The Storyteller's Toolkit

1. Story Development

In this lesson, I’m gonna show you a smart way to create stories using AI, for the creation of a children’s book, primarily, but also other types of books. But what we won’t do is create AI-generated garbage like everyone else is doing. I’ve created a process designed to improve the: 1) Quality, 2) Speed, and 3) Cost of story creation. Who says you can’t have all 3?

My AI-powered book creation course defies this age-old trilemma.

I’ll walk you through each step, making sure we cover everything important. It doesn’t what your experience level is. By the end of this lesson, you’ll have the tools to create multiple epic stories, and vastly minimize writer’s block. I’ve used ChatGPT for more than a year, and it’s been a game-changer for me.

Templates & Cheat Sheets

Story Development Prompts Template

Midjourney Essentials

Initial Brainstorming

Step 1: Open ChatGPT on your browser and create a new chat.

Always have Google Search open in another tab for fact-checking purposes.

Step 2: Download the Story Development prompts template.

I’ve put together a variety of prompt templates tailored to different phases of your story development journey.

Step 3: Use the Story Development templates

Remember that the templates are merely starting points. Think of them as creative launchpads to help jumpstart your ideas and flesh them out. Storytelling has so much nuance and variety that it’s impossible to create a template that accounts for everybody’s vision.

Be sure to adjust the prompts according to your use case, add your own flair, and don’t shy away from experimentation.

The real magic of AI-powered storytelling happens during brainstorming.

It’s like this: You feed ChatGPT your ideas, the program refines them, you dissect those refined ideas to harvest the gems, rework them into your narrative fabric, and then feed that info to the AI again, the AI polishes it further, maybe adds new material, and then you dissect those again, and on and on the cycle repeats until you’re satisfied.

Step 4: Use a Note-taking app.

Now, you might wonder how to sift through all this chat info to find your cherry-picked ideas. The answer is to get a note-taking app. I personally use Notion, but let’s be clear. You don’t need anything fancy. I started with Google Docs, and it served me just fine.

Concept Art

Step 1, subscribe to Midjourney.

Step 2, Generate your first images.

Step 3: Generate your character concepts

Just type in /imagine, the subject, the modifier, and then don’t forget to include v 5.2, and click enter.>

Continue experimenting with various styles until one appeals to you. The point of this exercise is to identify art that closely mirrors your character’s envisioned look and to check the concept’s viability. However, don’t get caught up in making everything perfect now; remember, this is just the testing phase. Detailed character illustration guidance is coming up in the next video.

Story Outline

Many find the Story Outline to be the simplest and most enjoyable part. Here, we’ll craft your narrative’s roadmap, mapping out the main events using the original chat from your initial brainstorming session. Be sure to use the same chatroom.

This phase only has 2 steps:

Step 1: Brainstorm your story outline using ChatGPT.

Step 2: Keep brainstorming until you have a satisfyingly brilliant plot.

Simple, right?

Here is an example Story Outline:

Starts in Crisis, 2) Introduction, 3) Main Adventure 4) Climax 5) Resolution 6) Cliffhanger for the Next Book.

This is how I structured the outline for my pirate story, but remember, your approach can be completely different. The beauty of storytelling is that there are no set rules—you have the creative freedom to dictate your plot.

You’ll find the prompts I use in the Story Development template. Go check that out.

Reaching this final outline required numerous iterations. Be prepared to go through several back-and-forth conversations; the first plot ChatGPT provides is unlikely to be your final draft.

Polishing

Polishing is the phase where we flesh out all the major scenes of the book in more detail. This includes enriching the character profiles, finalizing the locations, and fleshing out every major aspect that revolves around your character or story.

This phase is exciting because it lacks a rigid framework. Because the polishing your story requires depends on its individual features.

This means you can brainstorm freely with ChatGPT on all facets that require elaboration and refinement.

Next Lesson: Consistent Character Creation

In the next lesson, I’ll be covering a topic everyone’s been asking for: how to generate consistent characters, which is the holy grail of AI image generation.

Prepare to bring your characters to life in various poses and environments, experiment with diverse backgrounds, and have a whole lotta fun.

Click next below to find out.