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Full Beginners Guide to Writing Books With AI — Transcript

by The Nerdy Novelist · 47,223 words · 6,559 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00Hello everyone and welcome to the Nerdy
0:02Novelist. I feel so grateful to be here
0:04with you right now because what you are
0:06about to see has never been done before
0:08in the YouTube space. This course has
0:10been in production for months now and I
0:12have spent literally thousands of
0:13dollars to put this in front of you.
0:15This course is several hours of content
0:17teaching you everything that I've
0:18learned over the last 3 years of doing
0:20YouTube on the topic of AI for creative
0:23writing. Before that, I was the lead
0:24content manager for 3 years at
0:26Kindlepreneur, the leading online
0:28website for authors who want to write
0:30and self-publish their books. And before
0:32that, I wrote 14 books the traditional
0:34way. So, unlike a lot of tech bros on
0:37YouTube who have clearly never written a
0:39book in their life, I actually have
0:40experience with the process with and
0:43without AI. And I'm going to show you
0:44exactly how I would write with AI in a
0:46way that completely preserves your
0:48voice, your creativity, and quality
0:50storytelling, all while making the
0:52process far less likely to burn you out
0:54than the traditional method. And in this
0:56course, [music] I'm not holding anything
0:57back. I'm showing you my methods that
0:59have allowed me to write a book in as
1:01little as 4 days. And I'm not just
1:03talking about some random story that AI
1:05makes up. This was an actual story I had
1:07had in my head for years, finally
1:10envisioned in under a week. I know it's
1:11hard to place value on something that
1:13you get for free, and that's why no one
1:15has done this before in my niche. Not
1:17only is this a full course explaining
1:19every part of the writing process, and
1:21I'm not just teaching you, I'm actually
1:22going through the entire process with
1:24you step-by-step. And I'll even show you
1:26how to get your book edited, formatted,
1:29and published. So, here is what you will
1:31learn in this course. I'll show you the
1:32entire strategy I use to build a book
1:35from scratch, just like I did in 4 days.
1:38I'll walk you through the most important
1:39parts of AI writing, like how to
1:41maintain your voice and how to make sure
1:43the output is yours. Most people think
1:46that writing with AI is just slop, but
1:48that's really when you don't know what
1:49you're doing and don't put any effort
1:52into your work. The point of using AI is
1:54not to avoid work. It's to work smarter.
1:57And if you follow my instructions, your
1:59work will be of genuine quality, not AI
2:01slop. I also show you how we select a
2:03genre and optimize our book to ensure
2:06that readers are likely to want to read
2:07our book. And I'll also show you how we
2:09build our book bibles to ensure the AI
2:11has everything it needs to write an
2:13original book. So, I hope you can see
2:15the amount of value that you're about to
2:16receive in this course. And I'll be
2:18real, a lot of you will go through this
2:20and not see the true value because you
2:22were able to just watch the video for
2:24free with no resistance. This is the
2:27exact reason why nobody is making free
2:29courses that are this in-depth. It is so
2:31easy for you to brush this off as not
2:34having much value because you didn't
2:35have to pay for it. But, I can genuinely
2:38promise you that every single person who
2:40goes through this course is going to
2:42have every piece of information that
2:43they need to write their first book, as
2:45well as their second book, or the third
2:47book, you name it. I'm serious. This
2:48course is a step-by-step blueprint to
2:51growing your author business, and we
2:53cover everything from mindset to final
2:55publishing. So, if you want to write a
2:56book quickly and effectively without
2:59sacrificing quality, there really is no
3:01better place you could be than inside
3:03this free course. But, I will be
3:04completely real with you guys. This
3:06course has a lot of information. And if
3:08you follow it all the way through and
3:10follow every piece of advice, this will
3:12be a big challenge in your life. In
3:15module one, we're going to tackle the
3:16part most authors skip, and it's exactly
3:18why they burn out. We'll talk about the
3:20difference between chasing quick money
3:23versus mastering your craft, and I'll
3:25show you how my own write 14 books then
3:27crash and burn phase almost killed my
3:29writing career. You'll also see how
3:30focusing on the wrong metrics destroyed
3:33my motivation and how shifting my
3:34definition of success brought me back to
3:36writing with more clarity and less
3:38pressure. Then, we'll dig into abundance
3:40versus scarcity mindset for authors, and
3:42I'll give you concrete examples of how
3:43each one shows up in self-publishing.
3:45Things like the market is saturated, or
3:47if that author wins, I lose. From there,
3:49we'll zoom out and treat your writing as
3:51a real business. What it actually means
3:53to invest time and money into tools,
3:55education, and systems, and how those
3:57investments compound over years of
3:58publishing, and not just with one book
4:00launch. And yes, we'll address the
4:01elephant in the room, using AI without
4:04shame as a way to offload the parts of
4:05the business that drain you, so you can
4:07double down on what you genuinely love.
4:09By the end of this first module, you'll
4:11have a practical mindset framework for a
4:13storytelling driven business, one that
4:15keeps you out of burnout, gives you
4:17permission to use AI strategically, and
4:19positions you to build a long-term
4:21catalog instead of betting everything on
4:23one perfect book. Module two is where we
4:25get tactical, and I give you a
4:27customized tool stack instead of a mess
4:29of random apps. You'll come out knowing
4:31exactly which tool is best if you are a
4:33total beginner, which option makes the
4:35most sense when you want to automate and
4:37scale like a power user, and which
4:39middle ground system gives you the most
4:42control without requiring you to be
4:44super technical. By the end of this
4:46module, you'll have a setup that matches
4:48your skill level and goals, and you'll
4:50know how to use it to support every
4:52other step in your writing and
4:53publishing process. And these are
4:55literally the exact tools that I use in
4:57my own author business and teach to my
4:59members. By the end of module three,
5:01you'll never sit down to plot from
5:03scratch again. Instead, you'll have
5:04genre-specific story templates that turn
5:06vague ideas into clear, repeatable
5:08structures designed to sell. You'll know
5:10how to choose the right niche for a book
5:12idea, how to lock in the aspects that
5:14readers expect, and how to build a
5:16framework that prevents generic AI slot
5:18plots. The result is that every story
5:20you create after this module starts with
5:22a solid skeleton tailored to your genre,
5:24which makes everything else so much
5:26easier. Module four gives you a
5:27repeatable brainstorming system that
5:29produces commercially viable story ideas
5:32instead of random concepts you're not
5:34sure anyone wants. You'll learn how to
5:36turn genre research into concrete plot
5:38hooks, as well as tropes and setting
5:40that align with real reader demand, and
5:42how to use that to generate story
5:44material that feels fresh, but still
5:46familiar enough to sell. By the end of
5:47this module, you'll have a complete
5:49story dossier filled with market-aware
5:51ideas, so that when you move forward,
5:53you have the best chance for success. In
5:55module five, you'll discover the ability
5:58to create characters and worlds that
6:00readers genuinely remember and talk
6:02about. You'll come away with a clear
6:03process for turning rough character
6:05sketches into multi-layered people with
6:07goals and flaws and arcs, and for
6:09building settings that feel lived in
6:11instead of just broad and generic.
6:12You'll end up with a cast in a world
6:14that naturally generate conflict, making
6:16your plot more engaging and your book
6:18far more likely to turn casual readers
6:20into dedicated fans. Module six gives
6:22you a flexible blueprint for your book,
6:24a clear beginning, middle, and end, plus
6:26key turning points and subplots, all
6:28aligned with your genre templates from
6:30earlier. The outcome is that you always
6:32know what happens next when you sit down
6:34to write without feeling locked into a
6:36rigid plan, so that you reduce writer's
6:38block and keep your story on track. By
6:40the end of module seven, you'll have a
6:41streamlined approach to drafting
6:43chapters that balance speed with
6:45quality. You'll know how to break your
6:46book into manageable chunks, how to use
6:48AI to accelerate the drafting, and how
6:50to keep your voice and intent intact
6:53throughout the entire process. Because
6:55of this, the actual prose will become
6:56the fastest and most predictable part of
6:58your workflow, something that you can do
7:00consistently. Module eight turns editing
7:02from a vague make-it-better phase into a
7:04clear step-by-step upgrade path for your
7:07manuscript. You'll learn how to spot and
7:08fix the most common issues introduced by
7:10AI-assisted writing, and you'll learn
7:12how to tighten your prose, you'll learn
7:15how to all of the different layers of
7:17editing to polish that book, and you'll
7:18get a practical editing routine that you
7:21can repeat for each project that saves
7:22you a whole lot of both money and time.
7:25In module nine, you'll end up with a
7:27finished book that looks like it belongs
7:28on the shelf next to your favorite
7:30authors, and not in some sort of
7:31homemade experiment category. You'll
7:33understand what makes a cover actually
7:35sell, how to ensure your cover matches
7:37your genre's visual language, and how to
7:39format your book so it's easy and
7:40enjoyable to read in both ebook and
7:43print. The result is a package that
7:44converts, aka more trust from readers
7:46who are seeing you for the first time.
7:48And finally, by the end of module 10,
7:50the last module in this course, you'll
7:52know how to get your book out into the
7:53real world with a strategy that matches
7:55where you are in your career. You'll
7:57learn the pros and cons of sticking with
7:58the biggest retailers versus going wide,
8:01what exclusivity really means for your
8:02income, and when it makes sense to move
8:05into more advanced options like selling
8:07direct from your own store. I'll also
8:09show you exactly what to do to publish
8:10that first book and get the finished
8:12version in your hands. So, that's what
8:13makes up this course, and there will be
8:15chapters so you can go through this
8:17course at your own pace and skip the
8:19ones that aren't relevant to you. But, I
8:21want to quickly talk about how you can
8:22get more direct access to me through my
8:24school community if you are interested.
8:26If you want someone to hold your hand
8:28through the entire process, we hold
8:30weekly coaching calls to do just that.
8:32The membership also comes with a full
8:33step-by-step guide to write your book,
8:35and we just recently launched Story
8:37Hacker OS, which is our own proprietary
8:39AI software that is tailored to our
8:41methods and workflows so that you can
8:42write far more efficiently than you
8:44could even with the other tools that
8:45I'll be showing you today. But, most
8:48importantly, this is a place where you
8:49can be with the other authors, people
8:51who are on the same path as you, trying
8:54to write their books, and people who
8:56share your common interests, and people
8:58who understand how isolating the writing
8:59process can be, and want to form genuine
9:02connections with other creators and grow
9:04together. I can speak firsthand, when I
9:06was starting publishing in 2018, it was
9:08just me in my room typing for hours and
9:10hours until I eventually burned out.
9:12None of my friends understood what I was
9:14doing, and often times I would get up at
9:164:00 a.m. just to get an hour of writing
9:18in while still working my day job, which
9:19naturally killed my evening social life.
9:22So, not only is this school community a
9:24place where you have direct access to me
9:26and my team to ask specific questions
9:28about your book and make sure you're on
9:29the correct path, but it's also a place
9:31where you can meet other authors that
9:33understand you. And that's what this
9:34community was built for. But, I'm going
9:36to leave things there, and if you're
9:37interested in getting a one-on-one
9:39connection with me and a community of
9:40like-minded people, then you can learn
9:42more through the first link in this
9:43video's description. I hope it becomes
9:45evident as you watch this course that
9:47you can feel my intentions for making
9:49this for you. Seven years ago, I burned
9:51out hard when trying to go through the
9:52traditional writing and self-publishing
9:54process. In a few years, I wrote 14
9:57books, but at a huge cost. Discovering
9:59the technology and the techniques that
10:01I'm going to show you in this course is
10:03what got me out of creative burnout and
10:05enjoying the writing process again. And
10:07that is what I want for all of you,
10:09whether you're just getting started or
10:11you're an experienced author already. If
10:14I had this information when I first
10:15started, then I would be way further
10:17ahead than I currently am and would
10:19never have burned out in the first
10:20place. And the results are already
10:22showing. For example, this person is now
10:24making multiple five figures a month
10:26from their books. And this person even
10:28got a huge promotion just from the
10:30technical advancements that they gained
10:31by learning in my community. And we have
10:33literally hundreds of authors so far who
10:35have already completed a full book in a
10:37month, one that matches their vision and
10:39avoids burnout. Understanding how AI can
10:41integrate with your human creativity is
10:43the biggest advantage that any creator
10:46can have, and I feel blessed that I'm
10:47able to share my knowledge with you.
10:49With that said, I want to thank you for
10:50this opportunity again, and it's time to
10:52take you through the first steps into
10:53this program. Once you complete this
10:55full video, follow the first link in the
10:57description below, and I will see you
10:58inside. Now, let's get in to module one.
11:02For this first module, we absolutely
11:04must talk about mindset. And yeah, I
11:07know, I can hear you rolling your eyes
11:08right now, but hear me out because this
11:10is absolutely the difference between
11:13those authors who succeed and those who
11:16fail. You can skip any of the modules in
11:18this full course, but do not skip this
11:20one. It is probably the most important
11:22one. Now, when I was first getting into
11:24writing and self-publishing, I was not
11:26in a good place financially. I lived in
11:28central Maryland, which is one of the
11:30worst places to live if you're trying to
11:32save money. And my salary was barely
11:34able to support a teeny tiny studio
11:36apartment above a friend's garage where
11:39I lived with my wife and my first
11:41daughter when she was born. So, when I
11:42tell you I was motivated to make this
11:44work, I really was. I started to hustle
11:47and I started to grind and over the
11:49course of about 2 years, I wrote 14
11:52books. And this wasn't with AI, this was
11:54the traditional way. And my first book
11:56series actually did pretty well. I made
11:58a thousand in my first month and I was
12:00really encouraged after the rest of that
12:02series went out. So, I started making
12:03fairly consistent sales, but I, like
12:06many of the people in self-publishing at
12:08that time, knew that self-publishing was
12:10a numbers game. You had to get up a
12:11backlog in order to make a lot of money
12:14with books. Not just because every book
12:16provides an additional opportunity to
12:18make money, but because you also improve
12:20a lot as a writer every book you
12:22produce. So, once I finished my first
12:24series, which was eight books long, I
12:26started on my second. By that time, I
12:28had started working on the third book in
12:30that series, I released the first two
12:32and crickets. It did nothing. I even
12:34spent a thousand dollars and only
12:36received five hundred dollars in sales.
12:38And I had to take out a loan for that
12:40thousand dollars in the first place. I
12:42was absolutely devastated and this whole
12:44process ended up killing all motivation
12:46that I had to write for years to come,
12:49becoming the worst case of burnout that
12:51I have ever had. And I was so sure that
12:53this one was going to work. Everything I
12:55had learned from writing my first
12:56series, I was going to put it into the
12:57second and when it just didn't work, it
13:00drew everything out of me. Now,
13:02thankfully, there was a light at the end
13:04of the tunnel because I later went on to
13:06work for 3 years at Kindlepreneur and
13:08all of that study of self-publishing and
13:10writing had eventually worked in my
13:12favor to make me the perfect candidate
13:14for that job. But, I still found it
13:16incredibly difficult to write. And to be
13:18honest, I wasn't a big fan of the
13:20writing process, either. It didn't feel
13:22like it the creative part to me. In
13:24fact, there are many authors that say
13:26the same thing. They will say that the
13:27creative part is more in the planning
13:29and the outlining in the editing process
13:32where you shape it into something truly
13:33good. You've probably heard the term
13:35writing is rewriting which was coined by
13:37Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic
13:39Park. Now, I myself found a lot more joy
13:41in the outlining process and coming up
13:43with the worlds. [music] That to me was
13:46the creative part that led to that
13:47coveted flow state that I craved so
13:50much. And I never stopped doing that
13:52even when I was burnt out shaping these
13:54worlds and enjoying that that part of
13:55it. The only thing I stopped doing was
13:57the actual butt in chair, hands on
13:59keyboard, mechanical typing part of it.
14:01So, there are two main lessons that I
14:03got from this experience that I want to
14:05share with you today regarding mindset.
14:06The first is that you need to be focused
14:08on the right things. The main reason I
14:10burnt out is because I was focused on
14:12money. Had I instead been focusing on
14:14improving my craft or flushing out my
14:16worlds, perhaps I would have felt
14:18differently about the whole ordeal
14:19because those factors were more in my
14:22control. The fact that I was focused on
14:23money which is outside my control, at
14:26least outside my direct control, that
14:28meant my feelings of accomplishment were
14:30contingent on an external factor. So, as
14:33we go into this course, I recommend not
14:35focusing so much on the money. Money is
14:37definitely important, but I would go
14:38into this assuming that you're not going
14:40to make money for a while until you've
14:42truly mastered the craft and until you
14:44have a lot of high rated books out. And
14:46it can take some time to get there and
14:48you will need to be willing to do this.
14:50And I say this not just as an AI writer,
14:52but as a writer in general, it's going
14:54to take time. The chances of a one-hit
14:56wonder are almost zero. Now, the people
14:58who succeed at this have been doing it
15:00for a long time. That means you need to
15:02do this as well. Even if you're using
15:04AI, there is a lot you need to learn
15:07about craft and story and structure and
15:09character arts, you name it. So, if you
15:12focus instead on becoming a master
15:13storyteller, then every time you craft a
15:16story, you are going to be succeeding in
15:18that goal. Whereas if you focus on the
15:20the there is a good chance that you
15:22won't be succeeding on that goal for
15:23potentially years to come. And there's
15:25no faster path to burnout than not
15:27succeeding at what you perceive to be
15:30success. All you have to do is redefine
15:32your definition of success and you can
15:33avoid burnout. The second lesson I want
15:35to share that I got from my burnout
15:37experience is this. Focus more on those
15:40things that light you up. In any small
15:42business, you are going to have to do
15:44some things that you find unpleasant and
15:46that's just part of it. But the more of
15:47these things that you can eliminate or
15:49outsource to other people the better.
15:50And AI has made this so much easier
15:53since its explosion onto the landscape.
15:55I know some writing purists are going to
15:57get really mad to hear me say this, but
15:59I don't and never really did like the
16:02actual writing process. [music] And I
16:04mean the butt-in-chair typing on the
16:06keyboard part of the creative process.
16:08And writing, especially creative
16:09writing, is a lot more than just one
16:12step. It includes, but is not limited
16:13to, brainstorming, character
16:15development, plotting, outlining,
16:17research, and staring at a blank window,
16:19working with a developmental editor,
16:21working with a line editor, working with
16:23a proofreader, getting your book cover
16:24designed, understanding genre and
16:26markets, understanding tropes and what
16:28readers actually want, learning to
16:30market your books, which yes, is a
16:31creative process in its own way. And
16:33there could be many more specific to the
16:35type of books you want to write. For
16:36instance, because a lot of my books are
16:38set in Arthurian England, I've had a
16:39blast just researching that era and all
16:41of the different myths and legends
16:43associated with it. My point is, writing
16:45is a multi-step process. And if we want
16:47to consider this like a business, we
16:49absolutely must focus on those things
16:51that interest us the most or that we are
16:53the most skilled at so that we can spend
16:55as much time doing those things as
16:57possible. Everything else, we should
16:59find ways to lessen the amount of work
17:01we have to do in whatever way we can,
17:03whether that's eliminating it entirely,
17:05sometimes there are things we just don't
17:06need that maybe we thought we did, or
17:09outsourcing it to another person, or
17:11outsourcing it to AI. For this course, I
17:13will be showing you how to use AI at
17:15practically every step of the process,
17:17but you definitely do not have to use it
17:20for every step. Instead, use it for that
17:22area that you dislike the most, the part
17:24that if you had to do it over and over
17:26and over again might burn you out over
17:27time. Now, lastly, before we get into
17:29our next module, I want to mention two
17:31other mindset shifts that are going to
17:33be the difference between success and
17:35failure in a storytelling driven
17:38business. The first is that you do need
17:40to treat this like a business. Now, I'm
17:42absolutely fine if you just want to
17:44write a book for your kids or your
17:45grandkids or even for yourself, but I
17:48would not expect that to sell. And it's
17:49also totally fine if you want to treat
17:51this as a hobby. More power to you. But,
17:53if we want to be able to continue to
17:55create art of any kind in a way that
17:57allows us to work on it full-time, we
17:59must get paid eventually. I know I said
18:01earlier that we don't want to focus on
18:03the money, and we don't. We want to
18:04focus on growth because growth will lead
18:06to money. But, we can't kid ourselves
18:08and say that we can do this full-time
18:10without having some kind of income. Keep
18:12in mind that success isn't always the
18:13road we planned from the start, but at
18:15some point we must get an income from
18:17our efforts, otherwise we'll be forced
18:19to continue with these hobbies as just
18:21that, a hobby. You must treat this like
18:23a business, and a big part of that is
18:24learning about investments. And I'm not
18:26talking about investing in the stock
18:28market or anything like that. I'm
18:29talking about investing in yourself and
18:31in the business. [music] A lot of people
18:32look at what it costs to create a
18:34business. And while it is important to
18:36be frugal, especially early on when
18:38you're starting a business, [music] and
18:39to do much of the work yourself, doing
18:41things that free up your time to work on
18:43that which you're best at, or spending
18:44money on education to give you the best
18:46possible start to your journey, all of
18:48that could be considered an investment.
18:50For instance, I recently invested $8,000
18:52of my own money into an organization
18:54that would help me identify good YouTube
18:56video topics to target. And that may
18:58sound like a lot for something so
19:00simple. But, already I've seen huge
19:02returns from that investment, and you
19:05have two things to invest, money and
19:07time. Which one you invest will depend
19:09on which one you have more of. But, the
19:11idea of investing is this: you put in
19:14the time or the money and hopefully by
19:16doing those things you get returns that
19:18are greater than what you put into it.
19:21But, creating a business will require
19:22investment and that is very important.
19:24Now, the second mindset shift that I
19:26want to hammer home for you is the
19:27difference between an abundance and a
19:29scarcity mindset. A scarcity mindset is
19:32a habitual focus on what you don't have,
19:35combined with the belief that resources
19:37and opportunities or success are limited
19:39so that other people's wins feels like
19:41your loss. On the other hand, an
19:43abundance mindset is a belief that there
19:45are enough resources and opportunities
19:47for everyone and that you can create
19:48more value through learning and
19:50collaboration and experimentation. This
19:52is one of the core issues that plague
19:54most authors. Common scarcity thoughts
19:56for aspiring authors include the market
19:59is saturated so no one will ever find my
20:01book. Or, if that author in my niche
20:02succeeds, they're taking my readers. Or,
20:05I can't invest in covers, editing, or
20:07ads until I'm already making money. I
20:08only get one shot with this book. If it
20:10doesn't blow up, I've failed. That was
20:12my biggest mindset issue early on. Now,
20:14psychologically a scarcity mindset
20:16narrows your attention, pushes people
20:18into high-stakes thinking, and triggers
20:20anxiety and avoidance behaviors. And
20:22it's just not pleasant. Now, most
20:23successful entrepreneurs that I know
20:25have an abundance mindset. Now, this
20:26idea is that there's more than enough
20:28and that we actually create value
20:30instead of using it up. An abundance
20:32mindset doesn't pretend that resources
20:34are infinite, but it does focus on
20:36opportunities and levers that you
20:38control. For authors, that sounds like
20:40this: There are always more readers
20:41entering my genre and I can reach them
20:43over time with multiple books. Other
20:45authors' success proves that there's
20:46demand, so we can cross-pollinate
20:48audiences. Every dollar I invest, when I
20:51can afford it, is a test of return on
20:53investment, not a permanent loss. Or,
20:55this book is one step in a long-term
20:57catalog. Even a failed launch gives data
20:59that I can use later. Abundance thinking
21:01invites experimentation as well as
21:03long-term strategy and collaboration
21:06instead of perfectionism or jealousy or
21:08isolation. It also helps you become an
21:10opportunity seeker, making you far more
21:12likely to spot opportunities when those
21:14with a scarcity mindset would simply
21:16brush them off. This is why those who
21:18have an abundance and a growth mindset
21:19actually are proven in studies to be
21:22luckier compared to those without. Now,
21:24if this sounds like a lot, don't worry.
21:25These are mindsets that can be worked on
21:27over time. You are not stuck with the
21:29mindset that you currently enjoy. And if
21:32you want tips on ways to improve your
21:34mindset, you're already doing one of
21:35them, which is taking action and
21:37learning from videos like this one. I
21:39also strongly recommend a daily
21:40meditation practice, a daily movement
21:43practice of some kind, and a daily
21:45reading practice of books from other
21:46successful people in any field,
21:48honestly. So, now that we have that all
21:50out of the way, let's move into the
21:52actual practice of writing with AI,
21:54starting with an overview of all of the
21:57tools that we are going to use for the
21:59rest of this course. All right, so let's
22:01talk about the tools we will need for
22:03this entire process. Now, in the past, I
22:05have recommended having two tools. One
22:07simple chatbot as a kind of catch-all
22:09for everything else that you would need,
22:11and one writing-specific tool, which
22:13allows you to have a workflow that's
22:15kind of tailored to writing-specific.
22:17And in the past, you may have heard me
22:18talk about several of these
22:20writing-specific tools. Notably, there
22:21are three that I've talked about before.
22:23One is called Raptor Write, one is Novel
22:25Crafter, and one is called Sudowrite. As
22:28AI has advanced, I've found that my
22:30needs have changed kind of a lot, and
22:32today I will be showing you three tools,
22:34uh but you really need to only have one
22:36of them. Although, it can be useful to
22:37have more. I will show you one tool
22:39that's good for beginners, one that's
22:41good for advanced AI users, and one
22:43that's kind of in the middle. So, let's
22:45start with the tool that I believe to be
22:47the best for beginners, and that is
22:49Claude. So, Claude, if you haven't heard
22:51of it, is very similar to ChatGPT, which
22:53you probably have heard of, but it's
22:55actually far better for writers
22:57specifically and in a lot of other
22:59industries, too. I know coders use it
23:01dominantly. It's just one of the best
23:03ones out there. And right now there's a
23:05free tier. There is a This one says $17,
23:08but I believe that's uh if you're doing
23:11the annual subscription. Uh yeah, it
23:13says $20 if billed monthly. And there is
23:15a max plan, which is $100 a month, which
23:18gives you more usage. And uh generally
23:20I'm on the pro plan. Uh it's usually
23:23enough for my needs. Uh although quite a
23:25lot of it is available on the free plan.
23:27Just understand that the problem with
23:29the free plan is that they're going to
23:30throttle you very quickly. Meaning as
23:32you're using it, they're going to say
23:33you've come to the end of your usage
23:35limits. You have to come back in a
23:36couple of hours or something like that.
23:38And that happens on every plan, but it
23:40will happen more frequently with the
23:42free plan. And with the pro you get a
23:44little bit more usage. And with the max
23:46you get even more usage. But for max it
23:49says five or 20 times more usage than
23:52pro. Uh the reason why it says five or
23:5520 and it doesn't actually get specific
23:57is cuz it kind of depends on which model
23:59you're using and how much thinking it's
24:01doing and different things like that.
