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"I had to learn so much about calandars" and I am so glad you did! Thank you for making sure my double new moon days are the best disasters.

Cool video! Very inspiring!

I say yeah. I got a pirate fantasy book in the docket too.

Thanks so much for having me on the show! Was a great time 🔥

I heard the books of Harry Potter were much better than the movies however I have only seen the movies so I can only go by the movies. The time changer that Hermione had kind of ruined the overall story for me. The same way time travel in Endgame ruined the last movie for the MCU for me. The same way time travel in the Warcraft series ruined some of the story. Time travel feels lazy to me. With that being said what other issues did Harry Potter the books have that didn't quite match up?

great video

dope interviews legends. always help to hear from other authors hammering through their second book 👊 (also epic beard game!)

Pure Silicon Valley brained arguments... "humans aren't good at pattern recognition" is a patently false statement. Patterns only have any value within the context that they are identified. Context is the exclusive domain of conscious humanity and writing, insofar as it is done as a literary exercise and not some banal copy to get clicks, will never have any use for AI.

I have a two year old and a 11 month old. And another on the way. I write when I can manage it. That's not hyperbole. I can't imagine not having time to write with a 9 and 12 year old. Like, at that point they can totally entertain themselves! And they go to school for hours out of the day. I'm confused how it's even a question once they get to that age. Is there something I'm missing?

I'll be glad when we're past this era of pearl-clutching about AI and being overly-sensitive about making sure what we say about AI publicly walks that fine line of "I know it's controversial, but I want to make it clear that I'm only using it in the ways that have been deemed non-controversial." The reality is that no one reads books or listens to music or looks at art purely based on its quality or originality. An AI could write a technically perfect book, but it's all the extra sauce that makes a book popular. A song is an ever better example. The technically best singers or musicians are never the most-celebrated or even known. Taylor Swift is middling quality, at best, but because her brand is so huge and she's so beloved, anything she writes or sings instantly becomes more important than anything else. All that to say that people can pump out millions of purely-AI created books or songs or artwork, but no one will care because it won't have that secret sauce. Now, will people use AI-created elements in their work? Sure. Absolutely. Just like we currently use stock imagery, or music stems, or google. But the things they make using AI-assisted elements, that's the HUGE grey area we are in. Personally, I use AI extensively in my creative processes. One example is in my novel which takes place partially in Scotland in 1911. I've never been to Scotland. I'm not a buff on turn-of-the-century Scotland. I knew I wanted to set part of this story in that region (for reasons). So I fed ChatGPT the plot of my story, the general character arc for that character, thematic ideas I wanted to address, and other factors that I knew were important. I then told ChatGPT to give me ten Scottish cities where my character could find himself. It gave me a great list, with justifications (based on my story) why each city would be a good location. One of the locations, near the end of the list, tossed in a random out-of-the-box idea (I'd asked it to give me two or three ideas that really went off the grid of my story) and it suggested a crazy idea involving the Loch Ness Monster. While I had no intention of Nessie being in my story (and still don't), the mere mention of Nessie launched me into a whole new aspect of my story, as it's very likely this character would have at least heard of Nessie. And based on that, I still chose a different city to use (Stirling) but now there was a Nessie-flavored idea that I went back and layered through what I had already created and that would inform some future plot elements. While it could be argued that I didn't come up with the Nessie aspect, and shouldn't take any credit for its existence in my story, I'll counter by saying that before AI, we'd use google in the exact same way, just finding lists of things that may or may not have had anything to do with what we were looking for and being sparked by a random idea. But I use AI in my writing extensively in that way. I treat it as a collaborator, asking it questions and sifting through the ten or twenty responses it gives me looking for some tiny nugget to pull out and send me down new paths. I can't express how rewarding the experience has been. I look at the writing I'm doing and it's 100% mine. Woven within the fabric of my story are AI-inspired bits, stuff that's come from my writing group critiquing my story and giving feedback and ideas, discussions with random friends, watching movies and TV, reading books, watching TH-cam videos where people talk about the things they like or don't like in fantasy books, and just purely reading or watching stuff purely for research. All of it gets put in the gumbo. At the end of the day, I'M writing it. It all filters through ME. If we're going to start nitpicking where each element of inspiration comes from, then every author is going to have to start cutting royalty checks to every author that inspired them. My book is absolutely a close third-person style like George RR Martin. I'm not aping his style, but I'm aping that structure. How much should he be compensated? As I go back and re-read books from my youth, I see where I subconsciously absorbed some style and cadence and tricks from various authors. Do they deserve a chunk of credit and compensation? Or should I be required to excise any part of my book that could be deemed "stealing" from an author? And finally, the most ridiculous fear I keep seeing expounded upon (and I heard it in this video) is the worry that no one will put any effort into making art. This is SILLY. Today, there are more people making art than at any point in the history of mankind. The tools to create art, and the means to display it and share it are ubiquitous and endless. More people are writing books than ever before. More people are making music than ever before. More people are making art than ever before. More people are taking photos than ever before. That isn't going to ever change. More people are making art than ever before and there's less likelihood that your art will make any money. People are making art because they LOVE it. Because they must. I'm writing my epic fantasy novel not because I expect to make millions of dollars and see it turned into a movie or TV series. In fact, I know it'll never likely make me a penny. But I MUST make it. My soul demands it. And that's how everyone is that explores creativity. They MUST make art. Photography has been around almost 200 years. The NEED to paint or draw or sculpt vanished instantly. No need to spend days or weeks making a portrait of someone (and years learning the skill) when you can just point the picture box at it and have an absolutely perfect representation of it hours later. That didn't kill the desire of people to MAKE stuff, to spend years perfecting their craft, from people appreciating the art. That will never change, no matter how easy it makes it for someone to type in some words and have a fully-formed book or song or movie pop out minutes later. There will just be infinitely more people expressing their creativity, even if they don't have ANY true creative skill. The good stuff will rise to the top. The generic stuff will become the bland sludge in the middle, just like it's always been. There were endless endless endless terrible books written, songs recorded, and artwork hung on walls. That's never changing.

