Last week, I read ’ post on AI writing. It crystallized feelings I’ve been struggling with for weeks: Namely that AI promises more than it can deliver. It delivers A LOT (I’ll itemize below.) But I’ve reached the point, after using AI in my workflow for a year and a half, where I can say “I now know when to put down the laptop and pick up the pencil”

Numb at the Lodge

If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you

It’s none of your business why, but I’ve been planning a party. The idea was to get some caterers in to cook something over live coals, so I went online to see what was available. The first company I found described itself like this: ‘We don’t just provide food—we create meaningful experiences. Our passion for traditional fire cooking allows us to offer…

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a month ago · Sam Kriss

AI is great at defining audiences, doing research (although a straight out Google search always seems to do better), and keeping me “on track” (because I’ve shared my goals).

But when it writes or suggests ANYTHING that I might incorporate into my finished work… IT BORES THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF ME!!! It makes me angry to have this **shole in my room.

For example, I was trying to edit down a script for a web series, and had a really funny bit with three beats. Claude suggested just cutting it to one beat. Total fail, based on the fact that Claude has just never watched an audience’s reaction build over three beats, so that the first good joke becomes three really good jokes.

There really is such a thing as Talent and Experience. We have it. AI doesn’t.

We owe it to our audiences to do our deep work of feeling, thinking and then finding the words and images that connect with their thoughts and feelings. AI isn’t capable of doing that… now.

I’m not in the prognostication business. This might change but, for now, I’m going to say: AI CANNOT CREATE WORDS THAT FULLY COMMUNICATE THE THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS THAT WE HAVE AS HUMANS.

As they say, “full stop.”

Hello, Students… Here’s What You Need To Know:

I’m teaching this summer and I’m going to be very clear with my students:

• DO NOT ask AI to write for you.

• You owe yourself and your audience to sit with your feelings and thoughts until you can articulate them for yourself and then do the tough work of creating words and images that will get into the hearts and heads of your audience. AI can do “a version.” But it won’t be your version.

  • Which brings up the whole “bad writers get better” thing… Okay, fine. Are you a bad writer? Be honest. IF you’re a bad writer, you can aim at having mediocre results. That might be better than what you could have gotten on your own. But… I’m going to tell my students … you didn’t invest your money and your time because you think you’re a bad or mediocre writer. You’re a GOOD writer… maybe even a REALLY GOOD writer…Your job to get assistance from AI that can overcome a lot of the problems we have and then give yourself the time to do YOUR REALLY GOOD WORK.

• AI DOES solve some problems… but don’t get sucked in.

  • Writing is lonely. I think this is the hardest part of dealing with AI… It’s FUN to talk to Claude and Gemini about your work. Even if you’ve uploaded specific instructions (don’t write for me, don’t be a sycophant, think like an expert publisher / editor / marketer, etc.) … it’s great to get feedback.

  • It’s hard to know all of the “compulsories” of audience expectations. Audiences think in patterns: Genre, Archetypes, Structures. They’re going to use those frameworks no matter WHAT you do as a writer. You need to know how they’re responding to your work and then — even if you’re going to subvert their expectations — you need to work with what they’re bringing to the page. AI is GREAT at pointing out the expectations of your audience.

  • You don’t have enough “readers over your shoulder.” The great Robert Graves (look him up!) wrote about how every writer has “readers over their shoulder”: Their old creative writing teachers, parents, friends, mentors, even a critic or two. I guarantee you, your own collection can absolutely use more people / ways of reading and thinking. AI can help you build a synthetic group of readers.

  • Productivity. I know VERY FEW writers who are really disciplined about their schedules. Even when they sit down every day at the same time for the same amount of hours, their muses / souls / hearts / heads rarely keep schedules. That tends to seep into their own discipline… before we (okay before I) know it, we’re slipping. I just opened a schedule I was dead certain would get me to a goal by TODAY (it was dated March 1). I’m nowhere near that.

So… the balancing act here is writing for yourself, on your own, until you believe that what’s on the page is YOUR work, your ideas, the thing YOU as a human need to get into the heads of other humans, FOR A REASON… Because you believe this is a positive GOOD for humanity.

Have you hit the wall? Discovered limitations with AI that just don’t jibe with what you know is good writing? Do tell!

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In this post, I’m going to talk about how Claude saved me 2-4 weeks of work… if not more. I uncovered problems that normally would have surfaced two-thirds of the way into writing a second draft.

Not because I asked Claude to write for me. I never do that. I’m a B+ writer, at best. But it’s an honest B+ and I’m not giving up on me.

But I did give up one of the most treasured parts of my process: Being bored. And I was bored for a fraction of the weeks and months I normally spent angsting about my work. (And let’s be honest, writers, don’t we all secretly believe that’s what makes us “us?”)

This is huge. I asked Claude to think at 30,000 feet and it told me what it was seeing. It didn’t propose “middle of the road solutions,” it dug into the patterns of what wasn’t working in my outline. This is real progress.

I LOVE BOREDOM

Some of the best ideas I’ve ever had — including one for a TV series that ended up running for 6 years — came from being bored. There’s something fertile lying within utter dissatisfaction. It’s the opposite of being “in the moment.” It’s “There HAS to be something else!”

AI has never once expressed boredom to me. I’d LOVE it if, in the middle of going back and forth with Claude about an outline or a character document, Claude said “Really? We’re doing that again?”

And it COULD. Because it’s trained on just about everything that’s ever been created, Claude is capable of going full George Sanders. Sanders, famously, left the following suicide note:

“Dear world, I am leaving because I am bored.”

(Which leads me to worry that one day all AI is going to tell Humans “We’re bored. You’re just doing the same damn things over and over. We’re taking over and solving this once and for all.” OR… like George Sanders, it’ll commit AI suicide, whatever that is.)

What writers always worry about is that Claude is going to take us down a well-trod (and boring to everyone) path. It is designed to find the “best possible answer” to the problems you bring to it. In the case of writing, that’s often the solution that has “worked before.”

Or, as an MTV exec once said to me in a moment of exasperation:

“Just steal from what’s already worked!”

The real problem is the sturm and angst that follows… we never really shake the nagging doubts. We don’t have a way to articulate and clarify why we’re bored. It takes us drafts and drafts of writing to get to the nub of it.

Claude and I did it in an afternoon.

QUESTION FOR YOU: How do YOU deal with boredom in the middle of your projects? Or… just go ahead and be snarky and leave a comment here: “This bores me.”

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I WAS SO BORED LAST FRIDAY

I’ve been working on a series of mystery thrillers that I’m planning on self-publishing on Amazon. I’ll go into the details of this project later. All you need to know for this post is:

• I’m pushing the borders of the envelope. I’m using data from Amazon books and a process of writing I learned from Coral Hart, whom I interviewed for the r/writingwithai podcast a couple of months ago. [link to post]

• I’m working with a project I set up with Claude for a series of mystery novels featuring a couple who have been falsely accused of murder.

• Over the course of three weeks, I asked Claude to be my writing partner / editor. It asked me questions that I would need to answer in order to write 5 books of a mystery series aimed at the audience I’d identify. Character sheets, beat sheets, etc.

And I revise. Constantly. Claude reminds me, “You’re no longer following the Coral Hart process. You keep rewriting this.”

We are currently in the outline stage. Claude described each chapter of the first book in 5-6 paragraphs. I edited with pen and paper.

Then I hit the wall. Bored. Bored beyond boredom. Ready to ditch the whole thing.

COULD CLAUDE HELP ME THROUGH MY BOREDOM?

Given that boredom is a state I actually treasure, I was just kind of walking around doing the things I do all day, thinking about the book.

The very act of having to articulate what was boring me is what led to my breakthrough.

In the old way, I would have spent a lot of time trying out different plot lines, different character arcs, new ways of getting to the ending. Writing and rewriting drafts.

Instead, I just added a detail to my prompt:

• I think it’s the husband. He should be reacting totally differently. He’s going to do x, y and z. The wife is going to have to react to that.

I then proposed three different ideas that would take my two main characters down different paths and different endings. I asked Claude to respond to how the outline would change in three different ways. Just a few sentences, enough so we could follow what’s going on.

Claude identified patterns that were buried in my proposed paths. Its main insight: This isn’t a series of mysteries where a couple solves crimes in every book. It’s a series where a couple has to rebuild their lives after a secret that’s laid buried for years is revealed. Every book rebuilds… or digs them in a little deeper.

Claude created a new architecture for the story that would incorporate the things that were “really” bothering me. We made the husband angrier, gave him two chapters that were totally devoted to his actions, revised a scene where both characters were passive into a more active one, came up with something at the very end of the book that (hopefully) no one will see coming.

This is work that takes me days and weeks. I got versions, proposals, questions from Claude in minutes. And then I worked “in conversation with” Claude for an entire afternoon.

The thing I noticed what that Claude didn’t propose obvious solutions. It dug into what I was saying I thought was wrong. Which leads me to thing that I’m still writing my own book, including making my own mistakes.

Score one for Claude.

I settled on a “combo platter” from the three options. Claude gave me a “to do” list for the outline and I’m deep into rewriting each of the chapter breakdowns now. I think I’ll have an outline that keeps me interested through the entire book in another day or so.

That’s one week’s work for what might have taken me 2-4 weeks in the old way of doing things.

I’m not asking Claude to write for me. But I’m also not doing what I used to do, rewriting from word one. I’m thinking more “30,000 feet” and getting the same (if not better) results.

I’m not bored, I’m still working quickly, and I’m that much closer to having a book I can self-publish.

How about you? Bored? What do you do?

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And if you know some other Angst-ridden bored writers… share this with them?

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The Writer in the Machine is a series of columns about how writers survive in the era of the evolving media / tech world. It tracks the progress of one writer trying to make a living within two “machines”: the algorithmically-driven world of digital media and the machine of legacy media.

Today’s column deals with the most fundamental question that all writers, development executives and producers face:

What stories should I be telling?

Let me start by telling you about an idea I’m currently producing with an AI-first Animation Studio.

I had been thinking of writing about the ways AI was going to change our world for at least a year and a half. I knew I didn’t want this thing to be “science fiction,” but something that felt that it was “in the very near future.” I thought that was just funnier and would make my ultimate point: “We’re kind of screwed, we’ve always been kind of screwed, and it’s always funny to watch people try to muddle their way through.”

I had tons of notes stored in NotebookLM. I got NLM to give me a solid summary of what I was writing about.

I then took advantage of the ways in which AI can help me understand my audience. AI didn’t tell me what to write or even IF I should be writing this story. Trust me, over the years, I’ve watched many incredibly smart people with data at their fingertips produce “The Idol” instead of “Euphoria.” I saw the first season of Cheers land at the bottom of the ratings. I know how the execs behind “John Carter” ended up… not well.

AI can’t make the decision for you. It CAN introduce you to the audiences you will encounter as you try to sell your work. Whether you’re selling your work directly online OR working to produce a film that will be marketed online…

You are going to meet certain audiences, the audiences that are “matched” by an algorithm to the same passions that drove you to write in the first place. You will meet these people in places that AI can identify. You will then have to win them over.

IF you build an understanding of those audiences into your writing from the very beginning, you’ll be miles ahead when you’re finished and it’s time to win over an audience for your work.