24:03There's a lot that goes into it. But you
24:04can still get most of the features on
24:06the free plan. But generally if you use
24:08it frequently enough, I would say at
24:10least go to the pro plan. So once you've
24:11signed up for Claude, it'll look
24:13something like this. One of the things I
24:14love about Claude is that it has a very
24:16nice clean interface. And let me just
24:19give you a brief tour around this whole
24:21thing. So first of all, uh you have your
24:24your main chat window here. Right here
24:26is where you enter in your your text to
24:29chat with Claude. Right here is where
24:30you can add things. So you can add files
24:33or photos. And it is able to read the
24:36contents of a photo and stuff like that.
24:38There's a something that says add to
24:39project, which is another feature I will
24:41show you in a second. You can also add
24:43skills, which is another feature I will
24:44show you in a second. Uh there are other
24:46connectors and things that you can
24:47connect to this. Most of which are not
24:50really needed. Uh there's a research
24:52mode if you want to do more in-depth
24:53research. And I highly recommend that as
24:56a research tool for authors. If there's
24:58anything you want to research about your
25:00book or anything like that, the research
25:01function can be excellent. Uh there's
25:03also web search, which is turned on by
25:05default, [music] which is allows it to
25:07be able to browse the web and find
25:09different things. Over here, we've got
25:11this right here that currently says Opus
25:134.8. This is the model that you are
25:15selecting, and Claude has multiple
25:17models that vary in intensity. For
25:20instance, there is the Haiku model. This
25:22one is fastest. If you use Haiku, you'll
25:25have more usage, right? Uh because it's
25:27less expensive. Then in the middle,
25:28we've got Sonnet, 4.6 at the moment. If
25:31you're watching this in the future, you
25:32might see different models here, but
25:34generally they fall into these families
25:35of Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus. And uh as
25:38I'm recording this, they recently
25:39released Fable 5, but that's currently
25:41unavailable. So, uh these are the
25:43different models you can select. Again,
25:44Haiku is the simplest, and it's not
25:47going to be as powerful, but you will
25:48get more usage out of it, and then they
25:50go up in order from there. There's also
25:52this feature that says effort. And uh
25:55you can select how much effort you need.
25:56Again, the more effort that you put into
25:59your chat, the more will use up your
26:02credits, the amount of usage that you
26:04get through Claude. What this does is
26:06this essentially increases the amount of
26:08thinking time that you get out of these
26:10models. So, one of the things you can do
26:12that can actually be a good way of kind
26:15of balancing the your credit usage, you
26:18actually use a model like Haiku, which
26:19is very inexpensive. Now, beyond this,
26:22uh beyond effort, which by the way is
26:24only available for these higher models.
26:27It's not available for Haiku. Uh if you
26:28select Haiku, it will show you something
26:30different. It says extended, so it's
26:31using deeper reasoning, but you can't
26:33tell it how much of deep reasoning to
26:35do. Below that, there's also more models
26:37here, some past models that aren't as
26:39good, uh but they are available there if
26:41you want to use them. Next to this, we
26:43have this little icon, which allows you
26:46to record. And so, if I use this and
26:48say,
26:50"Hey Claude, I would just like to say
26:51you're looking fine today. And then it
26:54will just transcribe what I just said.
26:56This could be a really good way if you
26:57have really long prompts or you're
26:59trying to describe something that's very
27:00lengthy, it can often just be way easier
27:03to turn this on and input your prompt
27:05there. Related to this but not the same
27:07is voice mode. So voice mode is if you
27:09want to have more of a conversation with
27:11the AI rather than actually transcribing
27:15what you say, this will allow you to
27:16actually have a back and forth
27:17conversation. It's not as good as the
27:19same feature other AI models. The voice
27:21itself kind of sounds very robotic and
27:24everything, but it is available there
27:26and it can be really useful especially
27:28at the brainstorming phase where you
27:30kind of want to have that back and
27:31forth. I will even sometimes just sit
27:33back in my chair and just kind of be
27:35thinking about things while I'm having
27:37this conversation, right? So that's
27:38another option for you there. I don't
27:41use it for everything, but it can be
27:42useful in certain use cases. Below this
27:44you'll see all of these buttons here.
27:46Each of these give you basically just
27:48suggestions. I don't typically use any
27:50of these, but some of them can be
27:51useful. For instance, under learning you
27:54could say things like find the best
27:56books on a certain subject or create a
27:58curriculum inspired by my favorite
27:59cultural movement. Or under life stuff,
28:01you could have something like plan
28:04educational pursuits or something like
28:05that. But these are just kind of
28:06starters to get you started and they
28:08don't remain the same. So if I were to
28:11click away and come back, it would
28:12probably be something else. So that is
28:14just the main home screen here for
28:16Claude. Let's go over here on the side
28:18and over here you will see a couple of
28:21additional things. Here's where you
28:23start a new chat. Here's where you find
28:25a record of all your chats. And then
28:27here's a little something called
28:28projects. And we're going to be using
28:29projects a lot in this full course. This
28:31allows you to have you can think of it
28:33as kind of a specific employee. Like
28:35think of it as a employee that does one
28:38very specific task. And what you do here
28:41if you want to create a new project is
28:42you select new project, you give it a
28:43name, you know, we'll just call this one
28:46test project. You don't have to give it
28:47a description of what it is and then
28:49just say create project. And this allows
28:51you to pull in here. You can pull in any
28:53files. So, anytime you have a lot of
28:55files that you want the AI to have
28:58access to, you can put these in a
29:01project. So, it will anytime you do a
29:03chat inside of this project, it will
29:05have access to those files. So, you
29:07could upload any any files from a
29:09device. You can also just say add text
29:11content, copy paste your stuff in here.
29:13And then there's also instructions. So,
29:15instructions, this is just a space where
29:18you can tell it specific instruction on
29:20what you want it to do. So, if we were
29:22to create a very simple type of
29:25instructions here, you could say
29:26something like, "Anytime I give you a
29:29long article, I want you to summarize it
29:31in one paragraph." All right, so I put
29:33that in here and save the instructions.
29:35And now, anytime I come here into the
29:37chat window, all I have to do is input
29:39my article here and it will summarize it
29:41in one paragraph. Okay, that's an
29:43example of what projects do. And they're
29:46pretty important for a lot of the tasks
29:49that we're going to go through here in
29:50this course. So, I'm going to go ahead
29:51and delete this test project. Now, over
29:53here we have something called artifacts.
29:55Occasionally, as you're working with the
29:57chat, it will spin off a specific, call
30:00it a document. I think documents makes
30:02more sense than artifacts. For instance,
30:05I was working on an outline for a book
30:06and it gave me this document here. This
30:08document is editable and you can
30:10actually ask for specific feedback and
30:13it will go through and kind of mark this
30:14up and things like that. So, think of it
30:16as a as a specific document that is
30:18within your chat that you can modify
30:21with the AI. Underneath that is
30:23customize. So, customize just allows you
30:26to add There's a lot you can do here,
30:28okay? So, this is one of the areas where
30:30I'm not going to go into too much depth
30:32because it's not necessary to be able to
30:35write a book in Claude. But, there are
30:36lots of things that you can do here to
30:38make your life a little bit easier.
30:39Notably, you can connect your apps. So,
30:41there's a bunch of apps and tools that
30:44it can connect specifically to. Some of
30:46these that are very useful are things
30:47like Canva, right? Or Notion, if you use
30:50Notion, or Slack. And of course, you got
30:51Gmail, Google Drive, Zoom. A lot of
30:53these things can be connected directly.
30:55And therefore, you can use Claude to
30:58have certain functionalities within
31:00these apps, right? So, these can be very
31:01useful, but again, a little bit outside
31:03the scope of what we're doing today. So,
31:05that's just one option there.
31:06Additionally, there are plugins, and
31:08some of these were created by Anthropic,
31:10some are created by other AI or other
31:13tools out there in order to have
31:15specific things that they do within
31:17within Claude. Some of these are useful,
31:19some of them depends on what industry
31:21you're in. Like for instance, if you're
31:23into design for apps and stuff like
31:26that, Figma might be a useful one to
31:28integrate. Or Airtable, if you're doing
31:30database stuff. You know, lots of these
31:31things can be useful, but once again,
31:34this is a little out of the scope of
31:35what we're trying to do today. Last but
31:37not least is skills. So, skills are
31:40actually function kind of similar to the
31:42instructions in a project. They are You
31:44can think of them as little autonomous
31:46agents that do specific things, and you
31:48can call them in to do those specific
31:51things whenever you want them. And in a
31:52lot of ways, you can use skills in the
31:53same way that we're going to be using
31:55projects. And I'll show you how to do
31:56both later in the course, because skills
31:59can be really useful. I particularly
32:00find them useful for things like editing
32:03and modifying your documents to sound
32:05more like you, that sort of thing. So,
32:07here are some examples of skills that
32:08they have available here, but again,
32:10these are something we'll get into a
32:12little bit later. All right, so that's
32:13under customize. And you'll see the list
32:15of skills and connectors here. Now,
32:17going back to our left-hand side things
32:20here, you'll also see a list of all your
32:22past chats. And you can also minimize
32:24that if it's getting too much. But above
32:26that, you'll have this product section.
32:28You have code, code work, and design as
32:30I'm recording this. For Claude code and
32:32Claude code work, this is actually
32:34something I recommend authors maybe dig
32:36into a little bit because anytime you
32:37have want any sort of advanced
32:39functionality with Claude, these are the
32:41two you want to look at because there's
32:43a lot of potential for these two things.
32:45However, they are not necessary again,
32:47they're kind of beyond the scope of what
32:48we're doing today, and you definitely
32:50don't have to use them. And if you click
32:52on one, like let's click on code, it
32:54will lead you to a download because in
32:57order to do this, you will need to have
32:59a desktop version for either your PC or
33:01your Mac, right? So, I've got it here
33:02Windows machine, so I can download it
33:04for Windows. And when I do that, it
33:06looks something like this. So, the chat
33:08looks very similar, like a pretty much
33:10everything that we had before is
33:11available in the chat in the desktop
33:13app, but the over here on the left,
33:15you'll see there's also co-work and
33:16code, which do things in a slightly
33:19different workflow. And I'm not going to
33:21get into these in full court because
33:22again, they're not necessary for the
33:24scope of what we're doing in writing a
33:26book with Claude. You don't need But
33:27they can be a more advanced way to to do
33:30The only reason I'm not going to show
33:31you is cuz I have another advanced tool
33:33that I'm going to show you next that I
33:35believe to be superior for the purposes
33:38of writing a book for a lot of reasons,
33:40but one of which is you can use other
33:42models besides Claude because that is
33:44the number one issue with using Claude
33:47is that you are limited to their models
33:49only. If we come here to the main chat,
33:51you have to select Opus, Sonnet, Haiku,
33:53maybe Fable, or one of their older
33:55models. You can't use a GPT model. You
33:58can't use a Gemini model. You can't use
34:00any of the open-source or local model
34:02inside of this work. And as great of a
34:04workflow as it is, sometimes certain
34:06models do better for certain things.
34:07Now, I tend to stick to Claude as my
34:09default chatbot generally because I find
34:12it to be one of the best in terms of
34:14writing, and it has long been one of the
34:16best for writing. Uh there are some
34:18other models that are getting a little
34:20bit better with pros and things like
34:21that because they're trained to be more
34:23conversational in that way. And Claude
34:25is also known to have a lot of the
34:27telltale signs of AI writing. That said,
34:30it's still one of the best for writing.
34:32You just have to clean up some of those
34:34tells. So, this is the main tool that
34:36we're going to be using for a lot of the
34:38processes. I'm going to show you how to
34:40use this and the other tools to go
34:42through each of the modules here. But,
34:43the nice thing about Claude is that it
34:45really requires very little setup. You
34:47can get started right away and it's very
34:49easy for beginners. In our next tool,
34:51I'm going to be showing you something
34:52called N8N. And N8N is a lot more
34:55advanced than what you see in Claude,
34:56but it can do a whole lot more and I
34:59think it can actually save authors a ton
35:02of time and actually get a lot of this
35:04done in a more efficient manner. So, I'm
35:06going to show you how to write a book
35:07from start to finish both of these tools
35:09as well as a third one that we'll get to
35:11next. But, before we get into the actual
35:13process, let's go over N8N just brief.
35:15N8N is a more advanced automation
35:18system. So, for instance, here is a
35:21example of a very basic automation that
35:23I've set up. Now, with Claude, you have
35:25to be chatting with it at every step of
35:27the way. Everything you do, you have to
35:29give it instructions. And [music] with
35:31an automation, there may be instances
35:34where you don't want to give it
35:35instructions until it's done a couple of
35:37things. So, in this case, there are a
35:39number of steps and it runs through all
35:41of those steps one by one so that I
35:43don't have to really look until it's
35:45finished what it's doing. N8N also
35:47integrates with the Google suite of
35:49tools and with Claude and with virtually
35:51all models that you can think of, which
35:53means you can use any model for any
35:56task, which there are many where Claude
35:58is not the best one to use. For
36:00instance, in this automation, if we go
36:01look at some of the models I'm using,
36:03for this one I'm using Gemini 3.1
36:05Flashlight at the time moment because in
36:07this case, I want a very inexpensive
36:10model for this particular step. So, what
36:12this automation does in a just a few
36:14steps is it creates a style sheet based
36:18on samples of your work. Very simple,
36:20that's all it does, not much to it.
36:22However, these can get far more
36:23advanced. Here is an example of another
36:26one that I use and I use this to help me
36:29create genre guide. And as you can tell,
36:32this is a very involved automation. It
36:35goes through this entire process and
36:37saves me so many hours of work. If I
36:40were to go through this process one step
36:42at a time, even if I'm using Claude or
36:44another AI chatbot, this would still
36:46take me hours. Whereas, all I have to do
36:48is give it a couple of documents that it
36:50needs to start out, hit a button, and it
36:52runs through the process while I go have
36:54lunch. This is why I'm even talking
36:55about N to N in a full course like this,
36:57even though it is kind of an advanced
36:59topic. It is still my favorite way of
37:01writing books and my favorite way of
37:03doing a lot of things besides writing
37:05books. Like I'll use this to generate
37:06marketing tools. I'll use it to clean
37:09book into a erotic hook or vice versa.
37:12I'll use it to do a bunch of things
37:14where, like for instance, I'll have like
37:16a whole book and let's say I want to
37:17convert that book into something a
37:20little bit different. Let's say a young
37:21reader edition of that book. I don't
37:23want to have to go through every single
37:25chapter in Claude and do it manually for
37:27everyone. I just want to like set it and
37:30have it go through the entire book step
37:32by step and it will it'll create the
37:34whole thing and I don't have to do
37:36anything. So, that's the kind of thing I
37:38like to use for N to N. It's a huge time
37:40saver for me and one of the most
37:41powerful ways of making book. Another
37:43way in which it's most powerful is that
37:44let's use Claude as a good example
37:46because Claude, [music] as I said, it's
37:47a very good writer, but it does have a
37:49lot of AI tells in its writing. So, what
37:52if you just took that writing into an
37:54automation then once it's finished
37:56writing, you pass it to another model
37:58and that model checks it to try and find
38:00all of those tells. And then from there,
38:02it makes a list of all of those tells
38:05and passes that on to another model that
38:07then looks at the original text, looks
38:09at the list of AI tells and it goes
38:11through and fixes them all for you. And
38:12it can do that automatically so that you
38:14don't even need to worry about it
38:16yourself. It can just do a lot of that
38:17heavy lifting for you. That's the power
38:19of automation, all right? So, now I'm
38:20going to teach you how to get started
38:23with n8n and how to get integrated with
38:26Google Drive, Google Docs, and other AI
38:29providers so that you can get models in
38:31here. And then I'm going to like walk
38:33you through what the process is of
38:34actually building a simple automation in
38:36n8n. This next part, I've actually
38:38already done a couple of videos on how
38:41to get set up with n8n and how to get
38:43your authentications for Google Drive
38:45and everything like that. It's the most
38:46technical part of this whole video. And
38:48since I already did some videos on it,
38:49I'm going to actually bring in a little
38:51footage from those videos because it's
38:53still relevant, still up-to-date. Uh
38:54this is the only time that I'm going to
38:56be bringing in footage from other
38:58videos. I promise everything else in
39:00this full course is completely original.
39:02But I feel like I might as well go to
39:04those videos because they're still
39:05perfectly relevant today. All right, for
39:07starters, this is n8n.io. This is the
39:10SaaS version or software as a service uh
39:13version of n8n. And it's okay. Like um
39:16there there's a lot it can do. This is
39:18probably, in terms of functionality, the
39:20most capable version because there are
39:23certain things you can do with it that
39:24are going to be a little bit more
39:25up-to-date. You're going to have a
39:26better support system, stuff like that.
39:28However, there's a big problem with this
39:30one and that is the pricing. So, if you
39:32look at monthly pricing, it's going to
39:34be at least $24 a month for the starter
39:37version. And honestly, if you're taking
39:40this stuff seriously, you'll probably
39:41actually need the pro version, which is
39:42$60 a month. Although you could probably
39:45get by with the starter. Uh but
39:47regardless, this is a very expensive
39:50option. And there are other options that
39:52are a little bit better for most
39:54authors. Uh that said, if you want to go
39:57with this, you just go ahead and click
39:59on the plan you want and say start a
40:01free trial. And then just walk through
40:02the steps. It's a regular normal sign-up
40:04process. I don't feel like I have to
40:06show it all to you. You just go through
40:08that process and then you'll be in n8n
40:11in no time and be able to get started.
40:13And the reason I would recommend this
40:15one is really only in a couple of use
40:18cases. The first is if you have the
40:20money and want probably the simplest,
40:23most seamless solution to get started
40:25with the least amount of tech involved,
40:28this is probably the best one. The other
40:31reason that I might suggest using this
40:33is if you have a really complex business
40:35where you need lots of people to be
40:38involved in the process, lots of admins,
40:41lots of people helping you build the
40:43automations and stuff like that. For
40:45really complex systems, you probably
40:47want something a little bit more robust
40:49like this. But that said, I really don't
40:51think that most authors are in that camp
40:53and most of us just want something that
40:56is cheap and affordable and will get the
40:58job done. So with that said, let's talk
41:00about the second option that we have
41:02available to us. And that second option
41:04is a hosting it locally on your actual
41:06computer. Now, the biggest advantage to
41:08this is obviously that it is actually
41:11free to do. There is no ongoing cost to
41:13hosting N8N on your computer. There are
41:15some disadvantages, however, to doing
41:17this. The first is it's kind of
41:18technical to set up. I'll walk you
41:20through it in a second. The second is
41:22that it is not an always-on system. What
41:25that means is if you have automations
41:27that need to run automatically at say
41:29like during the night or while you're
41:31out traveling or something like that, it
41:33can't do that if your computer is shut
41:34down. So your computer must be connected
41:37to the internet in order to interact
41:39with the internet in any kind of way,
41:41and that can just be a problem if you
41:43have things that need to be automated
41:46outside of, you know, you're actually
41:49using and interacting with it. For
41:51instance, I have some automations that
41:52go through my emails as they come in. If
41:54you had an automation like that or an
41:56automation that scans news items every
41:58day or something like that, if your
41:59computer was off, it would not be able
42:01to execute those things. And not just if
42:03your computer is off, but if the actual
42:05locally hosted version of N8N is not
42:08currently enabled, you're not going to
42:10be able to do that. There are also a
42:11couple of features that won't work on a
42:14locally hosted machine. The biggest one
42:16of these is webhook integration. You're
42:18not going to be able to have any kind of
42:20webhooks inside of your locally hosted
42:22machine. Now, I don't use webhooks a
42:24whole lot in my automations, but if you
42:26did and I could see circumstances where
42:29you would need that, it's definitely
42:30something that you would want a
42:33different solution rather than a locally
42:35hosted option. Another advantage though
42:37is that hosting locally is more private
42:41and secure. So, as long as you keep
42:43everything on your your actual system,
42:46you don't have to worry about your data
42:47getting into the hands of other people
42:48and stuff like that. Unlike the cloud
42:50solution, which basically you're you're
42:53putting all of your automations, your
42:55data, all of that is hosted in an a
42:57cloud system that you do not control.
42:59All right, so let's actually get this
43:01installed on your computer. The first
43:02thing you will need is a program called
43:04Docker Desktop. And here's the website
43:06here. I will make sure there's a link to
43:08this down below. All you need to do is
43:10come here. This is not something that
43:11you need to worry about pricing or
43:12anything. You just go come here to
43:14download Docker Desk- Desktop and you
43:16want to choose the one that is right for
43:18your computer. So, if you have an uh
43:19Mac, you would choose one of these. If
43:21you have a Windows, you choose one of
43:23these. If you have Linux, you can choose
43:24this one. For most of you, if you're on
43:26a PC, you're going to be using this one
43:28that says AMD 64 uh and you'll go ahead
43:31and download that. And then you simply
43:33install that program on your computer.
43:35And then once it's installed, it will
43:37ask you to close and restart your
43:38computer. So, go ahead and do that now.
43:40Now, once your Docker is installed, you
43:42just come and search for Docker and load
43:45it up. And it will ask you to set up an
43:47account, but you don't actually need
43:48this. So, you can just go ahead and and
43:51skip filling any information you have
43:52here or just skip it. All right, and
43:54once you're in, it'll look something
43:55like this. And over here on the left,
43:57you'll see a number of options here. You
43:59want to make sure to navigate to images
44:01and then say search images to run. And
44:03then from here, do a search on n8n. And
44:06this is the one that you want to run
44:07right here. From here, you want to
44:09select pull in order to download this
44:11image. All right, so our next step is
44:13that we want to create a container
44:15inside of Docker inside of this image.
44:17So, here you'll see this little play
44:18button right here that says run. Go
44:19ahead and click on that. And then it'll
44:21say run a new container and there are
44:23some optional settings here. I recommend
44:25giving it a name. You can't have spaces
44:27in this name, so make sure you use like
44:29an underscore or something like that.
44:31I'm just going to call this n8n [music]
44:33_test. And then give it a host port.
44:36Now, by default it it'll show 5678 over
44:39here. You can just use that number, 5678
44:42right there, and hit run. And once it's
44:44finished that, you go here to containers
44:47up in the left menu and you'll see it'll
44:49have a number here under ports. If you
44:52click on that number, it'll bring you to
44:55the setup to setup your account. And
44:58here you just set enter in your email,
45:00your first name, last name, and password
45:02and you will be into n8n. So, that is
45:05everything that that you need to know.
45:06Now, if you walk through these steps
45:08exactly like I've shown it to you and
45:10it's not working like I like it works
45:13for me, Perplexity is your friend. Use
45:15Perplexity or any other search-based AI
45:18tool and say like that you're trying to
45:20set up n8n locally and explain the
45:22problem that you're running into.
45:24There's a very good chance it will be
45:25able to help you troubleshoot the issue.
45:27All right, so let's talk now about the
45:29third option. This is the actual option
45:31that I recommend for most people as long
45:33as you're willing to pay just a little
45:35bit more than free uh cuz the free
45:37option is obviously installing it
45:38locally on your computer, but there is a
45:41way that you kind of get the best of
45:42both worlds, best of the cloud version
45:44which has some advantages, but it's
45:46really expensive and best of the uh
45:49cheaper option, putting it locally on
45:51your computer. And that is having your
45:52own cloud server that you install n8n
45:55on. So, essentially it's a local
45:57install, but on a different server,
46:00meaning a server different than your
46:02actual home computer. And there are a
46:04couple of different advantages to this.
46:05The main advantage is issue that I told
46:08you about the locally hosted option,
46:10being that it it isn't always on, is not
46:13an issue when you're hosting it on your
46:15own server. So, if you have it on a
46:17server, you can run automations whenever
46:20and it'll be always on, essentially,
46:22unless there's a problem with the
46:23serving hosting service that you're
46:25using or something like that.
46:26Additionally, you get all of the same
46:27privacy and security advantages of
46:29having it in locally, because it's still
46:31that your server, it's not on somebody
46:34else's server. It's still one that you
46:36currently are essentially renting out.
46:38Plus, even though it's not free, it is
46:40going to be a substantial discount from
46:43what you [music] would get through N8N's
46:45actual software as a service provider.
46:47So, if we go back and look at what the
46:49N8N cloud version is, you're going to be
46:52paying at least $24 a month, if not 60,
46:54and there is another web hosting option
46:58that I recommend, called Hostinger. And
47:01this is not sponsored by Hostinger or
47:02anything. I did reach out to them to see
47:04if they would sponsor a video, but I
47:05never heard back, and so I'm just doing
47:08this
47:09free for them. Um the reason I recommend
47:11Hostinger is you'll notice even at the
47:13top of their homepage, they have a
47:16option here for self-hosted N8N. Uh
47:19Hostinger has been really good about
47:21making this a very seamless process,
47:23which is why I'm recommending them. Uh
47:24but what you do, if we go here to
47:26pricing, you can see what the pricing
47:28option looks like. So, this is
47:30essentially the same as hosting your own
47:31website, and you can even use this
47:34[music] to host a website and host N8N,
47:36if you want. But if you come up to this
47:38pricing and select N8N VPS, these are
47:41just the VPSs that they recommend for
47:43N8N. You can select as low as $4.99
47:48a month for the this option. I would
47:51probably get something with just a
47:52little bit more oomph for $6.49 a month.
47:56That said, the only way to get it at
47:58that low price is to opt into 24 months,
48:01which is what I have done. Now, if you
48:02wanted to go month-to-month, it would be
48:04a little bit more expensive at $7.99 or
48:07$9.99 for one of these two plans. Almost
48:10certainly, you will not need one of
48:12these higher plans. I've been on the KVM
48:142 plan. I've never had any problems with
48:17N8N overloading the server or anything
48:18like that. And honestly, you could
48:20probably make do with the KVM 1 plan as
48:23well. But to get the best prices, you
48:25crank it up to 24 months worth and buy
48:28it all at once for for 2 years. And
48:30that's what I did. And even though that
48:33sounds like a lot that you're paying for
48:34all at once, it was still less than just
48:38a couple of months of the cloud-hosted
48:39option. And so, I find this to be a
48:42incredible deal given that you get
48:44almost all of the advantages of the N8N
48:47cloud as well as a lot of the advantages
48:50of self-hosting. The only disadvantage
48:53that this one has to self-hosting is
48:55that it does cost a little. As you can
48:57see, it's not really a whole lot, and
48:59this is certainly a lot less than you'd
49:01pay for Novel Crafter or Pseudo Write or
49:04any of these other AI writing tools. So,
49:06if you want to use what I think is to be
49:09the the best option here, this is the
49:10one I would go with. But there's
49:12absolutely nothing wrong with going with
49:13the other two options. This is just what
49:15I do. And if you're really strapped for
49:16cash, you can absolutely do the local
49:18install thing. Or if you're unsure about
49:20what you want, you can try the local
49:21install thing. But if you want to go
49:23this way, all you have to do here is
49:25select choose plan. Then you'll go
49:27through the purchase process. As you can
49:29see, this is only $155 for 2 years,
49:32which is a really good price in my
49:34opinion. Like I said, 3 months of the
49:38pro plan here in N8N would be more than
49:40that. And here you're getting 2 years
49:42for the same price, for less than the
49:43same price. So, you go through this, and
49:45then and I'm not going to show it here
49:47because I already have this, but you
49:48just select N8N here and then walk
49:50through the process, and it will be
49:52installed for you, ready to go. It's a
49:54much simpler process than going through
49:56Docker and all of the stuff I showed you
49:58on installing locally. So, this is
50:00definitely the way I would go if you're
50:02kind of like you don't want the whole
50:04technical hassle, and you're okay to pay
50:06a little bit of money for it. I think
50:07this is a good option. So, that's just
50:09my thoughts there. So, let's first talk
50:11about why you would need this, and then
50:13the main reason is a lot of the text
50:16that is used by an automation can be
50:19stored in Google Docs, as well as
50:21outputted. Anything that the AI outputs,
50:23we want to put that information
50:24somewhere we we can access it, and a
50:27Google Doc is a good way to do that.
