Transcripts
1. Introduction: Are you a writer who struggles with getting words on the page? Then you might find
writing exercises and games to be helpful to get you through that
writer's block. If you've ever taken a course on writer's craft and you might
remember doing little games, Exercises, and activities
to help you get out of your comfort zone and into
a more creative headspace. We can actually use AI
to mimic that kind of writer's craft workshop by
prompting it to work with us. In this class, I'm
gonna teach you a ton of different prompts
that you can use with any AI writing tool to
play these sorts of Writing Games is activities should help you get your
creative brain working. It will help you develop your actual technical writing skills. And it'll help you get words
on the page that might actually inspire a
longer piece of writing. Now you are welcome to use any AI writing tool that you'd
like or that you prefer. I'm going to be using Chat
Gpt for our examples, but using these prompts
on different platforms could get you different
interesting results. So feel free to use
whatever you like. My name is Rebecca, I'm gonna be instructor for this class. I am a writer, a
creative entrepreneur, and I haven't academic
background in digital humanities and
creative machine learning. If you're feeling ready
to get started with AI and have some Creative fund, then let's head into
the course together.
2. Getting Started Playing with AI: Some writers have a lot of
apprehensions about AI tools, including fears of
being replaced by them. If you're taking this course, then you probably aren't
one of those people, but just in case those
thoughts do linger, let's try it a little bit about
it before we get started. There are very few industries that haven't been touched by and change by technology
over the few past decades. And Writing is one that
certainly has changed. We went from typewriters
to computers, integrated spell check
and proofreading tools. Self-publishing online
revolutionized our ability to earn an income from Writing. And then AI back to editing tools like Grammarly
and pro Writing aid. Alright, even better. These AI writing tools
that exist today are just a next step in a logical
pathway of development. But it isn't a magic wand. Much like how typing
on a computer instead of writing a
novel by hand on paper, hasn't destroyed the
integrity of writing. It's just saved us from animals hand cramps and
improved our efficiency. There is no tool out there
that you can tell to write me a great novel and send
it on its way to do that. Human creativity,
intention, planning, and action is all still a necessity to make
anything worth reading. Now, in this course, we aren't worrying
about trying to write a novel or even a
whole short story. We're simply using
these tools to make AI challenges creatively, much like a writing partner or writer's craft teacher would. The way this course is going
to work is that I will present you with the
prompt that we are going to use to start each game, and then I'll demonstrate
using it in real time with my AI tool of choice to see an example of
what it might give you. Right now my preference
is using Chat Gpt. I do subscribe to
the upgraded version because I use it
for a lot of tasks, particularly in my
marketing activities. But I do also really like
the free version and I may actually be taking
a break and just using the free version
for a little while. So you can use the
free version or any other tool that you
like for this class. All of these tools are
going to continue to be more sophisticated and
use larger datasets. So if you're viewing
this course in the future from when
I'm recording it, there could be new or
different AI tools that are useful and popular. You should be able to use
all of our Prompts no matter what kind of tool you're
using at the present. With all of that in mind, let's head into the first lesson and try out our first
Writing challenge with AI
3. Simple Writing Prompts: The first easy challenge
that we're going to be doing is asking the AI to give
us some writing prompts. As I've mentioned, I'm using
chat GBT for this project, but you can use any
AI tool you like. And I have here the
browser open for IGBT. And you can see that there
are version three point 5.4. Now whenever you're
taking this class, this could be updated, this could be different or
can be the same right now, 3.5 is f3 and f4 is paid. And I do have access
to both right now, but I'm just going to show you this particular
exercise in both, just to show you that you
can get quality results in either you're just gonna get
different kinds of results. So if you're using
the free version or any free AI tool that can
still work totally fine. I'm just going to start
over here in 3.5. As an example, you can ask
CBT to give you writing prompts and you can ask her very generic ones and it
will give you generic ones. So for example, if I just say, please give me three
creative writing prompts. There we go. It gave us some writing prompts. Them, they're interesting,
they're kind of random, but they have some fairly
generic story plot devices, as you can see here. So that can work
well if you really don't care what you're writing, but you can definitely be
more specific when you're asking for prompts and
specify more or less, you can give yourself a
challenge by asking for just one prompt and having to deal with it no
matter what it is. Or you can get a whole
bunch and make yourself a collection that you
can reference anytime. Now these are the
kind of prompts that the three-point five
free version gives us. The first one says The
Forgotten doorway. You stumble upon an
old forgotten doorway in an abandoned building. As you step through,
you find yourself transported to a different
time and place, right, about your adventures
in this new world, the characters you encounter, and the challenges you face as you try to find
your way back home. So that's a pretty
good story prompt. It's pretty generic, but
it could definitely work. I would say these sort
of level of reminds me of the prompts that you
would get in a middle, middle grade writing
craft class. So they're not super complex, but they're very
approachable for all ages. Now I'm going to
zip over here to chat GPT for the paid one. That's a bit more complex and just put in the same prompt. Now the AI gave us
three prompts using the fourth version of chat GBT. And if you read this through, you'll see that they're actually just more complex story lines and they ask you
to prompt with it. Prompts you have more
questions basically. For example, this first one is called in the
absence of time, which I guess is it's suggested
title for this piece. The world suddenly stops for everyone except for
your main character. Time is frozen. Birds are suspended in the air. Drops of rain hang motionless, and the people
around him or her, or like statues, what
does your character do in a world where
time no longer exists? What problems and
unique opportunities does this situation present? How do they cope with the
loneliness and what did they discover both themselves
and the world around them? So it is a much more
complex question, much more of a, I would say high school grade
writer's craft question. Remember, we're just
basically asking for a creative writing prompts for not giving it any direction. I would say that both
versions do good prompts. It's not necessarily better to have a more detailed
prompt because that can of course limit
your creativity or make you feel like you have
to follow what it says. So I think there's merit to both versions and just
something to keep in mind. I will not be testing every single prompt
in both versions, but I just wanted to
show you the difference. Now I hop back into 3.5 and we're just
going to work here to explore how we can modify this prompt a little bit to get
us some different results. So you can ask for creative
writing prompts that are kind of different categories or different types of prompts. And this can give you
different results. I'm going to actually ask this in a complex way to check GPT. But you can feel free to
just use one of these. So I'm going to ask
it for a bunch of one prompt under a bunch
of different headings, just as an example, the
first thing I'm going to ask is a prompt
involving a location. So I will ask for, please give me one
creative writing prompt set in a
forest in Ontario. That's a place in Canada. If you didn't know. That's a location-based prompt, then we could do one
