Creative Writing with an Artificial Intelligence: Part 2

Continuing my magical journey with a brand new creative writing partner

Back to my late night creative writing. After a day of installing all the necessary items needed to start using Subtxt AI to start generating major Plot points (Story Drivers in Dramatica theory), I sat down to work on my story.

Starting with the middle first (because why not? With a predictive model like Subtxt you can start anywhere, knowing that all your work will sync up in the end), I look to some of the ideas I generated for the first Plot Point (Act One into Act Two):

The selection of “The Obstacle Character” was random (This was before today's installation of a Player Select button in the Story Drivers) but I quite liked the idea of the as-yet-named (or visualized) Obstacle Character as the reason why the Story progressed at this point.

But I knew I wanted some more details on this character before proceeding so I headed over to the Players tab and opened up the Obstacle Character card.

First thing I did was describe this character in my own words. I knew I wanted the Obstacle Character to be human as I knew I would want to explore the emotional nature of their relationship later in the Relationship Story Throughline, so I invented “Erik” who was young and vibrant and really smart.

I was kind of cheating because I knew this Players Pivotal Element (their pivotal essence within the narrative) was ability...but you really can’t avoid it once you start to see how all the different parts of a story are tired together.

But what did surprise me was what Subtxt suggested when I went to randomly illustrate ability:

Subtxt went and flipped it on me by suggesting that Erik’s Illustration of Ability wasn’t that he was ask that great (though he could be mentally) but that he was physically challenged…

Instantly all these cool Story ideas came to mind of Erik struggling to make it on the moon when along comes Alpha to help save the day…and imagine how envious that would make Erik…

So I kept it. You’ll note that Subtxt likes to write the Elements of a Player in relation to the Story Goal (in this case: appreciating what it means to be outdated). This is important as it means all the Elements of all the players will be related to each other through this singular context.

So I took this understanding of Erik and brought it back to that First Act Turn.

First thing I did was change the ideas from saying “The Obstacle Character” to Erik, and then I changed the “Other person” to Alpha (because who better to screw over than your own friend?!), merged then together, and then clicked the Active button to bring them into the present tense.

Now this would generally be enough, but I wanted to see how the new Subtext features were working in the Story Drivers. I tapped the Deep Theory AI button and got something very interesting in return.

The struggle between our “Better natures and our more selfish desires”. I loved that.

I then chose Erik as the owner of this particular Story Driver and asked Subtxt to surface some storytelling from it—

—and that’s where I got stuck 😄

EVERY single idea that came back was awesome!

In this first one he knows what he had to do but also struggles with it going against his values. That syncs up perfectly with what I already have in there AND gives it more depth and meaning!

The next one is interesting because it paints Erik in a different light. Maybe he’ll do something nice instead…? Oh man, too many options 😅

And that’s before I read this next one:

Are you kidding me?? That is so incredibly rich and thematic, and fits in so well with the Dramatic Argument of the story (abandon your covetous nature and triumph), that now I really don’t know which awesome way to take my story!

I’m so conflicted that I’m going to have to sleep on it!

But not before I read these last two so all five meaningful story ideas can swim around in my subconscious whilst I dream tonight!