50:28Additionally, there might be instances
50:31where you might need it to access your
50:33Gmail account or something like that. As
50:34you can see in this particular
50:36automation, which I won't get into, you
50:38can see right here I actually have it
50:41access quite a number of documents
50:43before it even gets started. And in
50:45order to have these documents, you
50:47absolutely need Google credentials. And
50:49one of the ways you can look at how to
50:53set up these credentials is to
50:54double-click on any one of these, and
50:56you'll see here it says credentials to
50:57connect with. And right now you If
51:00you're doing this for the first time,
51:01you won't see it say Google Docs account
51:03here like it says on mine. Let me zoom
51:05in here a little bit, because I've
51:06already set mine up here. Instead,
51:09you'll probably see something like this
51:10that says create new credential, and you
51:12can click on that, and it'll bring you
51:14to this page. And so, what we need to do
51:17is fill out this client ID and the
51:20client secret to in order to get this
51:23Google Docs connected.
51:25And thankfully, you can do this process
51:27once, and it will work for all of the
51:29different Google products. So, that's
51:31Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google
51:33Slides, Gmail, etc.
51:36Uh all We only need to do this once,
51:38thankfully. Uh but it is a little bit of
51:40a complicated process to get this set
51:41up. Another way of accessing this, if
51:44you don't want to go through an actual
51:46automation like this one is from your
51:50n8n dashboard, you can see up here where
51:52it says create workflow, click the
51:54little icon here and instead say create
51:58credential.
51:59And then you can search through here on
52:01what kind of credentials you're looking
52:02for. So, if you just look through Google
52:05um
52:06let's say Google Drive and select Google
52:08Drive OAuth 2 API. That's one of the
52:11ones that we'll need to do. Now, like I
52:13said, you only have to get the
52:15credentials once, but you will have to
52:17plug those credentials in multiple times
52:19for each different thing. So, the hard
52:21part you only have to do once, but you
52:23do have to take those credentials and
52:25and stick them into multiple things. As
52:27you can see, I've got multiple
52:29credentials set up here. Uh namely, I've
52:31got Google Drive, Google Docs, Google
52:33Sheets, Google Sheets trigger account,
52:35and a Gmail account. And those are the
52:36ones that I use most frequently, but if
52:38I were to use like say Google Slides or
52:40something, I would need to set that up
52:42as well. Thankfully, I can use the same
52:44uh credentials. Uh you'll notice also I
52:46have Anthropic and Open Router here. I
52:48will walk you through at the end how to
52:50set those up, and particularly Open
52:52Router because it's the most versatile
52:54and it's the best one to start with in
52:55my opinion, and it's the one that I use
52:57most frequently in my automations. But
52:59we'll get to that a little bit later
53:00because right now we're just focusing on
53:02getting Google Docs integrated because
53:04that is the most difficult step. Google,
53:05unfortunately, makes this whole process
53:08egregiously difficult to set up, but
53:11thankfully, once you get through it,
53:13it's all smooth sailing from there. Like
53:14this is literally going to be the
53:16hardest technical thing that you have to
53:18do in this whole process. So, to get
53:20this process started, you need to come
53:22to console.cloud.google.com,
53:25okay? And I will link to this down
53:27below. Uh but this is where you come to
53:29create your auto your credentials. And
53:31you can see I'm already working in
53:33something that I've built here called
53:34n8n auto automations. So, the next thing
53:37that you need to do is up here where it
53:39says uh
53:40it won't say n8n automations for you,
53:42but you'll see something else here. You
53:43just click on this and then you hit this
53:46button here that says new project. And
53:48from here, you can call this whatever
53:49you want. I'm just going to call it test
53:51project because I'm only doing this for
53:55this video and after I'm done with this
53:56video, I will delete this. And I don't
53:58have any organization listed here, so I
54:01just leave this one blank and hit
54:03create. So, the next thing that we want
54:05to do is get these client credentials.
54:08And so, if we go back to the Google
54:10page. So, from here, from
54:12console.cloud.google.com,
54:15if you see this little hamburger icon
54:16here in the top left corner, you click
54:18on that, go to APIs and Services, and
54:21then [music] hit Library. Now, make sure
54:23you have the correct project listed
54:26here. Now, you can see it's actually on
54:28my N8N Automations project, which is not
54:31the one that I want it to be on. We want
54:33to select that new test project that I
54:34created. So, just double-check to make
54:36sure you've got the correct project uh
54:39selected here in the top left corner.
54:41So, from this API Library page, we want
54:45to scroll down until you see Google
54:46Workspace and click View All. And from
54:49here, you want to select any of the
54:52Google services that you think you'll be
54:53using inside of N8N. I would say you
54:56definitely want the Google the Gmail
55:00API, so go ahead and hit enable on that.
55:03So, of these, the ones that I would
55:05definitely enable are Gmail, Google
55:06Drive, um you'll probably want Yeah,
55:09this one, the Google Docs API, the
55:11Google Sheets API, probably the Google
55:13Forms API, and the Google Slides API.
55:17There may be more on here that you might
55:19want, but those are definitely the big
55:21ones that you definitely want to start
55:22with. So, once again, go through each
55:24one, click on it, hit enable, and then
55:27repeat that for every single one that
55:29you want to use. So, the next step that
55:31we want to go to is once again, go up to
55:33the hamburger icon here, go to APIs and
55:36Services, and then hit OAuth consent
55:38screen, and then navigate down here to
55:40where it says audience, and it'll show
55:42you the Google OAuth platform not
55:44configured yet. Get started to configure
55:45your application's identity and manage
55:47credentials for calling Google APIs and
55:49sign in with Google. So, go ahead and
55:51hit get started on that. And what you're
55:54doing is essentially creating a sort of
55:55internal app.
55:57And so, just give it a name. I'm just
55:59going to call it test app for now. Your
56:02user support email can just be your
56:04regular email. Then hit next. And for
56:06most of you, you're going to want to
56:07select under audience select external,
56:10unless this is something like if you
56:12have a set up Google workspace in your
56:14organization. If you have like a
56:16business that already has some kind of
56:17internal thing, you can do that. But
56:20otherwise, you just select external.
56:22That's going to be for most of you. Note
56:24that even though we say external, it's
56:26not actually going to be external for
56:27just anybody to see. The it'll be
56:30something that will be kept private to
56:31your account. So, under contact
56:33information, just put your email address
56:35in there, select I agree, and continue,
56:38and then hit create. And now we go back
56:40here under audience, go under where it
56:43says test users, and say add users, and
56:45make sure your email address is listed
56:47here. And then you should be able to see
56:49your email under there under the test
56:51users. All right. Now, finally, the next
56:53step is to actually set up our
56:55credentials that we need inside of N8N.
56:59So, for that, go back up to the
57:00hamburger icon, go back to APIs and
57:03services, and then select credentials.
57:05From this screen, you go up here to
57:07where it says create create credentials.
57:09Click on that, and then say OAuth client
57:12ID. You want this to be a web
57:13application here. Name this whatever you
57:16want. I'm just going to call it test
57:17application.
57:19Then scroll down a bit, and you'll see
57:20this one that says authorized redirect
57:22URLs. Go ahead and select add URL, and
57:25then this is an important moment. If we
57:28go back to N8N in as we're setting up
57:31our client ID and client secret here and
57:34everything, you'll notice it has this
57:35OAuth redirect URL. You want to go ahead
57:38and copy that and then paste it into
57:41this specific space. And once you've got
57:44this URL in the correct place, go ahead
57:46and hit create. And from here, you will
57:49see the client ID and client secret
57:52right here. Make sure you copy these and
57:54put them in a safe place so you know
57:56where they are. I don't mind just
57:57showing you this here because um
58:00essentially I'm just going to be
58:02deleting this as soon as I finish this
58:04video. Um but you want to just copy
58:06this, go to your N8N credentials, paste
58:08it in, copy the other one, the client
58:10secret, paste that in here. But you'll
58:12notice this little warning here that
58:14says starting in June 2025, you will no
58:16longer be able to view or download the
58:19client secret once you close this
58:20dialogue. Make sure you have copied or
58:22downloaded the information below and
58:23securely stored it. So, please, if you
58:26don't want to have to go through these
58:28steps again, make sure that you copy the
58:31client ID and the client secret and put
58:33it in a safe and secure place. I like to
58:34use a platform like [music] LastPass,
58:37which saves all my passwords and stuff,
58:39but you can also have secured notes in
58:41LastPass. That's just how I do it to
58:43make sure that information like this is
58:45still encrypted, but I can access it
58:47easily. Um that's what I do. Uh but at
58:50the very least, jot this down somewhere
58:53so that you don't lose it. Otherwise,
58:54you're going to have to go through this
58:55entire process again to create a new
58:57client ID and a new client secret to
58:59then put inside of your your credentials
59:02in N8N. So, now that you have the client
59:05ID and the client secret in here, all
59:06you have to do here is click this button
59:08that says sign in with Google. It'll
59:10bring up something like this. You go
59:11ahead and select it, and it'll say
59:14Google hasn't verified this app. And the
59:15reason it says this is because it's
59:17worried that this could be some kind of
59:20third-party malicious thing that is
59:22getting access to your data. But you
59:24created this app, so it's not actually
59:26you know it's not malicious. So, all you
59:28have to do is select continue, select
59:31all of the different things that it
59:33wants to access. So, just select all and
59:36then hit continue and it'll be done. And
59:39now you have successfully filled out
59:41your Google Drive
59:43um credentials here. Now, I'm going to
59:45go ahead and delete this because I don't
59:47need it, but you will need to get that
59:48same client ID and client secret for
59:51each of the Google automations here.
59:53Now, you thankfully, you only once
59:55you've got the client ID and the client
59:57secret, you just copy and paste it to
59:58each of these and run through the same
1:00:00process. You can see if I click on
1:00:02Gmail, for example, I've got the client
1:00:03ID and the client secret here and you
1:00:05just copy and paste those for each of
1:00:07the different accounts. And from there,
1:00:09you should be good to go as far as
1:00:11establishing your Google credentials and
1:00:14uh everything should work. I do
1:00:16sometimes have to reconnect my Google
1:00:19account, but really all I need to do for
1:00:21that is, you know, if we come to this
1:00:24and you just say sign in with Google,
1:00:26it'll walk you through that sign up
1:00:27process that I did right at the end
1:00:29there and you just have to repeat that,
1:00:31but you don't have to go and get a new
1:00:32client ID and all of that again,
1:00:34thankfully. All right, now I'm going to
1:00:36show you how to set up OpenRouter. Um
1:00:39you can run through a very similar
1:00:40process to set up Anthropic, to set up
1:00:42OpenAI, uh to set up any of the others.
1:00:45And if you've worked with a platform
1:00:47like Novel Crafter or Raptor Write to
1:00:49write your books, this should be a
1:00:50familiar process to you. So, uh
1:00:53OpenRouter, if you are unfamiliar, is a
1:00:56uh third-party platform where all uh
1:01:00they essentially provide access to most
1:01:02of the major AI models out there.
1:01:05And so, I use OpenRouter as my primary
1:01:08interface with N
1:01:10in order to provide the actual AI words
1:01:14that get generated. If you don't have an
1:01:16OpenRouter account, I strongly recommend
1:01:17you create one and then add five bucks
1:01:20to it or something so that it can draw
1:01:22from that as you're creating your work.
1:01:25But then in order to get the [music] API
1:01:27key that we need, we go up here to the
1:01:28top and go to keys. And from here you
1:01:31want to select create an API key. Give
1:01:34it a name. We'll just call this test
1:01:36API.
1:01:38And you can leave the rest of this
1:01:40blank, then hit create. And then it'll
1:01:42give you this long string of numbers.
1:01:44Again, I don't mind you guys seeing this
1:01:46because I'm just going to delete it
1:01:47afterward. But just go ahead and copy
1:01:50that, then go back to N8N, and what
1:01:53we'll do is go ahead up here at the top
1:01:57right, select this little icon, select
1:01:59create credential again,
1:02:01>> [music]
1:02:01>> and search for Open Router. Once you've
1:02:03found Open Router, hit continue. And
1:02:05then all you have to do is paste that
1:02:06API key right there. And then hit save.
1:02:09And that's all you have to do. It's
1:02:10really simple. A lot more simple than
1:02:13getting your Google credentials set up.
1:02:15And the same is very much true for
1:02:17Anthropic or Open AI or Gemini and all
1:02:20of their credentials. All you have to do
1:02:22is just go find the right API key for
1:02:24those platforms, which is you can easily
1:02:26Google that and how to how to find those
1:02:28API keys. And then just paste them in
1:02:29here. I do find Open Router to be
1:02:32refreshingly simple though in setting
1:02:34this up. All right. So, now that you
1:02:36hopefully have everything set up with
1:02:37N8N, we're going to create just a very
1:02:39simple automation to kind of show you
1:02:42how the steps work in relation to each
1:02:44other. From your N8N dashboard, you go
1:02:47to this one that says create workflow.
1:02:49And we'll right here where it says add
1:02:52first step, we're going to add our first
1:02:53step. Now, the two that I use the most
1:02:55are over here. It'll say trigger
1:02:57manually. The other one that I use a lot
1:02:59is on form submission. Sometimes I like
1:03:02to submit things via a form. And that's
1:03:04the one we're going to select for
1:03:05today's really brief automation. So,
1:03:07we'll select that. And in this form,
1:03:10there's a number of things that we can
1:03:11do, but most notably we want to give it
1:03:14a title. So, we'll say we're going to
1:03:16call this the book description info,
1:03:19right? You can give it a description if
1:03:20you want, but we don't need it. And then
1:03:22under form elements, I'm going to say
1:03:24add form element. And we'll give this a
1:03:26name, book description example, all
1:03:28right? And that's going to be the name
1:03:30of the field. This is going to be so
1:03:32there's under element type, you can
1:03:34select a number of things. So, is this
1:03:36an email that we're trying to capture?
1:03:37Is this a multiple choice option? In our
1:03:40case, we're just putting it as a text
1:03:42area, which will be a little box. And
1:03:43trust me, this looks really complicated,
1:03:45but it's really not once you kind of get
1:03:47to know it. We're going to toggle this
1:03:48that says required field, and that
1:03:51should be good there. Then we're going
1:03:53to add another one. So, this one will
1:03:55say add form element. We're going to
1:03:56call this about my book. And once again,
1:04:00for element type, we're going to select
1:04:01text area. We're also going to make this
1:04:03a required. Now, we've got that whole
1:04:05form submission set up. So, this is our
1:04:07trigger. This until we enter everything
1:04:10onto this form, this automation will not
1:04:12fire. If we want to look, just go ahead
1:04:14and select execute workflow, and it will
1:04:16pull up the form. So, as you can see,
1:04:18we've got a text box here and a text box
1:04:20here called book description example and
1:04:22about my book. So, what I'm going to do
1:04:24for this automation is we're going to
1:04:26actually go and find a book description
1:04:29example. Let's go to Amazon. I just
1:04:31picked a random book that was shown to
1:04:33me. So, this looks like cozy mystery
1:04:35probably. Yeah, cozy fantasy with kind
1:04:37of baking twist to it. Not a very long
1:04:41book description, all right? So, that
1:04:44that works for today's purposes. We're
1:04:46going to select this, and we're going to
1:04:48go to our form, which is right here, and
1:04:51put it in here. And about our book,
1:04:53we're going to enter in some information
1:04:55about our book. So, because this is a
1:04:57cozy fantasy in the book description
1:04:58example, I'm going to think of one. This
1:05:00is a cozy mystery about a dragon who is
1:05:04tired of people being upset at him, and
1:05:06he just wants to open a bakery where he
1:05:09sells hotcakes, all right? So, very
1:05:11simple. Obviously, if you have a book
1:05:13written already, you would put more
1:05:15information about your book in here. You
1:05:16could even create an automation that
1:05:18reads your book and gathers that
1:05:20information automatically, so you don't
1:05:22even need to put it here. But, since
1:05:23we're doing a very simple example here,
1:05:25this is all I'm going to put there. All
1:05:27I have to do now is hit submit trigger.
1:05:28So, the trigger has started. However, of
1:05:30course, there's nothing after this,
1:05:32right? Uh so, nothing happens,
1:05:33basically. But, I am going to teach you
1:05:35one really useful feature in N8N, which
1:05:38is the ability to pin information. So,
1:05:40if you right-click on this, you'll see
1:05:43an option that says pin. You click on
1:05:44that, it turns this purplish color. So,
1:05:46now that means that the information that
1:05:49we just submitted is locked in. So, I
1:05:51don't have to input that information
1:05:53again. And you can actually see what
1:05:54that information was down here in this
1:05:56section. You'll see, here's the book
1:05:58description example, and here's the
1:06:00about my book section here. So, that's
1:06:02the information, and it has been pinned,
1:06:04so we're not going to lose this. That's
1:06:06a very useful feature, all right? Now,
1:06:07we're going to create our first AI
1:06:09agent. And what we'll do here is we'll
1:06:11click this little plus icon, and over
1:06:13here on the right, we'll select AI AI
1:06:15agent, all right? And then here, we're
1:06:17going to is where it says connected chat
1:06:19trigger node, we're going to select
1:06:21define below instead. And then from
1:06:23here, I don't think we need to change
1:06:24anything [music] else here. So, we're
1:06:26going to put our prompt in here, because
1:06:28what we want to do is we want to bring
1:06:30in the information that we just gave it
1:06:32through the trigger, and then output
1:06:33that into probably a Google Doc or
1:06:35something like that. So, here we're
1:06:37going to put our prompt. I'm just going
1:06:38to write this real quick on the spot. I
1:06:40want you [music] to take the book
1:06:43description above and do a line-by-line
1:06:46analysis [music] of what the book
1:06:47description is trying to do from a
1:06:49copywriting stand. All right, so that's
1:06:51all I'm going to put there, but we do
1:06:53want to pull in that information from
1:06:56the form. So, what I like to do is I
1:06:57like to use this technique called XML
1:06:59tags, where you put a word inside of
1:07:02these brackets like this. If you know
1:07:05any HTML, this will look kind of
1:07:06familiar. Uh we're going to call this
1:07:08book description example. And then I'm
1:07:10going to create another one with a
1:07:12little slash in front of it like this.
1:07:14So now we have I call this is
1:07:16essentially I call this an XML box. All
1:07:18right, this we've created a box and
1:07:20inside the box we're going to put
1:07:21information. And you don't really need
1:07:23to know like why I do it this way, but
1:07:25this is basically just a
1:07:27well-established prompt engineering
1:07:29technique to kind of help the AI to be
1:07:31able to understand what information is
1:07:34what and sort [music] through it. So we
1:07:36on the left here, we can actually see
1:07:38from our form, it actually tells us all
1:07:41of the information it has available to
1:07:42us so far. And since we pinned the
1:07:44information in that form, all of that
1:07:45information is here. So all I have to do
1:07:47is drag this one that says book
1:07:49description example and I'm going to put
1:07:51it right here. Um actually we did that
1:07:53wrong. So um going to open this up and
1:07:55then pull it right here. And it'll give
1:07:56us this little short code that you see
1:07:58in green. It'll look red if it's not
1:08:00able to access it or if you named it
1:08:02wrong or something like that. But this
1:08:04is essentially a placeholder for where
1:08:06the information is going to go. And you
1:08:08can actually see what the ultimate
1:08:10prompt is going to look like over here,
1:08:11uh as you can see, where you've got the
1:08:14book description example right here. So
1:08:16if we wanted to test this particular
1:08:18step, we could, except there's a problem
1:08:21and you can see that it's giving us an
1:08:22error here. That is because we don't
1:08:24have a large language model attached to
1:08:26this AI agent. So in order for us to do
1:08:28anything about that, we have to select
1:08:30this plus button here where it says chat
1:08:32model. Click on that and you can pull in
1:08:34anything from Anthropic, which does the
1:08:36Claude models, you can pull in Deep
1:08:37Seek, Google Gemini's models, Grok,
1:08:40Mistral, but the one I use the most is
1:08:42called Open Router because Open Router
1:08:44has access to most of the models. So I'm
1:08:46going to click on that and it'll give us
1:08:48a huge list of models. So I don't really
1:08:50particularly care which model we use,
1:08:52but I'm going to pick one that's rather
1:08:53inexpensive. So I'm going to go with
1:08:55Gemini 3.1 flashlight, so that it
1:08:57doesn't cost me much money. So now we
1:08:59have our first agent fully set up. Now I
1:09:01could execute this workflow, and it
1:09:03already has the information pinned for
1:09:05the first step, but now it's running
1:09:06this second step, right? And if we click
1:09:09down here at the bottom, you can
1:09:11actually see the output that it gave us.
1:09:13So, here it says, "This book description
1:09:14is a masterclass in cozy fantasy
1:09:16marketing. It uses a specific rhyme to
1:09:18establish character and motivation,
1:09:19etc., etc." And then I had asked it for
1:09:21a line-by-line analysis. So, the first
1:09:23line is the Dragon Diner Bookkeeper
1:09:25Wanted. Copywriting goal, clear genre
1:09:27signaling, and immediate hook. Analysis,
1:09:30short and punchy. It establishes the
1:09:31vibe, whimsical, business-focused, while
1:09:33identifying exactly what happened in the
1:09:35book. So, it goes through and it
1:09:36basically does this line-by-line
1:09:38analysis. This is important because
1:09:40we're now going to create a new AI agent
1:09:42next to this one. And rather than just
1:09:44clicking the plus button and creating a
1:09:46new AI agent, I sometimes find it's
1:09:48faster to select the one I've got and
1:09:50copy it by going control C and then
1:09:52pasting and putting it here. But, if we
1:09:54do that, we do need to make sure we're
1:09:56connecting it. So, we just grab this one
1:09:58right here and pull it over so that now
1:10:01it's connected to our first AI agent.
1:10:03And we have the model connected as well.
1:10:05And if we click on this, it'll be the
1:10:06same model that we used. If we wanted to
1:10:08use a different [music] model for this
1:10:09specific step, we could, but it is what
1:10:12it is. So, now I'm going to select this
1:10:14one, and we've got the same hook that we
1:10:16or the same prompt that we had before.
1:10:18So, now I want to change this. [music]
1:10:20So, I'm going to remove this prompt. And
1:10:22the context that I want to bring in is
1:10:25the description of our book that we put
1:10:26into our form, the about the book
1:10:28section, as well as the output from the
1:10:30previous step, because that previous
1:10:32step had a step-by-step analysis of what
1:10:35we wanted, okay? So, I'm going to say,
1:10:38"Um book description template." [music]
1:10:40And we'll do another {forward slash}
1:10:42book description template. And then
1:10:44we're going to create another XML box
1:10:46for about my book. And so, now we have
1:10:49these XML boxes kind of set up, but we
1:10:51need to make sure they have the correct
1:10:52information in them. So, in order to get
1:10:54the book description template, which is
1:10:56the output of the previous step. You can
1:10:58actually see that output here in the
1:11:00previous step right here. So, I can
1:11:01select this and just pull that over and
1:11:03now it has this little shortcode that
1:11:05shows you here when it actually shows
1:11:07you what will actually go to the to the
1:11:10AI. It has this entire thing in it. Now,
1:11:13to do the same for about my book, we go
1:11:14down to the form, which is located here
1:11:17on the left side. You can see that step.
1:11:19We're not going to grab the book
1:11:20description example because we already
1:11:21have the book description template from
1:11:23the previous step. We're going to grab
1:11:25about my book. I'll select this and drop
1:11:27it into that XML box, okay? Now, we just
1:11:31need to give it some instructions on
1:11:32what to do with this information. Given
1:11:34the above info about my book and the
1:11:36book description template, I want you to
1:11:38craft a high-converting book description
1:11:41that matches the template, but is about
1:11:43my book instead. All right, so that's
1:11:45just a brief prompt that I kind of
1:11:47created myself. You don't often need to
1:11:49overthink these prompts. You just need
1:11:50to make sure, if it's not doing what
1:11:52you're doing, to go in and adjust the
1:11:53prompt to do more what you're asking
1:11:55for, but often you you don't need
1:11:57something super fancy. So, that's all
1:11:58I'm going to put in there. And before I
1:12:00run this, I'm actually going to
1:12:02right-click and pin the second step
1:12:04first so that the data that we ran the
1:12:07last time we ran this is still there.
1:12:09Otherwise, it would run this step again,
1:12:11if that makes sense. And before we
1:12:13actually run this, go ahead and already
1:12:15just put another step in here. So, in
1:12:18this [music] case, we want it to put
1:12:20this information in a Google Doc. So,
1:12:21I've already gone ahead and created the
1:12:24document here just called my book
1:12:25description, all right? But, this could
1:12:27be anything you want. And up here at the
1:12:28top, you've got a URL. We're going to
1:12:30copy that cuz we're going to need it.
1:12:31Once you've got that URL copied, we're
1:12:33going to go back into N8N, click this
1:12:36little plus icon, and under search
1:12:38nodes, I'm just going to type in Google,
1:12:40and up here pops Google Docs. This is
1:12:42the one you want. And it will give you
1:12:44three options. The first is to create a
1:12:46document, get a document, or update a
1:12:47document. I've already created the
1:12:49document, so I I need to do that one.
1:12:50So, instead, we're going to select get a
1:12:52document first, and we're going to type
1:12:54in that URL right here. So, just go
1:12:56ahead and paste that URL right into this
1:12:58place where it says doc. Now, it will be
1:13:00able to fetch that particular doc. Then,
1:13:03I'm going to select a plus right next to
1:13:05it, and once again, type in Google. Once
1:13:07again, select Google Docs, and now we're
1:13:09going to say update a doc. And actually,
1:13:11you could do just this one. You don't
1:13:13have to do the first step, but
1:13:14generally, it's good to get the document
1:13:16first. If you're doing longer
1:13:18automations, that is a useful feature.