based on a character. So please give me another creative writing prompt featuring a and then
you could come up with any kind of character
or a person. So let's say a eight-year-old
girl who likes art. Then we could try a prompt
with a specific problem, involves a mystery where a lot
of money has gone missing. It could be any kind of plot device or anything like that. We can also ask for
a particular genre. So please give me another
creative writing prompt. In the genre of a
Hallmark Christmas movie. Genres don't have to just be romance, fantasy,
science fiction. You can also base it
off a certain type of media that you want it to consume or
anything like that. So I've asked it for four different kinds
of prompts here, and hopefully it will just
give me one for each. So let's see what it
does. There we go. So it gave me four prompts and each one is a little
bit different, but based on the four
things I asked for. Now you can take
these prompts and just start writing
them as you like. Or if you want to try and make them bigger or turn them into plots using chat GPT,
you can do that too. So for example, the artistic
adventures of Emily. So the description that I
gave us is meet Emily and imaginative
eight-year-old girl with a passion for art, right? A heartwarming story about
Emily's artistic journey. Explore her creative process, the magic she finds
in everyday objects, and a unique perspective
she brings to the world. Follow her as she embarks
on an artistic adventure, discovers new mediums, and learns valuable life
lessons along the way. So that's a cute prompt. It doesn't really give
you a story to follow. So we can actually copy this and ask chat GBT to give us
some more information. Actually, I say
we can copy this, we absolutely can, but
it's already in the chat. So I'm just going to refer to the artistic adventures of Emily and ask it to give us
some more information. Can you please write a
brief plot outline for the artistic adventures of Emily that includes a beginning, a problem, a middle,
and an ending. You can phrase this
however you want. I'm just throwing it together, but I want there
to be a conflict. I've just called that a problem. And this will also determine the genre and
the age group as well. I mean, what they've
described here as a children's story, which makes sense
because it's an eight-year-old is the character. But we'll see what
it gives us here. Alright, here we go.
So it did give me a beginning problem,
middle, and ending. Now, depending on what you wanna do with your
creative writing, this might be too much
structure for you, in which case the prompts
above, maybe enough, but this is just an example that you can get it to expand on prompts to give you
actual story-line ideas. So in the beginning we
have Emily loves to paint. The problem is that
her beloved art class is in danger of being shut
down due to lack of funding. The kids have to raise
money to save the class. Middle is that she comes up with an idea to hold an
art exhibition. And then there's challenges
in setting that up. And then at the end
it's a big success and they get to save
their art class. So that's a more
detailed prompt. This isn't exactly
like spelling it out in terms of writing. So if you were to
write this story, there's still lots of
room for creative liberty and putting it in your own ideas or changing the storyline. But it does put together something that you
can work off of. And if you're someone
who has a hard time getting started with writing, this is a really cool option. So that's it for this
particular exercise with AI and writing prompts. And we can check
out the next one and see what else
we have in store
4. Give Me A Character: Sometimes it's more
interesting to start a story from a single character
rather than from the plot. We can ask the AI to
give us a Character and then use that as our
starting point for story. You can also combine this with the previous prompts we did to create a character
that you can insert into a plot or a storyline. And see how your creativity
fuses the two together. By asking the AI for specific information
about your character, you can build out an
interesting persona with lots of dimension
and realism. The first thing we
need to do as we always should is tell the
AI what we want to do. I wrote, I would
like you to help me design a character
for a thriller novel. I'm going to give you some
information to start with. And then you will write
a Character synopsis and add in extra details. I will then ask you for additional information
about this character. That's the information
that we're giving the AI so it knows what
we're trying to do. I'm going to go
onto another line. And by the way, if you
don't know how you just hold down Shift and
Enter or Return to skip down in the
chat box without sending your message if you're trying to put more information. Now at this point,
you can just throw some details together. If you have a story in mind, you could use whatever
that's based on. If you are writing
a novel and need a background character
and additional Character. This is a funny way to kind
of come up with someone else without having to spend
too much time brainstorming. You can pretty much
give it as much or as little information
as you'd like. So I'm just going to think
of some random details and we'll go from there. Okay, I wrote this character
is a detective's assistant. The novel is set
in New York City and the character is from there. They should be young and
have a degree in something. Their attitude is
optimistic and resilient, but they have a
secret insecurity. Any amount of this
information will be cool because the a is just
gonna give you other stuff. So again, give it as
much or as little prompts as you'd like
for this challenge. Let's send it and see
what it gives us back. Alright, that gave us
a lot of information. So this Character, the
AI named Emily Reynolds, and here is some
information about her. And it gets pretty detailed
we see about her job, who she works for, two loves her hometown. And the academic information
that I asked for, stuff about her belief system and our personality and then her insecurity about her ability to live up to her
own expectations, which is interesting, we've got some childhood
trauma and this is a pretty complex Character. And then we have additional
details down here. It gave us physical appearance,
hobbies and interests, personal motto, unique
skills and wardrobe. So that's a lot of
information to go off of. And you could definitely
use this Character, use emily here and start
a story around her. A lot of the things involved in her background could be
Started with plot point. Or if you had a story prompt
that you are regenerated, you wanted to place her in. You could definitely do that. If you had a prompt
that you wanted to use it ahead of time, you could also include that in the information you
give the AI just to create someone who's very specifically cast
for your story. But of course, this
is a place where you could use your
creativity and figure out your own
way to integrate the character with your story. Now we can chat
Back-and-Forth with the AI to find out more
information about this person. And one of the things
I noticed that wasn't mentioned was anything about
this Characters families. So let's find out
more. Now, this gave us a lot of
background information. So I just asked, please tell
me more about Emily's family and now we learn
everything about her tight-knit family
from New York City. Her parents names, their jobs, things that they instilled
and Emily, growing up, siblings, we have her father passed away in a car accident, kind of how they overcame
that as a family. And then she has a
special relationship with her maternal grandmother. It tells us a little bit about
that grandmother Margaret, and we even have a Pendant,
necklace heirloom. So there's a lot here
that you can work off of. You can actually use these characters for just
about anything. I mean, they're
completely fictional. So you could use it in a
short story or a novel. You could use it
in a screenplay. You could do basically
anything with it. Emily could be the main
character of your story. She could be a villain, she could be a side
character who knows, we don't, we don't really know. But those are the
prompts to give the AI to get some information
about a Character. Now in the next lesson
we're going to play a little bit more with this
character we developed, but it with a different
kind of activity. So we'll go look at that next.