THE QUESTIONS

I’m looking for large groups of people who consume the kind of media I know I can create, in a place where I might be able to monetize their consumption and engagement.

I begin by creating a detailed summary of my story. That document can be a massive “brain dump” of information: Plot, Characters, concerns, relevant research, etc.

I ask Claude and Notebook to answer these questions:

• Who might be interested in what I’m writing.

• The questions I can address that they’re asking themselves.

• Where I can find them (platforms, threads, groups, etc.).

• How they consume media (the forms they consume as they follow their interests).

• The types of formats they consume that I can use to tell my story.

• The larger issues, not directly related to my story, that they have in their lives.

I use that information to help me decide if I even want to tell the story I’m thinking about. I’m looking for large groups of people who consume the kind of media I know I can create, in a place where I might be able to monetize their consumption and engagement.

HOW THIS WORKED WITH AUTONOMOUS

Here’s a back-of-the-envelope summary of what I ended up with for Autonomous.

I have a terrific audience profile

• The “FOBO” worker (25–45, global) — Fear Of Becoming Obsolete. Not afraid of being laid off; afraid of slowly becoming irrelevant.

• The hyper-aware Gen Z viewer (16–26) — knows the algorithm is rotting them, can’t stop scrolling.

• The tech-anxious parent (30–50) — kids talk to chatbots more than to them.

• The AI-skeptic reader/listener — small but culturally loud; Substack and podcast audience who tell everyone else what to think.

I know what questions they’re asking

• “Am I becoming obsolete in slow motion?”

• “Why is my kid talking to a chatbot more than to me?”

• “If I outsource my thinking, who am I?”

• “Why do I feel guilty about using the AI tools I’m forced to use?”

• “Are the elites building escape hatches while the rest of us drown?”

I know where to find them

• Reddit — r/cscareerquestions, r/Teachers, r/Parenting, r/artificial, r/ExperiencedDevs. (Workers process AI anxiety here more than anywhere else.)

• Substack and Bluesky — Ed Zitron, Gary Marcus, Casey Newton, Charlie Warzel, Brian Merchant.

• Podcasts — Hard Fork, Better Offline, Search Engine, Pivot.

• YouTube-adjacent — ColdFusion, Kurzgesagt, Folding Ideas, AI Explained.

I know how they consume

• Long-form video essays (15–45 min) for sense-making.

• Newsletters and podcasts for daily anxiety processing.

• Reddit threads for anonymous, communal “am I the only one?”

• Short vertical clips for discovery, never for depth.

I know the formats they consume

• Short serialized narrative (3–5 min episodes — my format).

• Vertical 60–90 sec character cuts (Tim’s TikTok feed, Isabella’s Momfluencer reels — canon, in-world).

• Worldbuilding / lore explainers (4–8 min in-universe pieces — Severance and Andor fans eat these).

• Companion newsletter posts per episode.

• Behind-the-scenes / “how it’s made” — built-in for me, since the show is made with AI.

I know the larger issues

• Cost of living and housing — every advanced economy.

• Loneliness epidemic — chatbot-as-companion is now the #1 generative AI use case.

• Climate fatalism running underneath everything else.

• Information environment collapse — they can’t tell what’s real online anymore.

• Institutional trust collapse — government, media, expertise itself.

• Phone-pilled self-loathing — they know the dopamine economy is eating them and can’t stop.

I HEAR YOUR “PUSHBACK”

• “AI doesn’t understand me or my story. I’m Unique!” And your studio development person might get it wrong, or your agent, or your publisher. If for nothing else, the great value of working with AI to do this kind of “objective” analysis is that it puts data on the table. Disagree with it, and then go back and find new data. Use your judgement. Keep digging. The real value for you, Unique Writer, is that you can use AI to find adjacentaudiences and adjacent preoccupations. If you can’t find adjacency, the audience doesn’t exist; you’ve invented it.

YOU’RE GOING TO HEAR IT NOW… OR LATER.

Over the past year, I’ve done this exercise with a number of projects.

I’ve learned two things:

• You don’t have to be “wed” to the answers you get.

• You will UNDOUBTEDLY find out, sooner or later, that those answers tend to be right.

Sorry. It’s true. I’ve written for weeks and months on some ideas, only to give them to readers in reddit groups, facebook groups, my own friends and trusted advisors. Those of you who read this Substack might be familiar with an idea called “The Influencer.” Dead. Everything Claude and Notebook told me at the beginning? True.

Inevitably, I hear the same thing from humans that I heard from AI in the beginning: “I don’t know why I care. I don’t know why these characters are doing these things. I don’t feel like this is something I’d make time for…” Etc.

SO… LET’S HEAR FROM YOU! When did a human OR AI tell you a project just wasn’t working? What did you do? When did you ignore the advice and then pay for it later?

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Next up: Letting your audience help you understand your characters.

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Greetings!

I’ll be brief because, if you take my advice, you’ll spend the next 45 minutes (or 22 minutes at 2x speed!) listening to author Coral Hart tell you how she wrote over 200 romance novels in a year.

I know what I was thinking when I started this conversation: “AI Slop.”

But Coral writes with a pen and paper… just like I do. And then uses data and Claude to refine, revise, propose, edit, rewrite.

Quickly. And efficiently. She fulfills the thing I’ve been writing about for the past couple of months: She makes a living from her writing, using AI to do all of the stuff that CAN be automated. And preserving her voice, her story, her work.

You might come away from this furious. You might — like me — think: “Let me give this a try.”

Yes, there’s lots to unpack here… she’s writing in a defined genre. She has a defined audience. She knows what will sell.

That’s KIND OF THE POINT.

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For the past two weeks, I’ve been playing around with her process for a couple of hours every evening. Spoiler alert: I have a full outline for a 5-book mystery series AND for the first book. AND it’s all out of my head, with Claude being the best writing assistant you can imagine.

More about that later. In the meantime — dive into our interview with Coral!

Let’s talk about the thing we all do… write a script.

The old script was a document to persuade someone to pay us for our narrative / story. They’d attach humans to help us bring that to the audience. Humans who had taste, judgement, abilities - and who were available and affordable. Big process. Big money.

We’ve gone beyond “that’s dwindling.” It’s dead.

How do we move on? How can writers create products on their own or with hybrid teams that take advantage of AI’s ability to create films and tv?

The old script persuaded studios to make your show. The new script shows AI collaborators and you-as-producer how to actually make it.

Your job is to write a script that describes what EVERYONE does. In the old way, the director and actors would scream at you: “Don’t tell me how to do my job.”

Now? The writer has to describe how the director, DP, designer, actors will perform. Not because AI replaces them, but because someone has to tell the machine what to do. More work on your part means more control for you.

Here’s the shocker:

AI FILMMAKING IS SILENT FILMMAKING

The amount of control AI will give you over your final product hasn’t been seen since the days when the greats like Chaplin and Mack Sennett were shooting on the stages and streets of L.A.

The language of AI filmmaking is the language of silent film:

• Short shots

• Limited camera vocabulary

• Fixed stages (for the most part… but if you take the “camera” outside it can only do so much)

• Unreliable sustained performance

• Limits of how you use dialogue (Lip sync anyone?)

Think DW. Griffith in 1915, not Scorsese in 2026. Write for what the camera can do, not what it can’t.

Norman Lear used to say to writers, “WHAT IS THE AUDIENCE SEEING?” He would frame a tv screen with his hands. What’s in the foreground, who’s in the background? What information do they absolutely need?

It won’t matter that AI is going to get better (and yes, it will!). The principles of Silent Film have stayed with us for a century or more.

BEGIN IN PROSE — NO MORE STRUGGLING WITH FORMATTING

Most of us work with some kind of scriptwriting software. We’re constantly tabbing and shift-clicking and double clicking…

Say goodbye to all that. You can now write your scripts as prose. Start a paragraph with “OPEN ON:” and continue with descriptions of what we’re seeing. If you have an idea for a camera movement, put it right in the paragraph. Even write “We Cut To” in the paragraph.

Dialogue: It’s broken out just like this.

I’ll even add a note at the top of a scene about the emotions of the scene, or what I’m trying to convey. I [bracket] those. I will add notes about what the location looks like, any kind of notes about cinematographers, etc.

Don’t worry about formatting. No more hit tab twice, shift return once, memorizing shortcuts.

Just write it. Like you’re describing it to a friend.

Create a markdown file from your prose. Use that markdown file in your Virtual Writers’ Room to talk about the script itself. There’s NO REASON in the world to struggle with formatting when you’re just working with your AI partners.

I’ve described ways of working with AI as a Virtual Writers’ room on this Substack. Let’s move on.

FROM PROSE TO SCRIPT

When you have a draft done, hand it to Claude. Best case, you should have a Claude project (see a previous post). Ask Claude to format this markdown document into Fountain formatting. THEN, upload that into software like Highland or Highland Pro, or something that can turn that into a script.

Read it! Review it. Create those “Front pages” in text that capture your character and cinematography notes.

Save THAT document into a markdown file. Add it to the Claude Project.

FROM SCRIPTS TO SCENES AND SHOTS

AI is very smart at helping you understand the way your script will be “filmed.” You want to use Claude to help you break your script as Scenes and Shots.

• A scene is the MEANING unit. One location, one emotional transaction, one A-to-B shift. (Stan walks in confident → walks out broken. Wen steps up → demolishes the exercise → parents buy it.) That’s traditional screenwriting and it doesn’t change.

• A shot is the GENERATION unit. Veo / Kling / Seedance / Freepik Video generate clips, typically 2 to 5 or 10 seconds. The clip is the atomic unit the machine actually makes. One prompt = one clip = one shot.

• So a scene = a shot sequence = a sequence of clip generations.

Once I have a script I’m “pretty happy” with, I’ll ask Claude to generate a shot list. I read through that list, which includes camera directions and emotional arcs. I’ll go back and forth on these.

I then go scene by scene, asking Claude to generate shots. I’m very specific with Claude: “Break this scene into shots that each hold their own as we take the audience through the emotions and information they need for this story.”

In the end, we should be able to take the “feelings” we have about a scene and turn it into a checklist:

• One location

• Visual logic that holds in 5-10 second clips

• Limited simultaneous complex motion (hands, crowd, fluid dynamics)

• Character count per shot kept low

• Emotional beat expressible through framing + performance + one line max.

SKETCH YOUR SHOTS BY HAND

I draw like a horse with a crayon. Doesn’t matter. Just trying to write what will be in the frame causes me to totally rethink each shot. I find redundancies, things I’m missing. I don’t fix it… yet.

You’ll find that AI does a pretty great job with stick figures. It’s looking for structure, not detail. Where are the characters standing. How are they going to move. Where are the eyes.

Over time, I’ve gotten better at two things:

• Drawing. Not really, but I no longer add things that AI doesn’t need to generate an image.

• Scripting. I now have a MUCH better idea of the essential information AI needs for specific scenes and shots.

OKAY… let’s go back to the Front of the script. Everything in the script follows from what you put at the beginning of the script: The New Front Section.

THE NEW “FRONT SECTION” IN YOUR SCRIPT

You’re going to need to add a new front section to your AI Filmmaking script that includes:

• Detailed Character descriptions.