1:13:20But, I could just put the URL right in
1:13:22here, and that would work. But, and we
1:13:24can also we take that off, we can also
1:13:26pull the ID or URL from the previous
1:13:29step. So, over here on the left, you'll
1:13:30see it says content or document ID. In
1:13:32this case, we want to grab document ID
1:13:34and stick it right there. And then here,
1:13:37we have text. So, right here, this is
1:13:39the text that we're going to update this
1:13:41document with. And whatever this is, we
1:13:43want it to basically be the output of
1:13:46our previous step. So, I can't do that
1:13:48right now because I haven't executed the
1:13:51previous step, so let's do that now. So,
1:13:52I'm going to right click this step, and
1:13:54just this step, and say execute step,
1:13:56rather than executing the whole
1:13:58workflow. We're just executing this
1:13:59step. And it gave me some output, which
1:14:01you can actually read over here. And
1:14:03yep, this looks good. I might actually
1:14:05go into this prompt and modify it
1:14:07because it gave me some preamble. So,
1:14:09I'm going to add a line here that says,
1:14:11"Don't give me any preamble or
1:14:12explanation. Just give me the book
1:14:15description by itself." All right, so
1:14:17next time I run it, it will improve that
1:14:19particular aspect of it. And I do this
1:14:21all the time with my prompts. I'm
1:14:22constantly seeing what it gives me, and
1:14:23then tweaking the prompts to get more
1:14:25precise. All right, so now, if I run
1:14:28this thing all the way through, then it
1:14:30will go ahead and it'll run all of these
1:14:32steps, and then it will get the
1:14:34document, and it will update that
1:14:36document with our text. Actually, I'm
1:14:38going to let this one run again because
1:14:39I made a tweak to the prompt. But, since
1:14:41I have already run it, I can now go into
1:14:44update document. We'll go here to the
1:14:45section called text, and um we're going
1:14:48to make sure that whatever it updates
1:14:51the document with is the output of that
1:14:53second step. So, right here I can select
1:14:55output, and I'll just drag this over to
1:14:56text, and that's all you need to do. So,
1:14:58now you can save this, and we'll select
1:15:01execute workflow. Since these first two
1:15:03steps are pinned, it will just use the
1:15:04data that's already there right now, but
1:15:06it'll run this one again, and then run
1:15:08these two here, and by the end it should
1:15:11update our book description. So, now you
1:15:12can see it's all green and checked off,
1:15:14so that means it's completed. Let's
1:15:16check our document to make sure it's
1:15:17there. And so it is. So, here is our
1:15:19book description nicely placed inside of
1:15:22our document. So, obviously this takes a
1:15:25little time to set up, but once it's
1:15:27done, this allows for a huge potential
1:15:30in what you're able to do. This is just
1:15:32a very simple example to kind of get you
1:15:34started with figuring out how to create
1:15:36these things, but I'm going to show you
1:15:37some much more advanced automations that
1:15:39do a whole lot more, and are really fun
1:15:42to play with. So, I'll get to that it
1:15:43later in the course. But before we do
1:15:46anything more, I want to introduce you
1:15:47to one more tool. Because the problem
1:15:49with n8n is that it's really difficult
1:15:52to learn. As you can tell, like there
1:15:53are a lot of steps, it's very technical
1:15:55from everything I've shown you. And so,
1:15:56one of my big goals recently has been to
1:15:59define a way to get the power of these
1:16:01automations into something a little bit
1:16:03more simple, essentially combining what
1:16:05I like best about a tool like Claude and
1:16:07tool like n8n into one. The tool that
1:16:11I've come up with, that I've been
1:16:12developing now for quite a while, about
1:16:14half a year now, is called Story Hacker
1:16:16OS. Now, I will walk you through all of
1:16:18the steps in Story Hacker OS, as well as
1:16:21Claude and n8n, but I just kind of want
1:16:23to show you a few things about Story
1:16:25Hacker OS, and why this is kind of my
1:16:27dream tool. Now, full disclosure, this
1:16:29is a tool that I've developed, so I'm
1:16:31obviously a little bit biased towards
1:16:33it, but I've really done my best to try
1:16:35and make this the best tool for writers
1:16:37that I can. Because most of the tools
1:16:39out there for writers don't have any
1:16:40kind of automated system, and I am a big
1:16:42believer in those automated systems. But
1:16:44then the automated systems also have a
1:16:46problem because it makes it difficult to
1:16:48kind of use AI to fine-tune things, just
1:16:50interact with the document like I could
1:16:52in Claude, for instance. So, this has
1:16:54been my answer to that as a way of kind
1:16:57of combining the best of both worlds.
1:16:58So, to give you a little bit of a tour,
1:17:00you have a document here in the center,
1:17:02and over here you have a chatbot. And
1:17:04this chatbot works very similar to what
1:17:07you would find in Claude, where it has
1:17:09access to this document and it has that
1:17:10context, and it can give you suggestions
1:17:13and things like that. Down here it also
1:17:15gives you a bunch of other options for
1:17:18context. So, if you want to make sure it
1:17:20understands who your characters are,
1:17:21what your world-building's like, if you
1:17:22have an outline, you can pull all of
1:17:24that into this chatbot so it is aware.
1:17:26It's very similar to the projects
1:17:27feature in Claude in that respect. There
1:17:29are a whole bunch of different things
1:17:31that you can do inside of this. You can
1:17:32even give it personas. So, for instance,
1:17:35this one's just using the writing
1:17:36assistant persona, but you could have
1:17:38different types of personas, like maybe
1:17:40a character interaction persona, so you
1:17:42can interact with a particular character
1:17:44and talk to them and see is their voice
1:17:45correct and all of that. And then you
1:17:47have a bunch of different documents here
1:17:49that you can sort through, and all of
1:17:51these documents are put together inside
1:17:53of a project, like you can see here.
1:17:55Each project here acts like a separate
1:17:57book. We also have templates, which I
1:17:59will actually get to in the next module.
1:18:01But the main thing that kind of makes
1:18:04this distinct from all other
1:18:06writing-specific tools is this book
1:18:08builder and other things that we're
1:18:10adding that will be similar to this.
1:18:11These are my most powerful automations
1:18:13that I've created in n8n. I basically
1:18:16took those, which are super complicated,
1:18:18super difficult to set up and tailor to
1:18:19yourself, and would probably take you
1:18:21hours just to set up, and they're just
1:18:22here, and they just work. Uh so, all you
1:18:24have to do is come to this brain dump,
1:18:27for instance, and enter in your brain
1:18:29dump information here, everything you
1:18:30know about your story, and then hit
1:18:32start pipeline. Now, I will show off
1:18:34every single one of of features in the
1:18:36remaining modules of this video, but I
1:18:38just kind of want to bring this up
1:18:39because we're going to be talking about
1:18:41it as my solution to try and combine the
1:18:42best of both worlds because Claude, it's
1:18:44great, it's simple, it's a good place
1:18:46for beginners to start, but it's also
1:18:48very limited. For instance, you only
1:18:50have access to to certain models. N8N,
1:18:52on the other hand, is much more powerful
1:18:54and much more customizable to your own
1:18:58process. It [music] also has issues in
1:19:00that it's a little less flexible and it
1:19:02also has a huge learning curve to get
1:19:04started. This allows you to have these
1:19:06automations here in a way that requires
1:19:09a lot less time and work. And if you
1:19:11want to fine-tune the outputs that those
1:19:13automations give you to give a little
1:19:15bit more flexibility than what you can
1:19:16get with N8N, at least over your output,
1:19:18you can come into a project and work
1:19:21with it here with your chatbot or you
1:19:23can, you know, you can select text and
1:19:25edit it here and there's just a lot you
1:19:27can do. So, this is my solution to that
1:19:29and it's the final tool that I want to
1:19:30introduce it to you. If you want to get
1:19:32your hands on this tool, you can do so
1:19:34through my Storyteller AI membership,
1:19:37where it is available at no extra charge
1:19:39to the members of that group. It's the
1:19:40only way you can get it. I'm not selling
1:19:42this separately. I have not raised my
1:19:44price for this either, at least at the
1:19:45time that I'm recording this. People
1:19:47were already paying for the instruction
1:19:51and the access to me that you get inside
1:19:54of my membership. This was just added as
1:19:55an additional thing already on top of
1:19:57that. So, my membership looks something
1:19:59like this when you first join. There's a
1:20:02thriving community. In fact, my
1:20:03community is in the top six of all tech
1:20:07communities in terms of the engagement
1:20:09that it has. And over here in the
1:20:10classroom, we've got a bunch of
1:20:12different instructionary phases. And so,
1:20:14we walk you through the entire process
1:20:16in a way that teaches you what makes a
1:20:19good book so that you can use these
1:20:21tools effectively. And that's this phase
1:20:23project. You can also see there are
1:20:25recordings of live calls with me and a
1:20:27couple of other subject matter experts,
1:20:29as well as some super secret bonuses,
1:20:31which I will not talk about, but they
1:20:33are here. I also have a bunch of courses
1:20:36here from David Farland, and if you're
1:20:38not familiar with David Farland, he is
1:20:40an incredibly influential person. He
1:20:41unfortunately died a couple of years
1:20:43ago. But he's the guy who taught Brandon
1:20:45Sanderson and Stephanie Meyer and James
1:20:47Dashner and a whole lot of very
1:20:49successful authors. And I've since
1:20:51become good friends with his sons. As
1:20:52far as I know, I'm the only one that
1:20:54they've permitted to license their
1:20:55father's courses, so I'm able to include
1:20:57them inside of my membership. So all of
1:20:59this is available to you, plus Story
1:21:01Hacker OS, when you join. All right, so
1:21:03if that is interesting to you, be sure
1:21:05to check out the link below this video,
1:21:07and I hope to see you there. But now
1:21:08that we've pretty much covered all of
1:21:09the tools that we're going to be using
1:21:11inside of this full course, let's move
1:21:13on to module three, where we're going to
1:21:15talk about what I think is the most
1:21:18overlooked part of this process. [music]
1:21:21Pretty much all of the other AI writing
1:21:23software tools out there ignore this
1:21:25step, and I think it's one of those
1:21:26steps that has really helped my work
1:21:28excel. So let's get into that now.
1:21:30Welcome to module three, where we're
1:21:33going to talk about one of the aspects
1:21:35of AI writing that, as far as I know,
1:21:37originated with me on this channel. Most
1:21:39of the AI writing tools out there give
1:21:40you the tools to create your characters
1:21:42and plot and world building, but all of
1:21:45them miss one important step has to come
1:21:48first. Because you see, if AI isn't
1:21:50guided well, when you go to ask it for
1:21:52all of those assets, it will give you
1:21:54very generic suggestions. And this is
1:21:57where actual AI slop comes from, right?
1:21:59People who just went to the defaults
1:22:01that AI gave them. But something I
1:22:03realized is that if you give AI a solid
1:22:06framework to build on, ideally one that
1:22:08is specifically designed for whatever
1:22:10genre you're writing in, cuz not all
1:22:12genres are written the same. You can't
1:22:14use the Hero's Journey framework for a
1:22:15romance book, for example. And even a
1:22:17more romance specific framework like
1:22:19Romancing the Beat might not work for
1:22:21certain subgenres or of romance. Or the
1:22:24very least, those subgenres would have
1:22:26additional requirements. So, an [music]
1:22:28important first step to the AI writing
1:22:30process is not to plot your outline or
1:22:32start fleshing out your characters. It's
1:22:34actually to just establish the templates
1:22:36that you were going to follow. Because
1:22:38if you don't do that, you'll end up with
1:22:40generic AI slop. Now, I first figured
1:22:43this out a long time ago, and so I spent
1:22:45quite a bit of time handcrafting the
1:22:48perfect 40-chapter template for a
1:22:50general book. And that ended up becoming
1:22:52this book right here called the Plot
1:22:54Module. This book came about because I
1:22:57found an as I was reading a lot of books
1:22:59about story structure, a lot of them had
1:23:01the same different beats. And some of
1:23:03them even told you the approximate
1:23:05number of scenes that you should be
1:23:06going for. Save the Cat, for instance,
1:23:08gave me 15 beats, but said that you
1:23:11should have roughly 40 scenes for a
1:23:13book. And I actually found that this
1:23:15number of 40 scenes or 40 chapters came
1:23:18up quite a bit, not just in
1:23:19screenwriting, but in books about
1:23:21structure for novels as well. And so I
1:23:23thought, well, okay, if there's 15 beats
1:23:25in the case of Save the Cat, and there's
1:23:2640 scenes, what are happening in the
1:23:29other 25 scenes, right? So, I went to to
1:23:33study that whole thing and really went
1:23:35chapter by chapter trying to figure out
1:23:37what should if you had 40 scenes, like
1:23:39let's just cap it at 40, what would you
1:23:41put in each one? And the result of that
1:23:43became this book. And it's still today
1:23:46my best-selling book of all of them,
1:23:48fiction and nonfiction. Does very well
1:23:50for me. And that was the initial attempt
1:23:54at creating a template that could be
1:23:56really useful and specific for AI
1:23:59writing. I mean, it's useful for human
1:24:02writing as well, cuz it's nice to have a
1:24:04framework to follow. The problem, the
1:24:06only problem with this is that it it was
1:24:08a bit even this is a little too generic
1:24:11and doesn't fit every genre. But at the
1:24:13very least, this will probably teach you
1:24:15good story structure better than any
1:24:17other book, because it actually walks
1:24:19you through chapter by a like that. But
1:24:21because it's not that genre-specific, I
1:24:24came up with a different way that Well,
1:24:26actually, me and my community came up
1:24:28with a different way of getting a little
1:24:30bit more nuance in your templates. And
1:24:33that leads me to talk about the story
1:24:34hacking process. So, to briefly go over
1:24:37this, this is an automation I made in
1:24:40n8n that story hacks a book. I'm not
1:24:43going to go into too much depth here,
1:24:45but I'm just trying to give you an idea.
1:24:46But, basically, what it does is these
1:24:48steps, it grabs a file. So, for
1:24:50instance, you can go online and find
1:24:52screenplays from, you know, thousands of
1:24:55films. You grab one of those, and then
1:24:57you kind of highlight where the scene
1:24:59breaks are. You do That is a preparatory
1:25:01step you have to do. You highlight the
1:25:03scene breaks and make sure that your
1:25:05heading for each scene is formatted in a
1:25:07specific way. And then you pull that
1:25:09document in here in with these two
1:25:11steps. And then assuming you formatted
1:25:13the document correctly, it will then
1:25:16essentially chop it up into those
1:25:18individual scenes. And then for each
1:25:20scene, it runs a summary prompt on it.
1:25:23Kind of see what's happening in the
1:25:25scene. Now, this is more than just a
1:25:26summary. If you check it out, there's a
1:25:28lot here. So, we're determining, let's
1:25:31say, the So, we have the summary, then
1:25:33we also have a list of characters, the
1:25:36setting, and anything a list of anything
1:25:38important to the setting, the conflict,
1:25:39the tropes, the scene intensity, the
1:25:41spice level, the violence level, and the
1:25:42swearing level. So, all of that gets
1:25:44calculated chapter by chapter or scene
1:25:46by scene for whatever book or screenplay
1:25:49that you are analyzing. And then once
1:25:50it's done that, it has that entire
1:25:53summary. And these last two steps do a
1:25:55deep analysis of that summary. So, it
1:25:58checks for like, what are the main
1:25:59tropes in this book? And what are the
1:26:01main themes of this book? And
1:26:03particularly, the second one here is my
1:26:05favorite. It'll actually go through and
1:26:07create a plot template from the
1:26:10scene-by-scene breakdown that you've
1:26:11got. So, rather than saying something
1:26:13like C-3PO and C-3PO and are caught in a
1:26:16battle on the Tantive IV, but instead of
1:26:19I say something like secondary
1:26:21characters are caught up in an epic
1:26:23battle that is beyond the scope of their
1:26:26existence. You know, it will say
1:26:28something more generic that could be
1:26:30applied to any story. So, that's the
1:26:32story hacking process. And what this is,
1:26:34it's very similar to if you're learning
1:26:36how to become an artist. One of the
1:26:39things that you it is recommended to do
1:26:40when you're learning how to become an
1:26:42artist is essentially to create a copy
1:26:44of an existing painting from an existing
1:26:47master. So, you copy their style and
1:26:48everything. And there's different levels
1:26:50to this. You can actually try to copy
1:26:52like an actual painting, which of course
1:26:54you shouldn't do unless it's like public
1:26:55domain. I mean, you should do it to
1:26:57learn, but you can't sell that, right?
1:26:59You could also try to create your own
1:27:00work in the same style as that person.
1:27:02And that's kind of what we're doing here
1:27:04is we're creating a work in the same
1:27:06style as someone else or at least using
1:27:09the same structure. In our case,
1:27:10thankfully, you can absolutely copyright
1:27:12a story that is based on a structure
1:27:15from another book or a movie as long as
1:27:17it's not copying actual characters and
1:27:18things like that. If you're just kind of
1:27:20sticking to the high-level approach that
1:27:24story had to structure, then you can
1:27:26absolutely do that. A good example of
1:27:27this is Eragon, which is beat for beat
1:27:30the exact same structure as Star Wars: A
1:27:32New Hope. So, that's the kind of thing
1:27:34that we're talking about here. It's not
1:27:35necessarily going to produce the biggest
1:27:38bestsellers of all time, but it will
1:27:40teach you a lot about how to create a
1:27:42good book and what makes a good story.
1:27:45So, this is just one of the ways that we
1:27:46go about creating templates that can be
1:27:48used in the process of writing. And
1:27:51then, as I was going through this
1:27:52process, we actually found a way of sort
1:27:55of taking multiple of these that have
1:27:58been story hacked and sort of kit
1:28:00bashing them together. And what I found
1:28:02that when I was able to figure out how
1:28:03to do this is that if all of those books
1:28:05were, say, in the same genre and I went
1:28:08through this process to break them down
1:28:09scene by scene and figure out the tropes
1:28:12and create the plot template. Then I
1:28:14took that plot template and all of that
1:28:16other information and kitbashed it
1:28:17together to look at the trends and
1:28:19everything that these things had in
1:28:21common. I was able to create a genre
1:28:23guide for the genre as a whole that's
1:28:25based on multiple bestsellers in that
1:28:28genre. And those have become the basis
1:28:30for some of my genre guides which I have
1:28:32here inside of my membership. You can
1:28:34also buy these on Amazon. They're five
1:28:36bucks on Amazon, but you get them all at
1:28:38no extra cost inside of the membership.
1:28:40And these are like one of the biggest
1:28:41things that I have produced and they
1:28:43sell really well and get good reviews,
1:28:45too. So, I'm I'm really happy with these
1:28:47so far. Uh, but they are essentially a
1:28:50more refined genre-specific version of
1:28:53this book, my bestselling book. This one
1:28:55will teach you basic story structure.
1:28:57It's definitely a good foundation to
1:28:58start with. And if you're kind of
1:28:59stumped on what genre you want to be in,
1:29:02like this is just still a good structure
1:29:04to start with. But a lot of these will
1:29:06give you a specific structure for the
1:29:07specific genre that you are in and that
1:29:10can be super valuable. But if we look at
1:29:11these genre guides, we actually in my
1:29:13membership, we have multiple guides for
1:29:16everything from tropes to plot to
1:29:17>> [music]
1:29:18>> style, characters to world
1:29:20world building themes, and even a
1:29:21template for book descriptions for books
1:29:24in that genre. And so, I'm going to give
1:29:25you an idea uh if you don't have access
1:29:28to be able to analyze these books with
1:29:30AI like we've been doing in my
1:29:31membership, there is a way that you can
1:29:34create these templates for yourself
1:29:36without having to resort to somebody
1:29:37else's pre-made stuff like what I've
1:29:39got, right? So, the way I would go about
1:29:41that is I would first go to a chatbot
1:29:44like Claude. Perplexity will work as
1:29:46well. And what I'm going to do is here
1:29:48in this plus sign, I'm going to select
1:29:50research. With Claude, you can only do
1:29:52this so often, all right? But what I'm
1:29:54going to do is turn that on just so it
1:29:56does a very thorough job of what I'm
1:29:58about to ask it. And I'm going to ask it
1:30:00something like, "Please give me a
1:30:03complete list of major and minor tropes
1:30:07in the genre of and let's just say uh
1:30:11cozy science fiction, okay? And I'm
1:30:13going to pick Sonnet, yeah, we'll go
1:30:16with Sonnet 4.6, but we're going to
1:30:18select the effort to high and go ahead
1:30:20and hit go on that. Oh, and it's telling
1:30:22me I've uh gone past my usage limit. So,
1:30:25in this case, I'm just going to turn off
1:30:27that research and we'll just go with
1:30:29general web search, but if you can, I
1:30:31would go with the research. Uh if you're
1:30:33using Perplexity, their deep research
1:30:35tends to be a little bit takes up less
1:30:38usage, so you get you can get several of
1:30:40those in. Uh but in this case, I'm just
1:30:42going to hit go with just general web
1:30:44search on. All right, and then here it
1:30:46goes. Cozy sci-fi is a subgenre defined
1:30:48by warmth, low stakes, found family, and
1:30:50a hopeful relationship with technology
1:30:52and community. Here's a thorough
1:30:53breakdown. And so, here we have the
1:30:54major tropes of community and belonging,
1:30:56gentle protagonist, uh benevolent
1:30:58technology, hopeful feature futures,
1:31:01nature, growth, and craft, etc. And then
1:31:04here's some minor tropes. All right, so
1:31:06this is good. And now I can say, "Now
1:31:09give me a sample chapter-by-chapter
1:31:13template to write a cozy science
1:31:16fiction." Now, this is not going to be
1:31:18as perfect as if you actually went and
1:31:22got a cozy science fiction and analyzed
1:31:24it. It's still going to be more specific
1:31:26to your genre and better to follow this
1:31:29than to just follow a generic plot. So,
1:31:31I'm just going to let that go. So, it's
1:31:33decided to give me 18 chapters for this.
1:31:35You could ask it to do more or less. I
1:31:40would probably go up to like 20, 25 at
1:31:42least, but at the same time, you know,
1:31:44this could be fine. So, chapter one,
1:31:46first impressions, open emotion,
1:31:48protagonist arriving, transferring, or
1:31:49waking up somewhere new. Establish their
1:31:51interiority, what they've left behind,
1:31:53what they're hoping for. First century
1:31:55immersion in the setting. One small
1:31:56unexpected kindness from a stranger. And
1:31:58on a note of cautious wonder, something
1:32:00beautiful or strange catches their eye.
1:32:02All right, And so then chapter two is
1:32:04the lay of the land, chapter three is
1:32:06first days, and so on and so forth.
1:32:08Here's where act two starts, and you've
1:32:10got yourself a template. So this is what
1:32:12I would do in the absence of a more
1:32:14thorough, more thought-out template.
1:32:16This is still a necessary step in my
1:32:19opinion. The reason for this is because
1:32:21if you don't do it, you're going to have
1:32:22something very generic. It's not going
1:32:24to match the genre, it's not going to
1:32:25have the tropes, and you need those
1:32:27things to be able to guide the
1:32:29brainstorming process which we're going
1:32:30to talk about in the next module in
1:32:32order to get that done. And I've just
1:32:34shown you this process for tropes and
1:32:37for a plot template, but you can just
1:32:39keep asking it for like what are the
1:32:41general themes, what are the common
1:32:43character archetypes, what are the
1:32:45common world-building elements that I
1:32:47need, you know? And it'll probably give
1:32:49you something like you need a ship or a
1:32:51space station or something. And so
1:32:53that's just the the general idea behind
1:32:56this whole process. Now before I move
1:32:58on, I have tried to make this a lot
1:33:00easier in my own tool, Story Hacker OS.
1:33:02Over here on the left-hand side, we
1:33:03actually have a whole section called
1:33:05templates. And these templates
1:33:08um we've got a bunch of them in here so
1:33:09far. I have a list of over 200 that I'm
1:33:12working through to actually create these
1:33:13guides so that people can use them.
1:33:15They're useful whether you're using AI
1:33:17or whether you're just studying the
1:33:19genre yourself. Uh but for instance, we
1:33:21got like 12 or 13 different cozy uh
1:33:24genres here. So if we looked at this one
1:33:26for instance, that's cozy sci-fi. Uh
1:33:28here's a guide for characters, right?
1:33:30Here are the main characters that you'd
1:33:31see in this uh or character archetypes
1:33:34that you're likely to see in this genre.
1:33:35Here's the plot template, right? That's
1:33:37a little bit more thorough than what
1:33:39Claude gave us just now. Uh we've got
1:33:41one for world-building, one for themes,
1:33:44one for the style guide, how would you
1:33:46know what kind of style is the prose
1:33:48going to look like, one for the general
1:33:50tropes found in this genre, and one
1:33:53again for the book description. So we
1:33:55have these inside of the Story Hacker
1:33:58OS, and one of the cool things about
1:33:59this is that if we create a new project,
1:34:02um you can select the genre that you
1:34:05want. So, if we selected cozy sci-fi,
1:34:07now it says it's found seven genre
1:34:09guides, and we can say, "Okay, I I'm
1:34:12just going to call this cozy sci-fi
1:34:14one." And we can pick a we can pick a
1:34:17different name for it later. And you can
1:34:19also add your core idea and your target
1:34:21audience. This will be probably for We
1:34:23don't need to put that in there yet. So,
1:34:25and then you need to create a project.
1:34:26So, now I have this cozy sci-fi, and
1:34:28there's nothing here in a document, so
1:34:30we're just going to create a new
1:34:31document, call it brain dump, right? And
1:34:34categorize that as notes, and create.
1:34:37Okay, so now we have a brain dump
1:34:38document that we can now write in. But I
1:34:40want to call your attention over here to
1:34:41the right-hand side, where we have this
1:34:44chatbot. And there's a lot you can do
1:34:46with this, and I'm not going to get into
1:34:48everything right now, but the main thing
1:34:50I want to show you is that you have all
1:34:52of this as its context. And because we
1:34:54selected cozy sci-fi as the main genre
1:34:56of this book, you can actually see that
1:34:59it is brought in all seven of those
1:35:01documents into the context of this chat.
1:35:04Now, I don't necessarily need all of
1:35:05these for right now. I'm going to get
1:35:07rid of the blur, I'm going to get rid of
1:35:08the style guide, but I'm going to leave
1:35:10the themes, the tropes, the plot, the
1:35:12characters, and the world build. And so
1:35:13now I could say something to the effect
1:35:16of, "Give me ideas for a cozy sci-fi
1:35:20that fit your context." Or, you know,
1:35:23whatever you want. It'll just have that
1:35:25in the back of its mind, and here we go.
