The Author’s AI Toolkit – Brainstorming
By: Craig on September 6, 2024
Welcome to part 3 of the Author’s AI Toolkit series. After an introduction to the series, and then a brief primer on prompting, it’s finally time to start digging into some real examples of how AI can assist you.
Brainstorming is the natural place to start because that’s where most of the work for an author begins—coming up with ideas. Artificial Intelligence is fabulous at brainstorming, and for many authors, this will be the primary and most valuable use case they have for it.
And for those still worried about AI stealing/borrowing/plagiarizing content, brainstorming should feel less risky, as it’s not about generating unique ideas to use verbatim but rather offering a diverse range of ideas to spark your creativity and guide your thinking in new directions. Once you’re nudged off the path you normally follow, you can discover entirely new ideas just by thinking outside the box you usually live in.
What is Brainstorming, anyway?
Brainstorming is a creativity technique often done in groups, where people suggest new ideas as they think of them without self-censorship, filtering, or second-guessing whether those ideas are good or bad. The benefit of this technique over trying to come up with ideas on your own is not just the number of ideas that result but also the variety.
Your neurons and pathways are organized by countless variables, from the experiences you’ve had and the choices you’ve made, to the people you’ve met and the environment you were raised in. All of those contribute to a worldview, and a way of thinking, that differ from anyone else. When you brainstorm in a group, these different points of view allow for ideas that no single individual could have come up with on their own. They simply didn’t have the same experiences to draw upon.
That’s why even if none of the ideas pitched are usable as is, they can still spark your brain to move down a creative path you may never have discovered on your own.
Given the wealth of knowledge that AI has to draw on, using it to generate ideas is like having a brainstorming session with the whole world!
What can AI Brainstorming help with?
As authors, we often encounter moments of writer’s block or seek fresh perspectives to invigorate our stories. Fresh perspectives or new angles to view our roadblocks from can lead to unexpected solutions that help get us writing again.
There’s no way to list all the different things AI could help brainstorm, but here are a few examples to illustrate what I mean.
- Generate new story ideas
- Come up with character names, traits, motivations, or backstories
- Suggest clues to include in your mystery book, or plot twists for your thriller
- Propose ways for getting characters out of a corner you’ve written them into
- Help plan foreshadowing hints to drop into the early parts of your story
For Fantasy or Science Fiction writers, another great use for AI Brainstorming is with world-building. There are so many aspects to consider and plan when building a new fantastical world, and AI can help with many of them such as:
- Devising new cultural traditions, rituals, mythology or lore for your population
- Help design new magic systems for fantasy novels, or futuristic tech for Sci-Fi
- Generate maps or geography of your new world, and how the landscape might affect those that live in it
- Suggest a look or physiology of alien races, even generating images to help you visualize and use as reference when describing them
I could go on and on, but hopefully it’s clear that brainstorming isn’t about writing your story for you, but as a catalyst for creativity, providing an abundance of ideas to help get you unstuck, and move you away from the blank page you’ve been staring at for hours.
Using AI for Brainstorming
By now it should be clear that AI can help brainstorm ideas at any stage of development, and the beauty of it is that it can all be done from the comfort of your own home, and without having to share your ideas with other authors.
That brings us to the discussion on ways to actually do all of this.
Recent developments in AI (which is constantly evolving) have given us a couple of different paths here. There is the more traditional (and accessible to more people, especially using unpaid AI accounts) route of typing in your prompts and getting a response, as detailed in part 2 of this series, and then there is through the use of live voice chat with the AI. This second way is still “promptiing”, as what you ask the AI with your voice are still considered your prompts, but it’s a far more natural way to interact and brainstorm. I’ve personally been using this technique a lot lately and I find it to be an absolute gamechanger, but I’ll discuss both. Even if you choose to use live chat, it’s important to have a basic understanding of the best ways to ask for what you want.
Traditional Prompting
When I say “Traditional Prompting”, I’m referring to the idea of entering your prompts into your AI of choice—generally through the textboxes. You ask the AI to brainstorm whatever it is you want and if you aren’t quite sure on the specifics, you can be vague at first. Remember that you can always drill down and refine your idea as you go, using techniques we discussed in part 2, such as iterative prompts or prompt chaining.
