right in there and then your GPT already has all that information.
For those of you who don't know, Jamie and I are creating a case study. It's about my Amazon account. I primarily sell my books through Amazon and we’ve started the case study that is also on our Youtube channel. It's extremely personal. I tell you a lot about my life. I tell you a lot about my publishing career, and I show you my real live month by month KDP income, so you can see where and why it dropped down, and where and why it rose up. And then we set goals for later in the year.
When I first discovered AI, I was working as a marketing director, and I was enchanted and charmed with it, and I immediately wanted to see. How can it write a book?
In order to write a book with Chat GPT, it requires a lot of prompting and a lot of different tools. There are tools like Sudowrite, ProWriting Aid, Novelcrafter AI, etc. And there are more tools coming out on the market as we speak. I started getting into tools like Marlowe, which is done by Author AI, and having it analyze books that I've already written. It was incredibly insightful.
I wrote my first book using Chat GPT in March of 2023. Since then I have radically changed the way I use AI for writing books, because for me, I do not like writing books with AI.
And here's what I tell people, “We're all creatives. We all love to write books and tell stories the way we want to tell them, and our brains all work in different ways. So as I've watched different authors using AI to create their books, I applaud that. That's the way their brain works. But what was happening for me is, it became a lot of taking this bit from here and that bit from there and putting it together. And I had to think technically. As a technical marketer. I'm used to thinking a lot about very intense technical solutions to world problems. And it's not the part of my brain that I tap into when I'm telling a story.
For me, telling a story has always been a flow. I dictate my novels. I close my eyes and visualize in my head what the characters are doing, what's driving them, what their goal is and what they're trying to achieve.
So, what I found when I was writing books with AI, and and I'm gonna tell you my entire process here in a minute. But when I was actually writing the books with AI, I wasn't getting the same feeling. It wasn't uplifting my spirits. It wasn't making me feel good. It wasn't feeding my creative soul.
I've been writing stories since I was 8 years old. I started writing, producing and directing plays in third grade and I kept doing that all the way to the Sydney Opera House in Australia and writing operas. When I die, on my tombstone I want it to say “author.” I don't want it to say technical expert even though I have those capabilities. That is something I do. It is not the soul of who I am. I'm a storyteller, and I've been telling stories verbally and on paper and on stage for more than 4 decades. So, when it came to building these novels out with AI, and it is possible. And I work with a lot of solution providers who are helping authors to create their stories. But, it's not my choice.
I want to tell you where and how I use AI specifically in writing and content creation. Jamie has explained clearly how it works for marketing, for content creation and for coming up with sales copy. As a marketer.
I do a whole bunch of market research and that is my focus in terms of figuring out what is working in a genre and what is not working in a genre, and what the readers are actually looking for. There are a lot of different books you can buy that discuss tropes and writing to market. And you can also use Chat GPT to start doing this analysis.
Now, where I sit in my publishing career, I want to really understand my audience. Anybody who runs a successful business of any kind, whether it is aerospace and defense, whether it is a doctor's office, whether it is a school. You have to understand who your audience is, who your customer is. With this philosophy, you're really fulfilling a need the audience has. And so what's important about that is, there are decades of research studies about the psychological impulses to buy. And these psychological impulses are consistent. They are across the board. They're global. And they really rely on how the human psyche works. The good news for those of you like me who do not have a degree in psychology, we can use Chat GPT to start asking those questions to start building out a reader profile. Once you have your reader profile, and it understands that, you can start to ask it the important questions. What would compel this person to buy my book? What type of book is this reader looking for? What are some themes this reader is looking for? What types of tropes is this reader looking for? So all of a sudden, we're not reliant on long-term research.
I highly recommend that you create polls for your readers in your newsletters and on your social media platforms to gain real data from your real readers, and at the same time start building a foundation for your brand. You can start to get that information from a tool as simple such as ChatGPT, and I simply mean it is easier to use than a lot of the new tools coming out.
So, when it comes to content creation, I start with this step, the reader profile and questioning what should be in my book. I then do all of the research like Jamie does. And I used to write these 100 page world building documents that I used to write over two weeks. They include 3 or 4 pages of the history and all of the character descriptions. I would go on the Internet and find a picture of somebody I thought looked like my character. I would put that in the world building document. I would create species, etc.
Today I do all of that with Chat GPT. I build my book Bible before I write the book. The world building document is very, very important, because, as I create it I also find areas in the book that I haven't previously looked into or that might spark a new area of interest that I think should go in the book.
After those 2 steps, I start to build out the world deeply. The world building is very complex. If you're writing fantasy, you're creating multiple houses. You're creating old grudges. You're creating goals per house. You show where they start at the beginning of the book and where they're going to be at the end of the book. These aspects don't take a ton of time. I used to do a world building document in 2 weeks. It now takes me approximately two hours to get the first 100 pages. Then I go in and start modifying sections and working with it and making sure that it is in line with the story I want to tell. I've got it down from two weeks to about five hours and anyone knows that, especially as as an author, saving time really helps you to go back to focusing on what you love, which is the creative writing.