5. Talk To Your Character: In this lesson, we're going
to be doing a little AI Game that expands on the character that we created in
the last lesson. If you didn't follow this class linearly, the last lesson, I asked the AI to
create a Character for us and we ended up with our
friend Emily Reynolds here. So this next challenge, after we've completed all of Emily's background
information, we have a lot of knowledge about her now
because we're going to make the AIB Emily and we're going to Chat
Back-and-Forth with her. This is a useful exercise for writers because it
can help us to engage with different characters
or types of people in a way that is beyond simply
imagination and research. This can have limitations. Of course, the AI may not
know all facets of being Emily or her career
and the details of it. But because it's all fictional, It's a lot easier than if
we were trying to make Emily try and be someone
real or specific. What this can help
us do as writers, as it can help us figure out the tone of voice
that Emily uses. Ways that she talks or
basically build a vernacular or a way of writing
dialogue for her that is going to be consistent
throughout your own writing. So let's figure out
how to phrase this. Alright, here is our prompt. I wrote, you are going to
act as Emily Reynolds. I will write to you in
dialogue and you will reply back in dialogue as Emily, feel free to give her dialogue, personality and quirks to
make her a unique character. I will start by
saying, Hi Emily, tell me your
favorite thing about growing up in New York City. I think grammatically
there shouldn't be a question mark there, but
I'm going to leave it. So this is in the same chat as where we developed
Emily's Character. So the AIRE knows everything
we know about her. So let's see how
it plays the game. Alright, so instantly
it is Playing as Emily. And she says, hi there. Oh, where do I
begin? Growing up? In the heart of New York City was like being surrounded by an endless tapestry
of vibrant energy. A favorite thing
would have to be the incredible diversity. I would say that Emily is
coming across as pretty bubbly, a little idealistic
and creative. We have this being stepped
away from iconic landmarks. Definitely added a sprinkle
of magic to my childhood. It's like a creative
personality, I think what I'm talking to, so we can go back and
forth a little bit. I'm just coming up with
random things to ask Emily, but I said that sounds
so interesting. What did you and
your siblings like to do for Fun in the summers? What's a great memory
you have with them? So here we have Emily not
just telling us information, but I was worried with the
first part of this prompt. What did you and
your siblings like to do for Fun in the summers? She might just give me recommendations like
a talk for a tourist. But if I added, what's a great
memory you have with them? She's actually
written me Fiction here about an event that she went to where she went on a spontaneous road trip to Coney Island with her siblings. If Emily was a
Character in my book, whether that'd be a main
character or a side character, I could incorporate
this narrative in, or I could modify it to fit some other thing I need to
have happened in her life, but it's really just
giving me fodder. I mean, I don't know anything about growing up
in New York City. I don't live
anywhere near there. So I wouldn't think about going on a spontaneous
road trip to Coney Island. It would take a bit of research for me to reach that point, to realize that would be a thing that New Yorkers might do. Instead of doing
all the research about things to do
in the summer for kids in New York City and then finding it all the things
to do at Coney Island. I just asked Emily and she
told me because fictionally, that was her childhood. The Back-and-Forth
conversation does help you to kinda
figure out her tone. Again, we see from
the language here like summers with my siblings
were always a blast. We have like younger dialogue. But it can also
help us to fill out backstory and come up with
ideas that we might not. Otherwise. I could even ask Emily, what's something you dream of? What's a big goal you have, whatever, and it will
give me something. This is a FUN game to play with a Character
that you've created. This is also a game that you can play with
characters that already exist if you're not in the
mood to create somebody and you just want to practice writing or have
some FUN with AI, you can always ask it to be a Character that already exists. I'm going to open a new chat and we'll see how
that's going to work. Here is another way
to play this game. So I have written in
the chatbox here. I would like you to
pretend to be Mr. Darcy from Jane Austen's
novels, Pride and Prejudice. I will write dialogue to you and you will reply as
this character, make sure that the
language you use is period appropriate and
suits the character based on the novel's
description. I will start with,
good afternoon, Mr. Darcy. Fine weather
we're having now, this can be a FUN game to
play if you are just a fan of Pride and Prejudice or some other literary work that the AI would have access to. A couple of quick notes
before we send this off. First of all, the AI does not always have up-to-date
information. So if you're asking for an obscure character or
something really new, it may not know what
you're talking about. It's also more
likely it will have more information about
really famous old works of literature like Pride and
Prejudice than it would like a modern popular novel. Simply because this is
in the public domain and highly studied
and there's tons of fanfiction about it and
all sorts of things that the AI would
be pulling from. The second thing to note
is that this is actually an exercise that can have
really practical applications. You don't even have to pick
a fictional character. It could be a historical
person as well. If you are trying
to emulate dialogue or the way that people