For instance, let’s say you’re at the very beginning of the writing process and don’t even have an idea of what you want to write yet. All you know is that you want it to be an epic science fiction story. Not a whole series, just a single book. Even if that’s all you know so far, it’s enough to get started. Here’s an example of a prompt you might use:
Prompt: “Generate 3 ideas for a SF epic stand-alone novel”
I popped that into ChatGPT and this was what it came back with:
1. The Quantum Exodus
In a distant future where humanity has harnessed quantum tunneling for instantaneous travel, a catastrophe strikes when a major transport hub collapses into a parallel universe. The protagonist, a brilliant but disgraced physicist, must team up with an enigmatic alien navigator to navigate through chaotic multiverses, uncovering a sinister conspiracy that threatens the very fabric of reality. Their journey reveals ancient secrets about the origin of the universe and the true nature of existence.
2. Starlight Ascendant
In a universe where stars are sentient beings worshipped as gods, humanity is on the brink of extinction, caught in the crossfire of a celestial war. The protagonist, a young priestess of a dying star, discovers she has the unique ability to communicate with these stellar entities. She embarks on a perilous quest to unite the warring stars and harness their power to save her people. Her journey reveals the true origin of the stars and the forgotten history of humanity’s cosmic heritage.
3. Chronicles of the Forgotten Engine
In a future where time travel is outlawed and strictly controlled by a powerful temporal syndicate, a rogue engineer discovers a forgotten time machine hidden in the ruins of an ancient city. The protagonist, driven by a personal vendetta, uses the machine to unravel the truth behind the syndicate’s rise to power. Their journey through pivotal moments in history reveals a deeper conspiracy involving a secret society manipulating events for millennia. The protagonist must decide whether to alter history or let it run its course to prevent an even greater disaster.
As you can see, the very generic prompt I provided resulted in high-level “elevator pitch” type of ideas, with each one being very different. If none of the initial suggestions are appealing or spark new ideas of your own, you can request new ones until you find one that works.
Once you do see something you like, you can then go from there, fleshing out the plot, coming up with characters, or changing bits and pieces that you think would work better either on your own, or by refining your prompts.
If you continue digging in, remember that the AI retains the context of your session, so you don’t have to retype everything. For example, let’s say you like suggestion three above, you might follow up with something like this:
Prompt: “I like that third idea, let’s expand on it. Give me some ideas about this syndicate and how they got in the position to be controlling time travel in the first place.”
Or maybe you like parts of it, but want to explore some alterations:
Prompt: “In that last suggestion, let’s make the rogue engineer part of the syndicate at first. What are some ideas that would cause him to break off and go rogue?”
Of course, you don’t have to start right at the initial story idea stage. You can brainstorm about anything at any point.
For instance, let’s say you already have a cozy mystery plot somewhat planned out, but you’re having trouble in defining some of the personality traits of your characters. Authors often model a character after someone they know, but sometimes you may have a character who is unlike anyone in your life, or you may just be drawing a blank.
AI can help here, too. You can be generic if you want, but it helps if you can provide a bit of context as that will generally make some of the ideas fit a bit better on your first go around. Example:
Prompt: “Please give me some unique and interesting character traits that Emily, the young heroine of my cozy mystery, might have.”
Here are a few suggestions that ChatGPT gave me in response.
1. Unconventional Problem Solver
Emily has a knack for thinking outside the box. She often solves problems in unexpected ways, using her creativity and lateral thinking. For instance, she might use household items for forensic purposes or decode complex puzzles with an artistic approach.
2. Botanical Enthusiast
Emily has a passion for plants and gardening, which she inherited from her late mother. She often uses her knowledge of botany to solve cases, whether it’s identifying rare plants found at a crime scene or using herbal remedies to calm her nerves.
3. Night Owl
Emily does her best thinking at night, often staying up late to mull over clues and theories. Her nocturnal habits sometimes lead her to discover things others might miss during the day, giving her a unique edge in her investigations.
Again, you can ask for new suggestions, further refine the ones it gave, change your prompt completely if you aren’t getting the right results, or take any other steps you need.
When brainstorming bigger and more comprehensive problems, like world-building, you can use the same techniques, but you will likely need more lengthy sessions to flesh everything out. World-building encompasses so many aspects that you wouldn’t get great results through a single prompt. It is better to chain your prompts, moving successively through the various issues that you need help with. You might start off with general world building prompts and then when you find one you like, branch off into questions about the various aspects (technology, magic, geography, folklore, government, etc) until you’ve covered everything you need help with.
Live Voice Prompting
Recently, at least a couple of the major AI companies have started offering live voice chats with their AI. ChatGPT is still rolling out this feature to select users, while I believe Google’s Gemini Live is already available to a broader audience. However, in both cases you need a paid account to access this feature and it is currently only available on their mobile apps (i.e., your phone).