Totally relate to the "distraction" you have, Lucy! Good to see you here :)

I find it really difficult to believe that writers manage to write a story without even thinking about the end, the plot, and other relevant details before starting the writing process. Yes, there is the driving, initial idea, but not knowing where you are going with it sounds very amateurish and the perfect recipe for the story without structure or logic.

Forever DM/GM here, since about 1998, as well as a writer for almost as long. I use D&D and other TTRPGs for this stuff a lot. as well as setting/world building development. I've never run a pre-made module. I've done everything homebrew and off the top of my head. I've got such a long, intense RP history that it actually made transitioning to solo writing quite difficult. But I'm past that now and enjoy both. (And studying writing craft has made me a better RPer, and RP and D&D sharpens me as a storyteller and writer. I leverage both to great advantage.

Ohhhh this is good!

Are there any illustrations past the maps?

I’ve always wanted to write by hand I like how you think😃

I think lord of the rings is good for seeing the origin to a lot of modern day fantasy. It’s main issue is that it’s a bit dated when compared to today’s fantasy. I wouldn’t personally use it as a guide to writing a current day fantasy book but it is an interesting read for seeing what a majority of modern day fantasy originated from.

This is how i have chat Gpt help me. I have it write me a list of 20-30 ways of what happens and if i like it, i use that for a writing prompt and come up with what i need like i have the races down, where the setting take place and write an entire chapter based on that and my hands hate it when i have it written on paper as i have what i have typed as i want it done and then take that entire thing and have chat gpt read my chapter to me and if i dont like it i rewrite it on paper and retype it. I usually take too long on writing a chapter as i like to plan it out

Please stop with the constant hand waving. Very distracting

Spellcheck is the only acceptable reason to me. The rest of it you should simply know. I've got a series spanning 5 completed novels, 1 novella, and a sixth novel as a wip. I know how all the characters felt during situations. If I don't, I go back and reread it. And maybe its the infosec in me, but I never trust anything that says its not connected to the internet. Grammarly is an AI bot, but I only use it for spelling and some grammar, because it makes plenty of grammar mistakes.

This would stunt writer's development and creativity. Definite no for me.