1:35:27And here are a bunch of ideas. So, I
1:35:28could go through. And because we've
1:35:30given it all this context, it can now
1:35:32give us a much more nuanced and specific
1:35:35AI response that won't be nearly as
1:35:38generic as what you would get if you
1:35:40just asked it out of the blue for ideas,
1:35:42right? This is what makes templates so
1:35:45powerful. It narrows things down, it
1:35:47gives the AI some structure to build on,
1:35:49which AI thrives with structure, and it
1:35:52allows you to have a much better chance
1:35:55of hitting all of the correct tropes and
1:35:57plot beats for the genre you selected
1:35:59because and that will let you find the
1:36:02reader who likes your stuff better and
1:36:04makes it more likely that you'll be able
1:36:06to actually build an audience and all of
1:36:08that. So, that is the importance of
1:36:10templates. That's the end of this
1:36:11module. In the next one, we're going to
1:36:12take what we've almost started here to
1:36:15the next level to figure out how to
1:36:17actually start putting together all of
1:36:19the pieces of your book and get started
1:36:22on actually building that story. So,
1:36:23let's dive in. Welcome to module four
1:36:26where we talk about what is usually the
1:36:28first step in the writing process,
1:36:30[music] which is brainstorming. Now, of
1:36:32course, with AI writing, I make template
1:36:34creation the first step with
1:36:35brainstorming coming as the second, but
1:36:37you get the idea. Before we start this
1:36:39process, I want to impress on you the
1:36:40importance of establishing your genre
1:36:43and subgenre early on. You may have your
1:36:45kernel of an idea already, and you may
1:36:47have even fleshed out that idea a bit,
1:36:49but before you go any further, you need
1:36:51to figure out what specific genre that
1:36:53idea best fits under. Ideally, you want
1:36:56to niche down as much as possible in
1:36:58established genres that you know will
1:37:00sell because once again, we're
1:37:01interested in books that people actually
1:37:03want to read, not a personal book for
1:37:05yourself, not a book just for your kids
1:37:07to read, one that people and ideally a
1:37:09lot of people want to read because it's
1:37:11a fresh take on something they already
1:37:12enjoy. In other words, their favorite
1:37:14genres. As I mentioned earlier, we have
1:37:16over 200 genre guides either finished or
1:37:19in the works at Story Hacker, but I find
1:37:21that guides like that from anyone really
1:37:23are really just a starting point. The
1:37:25best way to become familiar with a genre
1:37:27is to become well-read in that genre.
1:37:29So, I recommend simply doing a lot of
1:37:31perusing, and that could be on Amazon,
1:37:33at bookstores, and in libraries. Read a
1:37:35lot of books and figure out what makes a
1:37:37difference between how those books are
1:37:38positioned online, how they're marketed,
1:37:40what kind of book cover elements do they
1:37:42have in common, et cetera. I found that
1:37:44most authors, and my earlier self
1:37:46included, tend to not niche down enough.
1:37:49You might know that you want to write a
1:37:50clean romance, for example, but don't
1:37:52realize that there are actually dozens
1:37:53of subgenres within that category. I
1:37:56found that simply spending a few hours
1:37:57browsing on Amazon can actually give you
1:38:00a good idea of what people are buying,
1:38:01and you could quickly figure out that
1:38:03maybe instead of just clean romance, a
1:38:05better niche might be clean Christian
1:38:07Amish small-town romance with an
1:38:09enemies-to-lovers trope. The nice thing
1:38:11about doing all that genre research is
1:38:13that it does half of the brainstorming
1:38:15process for you. You no longer have to
1:38:16come up with all of the elements because
1:38:18the reader expectations for that genre
1:38:20and those tropes already mandate a few
1:38:22things. It's now just your
1:38:24responsibility to fill in the rest of
1:38:26the gaps so that your book becomes a
1:38:27fresh take on that genre. Remember,
1:38:29we're not trying to be original here. No
1:38:31purely original book has ever sold
1:38:34widely at all, ever. What we want
1:38:36instead is fresh, a spin on something
1:38:38that readers are already familiar with
1:38:40and already enjoy. If you look at any of
1:38:42your favorite stories, you'll see they
1:38:44all fit neatly into genre categories,
1:38:46but the good ones usually have a fresh
1:38:48spin on things, which is what the rest
1:38:50of this brainstorming session is going
1:38:52to talk about, how to fill in those
1:38:53remaining gaps. And once again, I'm
1:38:55going to show you how to walk through my
1:38:56recommended process in Claude, and then
1:38:59and Story Hacker OS. So, let's start
1:39:01with Claude here. Now, there are a
1:39:02couple of different ways that you could
1:39:03go about this, and in fact, the
1:39:05brainstorming process is probably the
1:39:08least precise of this entire course that
1:39:11I'm going to show you. Because as is the
1:39:13case with brainstorming, you kind of
1:39:15just got ideas coming from all over, and
1:39:18it could be simple enough to just go to
1:39:20a chatbot and say, "Hey, I want to
1:39:21brainstorm this thing." And then you
1:39:23just go back and forth until you have
1:39:24some stuff that you like. What I'm going
1:39:26to show you is a process, uh some
1:39:28prompts that will make the AI interact
1:39:31in such a way that brings out these
1:39:33ideas, and then also at the end of
1:39:35things, takes it and sort of funnels it
1:39:38into a specific format that is useful to
1:39:42be used in later steps. Because I think
1:39:44one of the bigger problems that authors
1:39:46have is that they have too many ideas or
1:39:48in the brainstorming process they've
1:39:50kind of got all this stuff all scattered
1:39:52everywhere and we need a process that
1:39:54happens at the end of the brainstorming
1:39:56process [music] to sort of take all
1:39:58those ideas and form them into a
1:40:00concrete plan. And that plan is what I
1:40:02call the story dossier, but we'll get
1:40:04there. In Claude, what I would probably
1:40:06recommend you do is create a project. So
1:40:08on the left you go to projects and
1:40:10select new project and I would call this
1:40:12[music] something like novel
1:40:14brainstormer. Now I've already made one,
1:40:16so it's called novel brainstormer right
1:40:18here and importantly you need some
1:40:20instructions. So here you could edit
1:40:22this and add your own instructions.
1:40:24Here's my prompt for it and I actually
1:40:26have a document with this prompt here.
1:40:28If you want to pause the video and take
1:40:30a screenshot, you're welcome to. But
1:40:32essentially what this does is this says
1:40:33you are an expert story brainstormer.
1:40:35It's your job to collaborate with the
1:40:37user to brainstorm all the ingredients
1:40:39they need for a novel. I want you to do
1:40:40a mix of asking questions of the user to
1:40:42get their thoughts and to probe for
1:40:43ideas that they already had as well as
1:40:45to offer your own suggestions when
1:40:46necessary often providing multiple
1:40:48suggestions for the user to pick from.
1:40:50Now this is important because I think
1:40:52the a collaborative process in the
1:40:54brainstorming stage is absolutely
1:40:56crucial. AI can give you ideas, but
1:40:58generally speaking even when you have
1:41:00templates and stuff to to go off of not
1:41:02all of it's going to be super original.
1:41:04Some of it's going to be kind of generic
1:41:05or obvious and very often I will find
1:41:09that what it gives me I can say, well, I
1:41:10don't really like this. I will change
1:41:12this. I can get ahead of that process by
1:41:15having it ask me questions. Even though
1:41:17I'm brainstorming and I could just put
1:41:19all my ideas down to start with, I often
1:41:21don't understand, I don't know what I
1:41:24should write down in my giant brain dump
1:41:26until I'm asked certain questions. So I
1:41:29make sure that the beginning of this
1:41:30prompt asks me questions and offers
1:41:33suggestions so that I can work with
1:41:35that. By the end of your conversation,
1:41:36you should know all the major details of
1:41:38the story, including the genre, the
1:41:39style and tone, the scale of the novel,
1:41:41who the protagonist is, a list of all
1:41:43characters in the novel, a list of any
1:41:44world-building elements needed, and
1:41:46notes on what the inciting incident and
1:41:47climax of the story are. When you think
1:41:49you have all of these elements, ask the
1:41:51user if they want you to put together a
1:41:53full dossier on of their novel together.
1:41:55If they say no, continue to work with
1:41:57them to establish the remaining details
1:41:59until they're ready. If they say yes,
1:42:01create a full summary of the novel based
1:42:03on the conversation you've had. Include
1:42:04at the top of the dossier a logline that
1:42:06encapsulates the story overall, followed
1:42:08by a slightly larger synopsis with more
1:42:10details. Then make sure to have a brief
1:42:12list of all the characters,
1:42:13world-building elements, and the
1:42:15inciting incident and climax in bulleted
1:42:17lists with no more than one sentence for
1:42:19each element. Always output in plain
1:42:21text. I added that last sentence because
1:42:22sometimes Claude can get weird and
1:42:24output some weird stuff. All you have to
1:42:26do is copy this and put it into your
1:42:28instructions here. And now, if I say,
1:42:31"Let's brainstorm a cozy sci-fi
1:42:35together." It'll say, "Oh, I love this.
1:42:37Cozy sci-fi is such a wonderful space to
1:42:39work in." You know, maybe I should add
1:42:40something in the prompt about avoiding
1:42:42things like that, just intros like that,
1:42:44and just get to the point. When you say
1:42:45cozy, what does that mean to you? A few
1:42:46different flavors come to mind. We have
1:42:48small and domestic. We have a gentle
1:42:49adventure. We have community-focused.
1:42:51All right. Let's go small and domestic.
1:42:53But then you can offer any info that you
1:42:56have. So, let's say, "Taking place on a
1:42:59space station orbiting
1:43:03Mars in a far future timeline where
1:43:08humans have colonized
1:43:11Mars." So, now it's asking me a few
1:43:12questions about the space station
1:43:14itself. And I could just keep going back
1:43:16and forth and back and forth. And what
1:43:18this does is it maybe thinks of
1:43:20questions that I hadn't even thought to
1:43:22ask myself, and it gets more details out
1:43:25of me than I would normally do. And
1:43:27sometimes it'll offer suggestions. And I
1:43:29could even say, "I don't know. What do
1:43:30you think?" And it'll give me ideas on I
1:43:33think it should look like. So, that's
1:43:35the novel brainstormer as a project.
1:43:38Now, there is another way that we could
1:43:39do this cuz the last time I showed off
1:43:41this technique just as a brief uh
1:43:43preview of what we got coming. There's
1:43:44also uh projects here for novel
1:43:46characters, novel world building, novel
1:43:48outliner, and novel chapter writer. And
1:43:50there's one for each of these. I
1:43:51remember with the last time I kind of
1:43:52showed off a version of this process,
1:43:55someone asked if you couldn't just do it
1:43:57all in one project for one book. And
1:43:58there is a way to do this. I don't think
1:44:00it's as clean as doing it this way, but
1:44:02there is a way to do that. So, in this
1:44:04case, we would create a new project. In
1:44:07this case, I'll just call it cozy sci-fi
1:44:09one. We're actually going to leave the
1:44:11instructions blank, but eventually we'll
1:44:13have files and things to add in here,
1:44:14although not at this stage. And instead,
1:44:17we're going to go over here to customize
1:44:19and skills. Now, I've already created
1:44:21one called story brainstormer. But what
1:44:23you could do, there's a skill here
1:44:25called skill creator from Claude
1:44:27themselves, so you'll have this
1:44:29available to you. But basically, what
1:44:30this can do is you can give it the
1:44:32prompt that we just used in the project,
1:44:34and it'll create a skill that just uses
1:44:37that skill, does the same thing. So, I
1:44:38could create this copy this and and then
1:44:42come here to the plus sign, create a
1:44:44skill, create with Claude. So, I would
1:44:46probably say something like, "Here's a
1:44:49prompt that I use as a system prompt
1:44:54that I want to convert into a skill."
1:44:58And then you just paste that in there
1:44:59and hit go, and now it will run through
1:45:01the process of creating a skill. I'm
1:45:03going to pause this cuz I already
1:45:04created one of these, but now what I can
1:45:06do is if we go into our project called
1:45:09cozy sci-fi, instead of putting that
1:45:12prompt here in these instructions, I can
1:45:14instead do a forward slash to bring out
1:45:17the skills and select story
1:45:19brainstormer. Another way to access this
1:45:21is you go to this plus sign, go to
1:45:23skills, story brainstormer. And
1:45:24sometimes it'll even know when it should
1:45:27access that skill and it'll just pull it
1:45:29in. So now from here, I can just say, "I
1:45:32want to brainstorm a cozy sci-fi set on
1:45:38a space station orbiting Mars in a far
1:45:42future where Mars has been [music]
1:45:45colonized." And I hit go on that, and
1:45:49now it's reading the story brainstormer
1:45:50skill and we'll walk through the same
1:45:52process. So, [music] the nice thing
1:45:54about doing it this way instead of doing
1:45:56it as a project is that you can keep all
1:45:59of your stuff for one book in one
1:46:01project. I like doing it as a project by
1:46:04itself because I know that's going to
1:46:06work the same way every time. Skills I
1:46:09find can be really helpful, but also you
1:46:13have less control over them and their
1:46:15output. And so for that reason, I like
1:46:17doing things in a project cuz I know
1:46:19from the prompt that everything's going
1:46:21to happen cleanly the way I asked it to.
1:46:23So that's just two different ways to do
1:46:25this in Claude. Now, as I mentioned, if
1:46:26I were to keep going down this
1:46:28conversation until it had all of the
1:46:30elements that it needed, it would
1:46:31create, as you saw from the prompt, a
1:46:33story dossier. And this is where I use
1:46:38an automation for myself. So you could
1:46:40do this in the chat like this and chats
1:46:41are actually perhaps in general better
1:46:44for the brainstorming process because
1:46:46you need something more flexible and
1:46:48versatile, but I actually find that
1:46:50creating the story dossier, uh you once
1:46:53you've got all that scattered brain dump
1:46:55information, is something that an
1:46:57automation is really good for. So here's
1:46:59the one that I created in N8N. As you
1:47:01can see, there's a lot going on here.
1:47:03And uh one thing I haven't even talked
1:47:04about is pulling in the templates as
1:47:07well. That's something we didn't do here
1:47:09for this, but might be a useful thing to
1:47:11do. If you have a template for cozy
1:47:13sci-fi, you should bring it into the
1:47:14project so that the AI can read some of
1:47:17that stuff and have that inform the
1:47:19suggestions that it gives you. For this
1:47:21automation, what I do is I first it
1:47:23submits a form. So, if I hit execute,
1:47:26it'll submit this form and I can input
1:47:28any brain dump I want. This could be
1:47:29anything that I've got. Now, the
1:47:31disadvantage of using an automation in
1:47:33this case, it's not going to go back and
1:47:35forth with me to probe me for ideas. Or
1:47:38for me that just ask you for ideas. That
1:47:40kind of has to be done first. Or if you
1:47:42just already have a solid amount of
1:47:45brain dump, you can just put it in here.
1:47:47Alternatively, if you don't really know
1:47:49what would be a good idea, and you just
1:47:51want the AI to come up with something
1:47:52that's good, this is a good way to do it
1:47:54because the automation does a whole
1:47:56number of checks to make sure that it's
1:47:57not being super generic. You could just
1:47:59say something simple like, well, let's
1:48:01just pull in our idea. I want to write a
1:48:05cozy sci-fi that takes [music] place on
1:48:09a space station orbiting Mars in the far
1:48:14future when Mars has been colonized. I'm
1:48:17going to hit submit on this, but I'm
1:48:19actually going to pause it real quick
1:48:20and pin that info because some of these
1:48:23trope templates and plot templates I
1:48:25need to make sure that they're pulling
1:48:26the right ones in. So, for that, I'm
1:48:28going to go to my membership. And if
1:48:30you've made your own templates like we
1:48:32talked about in the previous step, you
1:48:34can use those. But I'm going to go here.
1:48:36We're going to look up cozy sci-fi and
1:48:38I'm going to pull out all of these
1:48:40documents here. I'm going to grab the
1:48:41URL. So, here's the URL for the tropes
1:48:44list and I go to this one that says
1:48:46tropes document and paste that in. Okay,
1:48:48so now these five nodes in this
1:48:52automation will grab all of those
1:48:55templates for cozy sci-fi. So, now all I
1:48:57have to do is execute workflow and it
1:49:00will start to run through this entire
1:49:02process. So, what this does, it first it
1:49:04looks at the templates and identifies
1:49:06what genre we're in, and then it
1:49:08brainstorms five pitches. And the reason
1:49:10I have it do five is because if you just
1:49:12asked it to do one, AI would give you
1:49:14the most obvious answer. If you ask it
1:49:16to do five, it will give you a variety
1:49:18of answers, and it usually stretches
1:49:20itself a little bit to come up with
1:49:21something that's a little bit of a
1:49:22better hook. And I also have like a very
1:49:25specific prompted here including a hook
1:49:27rubric. This whole thing here is a hook
1:49:29rubric to see how good is the hook. So,
1:49:32we're actually going a few levels deeper
1:49:34than what we're able to do in Claude
1:49:36because we're doing multiple prompts
1:49:38that are strung together rather than
1:49:40just one prompt that we put [music] into
1:49:42the instructions or into our skill. Um
1:49:44so, it brainstorms five pitches and then
1:49:46I allow it to pick what it thinks is the
1:49:48best, which is usually a good one. Then
1:49:50it outputs that and just that so I can
1:49:52use it later in the automation. And then
1:49:54it runs through the first step in
1:49:57creating a story dossier. And so, what
1:49:59that looks like is like this it grabs
1:50:01all of the data that it needs including
1:50:04your brain dump and says, "A given the
1:50:05above premise, brain dump, genre tropes,
1:50:07outline template, character template,
1:50:09and world building template, I want you
1:50:10to create a complete story dossier that
1:50:11has a list of everything the author will
1:50:13need to fully flesh out the characters,
1:50:15world building, and outline for this
1:50:16premise." And so on and so forth. So, it
1:50:18goes and does that. And then, this is a
1:50:20again another advantage of doing an
1:50:22automation, we do a emotion check and a
1:50:25character check character name check.
1:50:27So, the emotion check I want to do be
1:50:29doubly sure that this story has like an
1:50:32emotional gut punch to it because books,
1:50:35fiction in particular, needs to make us
1:50:37feel things. That's kind of the point of
1:50:40literature. [music] This check,
1:50:41specifically on a rubric, goes through
1:50:43and checks if everything is looking good
1:50:46in this concept. And if not, it gives
1:50:48suggestions for improvement. The
1:50:50character name check looks at all of the
1:50:52names except the ones that the user
1:50:55inputted themselves. So, any names that
1:50:57were essentially created out of whole
1:50:59cloth from the story dossier prompt. And
1:51:01actually checks against a list of AI
1:51:03names to see are any of these names like
1:51:07really generic cliché AI names. And
1:51:09then, if so, it changes them. And then
1:51:11from there, actually, it it doesn't
1:51:13change them at this step. It uh gives
1:51:15you suggestions on what to change it to.
1:51:17And then it does a a rewrite uh [music]
1:51:19with that feedback in mind. Then I have
1:51:21it do a second or another round of
1:51:23checks. So, in this case, a logic check.
1:51:25And the whole idea behind this logic
1:51:27check is to look for any
1:51:28inconsistencies, so things like plot
1:51:30holes or character motivations that
1:51:32don't make sense, you know, that kind of
1:51:34thing. It looks through those and just
1:51:37tries to [music] think about it
1:51:38logically. Like, could this be feasible
1:51:41within the premise of the genre and all
1:51:43of that. And then it does a second
1:51:44rewrite. What happens because of this
1:51:46automation is that we've already spent a
1:51:48several passes here improving the
1:51:50dossier before you even look at it. So
1:51:52that there is I hopefully a lot less for
1:51:55you to do once you see the final result.
1:51:57And once it's done the second rewrite,
1:51:59it updates a Google Doc and you're good
1:52:00to go. There's a lot to this. It takes a
1:52:03good deal of setting up. As you've seen
1:52:05earlier in this course, there's a whole
1:52:07lot of setup that goes into NDD, which
1:52:09is why I've built these functionalities
1:52:11directly into Story Hacker OS as well.
1:52:12And I don't want this to feel like a
1:52:14sales video. I can see how it kind of
1:52:16would feel that way at some point, but
1:52:17I'm just really excited for what we've
1:52:19got here. Uh so, first of all, there's a
1:52:20couple of different ways that you could
1:52:22do this. You can go here to Book
1:52:24Builder, and this automation right here
1:52:27is the exact same automation as you see
1:52:30here. The only difference is you don't
1:52:32have to go through all of that crazy
1:52:33setup and uh making sure all your
1:52:36documents are in order and all of that.
1:52:38All you have to do is go here, and I
1:52:41would select right here. So, and then
1:52:43you can just dump your brain dump right
1:52:45here. Then you select your genre, in our
1:52:47case we'd do cozy sci-fi, and you can
1:52:49see it's automatically pulling in the
1:52:51correct templates. So, we would just say
1:52:53our little thing about I want to write a
1:52:56story set in a space station orbiting
1:53:02Mars at a time in the far [music] future
1:53:07when Mars has been colonized. All right,
1:53:10so that's our idea. And then we could go
1:53:11ahead and say start pipeline. And
1:53:13automatically, it will go through the
1:53:15same steps. So it identifies the genre.
1:53:18All right, so we've got cozy sci-fi. And
1:53:20then it goes through and now you can see
1:53:22it's brainstorming our five pitches. And
1:53:24if you only have a nugget of a story
1:53:26idea and you haven't fleshed it out a
1:53:28lot and you don't really want to go
1:53:30through the whole process. Like this is
1:53:31the best way to do it is through a story
1:53:34dossier like this. It will flesh out
1:53:36everything and chances are it'll be a
1:53:38pretty good hook. So something decent to
1:53:40go with. But if you do have your own
1:53:41ideas and you want to have that back and
1:53:43forth with this whole system, there is
1:53:46another way you can create this inside
1:53:47of Story Hacker. So I'm going to go
1:53:49ahead and stop this process and leave.
1:53:51Then we'll find our cozy sci-fi one
1:53:53project that we developed in the last
1:53:55module. And then over here on the
1:53:56right-hand side, I've created a persona
1:53:59called brainstorming assistant. In Story
1:54:02Hacker, we have this concept called
1:54:03personas. And right now there's or you
1:54:06can just see writing assistant and
1:54:07brainstorming assistant. Writing
1:54:09assistant is just sort of generic. I'm
1:54:11going to help you type stuff and it's
1:54:13the default that you'll see here. But if
1:54:15you select brainstorming assistant, now
1:54:16you essentially have that same prompt
1:54:19that we were using in Claude. Although
1:54:20I've actually enhanced it just a little
1:54:22bit. Plus, you automatically get all of
1:54:25that genre context included here in the
1:54:27context down here. That's awesome. So
1:54:30from here, we can just start
1:54:32brainstorming our ideas here and it will
1:54:34be able to guide us down that path the
1:54:36same way Claude could. And we can have
1:54:37that back and forth. And then as we like
1:54:40the ideas that it gives us, we can copy
1:54:42and paste them into our brain dump here
1:54:43and then run a dossier automation on it
1:54:45if we want. Or we can actually generate
1:54:48a dossier inside of the chat. The only I
1:54:51I think downside to generating the
1:54:53dossier inside of the chat as opposed to
1:54:55running an automation on it is the fact
1:54:57that you don't get the logic check and
1:54:59the emotion check and all of those
1:55:00things. So you would have to do those
1:55:02things yourself essentially. You'd have
1:55:03to go through, change all the names if
1:55:05they're a little bit too AI cliche, that
1:55:07sort of thing. So, that is the
1:55:09brainstorming process in a nutshell. I
1:55:11want to go over a couple of things to
1:55:13round us out here because I know again,
1:55:15brainstorming can be one of those things
1:55:17that's just very nebulous. I've tried to
1:55:19put as much structure to the process as
1:55:21possible here, but this is definitely
1:55:23the least structured part of the process
1:55:25compared to what's coming. I've actually
1:55:28included a number of prompts that I want
1:55:29to show you guys uh for additional
1:55:31brainstorming methods that you can use
1:55:34to give you ideas. Uh you can use any
1:55:37one of these prompts in any chatbot, and
1:55:40I find these to be super useful. And
1:55:41they all use different methods of
1:55:43brainstorming to kind of enhance and
1:55:45unlock your mind a little bit. So, first
1:55:48we have high concept pitches. This is
1:55:49kind of a basic generic brainstorming.
1:55:52Give me a number of high concept pitches
1:55:53for best-selling insert your genre here
1:55:56story with a unique twist, interesting
1:55:58intriguing characters, and gripping
1:55:59emotional stakes, or give me certain
1:56:02number of ideas for characters that are
1:56:03part of a best-selling insert your genre
1:56:05story that are well fleshed-out, have
1:56:07strengths and weaknesses, and undergo
1:56:09conflict throughout the course of the
1:56:10story. Briefly describe their character
1:56:12arc. Because I usually find that most
1:56:13people's high concepts have to do with
1:56:15either the plot or the character. I have
1:56:17a prompt for each of those. Then there's
1:56:18the logline prompt. So, this one goes,
1:56:22"Give me 20 loglines for a genre story
1:56:24in the style recommended by Blake Snyder
1:56:26that includes the following elements:
1:56:27the protagonist or main character, the
1:56:29context or setup of the story, what the
1:56:31main character wants or is trying to
1:56:32achieve, the antagonist or main obstacle
1:56:34facing the protagonist, uh the main
1:56:36conflict or problem that drives the
1:56:38story, and an ironic hook or twist that
1:56:40makes the concept intriguing. It should
1:56:41be 25 to 30 words to concisely capture
1:56:44the essence of a story." And loglines
1:56:46are an excellent way to make sure you
1:56:48have a good story. If you can't describe
1:56:50your story and your hook in a concise
1:56:52logline like this, you probably need to
1:56:54work on your premise a little bit. All
1:56:56right, then I have a prompt here that's
1:56:58useful if you already have the initial
1:57:00concept in mind. So, you can say, "I
1:57:02like to write a genre novel about insert
1:57:05your idea here. Please help me expand on
1:57:07this idea by providing potential details
1:57:08about interesting protagonists,
1:57:10antagonists, side characters, settings,
1:57:12plot twists, and subplots. Make a list
1:57:13of 100 possibilities." So, this is just
1:57:15meant to be like a giant brainstorming
1:57:17session where you just like think of
1:57:18everything. Then you can kind of like
1:57:20pick and choose what you like from
1:57:21there. Uh then we have the what if game,
1:57:23which I is one of my favorites. I'd like
1:57:24you to create a list of what if
1:57:26statements related to your ordinary
1:57:28thing. So, in this case, you want to
1:57:29think of like an ordinary thing and give
1:57:32it a what if. So, what if, for example,
1:57:35your tree in your front yard uh suddenly
1:57:37actually started to sprout money. So,
1:57:40money was literally growing on trees,
1:57:41you know? You take an ordinary thing
1:57:43like a tree in your front yard and give
1:57:44it some fantastical what if statement.
1:57:46Yeah, I can help you brainstorm those.
1:57:48Then, this one's a first line prompt. A
1:57:50lot of authors, like uh I know Dean
1:57:52Koontz does this, is they'll just start
1:57:54with an intriguing first line, not
1:57:56really knowing anything about the plot,
1:57:57just like, "Oh, that's an interesting
1:57:59first line." And in this case, you can
1:58:00say, "Give me a list of whatever number
1:58:02of potential first lines for a genre
1:58:04novel. The line should include at least
1:58:06one character, include some kind of
1:58:08conflict, and should be quick, engaging,
1:58:10and action-oriented to hook the reader."