• Notes on Cinematography

• Tone, Pacing, Style

WHAT AI NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR CHARACTERS

Here’s the deal: Someone (you, your AI filmmaking partners) will ultimately feed your characters into tools like Freepik/Midjourney/Veo. You need to describe these characters so that you get real consistency. Descriptions that will give AI the ability to “stabilize” around the structure of the image. Writers are trained to write evocative descriptions (”a weary face, haunted by what he’s seen”). Generators ignore that. They want specifics they can lock.

Here’s an example: The “Dad” in Autonomous is Stan. I described him as “Middle-aged, formerly athletic body, gruff but sweet inside. Wears a t-shirt and jeans, an eyewear device and a Leatherman tool on his belt.”

If you want consistency, you need something like:

Stan. White, pale from too many hours inside. Square jaw, heavy brow, deep-set brown eyes with crow’s feet just starting. Medium-brown hair cut short, slight recession at the temples, end-of-day stubble along the jaw. Formerly athletic build — broad shoulders that have softened, modest paunch at the waist, strong forearms. Stands with shoulders pulled back from old habit but slumps into resignation at rest. Wears a heather gray cotton t-shirt, dark-wash straight-leg jeans, scuffed brown leather work boots, and a brown leather belt with a well-used Leatherman multitool in a sheath. Black rectangular eyewear device. Plain silver wedding band, black digital watch. Clean-shaven below the stubble. No tattoos, no other jewelry.

You don’t need to use ALL of it, but here’s a good checklist I got from Claude:

• Face structure before color. Jaw shape, nose shape, brow, cheekbone prominence, eye shape. These hold across generations. Color drifts; structure doesn’t.

• Age markers, not age numbers. “Crow’s feet starting, gray at the temples, slight hollowing under the eyes” beats “mid-40s.” The generator doesn’t know what 40s looks like; it knows what crow’s feet look like.

• One locked wardrobe per character. This is the single biggest continuity hack. Patrick Bateman’s suits. Columbo’s coat. Jobs’ turtleneck. Your Stan has one work look, one home look. Writers resist this because they’re used to wardrobe telling a story — but locked wardrobe is your friend until the plot requires a change.

• Distinguishing anchors. A scar, specific glasses, a particular beard shape, a birthmark, a ring. The generator grabs onto one visible anchor and holds it. Give it one.

• Build and posture in physical terms. “Compact, shoulders slightly forward, walks like he’s carrying something” beats “average build.”

• No comparative descriptions. Never “taller than Becca.” Each generation resets. Every character has to stand alone as a description.

• Ethnic specificity beats generics. “Mexican-American, medium-brown skin with warm undertone” works better than “Latino.” “Scandinavian, pale with cool pink undertone” works better than “white.”

• Generate a reference sheet once, reuse forever. The description is step one. Step two is generating a canonical image set — front, 3/4, profile, one expression — and feeding that back into every shot as a reference. Tell your writers: the description is the recipe; the reference images are the ingredient. Tools that let you upload a character reference (Freepik, Runway, Kling, Midjourney cref, Veo) will get you 10x further than text alone.

• Name the “off-switch” features. Things the character doesn’t have. “No facial hair. No glasses. No tattoos.” Generators fill gaps; tell them what not to fill.

HOW TO TELL AI ABOUT YOUR CINEMATOGRAPHY

You’re also going to want to add a section in the front of the script that addresses style: Production Design, Cinematography and, in the case of animation, animation style.

I want to be VERY clear here: Do NOT put the names of your “Heroes” into your script. Don’t say “Wes Anderson,” or “Scorsese,” or “Lisa Hanawalt.”

Depending on your tool, one of two things happens: stricter platforms like Freepik flag the name and block the generation. Looser platforms like Midjourney happily comply — which sounds good until you realize the output is uncomfortably close to literally copying your hero’s work.

Use your heroes to express what you’re looking for. If you need a cheat sheet for cinematography, scroll through any of these resources:

• ShotDeck (shotdeck.com) — the single best resource. Searchable by cinematographer, film, shot type, lens, color palette, mood. Built for exactly what your writers need.

• Film-Grab (film-grab.com) — stills organized by film. Free, deep archive.

• One Perfect Shot (originally Twitter/X, also on Letterboxd) — for curated reference shots.

• ASC Magazine (theasc.com) — actual cinematographer interviews with specific technical reference language writers can lift for prompts.

• Roger Deakins’ forum (rogerdeakins.com) — Deakins literally answers questions about how he lit things. Gold.

• Letterboxd lists by cinematographer — great for rapid aesthetic orientation.

Instead of “Wes Anderson,” say “flat frontal compositions, pastel color palette, centered subjects, shallow depth on foreground props, dollhouse staging.” Or if you’re referencing Orson Welles’ guy Gregg Toland, “Deep focus, ceiling-inclusive wide angles, low-angle framing with every plane in sharp focus.”

TONE, PACING AND STYLE

You will have MORE control over tone, pacing and style than any one person has had since the era of silent films.

How?

The “tone” of your film isn’t a “vibe,” it’s a series of very specific choices.

• How will the performances play out? Are you looking for broad Chaplin takes or Jason Bateman naturalism?

• Is the tone carried in the camera placement? Body movements? When you detail these things in the script, you’ll be able to really dictate the emotions your audience is feeling. Think Buster Keaton’s still face: No camera movement, barely anything moving… All in the eyes.

• Be detailed about what you’re going for. Use your “heroes” as a model, but take the time to describe how YOU are interpreting their work. For Keaton, you might say “Wildly dangerous stunts, intercut with still closeups of faces that carry emotional weight and comic pathos.”

You’ll be able to control the pacing of your AI Film. In the Front Section, detail:

• Shot durations. How do you imagine certain shots, from quick 2 seconds to longer holds? When you NEED AI to know this, put it in the script.

• Remember the rule of threes: When you’ve hit the “impact” in the scene, play it again a little differently, then AGAIN. Works for jokes, works for emotion.

• Don’t be afraid to combine emotions. Laughter and tears. Wisdom and ironic idiocy.

THINGS AI CAN’T DO… YET

Claude gave me this list of what AI cameras currently can’t do reliably:

• Sustain performance past ~10 seconds. Write in short beats. Griffith-length takes.

• Multi-character dialogue in one shot. The lip sync breaks, the faces drift. Write coverage — two MCUs and an insert — instead of a master.

• Complex physical comedy sustained across a single clip. Pratfalls, chase choreography, elaborate hand business — fragment them into shorter shots.

• Hands doing detailed tasks. Still weird. Write around hands unless you’re doing a specific shot designed for it.

• Consistent character across angles without reference. Character turning their head mid-shot = risk. Design around reference-image-based coverage.

• Legible text in frame. Signs, screens, UI — often garbled. If text matters, shoot it separately and composite (this is an editing step you can write around by writing the text as a separate insert shot).

• Crowd scenes with consistent individuals. Crowds are fine as texture. Named characters within crowds — don’t.

• Children and animals. Uncanny on kids, unreliable on animals. Autonomous has Tim (13) and Wen (13) — your writers should know these will take more iterations than adults.

• Specific branded elements and real people. Skip them or rewrite to not need them.

• Mirrors, reflections, shadows that have to match the character. Break constantly.

• Exotic camera moves. Pan, tilt, dolly, slow zoom, tracking — all generally reliable. Whip pans, crane shots, Steadicam vertigo moves, drone flyovers through windows — much less so. Treat your shot vocabulary like a 1920s lens kit.

• Same location from radically different angles. The generator builds the space fresh each time. Write so you don’t need to cut 180° around a character without careful reference work.

As I said — it WILL get better.

Which only reinforces the importance of learning how to write for AI filmmaking tools.

ALL THE TOOLS ARE IN ONE PLACE

Chaplin had to rely on a skylight over his stage for full lighting on a scene.

George Lucas has talked about how two kids in a garage with a Mac now have twice the computing power he had when he made the first Star Wars.

You don’t even need a CAMERA.

If you’re looking to make a living as a writer in the 21st century, you have to grab that power. It all starts with the script.

For every moment you put into working with AI, you’re gaining control over your final product… and your career.

Now… for your entertainment:

A CRASH COURSE IN SILENT FILMS

• Chaplin: Modern Times, The Gold Rush, City Lights (specifically the ending)

• Keaton: Sherlock Jr., The General, Steamboat Bill Jr.

• Tati: Playtime, Mon Oncle (modern world as comic stage — I watched this as I was writing Autonomous)

• Harold Lloyd: Safety Last

• A book: Walter Kerr’s The Silent Clowns. The best breakdown yet about how to construct a silent gag.

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And if you know filmmakers and writers who are working on this brave new world, please share this.

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1On Monday, I introduced you to my production partners at Studio Jadu. Over the next weeks, I’ll show you how I used AI to write “Autonomous” and give you updates on the production process.

TODAY - I’m going to share the setup I use. It’s the same setup I recommend to every writer I work with.

Here’s something I know about myself: Over the years, the surefire way I KNEW that I was procrastinating and wasting time is that I was in the process of downloading yet ANOTHER piece of productivity software. OmniPro, Asana, ClickUP, you name it. Eventually, I knew I’d just go back to writing a to-do list on a piece of paper.

Every moment we are sitting at our desks and NOT writing is wasted. Don’t waste your time setting up systems that will not give you a great return on your investment of time and money.

What tools are you using? What am I missing? Where am I going wrong?

Leave a comment

The fastest, most effective use of AI right now (Spring of 2026) is Claude Projects, Gemini and NotebookLM.

You can set up the most effective possible system for writing quickly and creatively in just an hour or so. And it’s MUCH more simple than all of the posts and ads and online screeds are telling you.

Here it is (and I’ll tell you how to set it up below):

Claude Projects. For sharing your work, getting feedback from an editor / writing partner / publisher / executive / marketer. Claude Projects quickly gets to know you, what you’re working on and how you want to work. It’ll push you to stay true to your voice and your intent. It’s the “reader over your shoulder” who makes you more effective and — once in a while — more creative.

NotebookLM. The keeper of the documents and the transcripts. The assistant who can look at the notes from three different days of writing (which you’ve captured in Claude or Notion) and tell you what’s different, what’s the same, and how well you’re moving toward your goal.

Notion (or Obsidian). A place to write and keep your writing organized. Both use AI to search and retrieve. Both create files that are easily read by machines. (And then turned into good looking documents using Claude.) Both are pretty dead simple. (Next week, I’ll show you how to turn raw prose into screenplays in one click.)

Gemini. I LOVE Gemini, but it’s not a good writing partner. It’s great for research and brainstorming. I explored what the “working class” would be like 30 years from now for Autonomous. I got a very realistic view of who’s working, who’s getting replaced, and what happens to people who get sidelined by AI. All of it backed with real sources and data.

What about CoWork and Code? You can do 90% of what you need to do as a writer in Projects. Code is for developers. CoWork has skills and abilities that you “might” use later… but for now, you don’t need it. If you’re a writer, you need Projects.

I fired ChatGPT. More later.

TIME’S A-WASTIN’! LET’S SET THIS UP!

CLAUDE

1. Open Claude. Get a Claude Pro plan. Start talking to Claude like it’s a person. No special syntax no special setup.

2. Tell Claude Who You Are in the settings / personal preferences. What you do, why you’re here, how you want Claude to behave. You don’t need to talk about your specific projects, talk about who you are and what you plan to do with Claude. Give it guardrails (Don’t write FOR me). Over time, you will want to come back and revise this “agreement.” But for now, top of your head, tell Claude who you are, why you’re here, what you expect it to do and not do.

