Writing a story can be straightforward. If you’ve tried before though chances are that hasn’t been your experience. It can be a struggle trying to get that idea out from your head and onto the page.
Some writers address this by outlining. They chart all the story beats and the the decisions that their characters make ahead of time before they write their first draft. For others that approach quickly becomes a chore. With a rigid outline to follow, it sucks out the spontaneity and the joy of discovery and possibility. Not structuring an outline though can lead to everything still feeling murky and ill-defined. It’s in cases like these where Generative AI like ChatGPT can be useful to turn to.
Note: If this really resonates with you, there’s a good chance that you’re a pantser.
Why Use ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a Language Learning Model that can quickly generate ideas. Yes, it’s just a super advanced auto-complete in a lot of ways, but it is capable of producing novel responses from a well constructed prompt. This means that ChatGPT has the potential to even offer perspectives and ideas for consideration outside of your usual ideas, although it will take a bit of setup to get it there. ChatGPT is also a tool that is incredibly malleable. It all depends on how you use it to suit your purposes.
Writers can then get a lot of value out of this. Chances are, since you’re already a creative who wants to create with words, these following steps will come easily to you. A final note before we start however is that ChatGPT may be generating novel content, but it will be you who makes the final call. This method does not compromise your creativity, and as you will find out, these steps are also open to flexibility and modification. At the end of the day, do what’s most effective for yourself!
How to Start Writing Your Story with ChatGPT:
There’s always a moment when a writer wants to actually write about something. One question. What was the thought that first captured you? The idea that drives you to want to write this story? We start with that inception point.
Step 1: Write Out Your Initial Prompt
It begins with some strong vision. Oftentimes this vision is incomplete in some way and that’s where you get stuck. It could be a scene, a character, a specific moment, a feeling, statement, a line of inquiry.
– You will want to write that vision out. It can be a long sentence or a paragraph in length.
– After that, ask ChatGPT to reframe your vision back to you in a particular voice. Be sure to properly frame the request.
– Also include a section in your prompt to ask for ideas. You will want to leverage ChatGPT’s strengths in generating concepts.
Effectively working with ChatGPT requires a good idea of what you want going in. This doesn’t mean that you have to have a completed outline however (some of us are trying to avoid doing just that). In our case, we are interested in defining our concept and then exploring possibilities. What we exactly want isn’t settled yet, we’re still coming up with it!
In short, make sure you are intentional when it comes to your prompts:
In this example, the vision presented in the prompt is a dynamic that I want to be the focal point of the story. I noted that it leans philosophical, so I integrated that into my prompt. Everything else is ambiguous so far (and that’s fine).
Step 2: Refine Your Initial Prompt
There’s a good chance that the output produced will not be quite on the mark. You will need to identify where the AI went awry, if it misinterpreted something or emphasized an element you didn’t expect. You can edit the prompt. A handy feature is that ChatGPT will save the previous response and let you click back to it so don’t worry about losing any information.
The pencil allows you to edit your prompt as it is in the chat. ChatGPT will automatically generate a new response without replacing the old one.
You can click through different iterations of your prompts. Note, ChatGPT sometimes doesn’t save these so be sure to copy them somewhere else if you want to preserve them.
This is where your taste comes in. Be picky, be discerning! Note what doesn’t appeal to you from the responses that it generates. Note what resonates.
Continue with another round of tweaking your initial prompt if it feels productive. At some point however, ChatGPT will continue generating responses that sound the same and that’s when you will have exhausted this stage in the process.
Step 3: Branch Out Into Additional Prompts
At this point you can ask specific questions if there are any threads you want to follow and are still stuck on. ChatGPT keeps memory of the previous prompts and responses which lets you ask questions assuming that context in the chat. You can directly reference previous prompts as well.
In the previous step, you already noted what you want and what you don’t. I would recommend starting there. The possibilities here are curbed to be specific to what you want.
Step 4: Start Writing!
In prompting through with ChatGPT, you have not only clarified what you wanted to the LLM but also hopefully to yourself as well, which is a vital part of the writing process. Even if the chatbot didn’t generate anything useful to you, consider how going through these steps may have facilitated further development of your ideas and how it organized your thoughts. The best part is that you have notes on your pre-writing process now! It’s all recorded in your chat log for easy reference at any time.
From here you are free to write whatever way that you would like. It’s your vision after all, run with it as you will.
I would love to hear about your experience in the comments. Did this approach work? Are there ways that you have/would adapt it for yourself?