spoke in a particular era. So hopefully, we're
going to see Mr. Darcy starts to talk in a bit of
appropriate period language. So the AI took a little
while to process this one, which is why we
have the two out of two and the response evaluation, but that typically won't happen. I think it's just
very busy right now. So here we go. Mr. Darcy has written back and he's asking if I'm in good health. So let's chat back and see if we can just make them
prompt a couple more times. This is an example here. So I'm going to reply, very
good health. Thank you. Is your wife traveling with you today which suggests
that I'm talking to Mr. Darcy after the events
of Pride and Prejudice, but of course you could
indicate otherwise if you like. Oh, sorry, I don't
get to choose that. Apparently. Mr. Darcy
is not married. Why is this so funny? Okay. So he tells me my apologies, but there seems to be
a misunderstanding. I am not married nor do I
currently possess a wife. The notion of matrimony
has yet to find its place within the scope
of my present circumstances. Pray Forgive me if I have given rise to any misconceptions. So aside from being
extremely funny, we have more original dialogue here that is not a
quote from a book. It's not pulled from anything, but it is appropriate
to the period, or at least to Jane
Austen's writing style, because that's where he is from. You can play with
this all day long. But as I said, this could be either a FUN game,
creative thought exercise, or a way to learn dialogue from an era that you
might not be super comfortable with
yet if you've never experienced living in the past. Alright, with this
one wrapped up, Let's hit onto our next game
and see what we have to play
6. First Line, Last Line: In this next lesson, we're going to be playing
a little game that I'm calling first
Line, Last Line. This activity is
going to give you a bit more of an independent
writing challenge. So it's not so much
asking for prompts or the AI to come up with
information for you. You're actually going
to be asking the AI for the first Line and the
last line of a story, you have to figure out
what comes in-between. Now you don't have to
sit there and write down the whole story if
you don't want to, this can either
be an exercise in writing or it could be
an exercise in plotting. It becomes your job to figure
out how to connect a and B. What happens in the story that gets you from the
beginning To that end. Now those first and last lines with the AI
might give you, couldn't be pretty simplistic. So if you create something
you really liked by the end, don't be afraid to edit out, remove those Prompts altogether in favor of your more
experienced writing. So I'm in the chat window here and let's see what we
can tell it to get started. As always, I am trying
to tell the AI what exactly I want it to do before
giving it more details. So I have written,
we're going to play a game called first Line. Last Line, you are going
to provide me with the first-line of a story and
the last line of a story. And I will have to come up with a story that happens in-between. These lines should
be interesting, literary, and fit
the fantasy genre. So this is the section here
that you can completely customize to whatever suits you. You can say this should
be for a children's book, that should be for a young
adult dystopian novel. This should be really complex. And for adult readers, it could be any kind of difficulty level
you're looking for. So I just chose fantasy and literary just as some prompts. Let's see what it gives us. Alright, so it is happy
to play our game. So the first Line is
in the ancient land of L Doria beneath the sky ablaze with swirling
hues of violet and gold. I've forgotten prophecy
whispered through the wind. So that's pretty cool. I think that's very literary evocative. And our last line is, as the Sun dipped
below the horizon, her laughter echoed
across the kingdom, filling the hearts of its
people with new-found hope. That's pretty cool too and interesting because we have the element of
horror right here. So there's a female character that could be your
main character. It could be a love interest. We don't really know, but it's up to you to figure
out these two. Now you can either
take these prompts into your word processor
or wherever you like, and either write the story or
do the plotting in-between. Or you can do it here in the
chat with ChatGPT if you are looking for it to co-writer or to give suggestions
or feedback, or to generate anything
randomly in-between. This isn't a simple
little game to set up. But as you can see, you could ask for a lot
of different stuff. We can even try a
different example. This time, I said, great, let's play another
round of the game. I would like you to give
me the first Line and Last Line for a story
that is dark and dystopian but aimed at ya
readers will send that off. There we go. We have in the desolate ruins of what was once a vibrant city, 17-year-old Laura clutched
a tattered photograph. Her only connection to a past
she could barely remember. We have a really
interesting start here, but typically the first
sentence of books aren't going to tell you
the age of the character. It's a little bit of more
inexperienced writing style. So this is an example of
where you could use this. And then when you edit your
story, if you like it, just edit the introduction to the story to be something
a little bit more refined. And our Last Line
is hand-in-hand. They stepped into the
dawn of a new world where their shared strengths would like the path for
generations to come. It's a little bit generic, but it does suggest that mara is with
somebody at the end. There's a new world that
they're physically stepping into and there's an
optimistic future. So it gives you some
clues that we start here in a desolate City. She can't remember her past. We have a lot that
changes by the end. So like I said, Fun
little game to play. And it can be the
start of a great story or a great plotting
exercise as well.