I know that everyone's view is different when it comes to AI. For me, I think AI is best used as a brainstorming buddy. It's amazing for helping you get past writing blocks, or to brainstorm ideas while you plan out your novel, or to create a 3 act structure from the information you give it once you've got a hefty plan in place. This latter bit is especially helpful if you're like me and you're a bit of a scatterbrain when it comes to planning, so your data isn't organized very well. When it comes to writing itself, I personally don't think AI should do writing for you. As you said, that kind of defeats the purpose, and for me, writing is where all the fun is. AI is also very helpful for initial editing (it won't replace an editor though.) I write my novel in NovelCrafter, not for the AI writing capabilities, but for the chat functionality. NovelCrafter lets you prompt the AI to ask questions based on a given scene, plot structure, or entire novel. This is extremely useful for the early editorial steps. I use it as a pre-editor editing stage to do a quick sanity check to find plot holes, problems with character development, pacing issues, etc. Google Notebook LM is also an intriguing option. I haven't tried it on an entire novel... yet, but I'm planning on using it for my next book. It's ONLY source of information is the information you provide, so you can maintain total creative integrity. I should also mention that if you're going to use AI to write (for teaching you show vs tell etc.) I strongly recommend against ChatGPT and instead I would suggest using Claude Sonnet 3.5. It's infinitely better at writing, though still terrible. Sonnet is also infinitely more reliable than ChatGPT. It still messes up, but I can trust what it tells me much more readily than I can with ChatGPT.

This content hits home, subbed. I reluctantly logged into openai, paid a monthly fee for premium features and proceeded to drop in the unfinished novel that I started nearly a decade ago. The result was an editor, a co-writer, a beta reader, a producer, a small child interested in any generally new information, an old wise man with a vast library of knowledge, and a partner that just never gets tired. Using check GPT to create outlines, different charts, descriptions, just characterizing different aspects of the story and how things relate to each other and how things contrast each other is, like you say, 'invaluable'. Not a creator, but someone who's always open to answer any question about the content you feed it. Again, I mentioned I was reluctant about the whole thing but when something is good is good, and I give it credit. We thought the issue was authors bypassing artists for visuals. The true issue is artists bypassing authors for storytelling, plot twist.

Imo, the arts will hold their own. Just as things that are fading are destined to become, treasured as something indeed rare and precious. Not merely as a modality, or a trend setting caricature portraying things, but mapping the heart of things that AI and the hive mind cannot touch, ever. But it certainly appears that our social fabric will not come out of this vale of shadow unscathed. Which is intended, I believe. Power is everything when nothing is held sacred and safeguarded from corruption. And so the powerful keep going ever farther beyond their ability to control.

My take on generative AI is that it does the parts of writing that you don't like, so you can focus on what you love. As writers we wear dozens of different hats, and not all of them are fun. I look forward to when AI can handle the marketing side of things for me. I've always been a pantser until AI just because it takes me so long to plan out a novel that it spoiled the fun for me. By the time I had the book all laid out I was burned out on it. Now, with AI, I can plan a book in a few days to a week. This allows me to still have a good structure, so that I have less to edit, but I have the freedom to write without having to worry about a saggy middle. I don't let AI write the novel itself since that's what I personally love doing. I think most writers (and software devs) tend to be down on AI out of fear. The truth is that it's not going anywhere. Anything that improves productivity and reduces cost is only going to be replaced by something that does it better or cheaper. It's the way of the world. I say learn to ethically embrace the technology or risk going extinct. From your use case with AI, I'd recommend trying out Google Notebook LM. It does exactly what you want. It ONLY let's you ask questions about your own novel (or whatever data you feed it.) It can't look elsewhere. It's designed to be a research tool, but it works well for authors that want to try to recall stuff from their notes. I've found it helpful. They also claim to never train on any data you submit (though I'd take that with a grain of salt since companies love to change their tune.)

Hi, fantastic video, appreciate the advice here! Do u (or anyone else) have advice for breaking out of the cycle of continuous iteration, by that I mean learning to say stop and sticking with an idea, even if temporarily, and progressing from there. I feel like my central problem is writing down an idea then thinking of a different way of doing it, restarting the progress, repeat.