In my opinion, though, this is absolutely worth it as it is a total game changer for brainstorming.
These features allow for a natural, real-time voice chat with your AI. As I mentioned earlier, your questions are still considered ‘prompts,’ but I find you can be much less formal and more conversational in how you phrase them. Because you’re simply talking, many people find it easier and faster to engage in back-and-forth conversations than typing everything out. Even if you’re a fast typist, most people can speak even faster. The only potential slowdown is listening to the AI’s responses, not because it speaks slowly, but because many people read faster than they listen. Still, I personally find this method far easier for brainstorming, especially when tackling bigger, more complex ideas that require extensive drilling down and back-and-forth discussions.
For example, the other night I spent a couple of hours chatting with ChatGPT about a TV series idea. We began by discussing the overall concept and naturally moved into different characters, their motivations, relationships, and even how the series would end. This allowed us to also strategize foreshadowing ideas for individual episodes.
The best part is that even though you’re chatting with the AI, your conversation isn’t lost when you finish. The entire conversation is logged, just like a regular text chat, and stored in your chat history for future reference. So you can come back and reference it, copy it into a different document, search it, etc.
And if you’re still wondering how much faster and more efficient this is compared to typing, here’s some context. In that two-hour conversation, the text version amounted to nearly 20,000 words. I’m not sure how many of you can type 20,000 words in two hours, but I certainly can’t.
More Advanced AI Brainstorming Techniques
There are a few other more advanced brainstorming techniques that can supercharge your creativity and help you break through even the toughest writer’s block. These methods go beyond simple idea generation and allow you to leverage AI as a creative partner, exploring ideas in ways that might never occur to you otherwise. And all of these can be used whether you’re typing them manually or using the live voice chat feature.
Create an AI “Writer’s Room”
One of the most effective brainstorming strategies is the “writer’s room” concept, a collaborative environment where multiple voices contribute to the creative process. This is often done with television series where a group of writers sit around a room pitching ideas for new episodes and then fleshing them out. With AI, you can simulate this experience, essentially having a virtual team of co-writers at your disposal. This is actually one of my favorite techniques that I’ve used for a while. Here’s how it works:
You may have heard about how people use AI to generate responses in specific ways, such as using prompts like “Explain dark matter to me as if I was a 5 year old”. This would then direct the AI to explain a complicated topic in very simplistic terms. Or you could even go the opposite route, such as instructing the AI to imagine itself as an expert in a specific field, which would result in all future responses in that session to be written in a more technical and informed way.
The writer’s room concept builds on this idea, but instead of asking the AI to pretend to be one type of person, you instruct it to act as a diverse group of writers, each with their own perspective or area of expertise.
For example:
Initial Setup Prompt: “For this session, imagine you’re a team of 3 writers working on a dystopian novel. Frank is focused on character development, Janet on world-building, and Pat on plot twists. Each of these writers can contribute ideas to what we’re discussing, building on each other’s thoughts or coming up with unique bits of their own.”
Using a setup prompt like the one above directs the AI to maintain this dynamic for all successive prompts (until you tell it to stop or start a new session). That means you don’t have to constantly reiterate the above with each prompt. So for example, your next prompt might be something like this:
Prompt: “Discuss potential ways to introduce a new character who will eventually betray the hero.”
This should generate a response from each of your “writers,” allowing you to explore multiple angles simultaneously, with diverse suggestions that can help spark new directions in your story.
You can even go further in your setup prompt (which can be refined just like any other if you change your mind or don’t like the direction the current group is going) by asking the AI to role-play as specific types of writers, such as a “classic horror writer” or a “young adult fantasy author,” or perhaps indicating that one of the writers often injects humor into his suggestions, or maybe one of them likes to try and suggest side-plot ideas whenever possible.
By giving your virtual AI writers different personalities and traits of their own—ideally ones that are a good fit for your book—the suggestions that your future prompts elicit will be influenced by those perspectives and perhaps lead to more interesting and relevant ideas.
Finishing Sentences or Paragraphs
Another powerful way to brainstorm with AI is by letting it help you finish sentences or paragraphs that you’re stuck on. This technique is particularly useful when you’re struggling to move forward in a scene or when you feel that your writing has become predictable.
For instance, you might start a sentence and then ask the AI to complete it in several different ways, giving you a variety of options to consider.