7. Worldbuilding Game: In this lesson, we
are going to be playing a little
worldbuilding Game. Ai can be really good at
writing descriptions. So we're going to be using
that ability for this game. Now a lot of writers
tend to have a strengths and people
are great at Dialog. Some are great at
Character creation, other great at plots, and some are really
great at worldbuilding, but that's not
everybody's strength. So this is an exercise that can certainly just
be phon, on its own. But also it can help you if you are not
someone who's great at coming up with
setting for a story, especially if it's
something a bit more fantasy or different
than real life. But of course, you
can also use this for any kind of realistic
fiction as well. In this challenge, we
are going to be creating a universe for a story and have the AI help us fill it out. Depending on the way
you like to write. You may be someone who comes
up with the setting first or at something that comes
afterwards when you already know the plot
you want to have. But either way, this can be
a FUN exercise to imagine settings in detail even if a story never ends up
being written about it. Now we're going to try three different levels
with this challenge, we're going to be getting
the AI to help us describe a whole planet and
then a fictional town and then a single room. So as always, we're
going to start off with a prompts to help the, I know what the heck
we're trying to do. The initial prompt
to describe what we're doing is we are going to work together in a Writing
worldbuilding exercise. I'm going to provide
some details and parameters and
you will fill in the details for a profile of the location that
I am prompting. That's just our starter to tell the AI what we want to do. Now I came up with some ideas. This is just off
the top of my head, but I said the setting is a
planet in a nearby galaxy. I chose a planet because
I want to show that I can do a really big sort of space, not just a small town
or something like that. We're talking a lot
of complexity here. This planet is a
lot like Earth in terms of its biological
composition, except all the oceans are
freshwater instead of salt. Just a random difference than I thought might
be interesting. There are sentient beings on this planet that looks
similar to humans, but with some differences. Please expand on this setting. So let's find out
what it gives us. Alright, we have a pretty
long detailed description of a planet that the AI
has named, Aqua Tara. And then it goes over, gives us some subheadings for all the
different aspects we have. Physical features,
sentient beings, culture and society,
technology and infrastructure, exploration
and recreation. And then a conclusion as well. So if I'm just
skimming over this, I'm not going to read
the whole thing for you, but you're welcome
to pause the video and check it out if
you're interested. But basically we have that the planet is super
lush and green, but all freshwater and
not salt described in a much more interesting way than just my basic notes on it. The interesting detail
that they've added about the people which
they call aquariums, is that they have slightly
larger lung capacity enabling them to
hold their breath for extended periods underwater. They also have a faint
luminescent quality. So it's a lot more water-based. I'm getting that
because the water is the one detail that I pulled
out about the planet. The AI took that as a significant thing about
this planet and culture. So kinda more fish-like
people, I guess. It says that they have
really intricate technology around water aqueducts reserves. They have music and dancing. Hydroelectric power
is mentioned here. And in terms of exploration
and recreation, the focus is really unnatural tourism and outdoor activities. So this is almost
a worldbuilding in the way that I
think of like planets OnStar track back in the day. We're like It's a little
bit one-dimensional. But for Fiction
that can be okay. You don't have to make it
be like a real gritty, complex civilization that
can be depending on what your story is and the purpose of the world that
you're including here. A description like this can
be a great starting point. And of course, if you want
more information about the world of awkward Tara, you can just ask
the AI, like say, what kind of challenges
to these people have, what threats are
there on the planet? What contacted they have
with other planets? Do they know about Earth, any kind of stuff like this? You can make up
that information by all means you are a writer,
you can be creative, but it's also interesting
just to see what the AI will give us because
it might give you stuff you never thought
of considering. Now for the next part
of this challenge, we are going to design
a fictional town. So let's just type in a,
another prompt for it. I have written here, great, So I like to wrap up the exercise that we
were already doing. Then said, the next
setting prompt is design a fictional town. Now, I've actually chosen to create a fictional
town in a real place. So I asked it, it is set in
rural Prince Edward Island, Canada, which is a
place that I know. So I'm able to fact check it a little
bit here as we play. This town has a big
tourism industry with a unique attraction that brings people in each summer. So specific but open-ended
for the AI to play with. The town also has
a secret that they don't want tourists
finding out about. There is a main
street with shops and businesses and
historical landmark. Please expand on
this description and provide more details. So let's see what it
gives us for our town. Alright, it came up with
the town of Willowbrook. So in terms of sub-headings, we have the location and overview which tells
us a little bit Area and sort of information
that I already gave, but a little bit
more formulated. We have tourism and
unique attraction. So the unique
attraction it chose is called the enchanted forest, which is a sprawling
woodland at side of town with a ethereal ambience. So this could be a setting
for a story that is more of a magical realism
or a fantasy story. Or it could just be a regular
general fiction book. And this is merely
an interesting name. Notes that we have
local guides known as forest keepers that offer tours, and that is Summer
Solstice Festival. That's a lot of information
about what goes on here. In terms of the main street
and the historical landmark. We have a list of
different kinds of shops, boutiques, cafes and galleries. Describes the aesthetics
of the main street. And the historical landmark
is Willowbrook manner, which it describes in a
bit more detail here. The secret that it came
up with is kinda cool. It says that beneath
the enchanted forest is a network of
hidden tunnels and caverns that belong to a
secret society of the elders. And apparently there's like artifacts and things
hiding down there. And this is a pretty
good plot point right here that it brought up
is that residents of Willowbrook strive to
maintain the delicate balance between tourism and
safeguarding their secret. So you can create
some Characters, give him some
motives of their own and have this be the
main plot of a story. I think that's pretty
cool and that's how you can start writing a setting based or worldbuilding
base narrative if you like, starting
at this point. For our third challenge,
we're going to get the AI to help us describe a room. So just like a single-space. Let's see what I can
put together for that. Here's what I came up with. So again, great, I closed