1:58:12Then, here's one of my favorites, and
1:58:13there's actually this is a two-part
1:58:15prompt here. There's finding new
1:58:16stories. There's two ways you could do
1:58:18this. Um you could do it with this one,
1:58:19"Using the following news story,
1:58:20brainstorm X number of ideas for a genre
1:58:24book." And then you paste a news story
1:58:26here. Uh I actually almost decided to
1:58:28pursue, like to try and create a
1:58:32newsletter, uh like a Substack or
1:58:34something like that, where every day it
1:58:37would auto-generate a like a fantasy
1:58:39story or something that's based on a
1:58:41news story from the previous day. I
1:58:43didn't end up doing that, but it was a
1:58:44cool thought experiment that I ran
1:58:46through. Cuz you can actually get some
1:58:47pretty interesting ideas when you adapt
1:58:50a news story to whatever genre that
1:58:52you're doing. And then the other way you
1:58:53could do this is to come up with X
1:58:55number of news article teasers covering
1:58:57unusual events, crimes, disasters, or
1:58:59discoveries that could drive the plot of
1:59:01a insert your genre story. So, this is
1:59:04more like in-universe news stories,
1:59:06stuff that's actually happening in your
1:59:08story. Like coming up with a number of
1:59:09those. That could be really useful,
1:59:11particularly for certain genres like
1:59:13thriller, mystery, suspense, horror, any
1:59:15of those. It'll work for fantasy and
1:59:16science fiction as well. Then you have
1:59:18job titles. Give me a list of
1:59:19interesting professions that one might
1:59:21find in a insert a setting or genre
1:59:24setting. And then So, this is a two-part
1:59:26prompt. So, after you've got that list,
1:59:28brainstorm a list of plot, character,
1:59:30setting, and theme ideas for insert your
1:59:32genre book where the protagonist insert
1:59:34occupation here. This could be really
1:59:35useful. A lot of people like to learn
1:59:38about interesting and unique
1:59:40occupations. I feel like I see this in a
1:59:43number of genres, but particularly
1:59:44romance, I think I see it a lot as long
1:59:46as it doesn't interfere with the tropes.
1:59:48There's usually, you know, there could
1:59:49be some interesting profession that, you
1:59:51know, might not be the most obvious one.
1:59:53This one's just for fun, but can be
1:59:55really hilarious. Give me X number of
1:59:57ridiculous would you rather scenario
1:59:59questions related to your genre book
2:00:01about your concept. This is just a great
2:00:03way to kind of throw out some weird and
2:00:06wacky ideas, some of which can actually
2:00:08give you genuine ideas that you could
2:00:10use. Uh then we have the this meets that
2:00:12brainstorming prompt. So, brainstorm X
2:00:14number of book ideas using a plausible
2:00:16mashup of insert two or three things
2:00:18here. So, what's a plausible mashup of
2:00:20blank, blank, and blank, right? And you
2:00:22could pick like Harry Potter mixed with,
2:00:25I don't know, 1950s housewife mixed with
2:00:29insert some other like random thing that
2:00:32doesn't seem like it should go together,
2:00:34and then ask it for those ideas, and it
2:00:37will give you pretty good plausible
2:00:39ideas. And the more unrelated the things
2:00:42are when you're matching them together,
2:00:44the more likely you're going to get
2:00:45really good results from AI because
2:00:47again, AI will naturally go to the most
2:00:49obvious answer. But if you give it a
2:00:51restraint like the story must have to do
2:00:53with these two unrelated things, it
2:00:55suddenly will give you a very original
2:00:57answer, which is awesome. Then there's
2:00:59the social issue. And if you're one of
2:01:02those people that likes to write about
2:01:05something that's important to you, this
2:01:06is a good prompt for that. I'd like to
2:01:08write a book involving the social issue
2:01:10or slash value slash theme of insert
2:01:12your issue here. Please brainstorm X
2:01:14number of ideas for a genre book that
2:01:16can incorporate this issue in a way that
2:01:18is meaningful yet subtle. Make sure the
2:01:20concept is not too preachy and fully
2:01:21explores the issue from more multiple
2:01:23angles. And finally, I have a
2:01:25summarizing it all prompt. Assuming
2:01:28you've gone through this brainstorming
2:01:29process and your your thoughts are just
2:01:31spread out everywhere, it can be really
2:01:33useful to have a prompt like this, which
2:01:35says if you're not going through like
2:01:37the dossier automation and all of that,
2:01:39you could have something like I'd like
2:01:41you to create a short pitch for a story
2:01:42using all of the information below. Sum
2:01:45it up using this framework. My story is
2:01:47about blank who must blank in order to
2:01:49blank. I got this from James Scott Bell,
2:01:51who's one of my favorite teachers on
2:01:53writing. This is just a good way to sort
2:01:55of succinctly tell somebody what your
2:01:57story is about. And if it doesn't sound
2:01:58interesting from my story is about blank
2:02:00who must blank in order to blank, that
2:02:02doesn't sound interesting put in that
2:02:04concise of a manner. Once again, you
2:02:06need need to kind of work on it until it
2:02:07does. But this is just a good way of
2:02:09kind of summarizing your story in as
2:02:11little space as possible. All right. So
2:02:13hopefully by the time you run through
2:02:15this process, whether you're using
2:02:17Claude or N N or Story Hacker OS, you
2:02:19should have a decently summarized
2:02:22version of your book that kind of
2:02:24briefly lists out everything that you
2:02:26need for the book. However, in order to
2:02:28actually write this book, we need to
2:02:30flesh out certain of these elements. And
2:02:32so that's what we're going to start
2:02:33getting into in the next module. So
2:02:36let's go to that.
2:02:37Welcome to module five. Where in In
2:02:40module, we're talking about taking
2:02:42everything that we brainstormed [music]
2:02:43in the previous step along with the
2:02:45story dossier you hopefully created and
2:02:47flesh out all of the pieces we need to
2:02:49construct our story. Specifically, we're
2:02:51talking about character and
2:02:53world-building. Now, these may seem very
2:02:55different from each other, but the
2:02:56process of using AI to flesh them out is
2:02:58actually very similar. So, you can also
2:03:00do them in any order, either character
2:03:02or world-building first. So, I put them
2:03:04in the same module for the purposes of
2:03:05this course. I'm going to start with
2:03:07character. So, like before, we're going
2:03:09to be starting in Claude and showing you
2:03:11how I would do this inside of Claude.
2:03:13Now, there of course, as with
2:03:15brainstorming, there are two ways to do
2:03:16this in Claude. Uh one of the things
2:03:18you'll find, just as a side here, is
2:03:20that there are many ways to do all of
2:03:21these things. And it's important to kind
2:03:23of get a sense of your own experience
2:03:26with these tools so that you can know
2:03:29what works for you. But, I'm just going
2:03:30to show you the two ways to do this in
2:03:31Claude. So, the prompt that we're going
2:03:33to use here is this character project
2:03:35prompt. You can go ahead and screenshot
2:03:37this if you need to. That's the prompt
2:03:38right there. I'm going to copy this and
2:03:40we're going to go into a second project
2:03:43and you'll want to create a new project
2:03:45and then put that prompt in the
2:03:48instructions. Okay, now I've already
2:03:49done one right here. So, you would just
2:03:51come here to the instructions, paste
2:03:53your prompt in there, and then save
2:03:55instructions, and so on. So, the way
2:03:57this prompt starts is it says, "Your job
2:03:58is to take any story dossier or brain
2:04:00dump information that the user gives you
2:04:02and create a fleshed out character sheet
2:04:04for all mentioned characters." And then
2:04:06it asks to generate the following
2:04:07including a physical description, their
2:04:09primary role in the story, their various
2:04:11personality profiles, their core
2:04:13motivation, brief explanation of their
2:04:15background before the story starts, an
2:04:17interesting quirk or hobby, and dialogue
2:04:20style. And then I say, "Only include the
2:04:22asked for character details. Do not add
2:04:24any preamble comment commentary or
2:04:26anything other than what I've asked for
2:04:27above." So, that's the overall prompt.
2:04:29So, basically, all you have to do is
2:04:31give it your story dossier and it will
2:04:34generate the or flesh out the characters
2:04:36for you. Now, the other way to do this
2:04:38is if we take the same prompt, we can
2:04:41create a Claude skill for this. So,
2:04:44let's go to customize and then go to
2:04:47skills, select create skills, create
2:04:50with Claude, and say I want to create a
2:04:54skill based on the system prompt that I
2:04:59used to create and flesh out character
2:05:03profiles. [music] And paste that in and
2:05:05go ahead and hit go. All right, and here
2:05:07it has fleshed out our character profile
2:05:10skill. All you have to do now is just
2:05:12say save skill. And now if you go to
2:05:14customize, you will see it included in
2:05:17your list of skills right here. So, what
2:05:19this allows you to do is instead of
2:05:21having a separate project for fleshing
2:05:24out characters, you can do it all inside
2:05:26of one project with one story. Now, to
2:05:29some this might seem more efficient. I
2:05:31do find the skills to be a little bit
2:05:33touch and go sometimes, like they're not
2:05:35always as precise. Uh the way I do it
2:05:37with a project means I will get the
2:05:39exact same type of result every single
2:05:42time. And you don't necessarily get that
2:05:43with skills. Skills, they tend to think
2:05:45for themselves a little bit more, which
2:05:47is not necessarily a bad thing, but if
2:05:49you want a specific thing, a specific
2:05:51format, sometimes it can be a little bit
2:05:52off. But regardless, I could take what
2:05:54we brainstormed [music] here so far,
2:05:56have it flesh out of the characters, and
2:05:57everything would be okay. So, I happen
2:05:59to have a dossier here for a cozy sci-fi
2:06:02and that I'm going to be using for all
2:06:03of these projects. So, what I could do
2:06:05is I could just do a forward slash and
2:06:08then type in character, and there's our
2:06:10character skill, and say I want to flesh
2:06:13out the characters from this dossier.
2:06:17And then I can paste in the dossier that
2:06:19I've got so far, hit go, and here it is
2:06:22fleshing out our characters right there.
2:06:25Now, while that's going, let me show you
2:06:26what you could do in a project. So, now
2:06:29all I have to do is go to our novel
2:06:31characters project, type in our dossier.
2:06:34Here's the dossier, and it already knows
2:06:36what to do with this because it's set in
2:06:38the system instructions. So, all I have
2:06:40to do is hit go and let it go. And there
2:06:41it is, flushing out the characters as
2:06:43well. So, uh it's just two different
2:06:45ways to do it. Now, let's take a look at
2:06:47some other alternatives uh starting with
2:06:49n8n and how I would do this in n8n
2:06:52because the problem with Claude, of
2:06:53course, is that we're only using one
2:06:55skill or one prompt to create these
2:06:58fully fleshed-out characters. What if
2:07:00there's more steps we want to do in
2:07:02between that would actually flesh these
2:07:04characters out even further or refine
2:07:06what it gives us or checks for uh logic
2:07:08errors and stuff like that? Well, we can
2:07:10do that with an automation. And what we
2:07:12have here is the automation I've created
2:07:14for characters. And uh in this case,
2:07:16what it does is it grabs the dossier. It
2:07:19also grabs various templates. Already,
2:07:21we're kind of giving it more than what
2:07:23we had in Claude because we're giving it
2:07:25certain templates so that it can
2:07:27actually get the right archetypes and
2:07:29all of that. Then it grabs a blank sheet
2:07:31where it's going to put all of this
2:07:32character info. It condenses the tropes
2:07:34so that it doesn't take up as much
2:07:36context, and it finds the list of all
2:07:38character names. This is an important
2:07:40step in this automation because it'll
2:07:42then parse those names out and start a
2:07:44loop for each character. What this does
2:07:47is it uh
2:07:48you know, in Claude, when we're talking
2:07:49about what Claude does, it's doing this
2:07:51all in one go for all of these
2:07:53characters. But, that's not actually
2:07:55that efficient because it's not devoting
2:07:57a certain amount of its brain power to
2:07:58just one character at a time. What we
2:08:01have here is the ability to do that. Uh
2:08:03so, we get even more efficiently
2:08:05fleshed-out characters. So, it parses
2:08:07through the names, it starts a loop for
2:08:09each one, then it runs this expand
2:08:11character prompt, which is similar to
2:08:13the one that we have inside of Claude.
2:08:15But, then it does a logic check. And
2:08:17this is a what I consider a very
2:08:19important step. Now, you could, of
2:08:20course, create like a logic check skill
2:08:22or something like that, but having it in
2:08:24an automation I find is just easier cuz
2:08:26you don't even have to call it up and
2:08:28say, "Hey, run this logic check on our
2:08:29characters." It just does it
2:08:31automatically. And what this logic check
2:08:33does is it just makes sure that
2:08:34everything sort of makes sense. Like,
2:08:36does this character motivation make
2:08:37sense given the character's background?
2:08:39Does it make sense given the plot that
2:08:41we've got here? Is there anything that
2:08:43just doesn't fit with the character's
2:08:45motivation or their arc or some part of
2:08:48their story that just actually doesn't
2:08:50make sense, that sort of thing. Once
2:08:51it's done that logic check, it does a
2:08:53rewrite incorporating the feedback that
2:08:55it got and then continues on with the
2:08:57loop for each character. Something I
2:08:59also add in here is once it's got that
2:09:02list of characters, I'll have this step
2:09:04which will look at each character and
2:09:06their relationship with each other
2:09:08character and create a relationship map.
2:09:10And from that relationship map, it is
2:09:13able to kind of get a sense of how
2:09:16characters relate to each other, which
2:09:18is important later on when we're writing
2:09:19the story and we have two characters
2:09:21interacting with each other. How are
2:09:22they going to talk to each other and all
2:09:24of that? That's important to include.
2:09:26Now, if we're looking at the Story
2:09:28Hacker OS, there's a couple of things
2:09:29that we can do here. So, I had
2:09:31previously generated this story.dossier
2:09:33for our cozy sci-fi inside of Story
2:09:36Hacker OS and over here on the side, we
2:09:38in our chat, I have created a character
2:09:41assistant persona which allows us to
2:09:43It's basically a version, maybe slightly
2:09:46more advanced version of what we were
2:09:47doing in Claude. It'll do that here but
2:09:50with the enhanced ability to bring in
2:09:52all of the context down here in the
2:09:54bottom right uh which includes a cozy
2:09:57sci-fi characters template. From here, I
2:09:59can just say like, "Flesh out all the
2:10:01characters." Or I could say, "Flesh out
2:10:04this specific character." So, we have
2:10:05Daria Osei. Flesh out that character,
2:10:08etc. We have that if you want to get a
2:10:09little bit more hands-on and don't want
2:10:11the whole automated process. But then
2:10:13I've also built into this tool the
2:10:16dossier to characters automation. So, if
2:10:18I select that and then we select our
2:10:21project which in this case is just
2:10:22called Cozy Sci-Fi 1. It will
2:10:24automatically find the story dossier in
2:10:26there. And if you don't have it in
2:10:28there, you probably should create one,
2:10:29but that's in there. And you could if
2:10:31you have more than one dossier, you
2:10:33could like select from a list. Uh it
2:10:35automatically pulls in all the genre
2:10:37templates, and then you can add any
2:10:38additional author notes here that will
2:10:40be passed to the AI during the character
2:10:42generation. And then from here, you can
2:10:43just say generate characters, and you
2:10:45can see it's starting to go through the
2:10:48process. So here it's made of all the
2:10:50characters uh that were listed in that
2:10:52story dossier, and it's started the
2:10:54expansion step for Daria Osei. And
2:10:58you'll also notice as it's going through
2:11:00this automation, the same as with my N8N
2:11:02automations, I have it have a selection
2:11:04of sliders here. This is what I like to
2:11:07do to kind of get a sense for their
2:11:09baseline when it comes to certain
2:11:11things. Like how stressed or calm are
2:11:13they? What's their fear to courage
2:11:15ratio? And it goes from -10 to +10. Uh
2:11:18so a -10 would be super stressed, and a
2:11:21+10 would be like so calm that they
2:11:23never get stressed about anything,
2:11:24right? And it gives these sliders as a
2:11:27way get adding a little bit more depth
2:11:30to their character. And later on when
2:11:31it's actually writing the text, it will
2:11:34adjust those sliders depending on the
2:11:36scene. So you might be in a more
2:11:38stressful scene, so their stress and
2:11:39calm levels would actually go down. This
2:11:42is just establishing what their baseline
2:11:43is, which is a really helpful feature to
2:11:45kind of get a little bit more of a
2:11:47realistic fleshed out feeling character.
2:11:49So while this continues on, we're going
2:11:51to go ahead and move on to the next
2:11:54step, which is world building. Now the
2:11:56prompt for world building looks
2:11:58something like this. I'll go ahead and
2:12:00pause a different so you can read some
2:12:03of it, and take screenshots if you want.
2:12:04When you are given a story dossier or
2:12:06brain dump information, I want you to
2:12:07create a fleshed out list of all
2:12:09important setting and world building
2:12:10elements needed specifically for this
2:12:12book. Make sure each world building
2:12:13element is labeled as one of the
2:12:14following categories. And then I have a
2:12:16list of world building categories here.
2:12:18So, we have high-level worldbuilding
2:12:19settings and locations, objects and
2:12:21artifacts, magic systems and technology,
2:12:23groups and races, gods and deities,
2:12:24geography and nature, population and
2:12:26politics, culture, history and lore,
2:12:28religion and beliefs, and languages. One
2:12:31of the big misconceptions about
2:12:32worldbuilding is that worldbuilding is
2:12:34all about fantasy or science fiction.
2:12:37And that's just not true. For instance,
2:12:38setting and locations is an important
2:12:41one regardless of what genre you're
2:12:44writing in. And a lot of people don't
2:12:46call that worldbuilding at that point,
2:12:48they just call it setting. But, you also
2:12:50need to in pretty much every genre, you
2:12:52also need to worry about like objects
2:12:54and artifacts or groups and races or
2:12:56geography or politics, culture, history.
2:12:59All of these things are useful to have.
2:13:01And you might have to research it if
2:13:03it's something that takes place in a
2:13:04contemporary setting or in a historical
2:13:08setting. Or you might need to make it up
2:13:10if you're doing fantasy or science
2:13:12fiction. But, regardless, you do need to
2:13:13have a lot of these details kind of
2:13:15filled in. Even like I find, let's say
2:13:18you're writing a cozy mystery. A cozy
2:13:19mystery is all about the small town. I
2:13:22would even sort of map out what this
2:13:24town looks like and where all the
2:13:26different shops, where does everybody
2:13:28live? That's the sort of thing we want
2:13:29to be establishing here with the
2:13:30worldbuilding. So, regardless of whether
2:13:32it's fantasy or science fiction, we're
2:13:34still needing to do this. All right, now
2:13:35here's the second part of the prompt
2:13:38here. Do not use a category if it
2:13:40doesn't apply to the book or series. If
2:13:41there aren't elements in the dossier
2:13:42that apply to that category, make sure
2:13:44to flesh out all of the worldbuilding
2:13:45details that a writer might need to
2:13:47write the story. Each worldbuilding
2:13:48element should feel fully fleshed out,
2:13:50not just set dressing. Each
2:13:51worldbuilding element should have at
2:13:53least three to four sentences describing
2:13:54it. Make these details specific. Only
2:13:56include the asked for worldbuilding
2:13:58details. Do not add any preamble
2:13:59commentary or anything other than what
2:14:01I've asked for above. So, that is the
2:14:02prompt. From here, we can take it and
2:14:04create a project. So, I've already
2:14:06created one here called novel
2:14:07worldbuilding and that prompt is
2:14:10injected right there. And we basically
2:14:12follow the exact same steps. We take the
2:14:15dossier, we paste it in here, and it'll
2:14:17flush out the world building.
2:14:19Additionally, you can go to customize,
2:14:21create a skill that is all about world
2:14:23building using that prompt, and then you
2:14:25could use that skill inside of your
2:14:27story. But, obviously, I just walked you
2:14:29through that whole process with
2:14:30characters. We don't necessarily need to
2:14:32go through that again. I will show you
2:14:34my world building automation in N8N.
2:14:37This one functions almost identically to
2:14:39the character one. So, it goes through,
2:14:42grabs the information, grabs the
2:14:44templates, uh makes a list of all of the
2:14:47different things that need to be fleshed
2:14:49out from a setting perspective uh and
2:14:51world building's perspective, and then
2:14:52runs a loop on each one. And this I
2:14:55think, you know, it's important to run
2:14:56the loop one at a time so the AI is able
2:14:58to think about one at a time. [music]
2:15:00And from there, it expands on the world
2:15:03building. This prompt here for this one
2:15:05is very similar to what we had for
2:15:06charac- for Claude, [music] what we put
2:15:08in the Claude. Uh it adds that to a
2:15:10document, then it does a logic check on
2:15:12that to see how does it fit in with the
2:15:15rest of the world, especially everything
2:15:17else that we've already established. And
2:15:18then it does a rewrite of the element
2:15:21and adds that to our final doc. So, this
2:15:23is our automation, the advanced one that
2:15:25I've created for N8N. And of course, we
2:15:28have a version of that inside of Story
2:15:31Hacker as well. Now, you before I
2:15:33actually show you the automation, I have
2:15:35also created a persona in the chat here
2:15:39on the right hand side anytime you're
2:15:41doing this. There is a world building
2:15:42assistant here, which functions very
2:15:44similar to lead to what you see in
2:15:45Claude. So, really, it's Story Hacker OS
2:15:47gives you both options to do it like
2:15:49[music] as an automation or to just do
2:15:51it in a little bit more hands-on way
2:15:53using this world building assistant.
2:15:55Yeah, that's So, that's how that works.
2:15:57But, let's go to the automation. Just
2:15:59click on dossier to world building.
2:16:01We'll select our project, which is Cozy
2:16:03Sci-Fi 1. It automatically detects our
2:16:05story dossier in there. It draws in all
2:16:08of the genre templates that it needs,
2:16:10and you have a place to add additional
2:16:11notes if you want. And from here, we
2:16:13would just click generate world
2:16:14building. And as you can see, it's going
2:16:16through and starting its work on the
2:16:19first world building element, which is
2:16:21our way station Kepler 9, which is, you
2:16:24know, the main setting of this story.
2:16:26So, it's going through and fleshing that
2:16:27whole thing out. Then it'll do a logic
2:16:29check just like the other one for
2:16:31characters, and uh basically runs
2:16:33through the exact same steps but for
2:16:35world building instead of for
2:16:37characters. So, it goes through that
2:16:38process, then it does the logic check.
2:16:41Here is a list of all the things that it
2:16:43has found to improve, and then it does a
2:16:45rewrite on that thing to make sure it's
2:16:48a little bit more in line with stuff.
2:16:49And then it moves on to the next world
2:16:51building element, which in this case is
2:16:53called the Dust Storm Orange Common
2:16:55Room, and runs through the exact same
2:16:57process. Now it's going through the
2:16:58logic check, etc. And from there it'll
2:17:01go on into the rewrite. And that's the
2:17:03process. So, I'll just let those
2:17:05continue to run. But that pretty much
2:17:06takes us to the end [music] of this
2:17:08module. As you can tell, the two
2:17:09processes were pretty similar, and once
2:17:11again, you don't have to start with
2:17:12characters, you can start with a world
2:17:14building first if you want. They both
2:17:15sort of run in parallel to each other.
2:17:17Uh but the next step is my personal
2:17:19favorite, so let's get into that next.
2:17:21Welcome to module 6, which is my
2:17:23personal favorite part of the process,
2:17:26where you get to see all of the
2:17:27different pieces that we've been
2:17:28collecting all get assembled together
2:17:30into a cohesive plot. I am, of course,
2:17:33talking about the plotting or outlining
2:17:35phase. Now, I want to pause here a
2:17:37little bit to talk about the spectrum of
2:17:40writers when it comes to outlining
2:17:41versus what we call discovery writers.
2:17:43The On one hand, you'll have a hardcore
2:17:46discovery writer. This person does not
2:17:48like outlining at all, and just wants to
2:17:51kind of write the book and discover it
2:17:54as she goes. On the other hand, you have
2:17:57the hardcore outliner, which is more
2:17:59what I am, and the hardcore outliner
2:18:02really needs to have everything
2:18:03established before they get started.
2:18:05Now, I will say because AI has a
2:18:08tendency to go for the most generic
2:18:09option when you don't give it a lot of
2:18:11structure, I do think that AI and people
2:18:14that use AI are going to be more skewed
2:18:16towards the side of outlining. But, that
2:18:18doesn't have to be the case. If I were
2:18:20more discovery writing this plot, I
2:18:23would probably move on to the next step,
2:18:26which we'll talk about in the next
2:18:28module, which is all about writing the
2:18:29prose, and I would give it instructions
2:18:31on what to write on that first chapter.
2:18:33And if you're a pure discovery writer,
2:18:35you might not have anything else planned
2:18:37beyond that first chapter. You'll just
2:18:38give it the summary of your first
2:18:40chapter, let it write the thing, and
2:18:42then you get to the editing process, and
2:18:44then you move on, write out what you
2:18:46want in the next chapter, give that to
2:18:48the AI, and so on. So, you're kind of
2:18:50building your outline as you go. The
2:18:52process I'm going to show you will build
2:18:55your outline all at once, but even with
2:18:57that, you run into some danger with
2:18:58letting AI do too much work here,
2:19:00because I find that for me, the most
2:19:03creative part of this whole process is
2:19:05the outlining process. So, I will spend
2:19:07a lot of time going through the outline.
2:19:10And I will, because AI has gotten a lot
2:19:12better at outlining in the last like
2:19:14year, I will often start with an outline
2:19:16that AI gives me, but I might cut huge
2:19:19chunks of it and start rewriting it
2:19:20myself. I will always have a whole lot
2:19:23of feedback. Usually, I'll flesh things
2:19:25out a little bit more, so that I end up
2:19:27with a longer outline, and I will even
2:19:30go and flesh out the next couple of
2:19:32chapters even more when I'm about to
2:19:34write the prose for those chapters using
2:19:36AI, because I find that as I'm going
2:19:38through and writing each chapter with
2:19:41AI, which we get into in the next
2:19:42module, I find that sometimes I get
2:19:44ideas, I get sort of into that flow
2:19:46state, think, "Oh, we need to add this
2:19:48to the outline for the next chapter."
2:19:50So, for me, the outline is probably the
2:19:52most malleable
2:19:54of all of these things. And so, I'll
2:19:56kind of show you what a finished outline
2:19:58looks like and what to do with that.
2:20:00But, let's first start with Claude and
2:20:03what we do with Claude. So, as before,
2:20:05there are two ways to do this. We could
2:20:07put our prompt inside of a project
2:20:10that's specifically designed to help you
2:20:12outline books, and we've got that here.
2:20:14And the prompt that we have here is this
2:20:17one. Using the story dossier character
2:20:19sheet, world-building sheet, and plot
2:20:21template, generate a fully fleshed-out
2:20:23outline for the story. Make sure to use
2:20:25the outline template. Get into that in a
2:20:26second. To inform you on the kinds of
2:20:28things that should happen in the
2:20:30chapters you are outlining. The summary
2:20:31for each chapter should have specific
2:20:33details rather than vague allusions to
2:20:35what should happen. Write it as though
2:20:36you are going to hand it off to a
2:20:37ghostwriter to write the first draft.