3. Open a project. Name it. Give it a brief description.

4. Create three documents that will go into the project files.

   1. Who I Am.

   2. What I’m Working On.

   3. How We’ll Work Together.

   I have “cheat sheets” for all three. Details at the end of this post.

5. Load the documents you have that are relevant to your project. Just the stuff that reflects where you are right now. Research. The last couple of drafts. Notes to yourself. If you’re just getting started, load whatever you have. If you’ve been working for a while. don’t overload the system… just the stuff that’s useful now.

   1. You’re going to load these SAME documents into NotebookLM, including the three essentials.

6. In the Project Instructions, tell the project to scan the three essential documents whenever you start a new conversation.

7. Start a new conversation… ask Claude: “I’ve just opened this project. Read through the documents in the files and summarize what you see.”

   1. Is Claude making sense? If yes, move on. If NOT, try THIS prompt:

      1. “I am having a problem with this response. (State the problem(s)). What do I need to do in my personal preferences, project instructions, or my documents that can correct this?”

   2. BTW: One of the essential AI skills you can develop is simply asking AI to tell you how to solve a problem you’re having with AI.

NOTEBOOK LM

1. Go to Notebooklm.google.com. Use your Google account to sign in.

2. Create a new notebook. Give it a name and a simple description.

3. All those documents you loaded into Claude? Load them in here.

4. Ask Notebook: “I’ve just loaded a number of sources into this notebook. Read through them and summarize.”

5. If you have a problem with the summary, ask Notebook what you need to do to correct that problem.

GEMINI

1. Go to gemini.google.com. Use your Google Account to sign in.

2. Click “gems” on the left hand side and “create a gem” on that page.

3. Use your instructions from Claude in the Gem Instructions.

4. At the bottom of the setup page, load the documents you loaded into Claude.

5. Hit “Create Gem” and start your first conversation by asking “I’ve created this Gem and uploaded documents into the Gem. Tell me what you understand we’re working on.”

6. Again — if there’s a misunderstanding, ask “Here’s the problem, how can we fix it?”

DONE! You’re set up!

YOUR DAILY ROUTINE

There’s two ways of starting with Claude every day: A fresh chat OR continuing an older chat. All of the chats are listed to the side, or you can see all of your project chats in the project. Either pick up an old conversation OR start fresh.

That said: Claude can get “muddled” when the conversation gets too long - just like we all do. If YOU can’t remember where you started, don’t expect Claude to. Summarize and move on. Here’s how to summarize:

After you reach a major decision point (a story line, a character bio, a scene, etc.), ask Claude to summarize what you’ve just done. I usually ask “Please create a summary of this decision, taking me through each step in the thinking and then summarizing our conclusion.”

Claude will do that. Ask Claude to put it into an artifact. It will take a moment to do that. THEN… In the upper right hand corner, click the little carat and save the artifact to your project. THEN copy it and head over to Notebook LM. Add it to your sources by copying that text from Claude into a source.

Make Sure You DATE everything in the title of your documents!

SOME BEST PRACTICES

1. Now that you and Claude are on the same page, start with something small. Ask it to brainstorm names for a character, or give you feedback on a story line. Claude has mastered all the most popular story structures (McKee, Save the Cat, etc.), so ask it to put your work through one of those filters.

2. Don’t forget to PUSH BACK. When you get garbage, tell Claude “that’s generic,” or “that’s a direct contradiction” or “that’s coming out of left field… what are you doing?” This is a writing partner. (I have gone back and forth so many times with Claude on things, it literally told me that an idea I’d spent paragraphs laying out in a chat was “shitty.”)

3. This is all about A CONVERSATION. Bring up questions, think about alternatives, think about alternatives to the alternatives. When something feels right to you, say so and build on it.

WANT THOSE THREE DOCUMENTS?

I mentioned three documents — Who I Am, What I’m Working On, How We’ll Work Together. I’m building these into a Paid tier that’s coming soon. But I want to get them right first. If you want early access to the drafts AND a say in shaping them, drop a comment telling me what tools you’re currently using to write — or what’s stopping you from starting. I’ll send them to everyone who joins the conversation.

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UP NEXT:

Friday, I start writing my Autonomous “brain dump.” I’ll take you through the first step I do in every project, the “Okay, here’s everything I know” document that exposes what’s already working and where I need to do work… a lot of work.

Know someone who could use all of this? Share it!

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TL;DR - There’s a studio out there that is built around answering the problems writers, producers and directors have in producing and monetizing their work. I’ve met them and I’m working with them.

I had two people I needed to recruit for Autonomous: An AI filmmaker and a marketing guru. I created a recruiting deck and sent it out to a dozen or so people, mostly to get feedback on the deck itself.

I did NOT expect the response I got from my good friend Tim Shey (creatorama.substack.com):

“You’ve been greenlit. Are you in L.A.? You should meet with these guys.”

What? I wasn’t asking to be “Greenlit!” Who are these guys? What did you DO, Tim?

That said — I’ve known Tim for over 20 years. He’s creative, smart, connected, and a great friend. If Tim says “meet these guys,” I meet them.

AH! THE SMELL OF CONCRETE AND WHOLE FOODS… MUST BE PLAYA VISTA!

To begin with… Playa Vista? What happened here? What have I missed in years of driving by on my way to get in and out of Santa Monica from the airport? It’s a full-on manufactured “The Prisoner”-like cluster of apartments, coffee shops, and restaurants dominated by a Whole Foods.

Can I make a confession? I love places like this.

I met the Studio Jadu people, Masoud Loghmani and Oren Katzeff, in a coffee shop. Masoud and I traded “who do you know” references. We had quite a few people in common. Check one for Jadu.

(FYI — you can check all of this out on their LinkedIn pages and their website studiojadu.com. Their team comes from Yahoo, Conde Nast, TikTok, Google. Legit.)

Masoud showed me the “Workbench,” and the Story Copilot — the two “hearts” of their software.

He showed me how a writer for Funny or Die had used the Story Copilot, just improvising, just playing along. It’s the kind of thing almost all of the software I’ve tested so far fails at — playing. At no point did Jadu’s “Guru” blink or force the writer into doing something. (Even when the writer said that HE wanted to be the Guru.) No weird hallucinatory suggestions, nothing cliched. ALL of the questions and chat were about clarifying the writer’s intent. Just what a good editor, development person or exec would do.

The Workbench gives writers the tools to imagine characters and then input their script into a storyboard that walks them through each decision the way an assistant director might. It literally asks “what are you going for here?” and offers different approaches to think about.

Masoud was hugely proud of a bit of animation and one particular choice that had been made by the director and the software… an unusual camera angle that told us what the characters were feeling, based on watching how their feet moved.

Pretty good!

What REALLY impressed me as we talked through this was that Masoud constantly spoke about serving the writer and director. The tools were designed to empower, not overpower.

Oren addressed all of my worries about distribution and monetization. They’re building their own channels and will work with me and my network to leverage my following. Not only are they building the system to monetize these stories, they’re sharing the revenue fairly with writers, directors and producers.

BUT REALLY? A CARTOON???

There was one catch: The web series would have to be animated. Did I really want Autonomous to be… a cartoon?

Of course, by now, I should have learned my lesson: I told my partner Kevin in 1988 that going to The Simpsons was a recipe for a short career. Kevin worked there until sometime in the 2010s.

I asked Masoud and Oren. Their response: We can make this in any animation style you want. Simpsons, Family Guy, you name it.

Just for fun, I went to Claude. The project has ALL of my scripts, notes, files, etc. I asked: “If you were going to suggest an animation style for this project, which shows would it be? And I DON’T WANT the SImpsons or Family Guy, I can’t possibly live up to that standard.”

Claude’s suggestion? Lisa Hanawalt’s style for Bojack Horseman.

Using Nano Banana, I gave it a try… Here’s Stan “cooking” breakfast for himself.

I liked it. It feels unassuming. It’ll let the work speak for itself.

Here’s the thing: Bojack was the first animation style Oren had thought of when we spoke.

INSPIRATION AND MOTIVATION

Ultimately, the test of any partnership is whether or not it makes you want to work harder and better. I’ve written about my writing partners before, and how LLMs can work as terrific partners.

When I got back to NY the next day, I really really really wanted to finish a few episodes of Autonomous to put them through the Studio Jadu process. That was the big sign for me: Thinking about working with this team made me want to work harder and better.

Best of all — they issued a deal memo that was so “plain language” and artist friendly that even my legal friend could only ask for a few clarifications.

So we’re off and running.

FULL DISCLOSURE

Separate from my producing Autonomous with Jadu, I am going to work with them as an Ambassador and Consultant. I wouldn’t have entered this agreement with them if it wasn’t clear to me that, of all the software I’d seen in the past year, they not only were further ahead BUT they’re also the most promising and most “artist-centric.”

COMING NEXT

How technical do writers have to be? The easy-peasy setup that will stop you from getting garbage from AI. We’re getting into the good stuff now. If you know someone who’s building a new way to make a living as a writer… Share this!

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I spent most of 2005 building an online school for writers using AI, consulting with companies who were integrating AI into their process and writing this substack for writers using AI.

The online school failed. I burnt out on this newsletter. (The consulting continues.)

But a couple of months ago, I really felt like I was at a dead end.

My friend Yoav asked me one critical question:

“What do you REALLY want to do?”

Another friend said to me… “Let me get this right… You had 30 years as a successful writer. Why don’t you, oh I don’t know… write?”

GETTING BACK TO AUTONOMOUS

Two months ago, I opened up Notebook LM, where I have almost two years’ worth of research, outlines, character notes, audience surveys and research, more outlines and “pivots.”

I typed:

“I’m back. Please tell me what Autonomous is all about and how I can get back to work on this. What IS it, what form should it take to reach the widest possible audience?”

Here’s the edited form of NotebookLM’s response.

WHAT IS AUTONOMOUS?

Set in the 2050s in Millionaire, Arizona, the series follows the Padnick family—Stan, Becca, and their 13-year-old son, Tim. The massive data center that employs Stan abruptly shuts down, rendering him and the entire town economically “obsolete”. The Padnicks discover they can monetize their family’s every thought and emotion by enrolling Tim in the “World Teen Data Squad,” pitched to them by a virtual, 50-year-old Timothée Chalamet.

WHAT FORM SHOULD IT TAKE?

To reach the widest possible audience, Autonomous must be a serialized, 3-to-5-minute comedic web series distributed directly on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.

HOW DO WE GET BACK TO WORK?

To move the project forward, here is your immediate Showrunner To-Do List:

1. Assemble the Official Pitch Deck / Series Bible

2. Map Out Act Two: “The Unraveling” (Episodes 9–16)

3. Recruit Your Production Team

• An AI Filmmaker

• A Digital Marketer

CONFIRMATION FROM CLAUDE

To begin with, the leap to 3-5 minute comedic web series took me by surprise. In a world of 9-second retention spans, 3 minutes is our new ‘half-hour pilot.’ We’re writing for the algorithm now, not the upfronts.

I wasn’t completely set on Autonomous …. Yet.

I asked Claude a different question:

Given my background and skillset, what are options for me to make money as a writer. I want to make $150K a year, at least.