off that previous challenge. The next setting
prompt is designed a bedroom belonging
to a teenage boy. He is 17 and legs Playing
drums and taking photographs. He wants to be a professional rock climber when he grows up. Describe all the
details of the room, including the sensory details. And I think the
sensory details are interesting because
those can be hard to factor into writing to make
places be very evocative. Now, hopefully I don't
regret asking for sensory details of a
teenage boys room, but fool to see
what it gives us. Alright, this is pretty cool. It gave us a lot of details. So we start off with beginning. So as you step into the
bedroom of a 17-year-old boy, a vibrant energy fills the air. The walls are painted in a
deep shade of midnight blue, providing a backdrop
reminiscent of the night sky. Stars, planets and
constellations glow in a luminescent paint, creating a sense of
wonder and exploration. In the subheadings below we
have the sensory details. So we have that the
room smells like pine and the outdoors. We have a Himalayan salt
lamps that does a warm glow. There's a tabletop fountain that adds a little bit of noise. So outdoorsy room is what
I'm getting the vibe of than we have
the description of the BED including the comforter, the type of wood
it's made out of. So a lot of details that if
you're describing a scene, you can just grab a
few of these just to make the place that the story is happening feel
really rich and realistic. We have a desk and
a workstation, includes hobby equipment, like we mentioned,
rock-climbing inspiration. So we have photographs of mountain ranges
and rock climbers. And he's also got
climbing gear in there, which it does describe
in some details like it names the pieces
of equipment and I don't know anything
about rock-climbing. So this would be helpful
because then I would know the things that one would keep in a room if you liked doing it. We have storage and
display listed with again, lots of interesting
detail that you can use. If this character was
idling around the room, it could be picking up things, placing objects
beside one another. He's got these miniature
rock formation statues so you could look at them and think there's lots of ways to interact with the space when
you're writing a Character. Then again, we have the
conclusion to just wrap it up. So overall, you can give the AI basically as much or as
little detail as you want. But I would suggest coming in with some idea of what you're looking for if you're going to be doing this
worldbuilding exercise, otherwise it's really
just going to give you random information and maybe not as detailed as you
were looking for. But it is a FUN exercise. This is also great if you are an artist and want
to come up with settings for paintings
or illustrations, picture book illustrations
in particular, it can be helpful to come
up with a child's room. Sometimes it's hard to envision all the objects that might
be cluttering it up. And this is also fine if you do Dungeons and
Dragons or any kind of RPG gaming where you need to come up with settings
that you can describe. This is a great way
to do that as well. So that's it for this
game and challenge. Let's head onto the next
lesson and play the next one.
8. Object-Based Storytelling: In this lesson, we
are going to be Playing another game that I have very creatively
named Object-Based stories. This game is a little bit of a description challenge to you. And then AI is going to take
the description that you write and give you something
more to write about. What you're gonna be doing is locating an object
in your house. It can be interesting
or mundane. And Writing a detailed
description of this object, it doesn't have to be
beautiful writing, just descriptive and
really thorough. Then we're going to
ask the AI to create a story prompt based
around this object. This take on a story prompt
will get you working on your observational skills,
descriptive Skills. And we'll also get you emotionally
involved in a story if the object has some
significance to you hopping into the AI. Again, I'm going
to start off with our usual prompt to inform
the AI what we want to do. And then I will get
into our specifics. I wrote, we're going to play
a Writing Game together. In this game, I will
provide you with a detailed description
of an object. You will then craft a plot for a story around this object. The plot should be
a detailed synopsis with characters that you invent. You can always change
this last sentence here. If you want the plot to
be something different, if you want it in bullet points, if you want to use
Characters that you already provide,
anything like that. Next paragraph, I
start the object is, and then I'm just going
to pick something around my office
and write it here. Here's the description I wrote. The object is an old
vintage sugar jar. It is missing a spoon which has a place for once one rested. The lid is decorated to
look like a cherry pie. And the white sides of the jar have a cherry pattern on them. Instead of housing sugar, this jar now holds a
sewing mending kit. This is pretty
short by all means, feel free to go
into more detail. You can include backstory
about the object, any sort of other detail
you want to provide. So now let's see what kind of
plot the AI comes up with. Alright, now we have a whole novel synopsis
for the secrets within. And I see the name Willowbrook
here and I'm pretty sure that's either the same or similar to
when it gave us an, a different game we played. So the quaint town
literary scene is pretty narrow in terms of naming
conventions. It seems. We see that in the Quinton of Willowbrook resides an old
vintage sugar jar that holds a fascinating history and a hidden secret passed
down through generations. The jar has become an
enigmatic artifact, invoking curiosity among
those who encounter it. This is the story of
the secrets within. We have Characters. We have three characters here. It's Character stumbles
upon the sugar jar, finds the mending kit, wonders about the
story behind it. Kind of a stretch. It's not
really that interesting. Then she goes to meet
and antiques collector. And then we meet Evelyn, who's the original owner of
the sugar jar after a hunt, and she has a secret. We learned that the sugar
jar was a gift from evidence great grandmother whose husband perished in the war,
a war somewhere. Clara use the jar is a
symbol of hope and a vessel for mending torn hearts
during challenging times. Not sure if that's the secret. But anyway, so did
create a plot. I personally wouldn't be
inspired to write this one, but this is just one example of one object that I love
very lightly described. You can play this as
many times as you like with different
objects until it gives you something worthwhile or at least a starting points
that you can edit from. Like I said, the main point of this exercise isn't just
to get the synopsis, although that can be FUN, but it is a boat
and opportunity to practice your descriptive
writing about an object, which you can do without AI. But I find that the added
incentive to then find out what it's going
to turn that into. It makes it a little
bit more compelling and exciting as a writing exercise. Sometimes just writing
description on paper for no one to
read as a practice. That can be funding useful, but it's not necessarily
as interesting as learning all about the secret sugar
jar of Willowbrook. That's it for this
little challenge. Let's move on to the next lesson and find out what
our next game is.