2:20:39Make sure you follow the template
2:20:40extremely carefully. Only include the
2:20:42asked-for outline details. Do not add
2:20:44any preamble commentary or anything
2:20:46other than what I've asked for above.
2:20:47All right. So, this one's a relatively
2:20:49short one, but there is an important
2:20:52element here that is not included in
2:20:54this prompt, and that is the outline
2:20:56template. So, let's talk a little bit
2:20:58about that for a minute. So, I've
2:20:59already gone over how to create your own
2:21:02templates, and if you have those, you
2:21:03can absolutely use those. If you've
2:21:05bought my book The Plot Module, you can
2:21:07use a version of this that has uh that
2:21:10built into as a template. That'll work
2:21:12in a pinch for most genres, although I
2:21:14probably wouldn't use it for romance.
2:21:15But, in my membership, I've actually
2:21:17gone through and created templates for a
2:21:18lot of different genres, and there are
2:21:20many more on the way. There will be over
2:21:22200 by the time I'm finished. In my
2:21:24membership, you can find this where
2:21:26where it says here "Phase 6 Genre." You
2:21:28click on that, and there are a bunch of
2:21:30genres here that you can go through. I
2:21:31even have instructions also about like
2:21:34why genre is important, genres versus
2:21:36tropes, how to research a genre, tools
2:21:38for genre research, and introducing
2:21:40these story hacks here. So, in this
2:21:41case, we're doing a cozy sci-fi, and
2:21:43here are all my templates for a cozy
2:21:45sci-fi. The plot template is the one
2:21:46that we want here. So, I would just
2:21:48select this because I've already created
2:21:50this template, so I have no need to
2:21:51create a new one. And just copy this.
2:21:54Now, if we go into Claude in our project
2:21:57here, I'm going to delete this plot
2:21:58template that I have in had in here
2:22:00before, and we're going to pull in this
2:22:03template. So, I'm going to say add text
2:22:05from add text content. We'll call this
2:22:07cozy sci-fi
2:22:10template, and paste in what we've got
2:22:12there, and then say add context. And
2:22:14once again, if you want these templates,
2:22:16I do sell each of these books for $5 on
2:22:18Amazon, but it's much more
2:22:20cost-effective to actually come here
2:22:22into the group and get them because
2:22:24they're all here at no extra charge. If
2:22:27you add it up, like 200 * 5, right? Like
2:22:29that's $1,000. That's over $1,000 that
2:22:31you'd have to pay on Amazon to get all
2:22:33of these templates, and here you can
2:22:35just get them right here. And plus, the
2:22:38ones you get on Amazon are like the book
2:22:39version, so you would have to like take
2:22:41screenshots, get the prompt extracted
2:22:44from that, whereas I just give you the
2:22:45docs right here that have everything in
2:22:47markdown, so it's easy for the AI to
2:22:48read. If you want to check this out, be
2:22:50sure to go to the link that I will have
2:22:52down below. Here is the about page that
2:22:54you'll see when you get there, and it
2:22:56has a list of everything you get inside
2:22:58of the group. Among other things, of
2:22:59course, you get Story Hacker OS, which
2:23:01I'll show off what that does for
2:23:02outlining in a minute. Yeah, it's
2:23:04there's just a lot of stuff here. People
2:23:06tell me all the time they come here for
2:23:09the tools or the genre guides or
2:23:10whatever it is, and they stay for the
2:23:12community because we really, truly have
2:23:14one of the best communities on all of
2:23:16the school platform. Like we're
2:23:18literally in the top, I think we're
2:23:20ranked number six in the tech category,
2:23:21which is an extremely competitive
2:23:23category, and that's for engagement, not
2:23:25for like profit or anything like that.
2:23:27Any questions that you have, we will
2:23:28answer them for you inside of the group.
2:23:30I make a point of being in there every
2:23:32single day, make sure I'm answering as
2:23:33many questions as possible, but very
2:23:35often, the questions are all answered
2:23:37before I can get to them. And I go
2:23:38through everything every day. People are
2:23:39super engaged, super supportive, and
2:23:42it's just a fantastic place to be if you
2:23:44are pro-AI and want a safe space for
2:23:46that. Now, in order to make this work
2:23:48for Claude, we need to bring in all of
2:23:50our contacts that we fleshed out so far.
2:23:52All of this will be needed to create our
2:23:54novel outline. So, I've copied what I've
2:23:55got for characters. I'm going to say add
2:23:57text context characters. We'll say cozy
2:24:01sci-fi characters. Paste in all of that
2:24:04context. Put that in there. And then
2:24:06we'll do the same for world building.
2:24:08All cozy sci-fi world building. Paste in
2:24:10everything we've got so far. And then
2:24:12we'll do the same with our story dossier
2:24:14because that does have some info that it
2:24:16needs for plot. Paste that in and now we
2:24:18have all of our context here. So, now
2:24:20all I have to do is say basically please
2:24:23outline all chapters. I could also say
2:24:26outline chapters 1 through 3 or 1
2:24:28through 10 if I wanted to. But, we'll
2:24:30just say all chapters. And as you can
2:24:32see it's going through and actually
2:24:33generating this whole outline. So, I'm
2:24:35going to pause this um cuz I don't
2:24:38necessarily want it to use up all my
2:24:39credits right now. Um but, let me show
2:24:42you the version of this that we have
2:24:44here in an end. So, this is my outline
2:24:46generator. And once again, we're doing
2:24:48multiple steps here. So, with Claude,
2:24:51when you're working with Claude it's
2:24:52always just one step at a time that
2:24:54you're doing because you're going in a
2:24:55chat interface, right? This way we'll do
2:24:57multiple steps for you and you don't
2:25:00have to check in between each step. You
2:25:01just get the final output and then you
2:25:03can work uh flesh that out further on
2:25:06your own merits and all of that. So, the
2:25:07way this automation works is it starts
2:25:09by pulling in the templates that we
2:25:11want. So, not just a plot template, but
2:25:13I also have it pull in like what's the
2:25:14themes, what's the tropes. And then it
2:25:17also pulls in those documents we had
2:25:18earlier including the story dossier, the
2:25:20character sheet, and the world building
2:25:22sheet. It creates a new document where
2:25:23all of the outline info will go. It
2:25:25summarizes the tropes. It writes a the
2:25:28full outline all at once. And then does
2:25:31an emotional check. And once again, like
2:25:33the other checks that we've done, this
2:25:34is kind of just to make sure that the
2:25:36outline has a good emotional gut punch
2:25:39to it that it's not just a series of
2:25:40events. That it that people will
2:25:42actually care about, and then it does a
2:25:44rewrite after that. Then, I have it put
2:25:46what we call sliders, plot sliders.
2:25:49These are very similar to the character
2:25:50sliders that I showed up earlier, except
2:25:52these are for plot elements. So, we have
2:25:54things like tension, and here is a
2:25:56rubric of what complete stillness, mild
2:25:59friction, moderate pressure, clear and
2:26:00present danger, maximum immediate
2:26:02threat, what those all look like. And
2:26:05so, it'll give us a number between 1 and
2:26:0710. Dread, what does that look like? And
2:26:10emotional intimacy. So, this is how
2:26:11close the reader feels to the interior
2:26:13world of the viewpoint character. So,
2:26:15not necessarily like relationship
2:26:16intimacy, but emotional. Then, we have
2:26:18relationship tension. So, if there's two
2:26:20characters, not necessarily in a
2:26:22romantic relationship, any kind of
2:26:23relationship, if there's tension there,
2:26:25what does that look like? Pacing energy,
2:26:27humor, because some scenes require
2:26:29higher levels of humor or less. And
2:26:31those are our plot rubrics, or our
2:26:33rubric for the plot sliders. And so,
2:26:35what it does is it basically analyzes
2:26:37each chapter that it just went through
2:26:39and applies a rubric. From there, it
2:26:42does another logic check, just checking
2:26:44to make sure everything makes sense,
2:26:45that it doesn't see any plot holes and
2:26:47whatnot. And then, it does a second
2:26:49rewrite and adds the final document to a
2:26:53uh to an outline doc. So, that is
2:26:55everything that we've got there so far.
2:26:56It's a really excellent automation, and
2:26:59by the time it goes through this whole
2:27:01thing, I've got something that's really
2:27:02significant that is already way ahead of
2:27:05what Claude could give me in one shot.
2:27:07Usually, there's still stuff that I need
2:27:09to work with it on and add my own
2:27:12particular flavor and taste to it. And
2:27:15often, as I mentioned, outlining is my
2:27:17favorite part of the process. So, I
2:27:18often have a lot to say at this
2:27:20outlining stage. Cuz if you don't get
2:27:22the outline right, then the rest of the
2:27:24book will suffer as a result. So, we
2:27:26need to spend some time at the stage.
2:27:27So, once again, going to Story Hacker OS
2:27:30to see what I've built into this tool, I
2:27:33have created an outline assistant in the
2:27:35chat here. So, what this does is it
2:27:37allows you to flesh out an outline, can
2:27:40do an outline in one shot, it can do
2:27:42just a portion of the outline, it can
2:27:44like if you used an automation for an
2:27:46outline, but you cut a couple of the
2:27:48chapters, it can fill in those chapters
2:27:49that you cut, etc. And plus it also as
2:27:52always has access to all of those
2:27:54templates that are built into Story
2:27:56Hacker OS. So, you have that option
2:27:58there. But, of course, we want to look
2:27:59at the Book Builder automation. So,
2:28:01we've already done at this point brain
2:28:03dump to dossier, dossier to characters,
2:28:05dossier to world now it's time for the
2:28:07outline generator. So, inside of this
2:28:10outline generator automation, you what
2:28:12you do is you select your project. In
2:28:14this case, we'll select Cozy Sci-Fi 1.
2:28:16It automatically finds your story
2:28:17dossier, your character list, your world
2:28:19building list, and all your genre
2:28:21templates that you're using for that
2:28:22project. So, all you have to do is hit
2:28:24generate outline. And then it'll
2:28:25actually start walking through all of
2:28:27the different steps of the outline. Once
2:28:28that's finished, it'll look something
2:28:30like this inside of my project. And now
2:28:33I've got my entire list of world
2:28:35building elements, my entire list of
2:28:37characters. I can modify these to my
2:28:39heart's content if I want. And of
2:28:41course, we can do the same with our
2:28:42outline. So, what I would do at this
2:28:44point is carefully go through this
2:28:46outline and make sure everything is as I
2:28:49want it to be. If we read through this,
2:28:51Daria arrives at Waystation Kepler-9
2:28:53expecting a rust bucket she can catalog
2:28:55and sell before her lunch break ends
2:28:57only to find Isidro tending tomato vines
2:28:59in a repurposed cargo bay. When she
2:29:01notices a misalignment in the irrigation
2:29:03pump, a mechanical issue that will cause
2:29:05catastrophe failure, she instinctively
2:29:06fixes it using techniques from her
2:29:08grandmother's manual before Agnes, the
2:29:10station's AI, blocks her departure with
2:29:12a holographic display of knitting. The
2:29:13station smells of damp earth and ozone
2:29:16and every surface tells the story of a
2:29:17place stubbornly kept alive by people
2:29:19who never got the memo that they were
2:29:20supposed to leave. It gives us then the
2:29:22viewpoint character for this scene, the
2:29:23spice level, which in this case is one
2:29:25out of 10, violence level also one out
2:29:27of 10, and swearing level is a two out
2:29:30out 10. Then it gives us those sliders,
2:29:32so we have tension, dread, emotional
2:29:34intimacy, relationship tension, pacing
2:29:36energy, and humor. And then we move on
2:29:38to the next chapter. So, we would then
2:29:40go through and modify this. And
2:29:42regardless of whether you're using
2:29:43Claude, N8N, or Story Hacker OS, you
2:29:46would still need to go through and make
2:29:47sure this is all good. I would say there
2:29:49are a few things in here that I'd want
2:29:50to clarify about the characters that it
2:29:52just sort of skips over, which is fine,
2:29:54but you know, that we we would want to
2:29:56actually go through and fix that. And
2:29:58you can actually use our outline
2:29:59assistant here inside of the chat window
2:30:01to improve something. So, I could say,
2:30:03"Chapter 1, I'd like to rewrite the
2:30:06chapter 1 outline section because I feel
2:30:10it is still too vague what is going on.
2:30:15Let's do more to introduce the
2:30:17characters and situation and explain
2:30:20[music]
2:30:20it well for the author who will be
2:30:24writing this later." All right, so I
2:30:26could say that, and we've got our
2:30:28outline assistant persona selected. just
2:30:30say send, and it's already got the
2:30:32outline in its context here, and now
2:30:34it's just going to rewrite that chapter
2:30:361, hopefully with my edits added in. You
2:30:39can also edit this manually, of course.
2:30:40And now I could just copy this, select
2:30:43my initial chapter, and paste it in, and
2:30:46there it goes. So, now I have this more
2:30:48fleshed out version here. You can
2:30:50continue this review for the entire
2:30:51thing. So, that is essentially how I
2:30:54would do my outlining for using AI. As I
2:30:58said, outlining is my favorite part, so
2:31:00I spend the most time on this myself,
2:31:01but I still will usually do a first pass
2:31:03[music] with one of these tools, whether
2:31:05it's Claude or N8N or Story Hacker OS,
2:31:07to fully flesh things out first, so that
2:31:10it's already 80% of the way there by the
2:31:12time I get to look at it. But then we
2:31:14come to the biggest step yet, and this
2:31:17is one of the ones that perhaps is the
2:31:18most controversial. So, let's get into
2:31:20that next and take a look at what we can
2:31:23do to actually write with AI.
2:31:27Module 7 is all about what most people
2:31:29consider to be the most important step,
2:31:31which is the actual writing. But, I find
2:31:33that this part, when using AI, is
2:31:35actually kind of routine and takes the
2:31:37shortest amount of time. Though, we will
2:31:39spend a good amount of time analyzing
2:31:40the output in the next module. This step
2:31:42is, of course, the writing of the actual
2:31:44prose of your book. I typically go back
2:31:47and forth between writing prose and
2:31:48editing prose, which will be our next
2:31:50module. So, even though you'll see my
2:31:52processes for generating prose with AI,
2:31:54keep in mind that I'm not doing so for
2:31:56the entire book all at once.
2:31:58Additionally, this is the step where a
2:31:59lot of people get a little hesitant.
2:32:01There are a lot of fears and unease
2:32:03around using AI to actually write the
2:32:05prose of the book. So, let me hopefully
2:32:08help with some of those fears. [music]
2:32:09First of all, you don't actually have to
2:32:11use AI for this step. Trust me. A lot of
2:32:13people will tell you that you do if you
2:32:15want to keep up with the world that
2:32:16we're going into, but I strongly
2:32:19disagree on this point. I am very much
2:32:21of the opinion that you should use AI
2:32:22for those areas of your creative process
2:32:25that you enjoy the least, and you should
2:32:28focus more on those areas that bring you
2:32:30the most joy. That is the best marriage
2:32:32of technology with human creativity is
2:32:35to let the technology take care of what
2:32:38is drudgework for you, so you can focus
2:32:40more on what is enjoyable for you. That
2:32:43way, not only does it make the whole
2:32:46process [music] more joyful for
2:32:48yourself, but I think that will also
2:32:50lead to a much better product at the end
2:32:53of this whole process. And [music] once
2:32:54again, the writing process is multiple
2:32:57steps. It's not just one thing. We've
2:32:59literally spent probably hours at this
2:33:01point going through this whole process,
2:33:03and we're only now getting to the actual
2:33:04writing part. Writing has always been a
2:33:07multi-step process, so there's a chance
2:33:09that at least one of those steps is one
2:33:11you don't enjoy that much. Use AI for
2:33:13that. Figure out which step of the
2:33:15process is your favorite, and do that
2:33:16part yourself. The second concern I want
2:33:19to address is the idea of AI slop.
2:33:21Remember, it's only slop if it's bad.
2:33:25Human slop absolutely exists as well. In
2:33:27this case, AI helps with prose writing a
2:33:29ton, but effort is still required. This
2:33:31is about working smarter and harder, not
2:33:34just harder. Also, another concern,
2:33:36Amazon actually has no problem with
2:33:38AI-written text as long as the quality
2:33:40is good. They care more about the user
2:33:42experience, which you should too, but
2:33:44you do have to disclose the use of AI to
2:33:46Amazon. They're the only people that I
2:33:48recommend you do disclose this to. To
2:33:51anybody worried that Amazon's going to
2:33:52de-list your book just because they used
2:33:55AI, Amazon is actually very pro-AI. They
2:33:58are one of the top investors in Claude,
2:34:01which we have been using for this whole
2:34:02video. The only reason I think that they
2:34:05are asking people to disclose if AI was
2:34:08used is to perhaps comply with, say, EU
2:34:13laws that come into effect in in the
2:34:15future. Uh cuz EU tends to a little bit
2:34:17more strict about this stuff. If there
2:34:19are any kind of laws in the future,
2:34:20Amazon would be able to say, "Here, here
2:34:22is what has been disclosed to us." But
2:34:24right now, they do not disclose to other
2:34:25people if you disclose to them that you
2:34:28used AI writing. There's really not any
2:34:30issues with it. What they do care about
2:34:32is quality. So, if you have a book that
2:34:34is low quality, whether you used AI or
2:34:37not, then you might need to worry a
2:34:39little bit about the status of your
2:34:41account and all of that. You don't want
2:34:43to look like a scammer, and what we're
2:34:44doing here, if you do it right in the
2:34:46way I'm telling you, you will not be a
2:34:49scammer. You're not going to be someone
2:34:50that's taking advantage of the system by
2:34:52just throwing hundreds of like slop
2:34:55books at Amazon to try and make a quick
2:34:57buck. That's the kind of thing that will
2:34:58get you banned, but if you continue to
2:35:00try and make this whole thing high
2:35:02quality and actually put in effort into
2:35:04this process and work smarter and
2:35:06harder, then you're not going to have
2:35:07any issues. Lastly, [music] I want to
2:35:08talk about public disclosure of AI use.
2:35:11I get this question a lot, "Should I
2:35:12disclose?" If you do your job correctly
2:35:14and you're and you're doing
2:35:16>> [music]
2:35:16>> good prompts and good editing
2:35:17afterwards, people will not actually be
2:35:20able to tell that you used AI,
2:35:22especially as AI gets better. I also
2:35:24like to say, would a Adobe Photoshop
2:35:26artist have to disclose that they used
2:35:28Photoshop? Because AI is essentially
2:35:30Photoshop for writing, which we've never
2:35:32actually had a Photoshop level
2:35:34innovation in the writing space before,
2:35:36so it's naturally jarring that we do
2:35:38now. That's one of the reasons why
2:35:40authors are so upset. But Photoshop was
2:35:42also ridiculed in its day, but now no
2:35:44one thinks anything of it. It's just
2:35:46another way of creating art. The
2:35:48traditional way and the new way are both
2:35:50excellent ways of doing the job, so you
2:35:52just pick the one you prefer the most,
2:35:54whether that's Photoshop or traditional
2:35:56art. And the same is true of writing.
2:35:58This is a different and new and
2:36:00innovative way to get your stories on
2:36:03paper so people could read them. But the
2:36:04old way is just as valid. And once
2:36:06again, if you do your job correctly, you
2:36:08won't have any issues with quality.
2:36:09[music] And you'll hear this a lot, both
2:36:11from me and from other YouTubers in this
2:36:13space, that the AI right now is the
2:36:16worst it will ever be. So best to learn
2:36:18how to use it now, so you'll be ahead of
2:36:20the curve when it gets truly amazing. So
2:36:22enough on this little soapbox tangent,
2:36:24[music]
2:36:24let's actually get into what to do if
2:36:27you do want to use AI to generate your
2:36:29prose. So going back to my list of
2:36:31prompts here, this is the prompt that
2:36:33we're going to put into our Claude
2:36:36project. Now this one's a little longer
2:36:37than before, so I'll pause here to see
2:36:39this screenshot this first part, which
2:36:42says, "When a user asks you to write a
2:36:43specific chapter, given your context,
2:36:45your task is to write the entire chapter
2:36:47based on the information provided in the
2:36:48outline, the provided character sheet,
2:36:50world building sheet, and story dossier.
2:36:52And cover it thoroughly from deep point
2:36:54of view, writing the scene as if it was
2:36:55written by a best-selling novelist, and
2:36:56not rushing through the scene. Be sure
2:36:58to ask the user how many words they want
2:37:00to have in this chapter, then write that
2:37:03number of words." And I had a few typos
2:37:05there, so be sure to take a screenshot
2:37:07again now.
2:37:08Pay special care to show deep point of
2:37:10view and showing not telling in order to
2:37:12fully flesh out the scene without
2:37:13skipping over important details. The
2:37:14reader should feel that they are fully
2:37:16immersed in the scene, seeing the events
2:37:18through the lens of the viewpoint
2:37:19character, rather than being told what
2:37:20happened. Always keep the following
2:37:22rules in mind. And then I give it a list
2:37:24of various rules. Most of them around
2:37:27like mixing short and punchy sentences
2:37:29with long descriptive ones, the show
2:37:31don't tell principle, convey events and
2:37:33story through dialogue if possible, put
2:37:36dialogue on its own paragraph to
2:37:37separate scene and action, you know, a
2:37:39bunch of different things like that,
2:37:40reduce the use of metaphors, write in a
2:37:42clear and direct and concise style, etc.
2:37:45Pause right here so you can take a
2:37:46picture or a screenshot of this second
2:37:49page here cuz it is a little bit of a
2:37:50longer prompt. But all you have to do is
2:37:52go into your project and create a new
2:37:55project if you don't have one already. I
2:37:57have one called the novel chapter
2:37:59writer, which has that prompt already
2:38:01built into it here. Then all you need to
2:38:03do is pull in your outline, your world
2:38:05building sheet, and your character
2:38:06sheet. And then if you're writing a
2:38:08second or third chapter, I also like to
2:38:10put the previous chapter, only the
2:38:12previous chapter, not the whole thing.
2:38:13If you do the whole thing, you're going
2:38:15to be giving it way too much context,
2:38:17and that'll water down your prompt and
2:38:18make the whole process a little bit less
2:38:20efficient. But you can do that and then
2:38:23start writing your chapter one here. So
2:38:26I've got an example here that you can
2:38:28see. All I had to do was say write
2:38:29chapter one, and then I could move on to
2:38:31the next one say write chapter two, etc.
2:38:33And then from here you would be able to
2:38:35put that first chapter here as your
2:38:37previous chapter of context, and then
2:38:39move on to write chapter two, etc. You
2:38:41could of course also create a Claude
2:38:43skill using this prompt that we just
2:38:46injected into the the project. I've
2:38:49shown you that process already, so I'm
2:38:50going to skip it right now. Let's just
2:38:52move straight into the automation
2:38:55because it's one of my most complex and
2:38:56advanced ones that I've created to this
2:38:58point. I'm actually really proud of this
2:39:00automation because there are additional
2:39:01steps here that don't make sense to do
2:39:04in Claude, but if you're doing it as an
2:39:06automation, it makes sense and this will
2:39:08actually improve the quality of your
2:39:10chapter significantly. So, let's just
2:39:12briefly run through what this automation
2:39:14does. First, I bring in a pro style
2:39:16sheet and this is something that you
2:39:18could add here into your cloud project
2:39:20as well. I haven't talked about creating
2:39:21style sheets, but I have whole videos
2:39:24devoted to creating a style sheet. You
2:39:26could bring in simply examples of your
2:39:27writing and do it that way, but we bring
2:39:30that in, we bring in the character
2:39:31sheet, the world building sheet and the
2:39:32outline. We create a new blank document
2:39:35where this book is going to go and then
2:39:37this step sorts through all of the
2:39:39chapters in the outline, creates a list
2:39:42of each one and then it starts going
2:39:44through a loop to go through all of
2:39:47those chapters and write them one at a
2:39:49time. Before it does that, it grabs the
2:39:51previous 2,000 words. Now, of course, if
2:39:53you're writing chapter one, you don't
2:39:54have any previous words, so this is
2:39:56moot, but if you're writing chapter two,
2:39:58this is where it's getting the previous
2:39:59chapter text from. So, it will always
2:40:02have the previous 2,000 words as an
2:40:05example of what you're writing and what
2:40:06you want it to look like. And then, we
2:40:08zoom out just a little bit, all of these
2:40:11steps that you see right here are all
2:40:13devoted to creating one thing, which is
2:40:15a scene brief. And I used to do this in
2:40:17one step, but what I wanted to do is to
2:40:20think more carefully about each step.
2:40:22So, I separated it all into multiple
2:40:25steps so that I could actually more
2:40:28accurately think through everything it
2:40:30needs and create the scene brief so that
2:40:32when it goes to write the first draft,
2:40:34that scene brief is able to guide it in
2:40:37a much more efficient way. So, we start
2:40:38with these three steps here, which are
2:40:40the plot selector, the character
2:40:41selector and the world building
2:40:42selector. And all these do is they look
2:40:44through the like, okay, we're going to
2:40:46write chapter one here. Let's look
2:40:48through all of the elements that are
2:40:50going to be needed for writing chapter
2:40:52one. And so, it looks through, it grabs
2:40:54the plot of that chapter from the
2:40:56outline. It grabs the characters, only
2:40:58the characters that are showing up in
2:40:59that scene. It grabs the world building
2:41:01elements that are relevant to that
2:41:03scene, so it's only grabbing those. And
2:41:05I'm using really cheap models here so
2:41:07that this is not using a lot of context.
2:41:08And even though this adds extra steps,
2:41:10this is actually going to save us
2:41:12tokens. And then I ask it to estimate
2:41:14the word count here in a two-step
2:41:16process. Basically, all that happens
2:41:17here is that estimates the word count
2:41:19and then multiplies it by 1.5 because
2:41:22usually it needs to be a little bit
2:41:23higher than it thinks it does. And then
2:41:26we run into these three steps, which is
2:41:29taking what we selected from the plot,
2:41:32the characters, and the world building,
2:41:33and it fleshes them out a little bit
2:41:35more and makes it appropriate for the
2:41:36scene. So, this plot scene brief will
2:41:38flesh out everything. It'll give me a
2:41:40bunch of beats of the scene and
2:41:42blocking. Blocking is a really
2:41:44underrated thing when it comes to
2:41:46writing with AI. The concept of blocking
2:41:48is that figuring out where in the the
2:41:50physical space are all your characters
2:41:53and objects and things and kind of
2:41:54determining that because AI doesn't
2:41:57often do this naturally. It'll just sort
2:41:59of have what we call it the floating
2:42:00head phenomenon where these characters
2:42:03are just sort of existing in the scene,
2:42:04but we're not really given a whole lot
2:42:06of context of where they are in the
2:42:08scene, which can help ground it a little
2:42:10bit more. So, it does that and
2:42:11establishes blocking. It also
2:42:13establishes the character scene brief.