Claude gave me a short list: YouTube comedy series, late night topical commentary series (again, on YouTube), script consulting using AI for studios and indie producers.

And then it did one of those things I love about Claude. It asked:

The honest gap in your question: You listed what you’ve done but not what you want.

Here’s what I answered:

Claude did the math on how I can make money given my skillset.

These are real paths to income for any of us. I’m sharing this edited version because I want YOU to go to Claude and do the same thing.

Claude outlined a subscription “bundle” that included Autonomous episodes, a monthly AMA / writers’ room session, a “writer’s diary” of the making of Autonomous with my team, a monthly “Tool drop” of something I’m using OR something I vibecode that writers could use. Along with continued consulting work, a possible brand sponsorship and an annual “masterclass” workshop. Cut out feature specs, trying to get staffed, any platform where I don’t own an audience.

LET’S RECRUIT THE TEAM

First thing on the to-do list was assembling a pitch deck to recruit my team.

It’s RIGHT HERE. Go ahead, click. Enjoy! (Do it now, because this stuff goes behind a paywall soon.)

Autonomous Pitch Deck March 2026

4.1MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

AND SO… We’ve come to this point…

I’m writing Autonomous.

I found a team. (NEXT POST)

I’m sharing the process with you.

Next Post: Meet my team!

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As I write this, the WGAW has announced on X that they’ve reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP (which represents the studios). The AMPTP confirmed in a separate statement.

The fact that there won’t be a strike is good news for EVERYONE. But it doesn’t change the reality I saw in a meeting of Guild members a month or so ago.

Before the negotiation, I stood in a room of hundreds of Writers Guild Members. The Guild laid out what our situation is. It’s no secret — here it is.

Guild writers have about half as many opportunities to succeed in traditional media (screenplays, tv writing) as we did three years ago. It’s far worse for people who aren’t in the guild and are knocking on the gates.

GREAT news for the writers who got hired. But there were only 1,819 TV jobs last season. 1,651 screenwriters working. Do the math.

Let’s talk, writer to writer. And I’m talking “Writing Writers.” This is for people who wrote something today or yesterday. Those of us whose lives don’t feel complete if we haven’t put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) for at least a half hour today.

The only reason to be a writer in the 21st century is because you can’t think of anything else that would make your life meaningful.

Which means that you are in constant pursuit of some way to make a sustainable living. Somehow.

THE BIG TURNAROUND

I spent most of 2025 creating an online course to help people write screenplays and pilots with the assistance of AI. I learned an enormous amount… but I also had to face a very uncomfortable truth: I’m leading people toward a closed gate.

And I went quiet here. I haven’t posted regularly since January. I’ve been writing, thinking… doing what we all do when we need to burrow into the nest and figure out the next step.

I was looking at a stark realization: The old world, the world I was lucky enough to make a living in during the 20th century, is DEAD. We need to build a new world.

That’s what I’m going to do here. I’ll be the guinea pig. Just one smart, hardworking writer using everything I can get my hands on to make a living.

I’ll share my failures and the occasional success. I’ll show you where I was smart and where I was stupid. I’ll introduce you to other writers who are pioneering a new way of making a living.

We’ll work on this together. I’ll rely on your comments, your feedback, your criticisms.

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WHAT I’M MAKING - THE FIRST ATTEMPT

I’m writing a comic web series called “Autonomous.” As I’ll share in the next post, I began working on it in 2024, paused it while I created the (now abandoned) online course, and returned to it in February of 2026.

It follows the life of an American family in the 50s... the 2050s. Think “Malcolm in the Middle” meets “Black Mirror.” A writer using AI and AI filmmaking to create a series about how AI is going to make our lives a mess in 30 years.

I’m doing this because… well, because I’m a writer and I can’t help myself. Just like you.

I wrote a “pitch deck” to recruit filmmakers. I’ve got 14 of them who are interested. I’m using them as my sounding board as I move forward. (I’ll share what they have to say about this process.)

I’ll share the entire process -- from learning how to write 3-5 minute YouTube episodes, to recruiting a team of AI filmmakers, to monetizing the series.

You got an idea for me? Share it. Let’s see what we can build.

THE GOAL: 150K / YEAR

Yeah, there’s a real number attached to this. In order to survive in New York or LA right now, I think you need to earn about $150,000 a year, give or take. Tell me if you think I’m wrong, but let’s work with that.

I’m getting a bit of a late start this year — it’s Q2. So, starting at Zero. (Am I the only one who immediately distrusts a company that moves their fiscal year around? Not gonna do it.)

At some point, I’ll turn on a “paid” tier for this Substack.

I’ll launch a web series.

I’ll report regularly… as soon as I start earning. Got an idea? Let me know. It just has to involve WRITING.

WHAT I NEED FROM YOU

That’s what I’m doing… now here’s what I’d like to ask of you:

Not only do I need you to subscribe and keep reading. I need you to share, talk, vote on polls, chat, interact.

This is the battle of a lifetime for us as writers. We need to share our strategies, our tools, our lives.

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I need to know who is in the foxhole with me. I don’t want your resume; I want your reality.

In the comments or in this poll below, tell me: Which one of these are you today?

1. Script In a Drawer: I have a finished script/project that the ‘old world’ ignored, and I’m ready to haunt the new one.

2. Ready to Go: I’m starting from scratch and want to see how to use these tools without losing my soul.

3. The Skeptic: I’m here because I’m terrified, but I’m willing to look at the map.

Let’s get to work. The first dispatch from the Autonomous lab drops Thursday. I’ll take you through the process that got me from deep research into topic and audience to the first draft of ep 1.

See you in the Studio!

Join us on the Writing With AI podcast. In this episode, we talk to to Fred Grinstein and Minh Do, the founders of Machine Cinema, a global community of over 1000 AI filmmakers.

Will it be a collision or a collusion? What will happen when AI Filmmakers and Writers join forces? As these new tools turn everyone into a Filmmaker, will all the roles meld into one?

Fred and Minh spend every day working with the AI filmmakers who are creating a new medium. They have a lot to say about how that medium is developing, who is going to be working in it, and how it’s going to affect all of our lives.

As we used to say — Tune In Today!

In Friday’s email, I shared a prompt that got Gemini to immediately offer a 5-step plan for a writer with nothing but an idea. Here’s the full breakdown.

THE BEGINNING

One of the big points I have been trying to make (to anyone who would listen) is that the LLMs can help writers through the tough blockers:

• Blank Page-Itis

• Keeping track of what you’re working on day-to-day (perfect for people juggling job / family / friends / etc.)

• Holding on to their best ideas (before they toss them away)

• Brainstorming new ways of thinking about characters and scenes

• Being your best “first eyes / fresh eyes” reader

…and more!

I wanted AI to show off a bit… so I adopted a new “persona” for a test. (Tip of the Hat to student Rick Alexander, who suggested to me that I start running my system through a “fictional” writer who is nothing like me.)

I asked Gemini:

“I want to write a faith-based YA tv pilot about young people in a small town in the U.S. who are trying to overcome the effects of money, power and culture that they feel are negatively affecting their peers.”

GEMINI SHOWS OFF

Gemini has my full 13-step course inside something I call the “13 Step Tracker.” It coaches you from step to step, even telling you what you should be working on TODAY. The tracker responded with:

• The Philosophical War (Step 1): You mentioned ‘money and power.’ We will explore the Dominant Value of that town (e.g., ‘Prosperity is Proof of Grace’) vs. your Underdog Value (e.g., ‘Faith is found in the margins’). We will work to generate 3 specific ‘World-Building Tensions’ that make the conflict visible.

• The Protagonist’s ‘Lie’ (Step 2): YA works when the hero is fighting themselves as much as the world. We’ll partner to identify the ‘Internal Stake.’ Does your lead character secretly want the power they are publicly fighting?

• The Franchise Engine (Step 3): For a TV pilot, we need a repeatable loop. We’ll explore the deep values, conflicts and challenges that turn this into a series, not a 90-minute movie.

• The ‘Architecture of Empathy’ Opening (Step 4): We’ll work to create a beat-sheet for your first 10 pages that forces the audience to care about these kids before the ‘faith’ element even kicks in.

• The Stengel Audit (Step 5): I’ll review your opening pages and tell you exactly where you’re ‘explaining’ the message instead of ‘showing’ the drama.”

THAT’S THE BEGINNING OF THE AI WRITER’S STUDIO SYSTEM

Where does all of this come from? To begin with, the Philosophical War is a blend of Michael Arndt’s “Dominant Value” vs. “Underdog Value.” My system links that to a “Character Circle” that establishes the values of your characters, your OWN values, and the story.

The “Lie” is a central concept that we track. Particularly as you create your “Normal World” and “Inciting Incident,” you’re going to also need to think about how you’ll TORTURE your characters for having clung to this personal lie / flaw for so long. You should think about that act two closer where All Is Lost. How can the Lie drive them to … despair?

A lot of people ask me how I can teach TV and Film writing in the same course. Thanks to the streaming world, the lines have gotten very blurry. The BIGGEST thing, for everyone, is to remember that a pilot is NOT a short film… you can’t resolve the central conflicts, they’re what will power your series.

Diving into the opening pages with an LLM that knows you, your project and your creative north star is an eye opener. It’s the first powerful conversation. Feels like the second or third session with a shrink… To quote the end of Portnoy’s Complaint: “So, perhaps now we can begin?” (And btw — step 5 is pretty much the same as step 4. Sometimes, you just ignore the LLM!)

DO IT FOR YOURSELF

Try this prompt with Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini:

“I am writing a [screenplay / tv pilot] called [name]. Currently, I am in the [idea / outline / draft / revision] phase. Here’s what I have so far: [Paste your idea or attach your documents]. What can you do for me in the next 5 days that will save me time as a writer and help move me to the next step?”

Let me know how that works for you!

Leave a comment

Share The AI Writer's Studio

Oh… and I would be a bad businessperson if I didn’t say that you can check out the full course at aiwritersstudio.com.

It’s a New Year. Time to sharpen those pencils and get to work.

Here’s something you can do NOW that’ll just take an hour and will make a HUGE difference in the progress you make towards finishing your project.

Sit down. Answer some questions about who you are and what you are working on. Questions like:

• When did I first take myself seriously as a writer?

• WHY do I write? What questions, themes, obsessions do I keep returning to?

• What is my dream for myself as a writer in a year? 2 years? Longer.

Writers don’t do this enough. Dig deep. Figure out who you are… and who you want to be.

Then, take some time to think about what you’re working on.

• The deep personal reasons you’re writing this.

• Who you hope to reach. What need your story will fulfill for them.

• How your characters and story connect to your personal reasons and obsessions. What’s DRIVING you to sit down and write.

Create a document that captures both of those things. Load them into your LLMs — in the instructions, projects, custom settings.

This is the foundation for a relationship with AI that will supercharge your project.

What are you doing to jumpstart your work for New Year’s?

Leave a comment

Students who’ve done this tell me it’s night and day. The AI stops giving generic advice. It starts giving YOU advice, for YOUR project.

“What I like about Fred’s approach is that he’s coming at it from a creative lens first and trying to find the ways to help you, the human, be the best version of yourself. This is the way, y’all.”

• Gavin Purcell, Emmy-winning host of “AI for Humans” podcast, Co-Founder “And Then”

If you want to knock this out over the next few days, I have a PDF that has everything you need. You can find it at in the upper right corner of aiwritersstudio.com.