9. Reverse Storytelling: In this lesson,
we're going to be playing a little Writing game with AI that I'm calling
reverse Storytelling. This time we're going
to make the AIB a bit creative and see what
happens as a result. In reverse Storytelling,
you are going to be telling the AI the
ending of a story. This can be a couple
of short sentences or a longer paragraph
with more detail. That's all totally up to you. Then we'll ask the AI to tell
us what happened prior to this ending starting at the
beginning of the story. It's gonna be really interesting
to see how the AI is. Interpretation and
plot Ideas are similar or different
to what we anticipate. This can help us get out of our predictable little
plot boxes and it really FUN way to get started. I will write my
introduction prompt. As always, I wrote, we are going to play a
Writing Game together. I'm going to provide you with the ending of a short story. I chose a short story just for simplicity sake,
but by all means, do whatever kind
of story you like, then you are going to write a bullet point
summary of the plot. It happens leading
up to this ending. I chose a bullet point summary just as something a
little bit different, but you can ask for
just a narrative. You can use the
details mentioned in my ending section and also add
your own creative touches. Now, down here I'm going
to add in my ending, I'm just going to come
up with something. I'm not terribly complicated,
but maybe kinda cute. That's kinda my writing style. So let's see what I can do. For my little ending
of the story I wrote. As the sun began to set, the fox walked back to his
cozy cottage and turned on the gas lamp inside by
the well-worn armchair, though his home looked the
same as it always did. It somehow seems smaller
after all that he had seen curling into
the familiar seat with a warm blanket on his lap. The Fox gazed out the window at the oranges and blues
of the evening sky. I felt happy for the first
time he could recall. It's kinda cute. I was inspired by
wind in the willows, Mr. Frog and Mr. Toad. I don't actually
know if gas lamps are supposed to be
inside a house, but that's not, that's
fine. This is Fiction. So let's send this off and
see what the AI does with it. So we have our bullet points here and just starting
at the bottom, I see that we have the AI
used a lot of my own text, but we have still some points that were
interesting and unique. We start off with the fox, a curious and adventures
creature has embarked on a journey to explore the
world beyond his cottage. Eager to see new sites he
traveled through vast for its crossed rivers and
climbed mountains, encountered various
challenges and obstacles. Found beauty in nature, encountered different
animals, listened to their tails and
gain new perspectives, but then wanted to go home. So this is pretty okay. I've been, this could
be a children's story. It's pretty and detailed though. This can serve as a
great starting point for your own creativity
where you take this outline and then
you make it richer with your own plotting and devices. Or you can say to the AI
that you would like it to try again and make it more
detailed, anything like that. But I like that this approach makes you really think
about how stories end and then creatively
anticipate the beginning. I didn't really know
where it was going, but I did set this up to
be like the fox went on an adventure that made it feel happy for the
first time in a long time. And I wasn't sure
where it would go. But most of us writers tend to think of stories from
start to finish. And we don't usually
look at those sections independently of one another. So if we can try
doing this exercise, it can really help expand your plotting Skills and you make up with something
really cool and new. This was a pretty
simple little game, but let's wrap it
up here and head onto the next lesson
for another one.
10. Back-and-Forth Writing: In this lesson, we are
going to be Playing a game of
Back-and-Forth Writing. We're going to ask the AI to be our writing partner and share the load and creating a story. We're going to write one
sentence and then the AI will write the next one
and so on and so forth. It's really best to go into
this particular game with out any expectations
because the AI may not be as creative or
versatile of a writer as you. However, the further you go and the more you write it
will start to take inspiration from your ideas and your writing style to create something interesting that
maybe resonates with you. As always, to get started, we just have to explain
the rules of the game to the AI and then start off
with our first sentence. For my introductory prompt, I wrote, we're going to play
a Writing Game together. In this game, I will write
one sentence of a story, then you, alright, the next one, I will write the
following sentence, and then we will
repeat Back-and-Forth until we have an
interesting narrative. The Genre for our story
is urban fantasy. This is an explanation
of how the game works. And I also added in this Genre
just for a little bit of guidance so that
we weren't going in completely
different directions. Urban fantasy, by the way, is a fantasy story that takes
place in a modern big city. So I said, I'll start. Here's the first sentence. And this is the
sentence I wrote. Fog lingered through the
streets of North City, wrapping around the edges of slick stone walls and dumpsters filled
with today's trash. So North City is just I made that I don't know
if that's a real place, but I don't think it is. So let's see what the AI
rights for the next sentence. Among the shadowed alleys
of figure emerged, their eyes glowing with
an otherworldly hue. This is obviously
on-brand for our Genre, but I do find that the AI
when you first get started, lacks a little bit of subtlety. So instead of increasing the description or spending
more time worldbuilding, it just dived into a mysterious
figure with glowing eyes. So I'll read the next sentence. I wrote. They pulled a strange
object and of their pocket and with
a soft clicking sound, more fog seem to bloom
out around the figure, clicking them in
further obscurity. So my thinking is that they
pulled like a magic device, something sort of Harry Potter
ask out that makes fog. But we'll see what the AI
thinks if they catch my drift. Okay, so we have another
character introduced, curiosity peaked, a
younger Phoebe artist named Maya watch from
a nearby rooftop. Her paint stained fingers
gripping the edge, actually traced the figures
movements with an entry gaze. So if I was writing this, I wouldn't introduce named Maia. Like it's a little too blunt. But I would take
that out and just say a young graffiti artist, watch from a Nouveau rooftop and introduce her name later on. But this is what you
can do when you edit, if you create something
you like together. So this is the basic premise. You can just go back
and forth as long as you like and
see where it goes. But it's FUN to have
a writing partner. This is something
that you'll typically find in writer's craft classes. This exercise where you co-wrote something
Back-and-Forth. And what is really FUN about
this is you often feel like you know what's
gonna happen next because you've come
up with an idea. But then you find out that someone interprets
what you've said in a completely
different way and takes it in a whole
other direction. So this really forces you to be creative and agile
with your writing, which I think is a
really good skill to develop for any writer. That is the basics of how to
play Back-and-Forth Writing. So let's wrap this
one up and head into the next lesson
for another Game.
