I’ve written hundreds of pages for Disney+, NBCUniversal.

Lazy writers use ChatGPT to crank out trash, but A.I. can help you breathe life into your characters and make us care.

Here’s how:

1/ First, endow GPT as a character actor. Make yourself the director.

With GPT as an actor, you can make suggestions, and it will adapt like a good actor does to direction.

(It’s better than telling GPT to be your character. Then it gets stuck in silly patterns).

2/ Don’t launch into a scene straight away. You wouldn’t do that to an actor. Give them time to understand the role.

Ask GPT to get into the head and heart of the character.

Answering GPT’s questions about your character might even help your writing—it helped me.

3/ I'm not going to lie: sometimes answering GPT’s questions about your character gets boring.

As soon as it's no fun: cut off the interview. Start the scene.

You can always give more info once GPT starts acting. It’s iterative.

4/ Showtime. Place the actor in the scene and cut them loose.

If the prose is clunky, don’t worry, that’s not what we’re here for. I’ll do a thread on getting gorgeous prose styling later.

But right now: we’re here to see different angles on how your character could react.

5/ Play with the character.

It’s fun, riffing and seeing what you character does when they’re out of your hands.

6/ The trick is: it's about give and take.

Don’t be afraid to correct GPT and tell it how to play the character.

But at the same time, if you’re open to it, quite often Jeep will surprise you with great moves.

7/ After you’ve improvised for a bit, ask GPT to summarise your character.

Now, next time you can just plug that summary in as a prompt without all the pre-work.

It's also handy when you hit the 8k memory limit and Jeep starts doing the grandpa thing with forgetting

8/ If any of this helps with your writing: go for it.

Anything that feels unhelpful—just call GPT out and redirect.

Play around. Have fun. Watch your character take a new life of its own.

Let me know how it goes. Always keen to hear your tips, problems, improvements.

That's a wrap!

(h/t Louie @LBacaj for showing us how to put "chocolate on the vegetables")

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