I'm literally about to start the hobbit

I used to be a pantser, but since AI started becoming really useful I've found myself becoming more of a plotter. The reason I didn't plan before was because it took so long that by the time I had the plan all laid out I was burned out on the book and didn't have the energy to then write it. Now that I can brainstorm with AI to bounce ideas off of it and get alternate suggestions, I find that I can plan a book in a few days or a week. It's so much faster now that there's no reason not to plan. It also saves a TON of time when it comes to editing. For me, it's a toss up as to which is worse, editing a large pantser novel or going to the dentist.

I have written a few mysteries myself. One of them, which will probably become a novel or novela, quite literally wrote itself. I had a random idea for the scene that became the first or opening scene, and then the rest of the story naturally grew from there. I got about half or a third of the way through it on the first sitting, and then came back to it later because it was intriguing, and wrote the rest of it in only a few more sessions. Another shorter mystery I have written (and it is my favorite of the small collection of short mysteries it is part of) started out as the first thing I had was the entire story, minus motive for the killer. To date I have no idea how these stories wrote themselves... And then there is my most recent mystery project. In this one, most of the first third of the story is the detective following the main red herring. As she described, I started this one with the "what really happened"; showing how the truly innocent suspect was almost perfectly framed. Then I kept that in the back of my mind and started the investigation, had the suspect detained, had the detective examine the misleading evidence, gave the suspect some true things to say that sounded incriminating... The truth only started to be revealed when the suspect reacted to something as the innocent bystander who had witnessed a crime would. Turns out he had, thought the real criminals were watching him, and so he felt like he couldn't tell the whole truth... This is how I write mysteries.

I could not understand how this template works. The instructions (this video) were rambling and incoherent. It looks cool, all gadgety, but there is no cohesion in the relations. Where do you add new characters, locations, and items, for example. Finally, where does the actual writing take place, and once all the writing's done, how to you export all the chapters into a single document? 1/5 stars.

*headdesk* ... Please let us know when this stint of interviews/podcasts or whatever you want to call them are over. Or give a transcript or summary or something. Vague/broad theory discussion is all well and good, but some of us are looking for cut-and-dry nuts-and-bolts, do this, do this, do this (with why and how for each of the things) ... sort of thing. I get this is good/useful content, in a sense, but lately it's all been interviews/podcast format.

Go buy the woman's book. Can confirm it's a fun pulpy adventure!

Very helpful video. I don't write mysteries, but I am incorprating lots of mystery elements into a current story I am writing. I have very little experience with the genre, so I'm trying to get lots of perspectives on it

That helped a lot. I appreciate your clear explanation.

BRINA!!!! She's the Queen of Adventure Queens YAY💖

Sup brina ! Great interview

I read this as Jenears instead of Genres.

it can definitely be a lonely business!

This aged well 😂

His character arc was a Möbius Strip.

he was perfect villian and hero until he killed a bunch of kids for no reason and then after that it was over

I'm really happy this video came up when I search for this exact topic! Thanks for the video!

“He’s also a princess.” The thumbnail got me so hyped. What a letdown lol

Excellent video... I'd like to build onto this for my worldbuilding. Thanks for the walkthrough. It's very helpful for someone like myself who likes to see how things work.

Also . . . on your website you three?? different products? The marketing blurb's are similar enough I'm not sure what I'm getting for each price point. Or maybe I should say what is for the 39.99 price do I get all of the above wrapped into one template? Or are they all individual tools that need to be purchased to get all functionality?

So I'm inspired by this workflow based template, however I've already bought a couple notion templates and once I started working with them It became clear that what seemed obvious to the creator was not obvious to me. When I went looking for further tutorials on their template there was none to be found. I've plunked around your channel looking for tutorials in greater depth but don't see any. What support can a get after purchase?

A what tive

Self-doubt being the biggest factor is SO TRUE! That's been the biggest (well, one of) the biggest for me for sure! Like, I'm just so terrified that it's gonna suck, that it's not gonna live up to the vision in my head, etc, etc! lol. But I've finally started writing, and it's going well! Here's hoping! Thanks a lot for the video! (I also have a writing playlist that I'm excited to use soon! It has hours and hours and hours of fantasy music that should fit my vibe, and I can't wait to use it! WOO!)