11. Problems and Solutions: In this lesson, we're going to play our last little
Writing Game, which is called
problems and Solutions. This is a great game to play if you're already writing something and have developed characters that you want to
understand better. If not, you can also just use any random character to help you understand Character
building even better. The idea of this
game is to inform the AI of the basic points
about Your Character. Be that a formal description as synopsis, anything like that, then you ask it to give you situations that this
character might find themselves in or problems
they might encounter in. Then it becomes your
job to articulate how that character would react
and handle the situation. This can give you
a lot of insights into your character's
personality. And it can help you to write more nuanced and
well-rounded interactions in your actual stories. I've put in our initial
writing prompt to inform the AI what
we're trying to do. And the ChatGPT window might look a little different
in this lesson from others because I actually just
canceled my subscription. So until upgrade again, it will look like how it did. Anyways, the prompts that
I use is as follows. We are going to
play a Writing game called problems and Solutions. I'm going to describe
a character from a story that I am
writing to you. If it's not from a
story you're writing, you can change that. You will then pose
questions to me about how this
character would handle different situations so that I can further develop this
Characters identity. The questions can
be situational, philosophical, personal, or
whatever else makes sense. And of course you
can modify this if there's certain kinds of
questions you're looking for, then I'm following this up
with this character is, and I will input character
description here. I'm just going to make
something up really quick because I'm making up
this character from scratch. It may not be as in-depth
as something that is in a novel I'm working
on, but that's okay. So my character,
his name is Arnold. He is at 58 year-old bookshop
owner in Bath, England. In a prior career, Arnold was a professional
horse trainer until an injury made him have
to change careers. He lives in a small cottage with his partner Michelle
and their two cats. And Arnold likes reading, going for long walks
in the country and watching TV shows about horses. So let's see what the Chat gives us as a question
about Arnold. Alright, so the AI is happy to play along with us and has
Post me my first question. How does Arnold feel
about his transition from being a professional horse
trainer to owning a bookshop? Does he missed his
previous career or has he fully embraced
this new path? I can answer this question
and it will help me develop Arnold's backstory
and his characterization. As you can see,
the AI definitely took a lot from this
narrative that I provided and use context to figure it relevant questions
which is really great. This is what makes
this activity a lot different than just
using, for example, a template for a Character
development or using pre-written prompts
that are typically used to help you develop
a Character more fully. This way the activity is hyper
specified to your project. I took this question
and then provided some information
about how Arnold feels about this situation. And this was a good exercise because it really
gets me thinking about how this character feels about his, his
own experiences. This takes Arnold
from being a flat, sort of just a sketch
of a Character, to being a person
with feelings and regrets and also to this complicated things that may good characters in books. I'm just going to
send this off now and we'll see what
the question is next. Alright, I liked the
direction this is going because the
AI is really honing in on that particular trauma of Arnold's to
really flesh it out, which would be something
important about him. I mean, that's the
only real fact we have him at this
point anyways. So now it's giving me
three different situations that I could write about
how Arnold handles them. And that will give
more insight into the process of creating
this character. You can play this game
for quite a long time and the AI will keep going
into more subjects. And if it ever runs out of things that you
want to talk about, of course, you can just
re-prompt it and say, okay, now, ask me questions about Arnold's backstory
or helped me give Me prompts to help discover what he's truly passionate about or, you know what I mean,
anything like that. So this is our last formalized prompt that I'm
going to give you. But in the next
lesson we're going to talk about some
other ideas for how you can use AI to continue to
build your writing skills, Break it if that writer's block, and generally use it for creative purposes in a way that is supportive
of your creativity.
12. Even More Ideas: Now that we have reached
the end of our lessons, I hope you have found
these writing challenges really FUN and
creatively inspiring. If you're looking for
even more challenges, something that you
might want to try is just asking your AI
tool what it suggests. A prompt like this could work. I am a writer wanting to practice writing with
creative challenges. What are some games
slash challenges we can do together to help
me improve my writing. Leave it up to the
AI to give you some ideas and suggestions. If it doesn't give
you useful Ideas, be more specific about
what you're looking for or the skill that you want
to improve and ask it again. Any of the texts that you
create during these games could be starting point
for longer pieces of work. So don't be shy about
using these activities as a way to get into writing
longer-form Fiction. Just remember that
occasionally AI can get confused and
give you incorrect fats. So if you are reading
something with a specific detail
that matters a lot, especially non-fiction, then you may want
to fact check it. For example, I was working on a project where I needed
animal fats for kids. And the AI gave me some
great facts about wolves, but also how they operated in an alpha wolf Beowulf dynamic. However, I know from previous research that the
scientists who published that theory in the
early 1800s only found this dynamic and
captive wolves at a zoo. And afterwards he
really regretted his research spending much of his life trying to correct
the public's opinion. Wolves don't actually operate
in that dynamic that way. It isn't actually factually correct to teach
this information, despite it being
largely believed, especially as it is still used
in dog training theories. So the AI assumed that it was factual because it was
so largely believed. So that's just a
good reminder to be vigilant about the fact
that it provides you with. Now if you enjoy learning
with me in this class, I teach lots of other
courses on design, entrepreneurship,
and technology, all with the creative twist. So please do check them
out if you're interested. And if you'd like to take the
time to review this class, I really would appreciate it. I read every single review and I would love to
hear your thoughts. I hope this course has
been helpful and a little bit of FUN,
happy writing. And I hope you create
something awesome
Rebecca Wilson, Writer and Artist