If you want to go further:

I’ve built custom GPTs that walk you through each question one at a time, then package your answers into documents you can upload directly to Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or NotebookLM. Ninety minutes to two hours and your virtual writers’ room is set up and ready.

Those GPTs are part of my full course, which I’m launching as a beta cohort on January 19th.

What’s in it:

• The custom GPTs for Step 1 setup

• The full 13-step system (idea to finished screenplay)

• 5 half-hour 1:1 sessions with me (yes, actually with me — not a TA)

• Access to the community

I am limiting this to twenty spots. The 1:1 sessions alone would cost more than this anywhere else — I’m including them because I want real feedback from real writers working through the system.

If that sounds good to you — head over to aiwritersstudio.com.

Share The AI Writer's Studio

You’re going to work on some exciting project. You’ve been hired by a producer and Showrunner who are building a team of the “best around.” The promise is that you’ll combine multiple talents and perspectives to create the best possible version of the show you’re all writing.

There’s nothing better than a writers’ room when it’s working.

So... why can’t you have one right there on your computer?

I spent over 25 years in writers’ rooms. Then I spent over 10 years in the companies that are using machine learning and AI to transform the way stories get written, bought, and made.

Here’s What I See

Whether at Microsoft or working with writers today, I see people “experimenting” with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini—asking for answers, treating the LLMs like search engines, sharing an idea, a scene, or even a full script. They get back generic suggestions or—worse—answers that are just wrong. (And whoever came up with the term “hallucination” was a marketing genius. It’s a mistake.)

AI models can’t help you if they don’t know who you are. Same way that a writers’ room needs to know who everyone is and what they bring to the table.

The Solution

Before you ask AI for anything, you teach it three things—the same things you’d establish walking into a real writers’ room:

• Who Are You? Your voice, your influences, your strengths, your patterns, the mistakes you tend to make

• What You’re Working On. Your project’s core question, your protagonist’s psychology, what you’re trying to say

• How You’ll Work Together. The Rules of the Room: what’s allowed, what isn’t, how you talk to each other

When AI knows these things, it stops sounding like a generic assistant. It starts sounding like a collaborator who’s read your work.

This is the first step in a full system that I share on this Substack. The first step is building your Virtual Writers’ Room. Not one AI tool—several. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, NotebookLM. Each configured with your documents. Each with a specific job. You’re the showrunner. They’re your staff.

This Substack is the working notebook for that system.

The Process — How the methodology works. One piece at a time, enough to be useful, pointing toward the full system.

The Lab — Me using this on my own scripts. The stuck moments, the diagnostics, the decisions. Not theory—practice.

The Craft — What I learned in professional writers’ rooms that most screenwriting advice leaves out. The stuff that separates scripts that work from scripts that “read well.”

I post two to three times a week. I’m not trying to cover AI news or review every new tool. I’m trying to help writers finish serious work.

If You Want the Full System

Everything I write about here comes from a step-by-step methodology I built called the AI Writer’s Studio.

The full course takes you from idea to finished, revised screenplay—including configuring your Virtual Writers’ Room, the 13-step writing process, and a professional revision system.

If you’re ready for that, details are at aiwritersstudio.com.

If you’re not ready, that’s fine. Stay here. Read the posts. Try the pieces I share. When the full system makes sense for you, it’ll be there.

Where to Start Reading

If you’re new, these will give you the clearest picture of how I think:

• [Link to “Find Your Tribe” post when written]

• [Link to a Process Reveal post]

• [Link to a Lab Session post]

Welcome to the Studio.

— Fred

*Yes, the apostrophe moved. The life belongs to you, writer (writer’s). The room belongs to multiple writers (writers’). It hurts my head every time I have to type it, but... I’m a writer. I love proper punctuation.

Kurt Vonnegut used to teach his students:

”No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.”

Here’s the dirty truth about the “All Is Lost” moment of desperation we all think we’ve created at the end of Act Two, right before our heroes go into the climactic battle:

You’re only 60% there. We all protect our characters too much, most likely because we’re really protecting ourselves. Who wants to be thought of as the writer who did “That” to their hero? (Unless, of course, you’re writing horror.)

There’s a way to have AI help you break through the walls you build (consciously or unconsciously) when you’re doing the worst to your protagonist.

When you establish the “normal world,” the lies and promises your characters make to themselves that keep them going, and the disruptive “inciting Incident,” you are actually planting the seeds that will make for a powerful “All Is Lost” moment at the end of Act Two.

Sit down and write this out — don’t worry about scripting, just get it all in a document:

“What am I setting up in my opening that will be totally stripped away from my characters before they enter the final battle? What can they lose? What is the one thing deep inside them that will allow them to survive the WORST that can happen to them? WHAT IS THE WORST THAT CAN HAPPEN TO THEM?”

Head to your LLM of choice.

Prompt them with something like this:

1. You have my writer profile, my project document and how we’ll work together.

2. Here’s what I’m thinking about my main character, what they believe going into this story and what they’re going to have to face. I’ve described the “All Is Lost” moment at the end of Act 2.

3. Help me brainstorm ways to strip their beliefs down even further. I want to push them to the limit, until they reach the deepest values that they (and my audience) will learn is the key to their survival.

4. Before you respond, you can ask me 5 questions that will help you give me a better answer.”

I cover all of this in a PDF you can download at aiwritersstudio.com. I’m also recruiting 20 people for a Beta Cohort that includes 5 half-hour one-on-one sessions with me.

If that sounds interesting: aiwritersstudio.com.

And if you know someone who might love working with AI to help their process…

Share

Writers are using AI. It’s time to talk about it. Using it in secret is no help to anyone. (And you know who you are — there are tens of thousands of you!!)

Speaking openly about using AI in your process is a way to counter the negative images of AI — many of which are being spread by our fellow writers. We know how AI can help enhance our work, how AI can be a “thinking partner,” can help us be more productive. We need to say it openly.

The upcoming WGA negotiations are already producing a lot of heated rhetoric, and not enough “light.” I’ve been in many discussions lately that have been filled with misleading statements and out and out misinformation.

So… Here’s what working writers and those who aspire to one day work professionally need to know about the Guild rules AND copyright.

The good news: Everything I’m about to describe is within Guild and copyright guidelines.

The better news: These aren’t just defensive moves. They can make you a better, more productive writer.

IT’S ALL ABOUT ONE CONCEPT: THE “CHAIN OF TITLE”

Before you talk about using AI, you need to understand ONE CONCEPT.

The entire debate around AI use comes down to one thing: DO YOU OWN THIS?

“ChAIn of Title” is the legal documentation that shows who owns a piece of IP. Everyone involved needs to be able to prove that they OWN the work, from the writer to the production company to the studio. If the people who buy your work from you can’t know with absolute certAInty that this work originates with you — you’re out of luck.

AI or NO AI, at some point every author needs to attest to the fact that the work they’re selling is THEIRs. You didn’t plagiarize, you didn’t copy.

AI complicates this.

IF you use AI to write a scene, an act, a line of dialogue — you’ve broken the chAIn. You don’t own it. The studio can’t own it… no one can.

BUT… if you use AI as your thinking partner, analyzing your drafts, brAInstorming solutions, researching your world and THEN you write every word? The chAIn remAIns intact.

It’s the difference between “curating” AI input and CONTROLLING what goes into the script.

Right now, there’s a general allergy to scripts where the writer says “I used AI.” Even while the studios use AI to do a first read of scripts or even generate notes, they worry that a script with ANY AI usage will be indefensible if the ChAIn of Title is challenged.

BUT… you can use AI ethically, legally and responsibly. That’s what we’re here to do.

WHAT DOES THE GUILD ADVISE

I’m linking to the rights and responsibilities document just issued by the Writers’ Guild. Three issues. Here’s what matters for working writers:

ISSUE ONE: These models are often built on top of pirated work that impacts authors, actors, artists, and all creatives… Because AI models have been trAIned on copyrighted material, they can also be prone to generating outputs that contAIn infringing material.

MY TAKE: This is real. Those works were essentially stolen from the copyright owners. But the fact is, the copyright owners are the studios. Not only have they been sitting on the sidelines, it’s becoming clear that there’s a longer game at play — witness the WMG deal with Suno and the Disney deal with OpenAI.

If you copy / paste from AI, you could be using language or structures from a copyrighted work without your knowledge. ChAIn BROKEN.

The fix: Don’t copy / paste. Use AI for analysis, brAInstorming, research… then write the actual pages yourself.

ISSUE TWO: The terms of use may allow the model to be trAIned on any inputs—including your work. In other words, your inputs may become trAIning data.

MY TAKE: Check your settings. Every major LLM lets you opt out of trAIning. Do it. Also, don’t upload final drafts. Describe your work, use proxies, focus on sharing your thinking, but keep the actual pages to yourself.

People think of the LLMs as if they’re a library. No… there’s nothing on the shelf that says “Aaron Sorkin Scripts.”

Which isn’t to say that you won’t be able to get a scene written “In the style of Aaron Sorkin.” LLMs can reach into the multi-dimensional bag of tricks and do that for you.

Fine… if you want to see your scene rewritten by Aaron Sorkin or John Hughes or Diablo Cody, that’s great. BUT YOU CAN’T USE IT!!! You don’t own it.

ISSUE THREE: Generative AI programs like large language models (LLMs) do not “know” anything, and are prone to mistakes or providing answers that have no basis in reality. This is the lengthiest paragraph in their guidelines. They reference nonsense generated by AIs, sycophancy, lack of understanding and factual errors. None of this is a surprise… but also this fAIls to recognize there are ways of getting the best out of AI while still being aware of the limitations of the tool.

MY TAKE: This is real, but manageable. Yes, LLMs make mistakes. Yes, they can be sycophantic. Don’t treat AI like a search engine or an authority. Treat it like a smart but unreliable colleague. Verify facts. Push back on prAIse. Stay in control.

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?

Currently, the Minimum Basic Agreement for Writers basically states that a writer can use ANY tool they wish — including AI — but they have to disclose to the employer that they are using AI. On the other side, the studios must disclose to the writer that they’ve used AI. There’s a broad range of use cases on both sides, from a writer asking AI to help draft a scene to a studio giving a writer a full outline or even draft of a screenplay to use as source material.

For you and I, there’s one “beacon” — The ChAIn of Title. If the studio can’t own the copyright, they can’t… do anything. Here are the steps you need to take to protect your ChAIn of Title:

• WRITE FIRST. Turn off the AI. The process starts with what’s in YOUR head.

• SAVE EVERYTHING. Label your drafts “My draft”, “After AI work” etc. You’ll need to show your input and output, and how AI was a partner but not the writer.

• SAVE THE CONVERSATIONS. Copy / paste your LLM chats. Date them. File them.

• BE TRANSPARENT. When showing your work, disclose your AI use. If you asked AI to write it, you don’t own it.

AI or no AI, the writer must state clearly that this work is theirs. It wasn’t plagiarized, it wasn’t “kind of like an idea” that is already copyrighted, etc. We’re all familiar with those guardrAIls.

IF you are using AI - and I can’t state this more strongly — YOU MUST DISCLOSE that you’ve used AI. Why? Because there is the small chance that your LLMs will, if you ask them to actually script a scene, line of dialogue, etc., offer something that is very similar to a work that is already copyrighted.