The next thing I did and this was early on is I started looking at the way Chat Gpt fills out plots. What it knows about plots. Does it know Romancing the Beat? Does it know Save the Cat? Does it know three act structure? And the truth is, it knows all those things. But even today, after 15 months. I don't think it's the best at creating the plots the way I like them. There's a great book called the 21 Day Author, and it shows you how to write a book in 21 days, and this book has been around for well over a decade. It helps you understand the spine of the book. This is also how films are written. So ChatGPT is pretty good at giving you the spine, which are main turning points that drive the story forward. I wouldn't rely on Chat GPT to write your plot because it's not the best tool, and I wouldn’t rely on a tool completely, because I do feel it's an author's job to understand the nuances of storytelling and driving the story forward through the character.
What I do use Chat GPT for is developing subplots and series storylines. When I say series storylines, I mean how does the plot carry through the entire series? I don't mean the main plot, because that's character driven from your key character. But I do ask ChatGPT things like: What is a good mirror subplot to this main storyline that I'm telling? Then it'll give me 5 or 10 ideas as many as I ask for. I'll pick one or two, and then I will ask: In this trilogy how will this subplot play out? Because the subplot can be in only the first book and it can get resolved, or it could be in the first 2 books, or it could be across all 3 books.
And to make a story and a novel dynamic. You want to include subplots that are interesting to your readers, and that underscore your main storyline, which is the character arc of your main character or characters. So, I found it very helpful to ideate on these subplots and on how those subplots would carry out across a series of books. It's not telling me what to write. It's giving me ideas of what I could include, and then I pick and choose.
If anyone's been following us for any period of time. You know that I've been using OneNote to take all of this data and categorize it in a filing system so I can go back and change it around or update it, or use bits and pieces in my outline.
At this stage, I take all of these bits and pieces, and I actually write my own outline, and I do it in a cut and paste and edit mode, which means I'm cutting sections that Chat GPT has suggested into the place in my spine I want it to go, and then I am editing it. I may want to make a character a little different. Maybe they say the mother dies and I decide, no, I really want the dad to die because I want her to have dad issues.
So these are things that I add in. And and I take it out of AI because I like to do that. And I feel that the way I tell stories is unique to me, and it's important. I don't mean to sound like someone who is perpetually unique, because I understand there are 23 different types of storyline and so we're all fitting into that somehow. But I do like the creative process of developing my own outlines.
Then I flesh the outlines out a bit so each chapter has about a single page of content that I have dictated into my phone, and then I print it out. And there's a little process there from phone to printing out. But I print it out because I like to be able to read it. And then, when I go to to write the book, I read what I wrote. Then I close my eyes, and I dictate the story I want to tell into my phone again. When it’s done, I take it out and move it into Scrivener to tell the story, to edit the story, to start looking at what parts of it are working. Where is it weak? Where is it stronger? And it's at that point that I bring AI back into my writing process to do analysis which it isn't always right, but it gives you another point of view. Is it consistent across the entire novel? I do a Marlowe review of it. I use ProWriting Aid to do spell checks, and I use a number of tools to make sure the book is the best that I can get it without having it go outside of my sphere. So, it stays on my computer.
At this stage I print the book out and I either proofread it or I read it out loud. Reading out loud is a really useful technique, because it helps you to feel the book. Where am I bored? Where am I excited? Where am I really wondering what happens on the next page? And if you write a lot of books, you know, you might get to a stage where you don't remember what you wrote in Chapter One. And sometimes it's really fun to go back and rediscover that.
That, in a nutshell, is my personal writing process, and where and how I use AI.
You know, there's a lot of AI pushback from the creative world, and I get that because I don't want to push a button and have a book come out that's like putting gas in my car. I enjoy driving my car on road trips, I don't enjoy putting gas in the car or getting the engine to work. Those are not the things that I'm interested in in terms of my vehicle, and it's the same with writing. I want to tell the story. It fills my soul, it makes me happy, and it helps me fulfill my purpose in life.
However, there are ways it supports my writing.
So, what I want to end this podcast with is don't throw the baby out with the bath water. If you don't want to write your books with AI. You don't have to. You don't have to publish 10 books a year if you build your brand, if you understand your market, and if you write a quality book.
But you can use AI and still write your book the way you've always written it, whether you're a typer, whether you're a dictator, whether you're a pen and pencil writer. None of that is going away. You can build a career writing 2 or 3 books a year. Many people have careers where they write one book a year. However, when you're starting out it's good to build a backlist and do a few more books, but I don't want talented authors to lose the opportunities they have with AI to work as a tool to help create your stories better while not actually writing your book.
So I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'd love to hear how you use AI in your creative process. Where is it important to you? Where is it not important to you? And I really want to encourage everyone who is listening to this who's not really into AI to take another look at the places in your publishing process and in your business, where you can plug in AI to save time, increase creativity, and still maintain your authenticity of your voice and your writing.
So thanks so much for joining us today. We're excited to see you next week.