Prompt: “Give me 3 options to finish this sentence: The wind howled through the trees, carrying with it the scent of…”
The AI will then respond with 3 versions of your sentence that have the same beginning that you provided, but finish completely differently.
Response:
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- The wind howled through the trees, carrying with it the scent of damp earth and pine needles, reminding Claire of the woods she used to play in as a child.
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- The wind howled through the trees, carrying with it the scent of burnt wood and ash, a warning of the fire that had ravaged the village only hours before.
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- The wind howled through the trees, carrying with it the scent of salt and brine, signaling the proximity of the ocean and the secrets it held beneath its waves.
Without the context of your story, the results may be random, so this technique is better suited for brainstorming less rigid scenes or experimenting with different ideas (or by simply providing some context and direction in your prompt). It’s likely you’d want to re-write the suggestions you get regardless, but they may at least give you an idea of direction when you’re stuck.
Experimenting with different Voices, Viewpoints or Styles
Sometimes, the best way to brainstorm is to step out of your own shoes and see your story from a new perspective. AI can assist by rewriting a chapter, scene, or even just a few paragraphs in a completely different voice or viewpoint.
For example, if you’ve written a chapter from the hero’s POV, you could ask the AI to rewrite it from the villain’s. This can help you uncover motivations, conflicts, and subtext that you might not have fully explored yet.
Prompt: “Rewrite this paragraph from the viewpoint of the villain, focusing on their inner thoughts and justifications. [Add paragraph]”
This approach might not only deepen your understanding of your character but also lead to new plot twists or layers of complexity in your story.
Alternatively, you could ask the AI to rewrite a passage in a style different from the rest of your book. For instance, how would your mystery novel read if it were written in the style of a noir detective story? Or how would a romantic subplot be handled if told through the lens of a literary fiction voice? These experiments can reveal fresh approaches that you might not have considered otherwise.
Experimenting with Genre Blending
At the beginning stages of planning your novel, when you’re simply kicking around ideas, one innovative approach is to have the AI experiment with genre blending. Genre-blending can lead to unique story ideas that stand out in a crowded market. You might start with a base genre and then ask the AI to introduce elements from a completely different genre, creating a hybrid that’s fresh and unexpected.
Prompt: “Blend elements of a space opera with a cozy mystery. What might that look like?”
The AI might generate ideas like:
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- “A retired space fleet commander now runs a quaint interstellar bookshop but gets pulled back into action when mysterious deaths start occurring among her regular customers.”
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- “On a remote space station, a group of misfit colonists must solve the mystery of disappearing supplies, with clues pointing to an ancient alien artifact hidden within the station’s core.”
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- “A pair of alien detectives travel across galaxies to solve crimes, but their latest case—a murder in a peaceful, low-tech farming colony—requires them to go undercover in a small, rural community.”
Pulling together different genres can result in some unique ideas that may help you offer your readers something truly unique.
Conclusion
Brainstorming with AI opens up a world of possibilities for authors. Whether you’re just starting out or you’re deep into your manuscript, artificial intelligence tools can help you break through creative blocks, explore new ideas, and refine your story in ways you might never have imagined. The key is to approach AI as a creative partner—one that brings a wealth of knowledge, perspective, and imagination to the table, but not to feel confined by the suggestions. They are, after all, simply suggestions. Brainstorming is often just a way to force your own brain to move off of the path it normally follows when kicking around ideas.
Think of the ideas generated by AI as starting points, not finished products. They’re there to inspire you, challenge you, and push your creativity to new heights.
In the next installments of this series, we’ll look at things like plotting and character development. But if you have any requests about things you’d like to learn how to do with AI, please feel free to add them to the comments below or email them to me directly, if you’d prefer.
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Craig Tuch began his own self-publishing career back in 2012, writing numerous bestselling romance novels under a variety of pen names, but has always recognized that he would never have been as successful if he hadn’t also been a part of a strong online community of authors. Through this community he not only became a better writer, but also learned what it took to get readers to discover him in the first place – because it’s not enough to simply write a great book, a self-publisher has to also master the packaging, promotion and marketing of their work. It was from this experience that he founded Hidden Gems, which he continues to run to this day with the goal of providing information and services designed to help authors spend more time writing books and less time worrying about all that other stuff.
This is fascinating and exciting. However, most of the zines and journals I submit short stories to now either ask you to confirm you didn’t use AI or else state whether or not you did. One could argue that one used AI for ideas but not for the actual writing but ….