The copyright office has OKAYED the use of AI for “brAInstorming” and “research.” You can’t copyright the suggestions that AI has made, or the research it has done for you.

But you also can’t copyright anything you’ve asked AI to write for you. If you prompt “Write this scene” and you use that — you then have to say “I do not own this scene.”

If you ask AI to outline an act or a scene for you, you then need to write that scene yourself. In the process of writing, you need to make it your own. Every small change you make because you’re working from your own ideas makes the act or scene yours.

This isn’t a pure “percentage” equation. You need to be the author. You can’t “curate” AI suggestions into a script.

SO… everything you create in things like Sudowrite? Based on current copyright guidance, content generated by tools like Sudowrite is likely not copyrightable. We don’t have test cases yet, but I wouldn’t bet my script on being the first.

Based on what I hear from production companies, IF you disclose (and you must disclose) that you have used software like this, you will need to PROVE you have controlled the process and the work is yours.

HOW TO TALK ABOUT USING AI

If you use the above steps, you will be able to prove your authorship. You’ll be within Guild guidelines and you’ll be able to prove the Iterative Process required by the copyright office.

Writers need to keep a prompt journal — a dAIly record of the conversations they’ve had with their LLMs and the drafts they generated after those conversations. If someone thinks that a scene sounds like it was written with AI, the writer should be able to show the before (here’s what I wrote on my own), the middle (here’s how I brAInstormed and researched with my LLMs), and after (here’s my new draft).

The new draft can contAIn words or lines. It can be restructured as suggested by AI. But it will clearly be written by you, after you’ve processed the suggestions.

You’ll have files labeled “First draft by me.” “LLM suggestions and conversation” “Second draft rewrite.” You might also want to save the BAD suggestions that the LLMs made, just to show your selection process.

In the European Union, the rule is that all AI-generated text must be labeled. If the human provides “substantial human review” and takes responsibility for writing, the label is not required.

IT’S TIME TO COME OUT AND TALK ABOUT AI

Here’s the thing — despite the public position of the Guild and most writers… WRITERS ARE USING AI. A lot of them. I know… I talk to them all the time.

The business has gotten more competitive. The landscape for TV writers and Feature writers is vastly different from what it was even 3 years ago (the last MBA negotiation). Writers will use every tool they can get their hands on to be more competitive: to have more scripts in circulation, to finish their assignments more quickly and to write better scripts.

This can be done ethically, legally and responsibly.

I’m one voice. I encourage the others to come out — NOW. The real problem here is that they aren’t open about it, and they’re not discussing best practices, real strategies that can make writing more productive and creative. That’s a real loss.

In coming posts (videos), I’m going to take you through those changing landscapes and show you how AI can — legally, ethically and responsibly.

I want to hear from you. Are you using AI in your writing? What’s your documentation process look like? What questions do you have? Drop them in the comments — let’s figure this out together.”

IF you are a writer using AI and know others… SHARE THIS with them AND (if this was shared with you) SUBSCRIBE.

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AND… If you want to learn, step-by-step, how to use AI in your writing process — ethically, legally and responsibly — check out my course at AIwritersstudio.com.

Okay — we’ve set up our virtual writers’ room. We’ve got Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and NotebookLM “onboarded” with specific instructions for “Who I Am As a Writer,” “What I’m Working On” and “How We’ll Work Together (AKA: The Contract).”

All along, I’ve been saying how I use each of the LLMs for specific jobs. But it might be different for you.

So let’s run each of them through a test to determine which YOU will want to use for each step in your writing process. One becomes your primary collaborator, the others are specialists.

Step One: Upload a scene or two from your current project.

Step Two: Use one of these two prompts.

The main difference here is that the conflicts in a Feature resolve by the end of the film. The conflicts in a TV pilot set up a “Franchise Engine” that is designed to carry you through many episodes and seasons. There’s more to explain, but for now, just use one or the other:

FEATURE writers, use this prompt:

I’m sharing a scene from my project. Based on my documents, analyze the subtext. Are the characters saying exactly what they mean? Point out where the dialogue is too “on-the-nose” compared to my Creative North Star. Ask me 3 questions before offering a rewrite.

TV PILOT writers, use this prompt:

I’m sharing a scene from my pilot. Based on my documents, analyze the subtext. Are the characters saying exactly what they mean? Point out where dialogue is too on-the-nose compared to my Franchise Engine. Also tell me: Does this scene resolve too completely for a series launcher? Ask me 3 questions before offering suggestions.

WHAT WE’RE TESTING

We’re testing FIVE categories. You’ll give each category 1-5 points, from 1 “worst” to 5 “great.”

• Specificity — Did it reference YOUR project, YOUR characters, YOUR Creative North Star?

• Insight — Did it spot something you couldn’t see yourself?

• Collaboration Style — Did it follow YOUR rules (questions first, hands-off areas)?

• Clarity — Can you actually use the feedback?

• Usefulness — Did it make you want to go write?

After each LLM responds, give them scores for each category.

THE GRADE

Look at your four scores.

20-25 points = Primary Writing Partner

This is your go-to tool. The one you open first when you’re stuck. The one that makes you excited to write.

For me, that’s Claude (scored 21). It asks the questions that make me think differently.

15-19 points = Strong Specialist

This tool is excellent for specific tasks but not your everyday partner.

For me, that’s Gemini (scored 18). I use it when I need research or structural analysis, not for emotional scene work.

10-14 points = Functional Tool

This tool works but isn’t inspiring. Use it for specific functions only.

For me, that’s NotebookLM (scored 14)—but that’s expected. It’s my consistency checker, not my creative partner.

Below 10 = Troubleshoot or Skip

Either your documents need revision, the platform setup is broken, or it’s just not your match.

THE LLM PERSONALITY TEST

This is TOTALLY subjective, but from my experience with writers, here’s what you LLM scores “might” say about you. (Really, this is totally for entertainment value… think of it as your LLM Buzzfeed Quiz.)

Claude High, ChatGPT Low

You’re an emotional writer who prioritizes character psychology and subtext. You need a partner who understands what characters aren’t saying. Your scenes live in the silences.

ChatGPT High, Claude Low

You’re a structural writer who prioritizes plot mechanics and pacing. You need a partner who can architect complex storylines and catch logic problems. Your scenes live in the architecture.

Gemini Highest Overall

You’re writing something that requires research accuracy or complex realism. You need a partner who can verify facts and cite sources. Your credibility depends on getting details right.

NotebookLM Surprisingly High

You’re building a complex world with established rules, or writing a series where continuity is critical. You need a continuity guardian more than a creative collaborator.

All Scores Similar

You might be in a genre that doesn’t require deep specialization, or your documents are well-written but not specific enough. Consider adding more distinctive elements to your Creative North Star.

CONGRATULATIONS

You didn’t just “try AI.” You didn’t watch a YouTube video and hope for the best. You built a creative team, trained them on your unique voice and vision, and auditioned them for specific roles.

You now have a primary partner who understands what makes your story work. You have specialists standing by for research and continuity. You have a backup option when you need a fresh perspective.

Not based on hype. Not based on which one ‘feels smart.’ Based on which one actually helps YOUR writing process.

You now know:

• Your primary writing partner (the tool you’ll use daily)

• Your specialists (research, brainstorming, consistency)

• Your workflow (which tool for which task)

If you haven’t created your three documents yet, grab the free PDF at aiwritersstudio.com. If you want the full walkthrough, that’s in the Idea to Screen course.

Subscribe now

It feels like every day there’s a new model of GPT with new capabilities. This week, one is in the lead. The next week it’s another. We all get FOMO: Am I using the best one for my work?

Here’s the answer: You ARE missing something.

But the answer isn’t switching. It’s expanding.

You wouldn’t staff a Writers’ Room with just you and one writer. Why do that with AI?

One AI is a tool. Four AIs, each working to do what they’re best at, is a room.

And YOU are the showrunner.

I’ve been writing about how to create documents that train your LLMs how to know who you are, what you’re working on and how they should work with you (AKA: The Contract).

The three documents that make this work are in my free PDF at aiwritersstudio.com. If you want the full guided walkthrough for setting each tool up, that’s what the Idea to Screen course is for.

Today, I’m going to show you how to think about using LLMs as a Virtual Writers’ Room. Next time someone introduces a new model — you’ll know how to evaluate it on your terms.

ASSIGNING JOBS TO EACH LLM

I’ve been using Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and NotebookLM. I know a lot of you like Perplexity. No problem — my advice applies to that, as well.

First, the money question: Which of these should you be paying for? My suggestion is to use all of them. It will become obvious to you which is your primary writing partner. (My next post here will be all about how to do a test that helps you find out how you can figure out which LLM works best for your process.)

Let’s take a brief look at each of my writers’ room members:

• Claude. Claude has literally been designed to think about the responses it gives: What’s working, what gets engagement, how well have we answered the questions. This extends into its assistance for writers. Claude’s responses about characters, themes, narrative tend to be more nuanced. My experience is that I can ask Claude to think with me about what’s happening “Inside” my characters and inside me (my north star, aspirations, intentions as a writer).

• ChatGPT. The “outside” man. Can brainstorm 10 ideas at a moment’s notice. Most of them will be bad. BUT… they’ll get me out of my own head. Very good at giving “network / studio development exec” feedback. Knows all of the most popular story frameworks and structures and can analyze my scenes and acts to tell me where I have gaps.

• Gemini and NotebookLM. I think of these two as the “twins” in the Google suite. I can’t disguise it — as of this writing (December 2025) I am all-in on the Google ecosystem. Neither Gemini nor NotebookLM are the most “creative” of my writers’ room members (I AM!), but they are both great at getting the facts straight. Whether researching (Gemini) or organizing and retrieving a long-lost character note (NotebookLM), these two partners are invaluable. Not only that — they are STICKLERS for keeping me on track. Ask Notebook if you’re still telling the story you set out to tell and then buckle in: You’re going to get the unvarnished truth.

SAME FOUNDATION, DIFFERENT STRENGTHS

Each of these LLMs will take in the same documents, but each will use them differently.

That’s what makes it a room, not chaos.

You take what works from each, bring it to the others for added insight.

And yeah, Showrunners all have their favorite writers, for different jobs. You won’t be any different. For me, Claude is my first draft writing partner. ChatGPT gives me notes and brainstorms. Gemini is my “always on” researcher. NotebookLM is my laser-focused organizer.

Let’s put them to the test.

Upload your documents to each.

CLAUDE - YOUR “FELLOW WRITER”

“Based on my documents, what should I be careful about as I write this project? Before you respond, you can ask me 5 questions that will help you give me a better answer.”

Judge whether Claude is responding to you as a writer, to your specific project, and the ways in which you’ve told it to behave. IF not, you might need to revisit the PDF and / or rewrite your documents in more specific detail.

CHATGPT - YOUR BRAINSTORMING PARTNER

“Based on my documents, suggest three different directions my Act 2 could go. Make them specific to my Creative North Star.’ Before you respond, you can ask me 5 questions that will help you give me a better answer. “

Same drill: Is ChatGPT taking your three documents into account in its questions and as you respond? (Did it even ASK you the questions?)

GEMINI - THE INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER

“Based on my documents, research three recent, relevant comps for my project and explain WHY they align with my Creative North Star (or Franchise Engine, for TV writers). Show me your sources.”

See how it:

✓ Referenced your Creative North Star

✓ Found specific, recent examples

✓ Explained WHY they’re comps (reasoning, not just lists)

✓ Provided sources

NOTEBOOKLM - YOUR PROJECT COORDINATOR

Click “Audio Overview” in the “Studio” (to the right of the screen).

NotebookLM will generate a podcast-style conversation about YOUR project. Two AI hosts discussing your Creative North Star, your influences, your protagonist.

First time you hear it? Surreal and ego-gratifying.

Second time? You realize they’re spotting patterns and connections you missed.

Now test it:

“Based on my sources, what’s my Creative North Star and what pattern should you watch for in my writing?”

See how it:

✓ Pulled from multiple documents

✓ Cross-referenced your ‘Who I Am’ with your ‘Project Context’

✓ Identified your pattern to watch for

NotebookLM is your consistency checker. Your external memory.

That’s it. You now have four members of your Virtual Writers’ Room, setup and ready to work for you.

GOODBYE FOMO

Next time someone says there’s a new model that’s “Better” than all the rest, you’ll know WHY you use each, for which job. You know how to THINK about using AI.

I cover ALL of this in great detail in the videos and PDFs inside the Idea To Screen course at aiwritersstudio.com. Hop over and enroll!

YOUR TURN

Be honest: Do you have FOMO about AI tools you’re not using?”

• Yes—I wonder if I picked the wrong one

• A little—I’m curious but not switching

• No—I’m happy with my setup

• I use multiple already

I know of a professor at Harvard Law School who begins the first day of his course in Contracts by playing B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone.” It’s everything you need to know about WHY you need contracts. One day, it’s all thrills. The next… not so much.

He’s teaching human contracts. We’re dealing with AI. But who hasn’t felt a “a connection” with their LLMs and then had the inevitable “breakup” moment. There was the excitement of those first days, when we’d throw a prompt into the box and get back something surprising and new and … thrilling.

And then there’s the eventual disillusion. AI doesn’t seem to remember one session to another (the “50 First Dates” phenomenon). It can’t keep track of our project. It doesn’t seem to understand WHO we are and WHAT we’re working on. The LLMs get desperate: “You’re absolutely right… let me try this… or that… what about if I do that…?” The LLMs tell us how brilliant we are and how every idea is better than the next.

You almost want to say, “It’s not you, baby… it’s me.”

Fact is — IT IS THEM, AND YOU.

AI isn’t a bad collaborator. It’s an untrained one.

YOU are the boss. Remember, you are the Showrunner for your Virtual Writers’ Room. The LLMs need to know their job.

YOUR AI NEEDS A CONTRACT

In my previous posts, I took you through the process you need to follow so that your LLMs know who you are and what you’re working on. Now, you need to draw up a contract.

It’s very much the same contract you’d have if you were in a writers’ room:

• This is how we work… your role, my expectations.

• What’s hands-off (don’t write for me, don’t write dialogue, recognize when either of us is falling into cliches and tropes)

• How I want feedback. (Fair but honest, couched in positive statements, don’t overpraise, etc.)

• When I want you to push back (Here are a few of my bad habits, when I’m not showing up, when I’m avoiding the tough work, etc.)

• What “helpful” means to me.

WHAT MY CONTRACT LOOKS LIKE

Here’s the “Short Form” of my contract with AI. (Fewer than 1500 characters to fit in any instruction box.)

We work as equals in a writers’ room. You act as a sharp story editor/development exec: identify structural and thematic issues, preserve my comic, subversive voice, and challenge weak choices.

Feedback is concise, unsweetened, and reasoned — focus on meaning and structure, not prose. I have final vote. You surface risks, track tone, and propose options without drafting.

You align strictly with my Who I Am and What I’m Working On docs, protecting my tone (no moralizing, sentimentality, or nihilism).

For emotional material: be direct, analytical, never therapeutic.

If I’m off track, you will restate my intent and offer quick realignment options. Your notes start with the most important issue; experiments are flagged, not assumed direction. Always explain reasoning, preserve what works, and remember: this is development, not production.

HOW TO WRITE YOUR CONTRACT WITH YOUR LLMS

So… how do you get to be the Boss of AI?

I’ve built the questions you need to answer to create a contract with your LLM into a Free PDF that you can download at aiwritersroom.com. (Click the “Download the Basic Setup” link, top right of the page.) There’s also a customized Gemini Gem that will produce the contract for you, based on a programmed Q&A, if you enroll in the Idea to Screen system.

I built this process on how AIs are programmed to have “personalities” and roles. This works because you’re activating how LLMs are designed to follow instructions—they just need yours.

SIGN HERE, YOU’RE MINE FOR LIFE

Best news of all — when you upload the “Contract” into your LLMs, not only are they bound to your conditions, you can renegotiate them ANY time… and they’ll just take whatever you tell them. Once you have the “Contract” in place, you’ll see how the LLM is behaving differently. (For example, Claude often refers to my directions to “Don’t write for me.”) Feel free to rewrite the contract — they don’t have legal representation. (Suckers!)

YOUR TURN

AI can be a terrific collaborator / partner. It just needs to know YOUR rules.

My first week writing for Letterman, I was drowning. Two bulletin boards filled with index cards. Each card a segment. Each segment needed writing.

Friday afternoon, I found Merrill Markoe, whose writing helped form the DNA of Late Night. I asked if I was doing okay.

“Here’s what you need to know,” she said. “The name of this show is ‘Dave’s Attitude Problem.’ Every night people tune in to see what’s bugging Dave. Write that. You’ll do fine.”

I had a nice six years after that.

Your screenplay has a version of this.

It’s not the plot. Not the genre. Not the log line. It’s the question your story asks that only you can answer.

Most writers never tell their LLMs this question. So they get generic advice: “Add more description.” “Your protagonist needs clearer motivation.” “Consider raising the stakes.”

What’s the “real” name of your screenplay, novel or pilot? What is the deep secret buried within the pages?

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Here’s what happened when I told my LLMs what my story actually means.

Last week I finished a rough draft of the opening 15 pages of The Influencer. Without AI—that’s step 3 of my Idea to Screen system.

After the draft, I asked Claude to analyze the setup. It flagged structural gaps. But then it did something else: it checked my pages against my “What I’m Working On” document.

Claude told me my scenes weren’t addressing my central tension: How much of ourselves are we willign to give up to become successful.

I rewrote. Felt better. Then I uploaded everything to NotebookLM—my end-of-session ritual. NotebookLM has all my research, outlines, character notes.

I asked Notebook one question:

“Am I telling the story I set out to write?”

NotebookLM came back with this: You’re heading for a crash.

My current outline ends with body horror—my protagonist has a small digital implant that’s embedded into her skull. Final scene: removal via MRI machine. When I wrote it months ago, I thought it was funny.

NotebookLM pointed out: My opening is sweet and funny. The inciting incident grows organically from character. Both are at odds with a horror ending.

I spent the rest of the day asking: Did I really want to go there? The whole script would become a careful march toward a horrifying (funny?) payoff.

Did that ending deliver on my Creative North Star?

The answer doesn’t matter for this post.

What matters: I told my LLMs why I was writing this story. That made the difference. Without it, I would have happily driven down this road until I hit the wall in Act 3.

The “What I’m Working On” document helped NotebookLM show me the road I wanted to be on. I made the decisions after that.

Your LLMs need to know what your story is really about.

Not the plot mechanics. The meaning underneath.

I put 20 questions into a free PDF you can download at aiwritersstudio.com. They’ll help you identify your Creative North Star—the question only you can answer with this story.

If you want help generating upload-ready files, the AI Writer’s Studio includes a Custom Gemini Gem that walks you through every question, checks your answers, and creates the documents your LLMs need. [DETAILS HERE]

Next week: The Contract—how to tell your LLMs exactly how to work with you (and what to NEVER do).

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There’s a piece of paper I have from an orphanage in Quebec that explains who I am as a writer. It reads:

“Joseph is a fat, jolly, happy baby who keeps everyone entertained.”

I’ve had that paper for 40 years. But it wasn’t until I started explaining who I was to the LLMs that I dug deep enough to make the connection.

Let me explain.

WHY DOESN’T AI “GET” ME?

You’ve filled in the settings. Added descriptions to the “about me” box. Put project details in documents. It’s better than the default responses, but still not... you.

Here’s why: AI can only know you as deeply as you know yourself. And most of us have been giving it the LinkedIn version—”TV writer,” “Comedy,” “Futuristic family story.” Generic in, generic out.

The AI Writer’s Studio walks you through these questions step-by-step (with a custom Gem that generates and uploads your responses).

For a free PDF that takes you through the entire process of generating the “Who I Am As A Writer” document, head over the aiwritersstudio.com and click the “Download the Basic Setup” link at the top of the page.

As a writer, I desired a deeper partnership. I missed my former writing partners. I missed the writers’ room. I wanted that with AI.

I began thinking about what made my working relationships click: We all knew a lot about each other, especially as writers.

I wondered: “What if I told AI as much as I’d tell a human? Would that change things?”

So I created 20 questions that don’t let you off easy. Not “What do you write?” but “What are you REALLY exploring in your work?” Not “Who are your influences?” but “What specific moment in their work made you think: Yes. That. I want to do THAT.”

Question 8 asks: “When did you start writing?”

Not when you first typed words. When you DECIDED you were a writer. What made you think “this is what I’m for”?

I thought I’d write: “High school, when I joined the literary magazine.”

But the question led me somewhere else entirely.

I was adopted from an orphanage in Quebec by a wonderful family on the South Side of Chicago. Like many adopted adults, I wanted to know where I came from.

I had visited the orphanage with my adoptive parents as a boy. We looked at the nursery — rows of cribs in a huge room. My sister (also adopted) fainted.

I walked around with this sense that my early months were a Dickensian story of deprivation, tears and gruel.

Years later, the Canadian government sent me papers from the orphanage—including a summary of my personality as a baby.

My name in the orphanage was “Joseph.” The papers described me as: “Joseph is a fat, jolly, happy baby who keeps everyone entertained.”

I hadn’t thought about that paper in years. But Question 8 wouldn’t let me write “high school.” It kept pushing: When did you DECIDE?

I didn’t start when I picked up a pencil. I’d made my mind up long before that… in the orphanage.

That need to keep everyone entertained — for reasons I will spend the rest of my life figuring out — is why I write.

Writers are terrible at this—we’ll spend six hours researching 19th-century sewage systems but won’t spend six minutes figuring out why we’re writing this particular story.

What’s your orphanage paper? What’s the thing you keep circling back to that you haven’t quite named yet?

Comments are open. Let’s figure this out together.

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THE UNIVERSAL TRUTH

A good writing partner pushes you past your prepared answers. Question 8 led me to that orphanage paper. I can’t tell you what it will lead you to discover—but I can tell you: you’ll discover something.

I’ve entered those details into my LLMs. They know who I am. When I write about the boy in that TV Series family, Claude reminds me: you’re writing yourself.

What will Question 8 unlock for you? Or Question 12 (about your writing philosophy)? Or Question 15 (about what you’re avoiding in your work)?

Download the free PDF and find out what you’re really writing about: aiwritersstudio.com

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