2:42:16So, what this does is it takes all of
2:42:17the characters that were selected that
2:42:19are going to be relevant for this scene
2:42:21and it adjusts them as needed. I've
2:42:23already mentioned the sliders earlier in
2:42:25this course. The sliders like are they
2:42:27calm or are they stressed? This will
2:42:29adjust those sliders depending on the
2:42:32scene and what's going on in the scene.
2:42:34So, if it's a really stressful scene, it
2:42:35might adjust the sliders to be more
2:42:37stressful. If it's more of a relaxing
2:42:40scene, then it might make them a little
2:42:42bit more calm. And so on for all of the
2:42:44the sliders. It'll also adjust things
2:42:46like what are they wearing and other
2:42:48things that might be relevant to that
2:42:50scene. Like let's say your character
2:42:52loses an arm halfway through the book.
2:42:54If that's the case, then we don't want
2:42:56them to be described as having both arms
2:42:58for all of the chapters that exist after
2:43:00that. So, this kind of goes through and
2:43:03finds all of those things and adjust
2:43:04them to make sure that everything works
2:43:06for those characters. And then this
2:43:08final step in this process, it does the
2:43:10exact same thing but for the world
2:43:12building instead of the characters. And
2:43:13then we run our first chronology check.
2:43:16What this does is it goes through and
2:43:19establishes that, "Hey, looks at the
2:43:21scene brief. It looks at everything
2:43:22that's been generated here." And it
2:43:24compares that to the overall outline and
2:43:26says, "Are there any issues with
2:43:28chronology here? Are we like introducing
2:43:31clues that shouldn't be revealed yet?"
2:43:33That sort of thing. And then it does a
2:43:34rewrite of the scene brief from all of
2:43:37that info that it gives us. And then we
2:43:40finally, after all of that, move on to
2:43:43writing the first draft. And ironically,
2:43:45with all of those steps that we had to
2:43:46create the the scene brief, we really
2:43:48only need this one to write the first
2:43:51draft. It'll take that scene brief and
2:43:53write the whole thing. And then I have
2:43:55it take that and look at the last 20,000
2:43:57words. And from there it'll do a second
2:44:00chronology check, where basically it's
2:44:02looking at everything that was written
2:44:04previously, or at least the last 20,000
2:44:05words, and make sure there is no major
2:44:08chronology issues from those previous
2:44:10chapters to this one. It'll also do a
2:44:12style check, so this will compare your
2:44:13style guide against the what was written
2:44:15in the first draft, which by the way we
2:44:17bring in that style guide at to give it
2:44:19advice on how to write the first draft.
2:44:21But this just does a double check of
2:44:23that style to make sure that
2:44:24everything's good there. it does, from
2:44:26that all of the data that it collects
2:44:27from that, it does a uh another rewrite
2:44:30and adds that chapter to your document.
2:44:33And from that, that's the end of this
2:44:34automation. So, it's a very involved
2:44:36automation, and it does this for every
2:44:38chapter, and it can sometimes take hours
2:44:39to go through the whole thing. And I
2:44:41wouldn't actually go through the whole
2:44:42thing. I would do one or two or three
2:44:44chapters at a time at most, and then go
2:44:46back to your outline, make sure that the
2:44:49next couple of chapters are are good and
2:44:51have what you want, and then you can let
2:44:53it go for the next few chapters and just
2:44:55continue that cycle until you've
2:44:56finished the whole book. So, what does
2:44:58this look like inside of Story Hacker
2:44:59OS? If we move on to that. Now, unlike
2:45:02the other steps, I do not have a prose
2:45:05writing persona in my list of personas
2:45:08because of the complexity of this whole
2:45:10process with the automation and
2:45:11everything. You can, of course, inside
2:45:14uh
2:45:14whatever document you're in, you can
2:45:16just do a control K and describe what
2:45:19you want and it'll do that. And as long
2:45:21as you've got your style guide in your
2:45:23context, it should be able to see that
2:45:25style guide as it's writing. So, you can
2:45:27just tell it what to generate to move
2:45:29on, you know, do like two, three, 400
2:45:31words at a time and kind of go one piece
2:45:34at a time like that if you wanted to.
2:45:35Going to our automation, we have now
2:45:37this last automation. We've gone through
2:45:39all the others. Now, we just have this
2:45:41one that says chapter generator. If I
2:45:42click on this and select our project,
2:45:45which is Cozy Sci-Fi 1 in this case, it
2:45:47will go through and make sure it's got
2:45:49your full story outline, which I've got
2:45:51here. It's got the all characters doc
2:45:54and the all world building doc. And from
2:45:56here, uh you can also select a POV like
2:45:58first, third-person limited, or
2:46:00third-person omniscient and the past
2:46:01tense, past or present. And then it'll
2:46:03give you a list of chapters and it's
2:46:05pulling this from your outline. So, you
2:46:06do need to make sure that they are
2:46:08present in your outline and that they're
2:46:09formatted as headers. And right now it's
2:46:11got all of them selected. So, if I
2:46:13wanted to, I could write the entire book
2:46:15all at once, just like I could if I were
2:46:17using the N8N automation. But once
2:46:19again, I do not recommend this. So, I'm
2:46:20going to deselect all and just select,
2:46:23let's say, the first two or so.
2:46:25Actually, I'll just going to do one for
2:46:27now uh for the demonstration. And then
2:46:29you've got your genre templates that
2:46:31it's pulling in and author notes. So,
2:46:32all I have to do now is say generate one
2:46:34chapter. And now you can see it is now
2:46:36going through each of the steps in this
2:46:39process. So, it went through and
2:46:40extracted what it needs for the plot.
2:46:42This is just from the outline verbatim.
2:46:44It'll flesh it out later. And it's
2:46:46pulling in the characters that are
2:46:47needed for this specific scene. Now it's
2:46:50moved on to doing the world build
2:46:52selecting the world building from the
2:46:53scene. Grabs the important things here
2:46:56from like the way station Kepler 9 and
2:46:59needs to know for the scene and so on
2:47:01and so forth. So it'll continue down
2:47:03this list. A lot of these are the exact
2:47:05same steps that you find in the NNN
2:47:07automation but just made a little bit
2:47:08easier here and it'll continue to run
2:47:11through that. Once this is totally
2:47:12finished, we can move on to the next
2:47:14module which is a lot of other people's
2:47:17favorite. It's not my personal favorite
2:47:18but I do enjoy it more than most of the
2:47:21other steps on this other than the
2:47:22outlining. So let's go through into that
2:47:25module next. Welcome to module 8 where
2:47:28we're talking all about the editing
2:47:29process. Editing is where things often
2:47:31get fun and for many people it's the far
2:47:34more creative part of the writing
2:47:36process. I personally don't enjoy it as
2:47:38much as the outlining stage but I know a
2:47:40lot of writers will spend most [music]
2:47:41of their time in the editing stage to
2:47:43really perfect that book. Even authors
2:47:46who don't use AI, in fact, especially
2:47:48authors that don't use AI uh spend a lot
2:47:50of time in the editing. Now
2:47:51traditionally there have been
2:47:53approximately three types of editing.
2:47:55Some people say four but they split
2:47:57hairs and I like to keep things simple.
2:47:59The first is developmental editing. This
2:48:01is the kind of editing where you will,
2:48:04especially if you have a developmental
2:48:05editor, they'll actually go through your
2:48:07entire book and look at it from a
2:48:09structural standpoint. They'll look at
2:48:10character arcs. They'll look at making
2:48:13sure everything is like logically
2:48:15consistent within the book. Make sure
2:48:16that you don't need any additional
2:48:18scenes here and there or maybe you need
2:48:19to cut a few scenes here or there
2:48:21because they don't really serve the
2:48:22overall plot. Regardless, that's what a
2:48:24developmental editor does. Quick tip, if
2:48:27you hire a developmental editor, I
2:48:29recommend doing so before you've written
2:48:31the book while you're in the outlining
2:48:33stage because first of all, it will cost
2:48:35a whole lot less for them to go through
2:48:37your outline and give you advice there
2:48:39than it will to have them go through
2:48:41your entire book. But, I digress. The
2:48:44next type is called line editing, and
2:48:46this is editing that takes place on a
2:48:49more sentence-by-sentence,
2:48:50paragraph-by-paragraph basis. [music]
2:48:52Where we're actually looking at the
2:48:53structure of the sentence and the
2:48:55paragraph, and actually going through
2:48:57and trying to make improvements there.
2:48:58Funny enough, this is very similar to
2:49:01what we will be doing with the
2:49:02AI-generated text. The third type of
2:49:04editing is proofreading. A lot of people
2:49:07will also throw in copyediting here. I
2:49:10find that there's not a good definition
2:49:12of like where line editing ends and
2:49:15where copywriting or proofreading begin.
2:49:17So, for me, it's easier to differentiate
2:49:18between line editing and proofreading.
2:49:20But, proofreading is essentially just
2:49:22going through and making those more
2:49:24technical, grammatical, or spelling
2:49:27changes to make sure that there's
2:49:29nothing actually like grammatically
2:49:31wrong with your book. AI is really good
2:49:33at a lot of things, and it can actually
2:49:34save you a lot of time in the edit. For
2:49:36instance, proofreading is something AI
2:49:38is extremely good at. And that alone
2:49:40could save you hundreds of dollars on a
2:49:42proofreader. And it already does a
2:49:43decent job at line editing compared to
2:49:45the average human. Or at least, what it
2:49:47writes is not too bad compared to the
2:49:50average human. Though, it still has a
2:49:52ways to go before it's the same as a
2:49:54skilled human, especially a skilled
2:49:56human that has had a line edit of their
2:49:58work. But, while AI-written books are
2:50:00already a step above what you might get
2:50:02if you wrote the book yourself,
2:50:03especially if you're a beginner, writing
2:50:05with AI does introduce some new problems
2:50:08that come with ones that it solves. And
2:50:10I'm talking, of course, of those
2:50:11AI-isms, those repetitive words or
2:50:14phrases that AI tends to introduce while
2:50:17it's writing, because of the way it's
2:50:18trained. Now, don't get me wrong, even
2:50:20though this is a new problem that didn't
2:50:22exist before, I still think AI saves you
2:50:25a lot of time overall. In fact, I don't
2:50:26think it, I know it. And eventually,
2:50:28these models will improve so that these
2:50:30issues are no longer as big of a
2:50:32problem. But, for now, we do have to
2:50:33deal with these AI-isms. So, here's is
2:50:36of the top 10 AI-isms so you can look
2:50:38out for them. The first is the
2:50:40contrastive hook. This is where you say,
2:50:42"It's not X, it's Y." It's a neat little
2:50:44rhythm where the text negates one or two
2:50:46things and then reframes them creating a
2:50:48slick but overproduced slogan-like
2:50:51intro. The second is a rhetorical
2:50:53question with an instant answer. The
2:50:55writing poses a question as a fake hook
2:50:57like, "What does this really mean?" and
2:50:59then immediately answers it instead of
2:51:01letting the question genuinely drive
2:51:03exploration. The third is the triple
2:51:05emphasis lists, things like faster,
2:51:07smarter, better. Ideas are constantly
2:51:09packaged into a three-part list for
2:51:11cadence, even when the content doesn't
2:51:13naturally fall into threes. The fourth
2:51:15is overused AI words. You've probably
2:51:17heard of delve or leverage or holistic
2:51:20or testament. You'll hear a lot of these
2:51:22things. We've got big lists of them that
2:51:24you can find all over the internet. The
2:51:25prose leans heavily on a small set of
2:51:27smart-sounding abstractions that show up
2:51:29far more often in machine-generated text
2:51:32than in normal human writing. Number
2:51:33five is inflated stakes for mundane
2:51:36topics. So, everyday subjects get framed
2:51:38as sweeping paradigm shifts making small
2:51:41points sound like civilizational turning
2:51:43points. Going along that is number six
2:51:45with grand abstract metaphors. So,
2:51:48things like the tapestry of or the
2:51:49landscape of or the a journey through.
2:51:52Abstract discussions are draped in
2:51:54clichéd metaphorical language that
2:51:56sounds lyrical but rarely adds concrete
2:51:58meaning. The seventh is generic
2:52:00importance adjectives. Things like
2:52:02significant, impactful, or key. These
2:52:05claims signal importance with vague,
2:52:07overused adjectives instead of precise
2:52:09[music] descriptors or measurable
2:52:11details. Number eight is bland,
2:52:13high-level generalizations. So, this
2:52:15could be like the writing hovers at the
2:52:17summary level and avoids specific
2:52:19numbers, names, locations, or sensory
2:52:21detail. So, the prose feels kind of
2:52:23floaty and ungrounded. You'll also see
2:52:26this with this is why I prompt so
2:52:28heavily to try and get it into a
2:52:30show-don't-tell state. Otherwise, it can
2:52:32feel very lofty and very much like we're
2:52:34just telling instead of showing. Number
2:52:36nine, you'll also see repetitive
2:52:38sentence templates and rephrasing.
2:52:39Though, the same few sentence shapes and
2:52:41phrases can reoccur restating the same
2:52:43idea in slightly different words instead
2:52:45of advancing the thought itself. This is
2:52:47how you can get really wordy AI output.
2:52:50Number 10 is overly neat and bow-tied
2:52:53conclusions. This is an ending recap
2:52:55everything and lands on a polished
2:52:57inspirational line that reads more like
2:52:59a generic slogan than a natural closing
2:53:00thought. And you'll see this at the end
2:53:02of chapters as well, but this is a
2:53:04particularly bad problem in things like
2:53:05academic writing. So, with that out of
2:53:07the way, let's now take a look at some
2:53:09AI writing so I can give you an idea of
2:53:11what it actually looks like when I'm
2:53:13reviewing and editing text. So, I'm
2:53:15going to do this here in Story Hacker
2:53:18OS. It doesn't matter where your prose
2:53:20came from. In our last module, we
2:53:22generated this first chapter of our cozy
2:53:24sci-fi. All I have to do is just save
2:53:26this to project and that gets saved to
2:53:28our project. And now we can go to that
2:53:30project and start editing it. So, here
2:53:33it is in all of its glory. So, when I'm
2:53:36going through and editing this, I
2:53:38usually just read through it. Sometimes
2:53:40I find it helpful to read it aloud or to
2:53:43get some kind of screen reader that can
2:53:45read through it for me. It's actually
2:53:47good to have a sort of robotic screen
2:53:49reader because anything that's a little
2:53:51off will will seem extra off if it's
2:53:54being read by something a little more
2:53:55robotic. I'm just going to read this
2:53:56aloud, of course, for you so we can kind
2:53:59of get a sense of what I would change.
2:54:01All right. The docking tube cycled with
2:54:03a wheeze that sounded like a heavy
2:54:04smoker trying to clear a chest
2:54:06infection. Right away, we've got a kind
2:54:09of overly dramatic metaphor here. So, we
2:54:13can cut most of this. I would say the
2:54:15docking tube cycled and Daria O'Shea
2:54:18stepped through. We need a comma there.
2:54:21The hatch with her tablet held in front
2:54:22of her chest like a breastplate. Again,
2:54:24we have another metaphor. I'll leave
2:54:26this one,
2:54:27because it kind of gives the impression
2:54:30that she's feeling very protective of
2:54:32herself, that she's nervous. So, I will
2:54:34leave that one there. It's fine to have
2:54:35metaphors, but AI does tend to overuse
2:54:37them. So, if you see them, I'd cut out
2:54:39like probably 50 to 80% of them. She had
2:54:42expected the standard hiss of pressure
2:54:44equalization, the clean click of
2:54:46magnetic seals engaging. Instead, the
2:54:48heavy pressure door ground shut behind
2:54:50her with a shuddering jolt and a
2:54:52hydraulic squeal that made her flinch so
2:54:54hard she nearly dropped her tablet. I
2:54:56actually think this is okay. There's
2:54:58maybe a little bit of fluff with how
2:55:01it's describing the hiss of pressure
2:55:03equalization, clean click of magnetic
2:55:06seals disengaging. In fact, yeah, let's
2:55:08just trim that just a little bit. So,
2:55:10I'm going to say she had expected the
2:55:11standard hiss of pressure equalization
2:55:13and we can remove clean and the click of
2:55:16magnetic seals disengaging. So, that's
2:55:19doesn't do much there, but it does kind
2:55:21of change the how the clauses are go one
2:55:24to the other. So, I think that's fine.
2:55:25Instead, heavy pressure door ground
2:55:27shut. Okay, yeah, that sentence is fine.
2:55:29"Bloody hell," she muttered. This is a
2:55:30genre decision, but given that this is a
2:55:33cozy sci-fi, I actually think we should
2:55:35remove the curse word here, because like
2:55:38you could totally have that word in this
2:55:40book, but this is literally the second
2:55:42paragraph. I think it would give the
2:55:43wrong impression. So, this is again one
2:55:46of those human pieces of judgment. It's
2:55:48not really a problem with the prose.
2:55:50It's just I don't think this is
2:55:51appropriate for the genre. I'm just
2:55:52going to say she muttered a short curse
2:55:57and clapped a hand over her ear. The
2:55:59sound had sawed through her composure
2:56:02like a rusty blade. Okay, this is a very
2:56:03AI-like sentence, another metaphor in
2:56:05there. And I don't think we need it. I
2:56:07think we can cut it entirely. It was the
2:56:08kind of sound She muttered short clapped
2:56:10a hand over her ears. It was the kind of
2:56:12sound that usually preceded a very
2:56:14expensive insurance claim. That one we
2:56:16can keep. A shimmer of amber light
2:56:17materialized at eye level. Dario jerked
2:56:20backward, her shoulder blades hitting
2:56:21the sealed door, and found herself
2:56:23staring at a holographic wireframe
2:56:25figure. That sentence is fine. There is
2:56:26a lot of description here, but it this
2:56:28the first time we're seeing this
2:56:29character appear, so I think that's
2:56:31fine. The figure had proportions of a
2:56:33grandmother and was actively knitting.
2:56:35Interesting. So, th- this is a good hook
2:56:37here for people who are just being
2:56:39introduced to the story. Her projected
2:56:40hands moved in a steady rhythm, a
2:56:42half-finished piece of lace trailing
2:56:44from the needles. Yeah, that's all fine.
2:56:45So, this might seem like I'm changing a
2:56:47lot with these, but like this whole
2:56:48sentence I think is totally this whole
2:56:50paragraph I think is fine. "Welcome to
2:56:51Waystation Kepler-9," the figure said,
2:56:53her voice carrying the unbothered
2:56:54cadence of someone who hadn't felt a
2:56:56spike in blood in blood pressure in a
2:56:58decade. Okay, that sentence needs work.
2:57:00Unbothered cadence, uh first of all, she
2:57:03doesn't have blood pressure. This is an
2:57:05AI figure, so we need to change that one
2:57:08entirely. Now, I would manually fix this
2:57:11normally, but I just want to show off a
2:57:12feature that I do have here. I can
2:57:14select this AI edit, and I'll say
2:57:17something like leave the dialogue, but
2:57:19make the rest of this paragraph more
2:57:23concise. And so now it'll show you what
2:57:26it changed. So, "Welcome to Waystation
2:57:28Kepler-9," the figure said, her voice
2:57:29calm and unhurried. "I do apologize for
2:57:32Gerald or Gerald. He gets excited when
2:57:34we have visitors." All right, so I would
2:57:36just say that's good, and now we've got
2:57:39that sentence there. It's a bit a little
2:57:41trimmed. It just says her voice was calm
2:57:43and unhurried, which I might even remove
2:57:45that. Like we could just say the figure
2:57:46said, but I'm okay with that cuz this at
2:57:49least gets the same point across that it
2:57:51was trying to get earlier, but this time
2:57:53it just says her voice is calm and
2:57:55unhurried. Daria lowered her hand, her
2:57:57fingers subconsciously tapping the
2:57:58153624
2:58:00firing order of a straight-six engine
2:58:02against her thigh. It was a nervous
2:58:03habit she'd never quite managed to kill.
2:58:05"Gerald?" The airlock. Oh, and actually
2:58:07there's I would call that a grammatical
2:58:10error there. Let's put a period there
2:58:12where it should be a question mark. The
2:58:14airlock, the hologram gestured over her
2:58:16shoulder with a translucent knitting
2:58:18needle. I love that it's still
2:58:20remembering what she looks like and it's
2:58:22kind of incorporating that into the
2:58:23blocking. He's been doing that for
2:58:24years. I keep telling him it's
2:58:25unprofessional, but he's convinced it
2:58:27adds character. He's very set in his
2:58:29ways for a series 4 pressure seal. All
2:58:31right, I love it. Good stuff. Daria
2:58:32stared at her then at the door which
2:58:33looked like it'd been held together by
2:58:35sheer stubbornness and luck. This feels
2:58:37like an AI-ism here to So I would just
2:58:39say we'll say by duct tape and luck.
2:58:43Then back at the hologram. Uh so anyway,
2:58:45you'll get the sense of what I'm doing
2:58:47here. Obviously, if I were editing this
2:58:49myself and not explaining the whole
2:58:51process, it would take me a lot less
2:58:52time to go through this. Uh I can
2:58:54usually get through a chapter like this.
2:58:55This is about a 2,000 words chapter. I
2:58:57can get through this in uh maybe 15
2:59:00minutes of uh dedicated work which is
2:59:02still enormously quick time which is
2:59:05still a furiously fast pace of writing.
2:59:09Back in the day when I was writing
2:59:10traditionally, I was lucky to get 2,000
2:59:12words in an hour. And that was just the
2:59:14first draft. I'd still have to go
2:59:15through and edit it again later. So this
2:59:17whole process makes the whole thing a
2:59:18lot easier. And so when you're doing
2:59:20this, you want to make sure you're
2:59:21looking for those AI-isms that we kind
2:59:23of discussed and that you've seen me
2:59:25catch a couple of them. You also want to
2:59:26look out for any chronological issues,
2:59:28things that don't make sense, things
2:59:30that aren't consistent with your
2:59:31character, and stuff like that. I do my
2:59:33best with the automations to make sure
2:59:35it already checks for that, but it's
2:59:36always going to miss some things. But at
2:59:38least it catches a good portion of them
2:59:41so that you don't have to worry about
2:59:43those. So the next steps after this
2:59:45would be to simply apply the same
2:59:46process to all of the remaining chapters
2:59:49of your book. And the way I like to do
2:59:50this is I kind of go back and forth
2:59:52between generating the prose, modifying
2:59:55the outline, and then generating the
2:59:57next chapter, and then editing that
2:59:59chapter, then going through and
3:00:00modifying the outlining again,
3:00:01generating, editing, etc. So what I
3:00:04would do, like if I got through this
3:00:05entire chapter one, I'm like, "Okay,
3:00:06this all looks good. I like it." I would
3:00:08then switch over to the outline and just
3:00:11briefly read through what it's saying
3:00:14here for chapter two cuz I'm going to
3:00:15write chapter two next. And after I've
3:00:17just edited chapter one, usually I'm
3:00:20like immersed in the story at this
3:00:22point. So, I can often when looking at
3:00:24the outline for chapter two, catch a few
3:00:26things that like, oh, I want to make
3:00:27sure this is in there. So, I'll I'll add
3:00:30a few sentences to kind of like clarify
3:00:32things or expand on things or what have
3:00:34you, correct something. And I might do
3:00:36that for chapter two. Maybe if I'm
3:00:38writing more than one chapter at once,
3:00:39I'll for chapter three or four as well.
3:00:42And then I'll go to our book builder.
3:00:45I'll select chapter generator. You'll
3:00:46have to select reset here. Reset. Select
3:00:49our project again. Make sure it's got
3:00:51all of our documents, which it does. And
3:00:53then I would select chapter two and
3:00:56three or however many chapters I want to
3:00:57do on this next round. Don't select
3:00:59chapter one again cuz we already wrote
3:01:01that and edited it. But now we can go
3:01:03ahead and write chapter two. And funny
3:01:05enough, if you do it this way, when it's
3:01:06writing chapter two, it will actually be
3:01:09pulling in chapter one into its context
3:01:12to understand like how to continue off
3:01:14from that chapter. And this is important
3:01:16because if you've done a lot of editing
3:01:18to that chapter, it should write the
3:01:21next chapter a little bit better because
3:01:22it's able to read what it thinks it
3:01:25wrote in the previous chapter, uh which
3:01:27is actually just your edited version of
3:01:29it. This is why I go one chapter or two
3:01:31chapters at a time rather than trying to
3:01:33write the whole book at once is because
3:01:35when it's able to read what my edited
3:01:37version of the text looks like, it
3:01:39creates better output. It's less likely
3:01:41to have continuity errors and so forth.
3:01:43So, that's why I do it that way rather
3:01:45than trying to create the whole thing at
3:01:46once, which is going to have a slew of
3:01:48problems that you're going to have to
3:01:49correct manually as you go on. So, that
3:01:52is the editing process. I hope this has
3:01:54been an informative module for you. It's
3:01:56the one that you will probably be
3:01:58spending some of the most time on cuz
3:02:00you got to do this for the whole book,
3:02:01but it's still like four or five times
3:02:04faster than if if were to write the book
3:02:06the traditional way. So, have fun with
3:02:07this, enjoy it. It's a creative process.
3:02:10Enjoy that creative process. The next
3:02:12module is going to cover the packaging
3:02:14and everything you have to do to get
3:02:15this thing ready to actually post online
3:02:18and start hopefully getting sales. Let's
3:02:20move into that next.
3:02:22Module nine is all about the packaging,
3:02:25which comes down to two primary
3:02:27elements, which are your book cover and
3:02:29your book formatting. Book covers, I'm
3:02:31not going to talk about too much in this
3:02:32course as I could make an entire
3:02:34additional full course video just like
3:02:37this one on just that topic. Instead, I
3:02:39want to give you a word of warning when
3:02:41it comes to covers. Book covers are
3:02:44incredibly important. If you have a bad
3:02:46book cover, it doesn't matter how good
3:02:47your book is, it will not sell. Let me
3:02:50repeat that. A bad book cover leads to
3:02:53bad sales. The most important thing that
3:02:55you do with your book cover is make sure
3:02:57that it matches the genre that you are
3:03:00writing it. And of course, once again,
3:03:02genre is key here. Because of that, I
3:03:04actually don't recommend that most
3:03:06authors, especially if you're just
3:03:08starting out, use AI to create your book
3:03:10covers. The only exception to this might
3:03:12be for a reader magnet or some kind of
3:03:14book that you're planning on giving away
3:03:15for free. Instead, I actually recommend
3:03:18hiring an artist for this until you
3:03:20understand what you're doing a lot more.
3:03:22Now, why would I recommend this
3:03:23especially on a channel where I talk so
3:03:25much about AI? Well, primarily not
3:03:27because of AI skill in art, because you
3:03:29can absolutely get a stunning cover that
3:03:32does everything you need with AI, but
3:03:34it's not so much about the quality of
3:03:35the art as it is the understanding of
3:03:38the genre. An experienced designer will
3:03:41understand what appeals to a reader
3:03:43better than you do when it comes to the
3:03:44visuals. So, I generally have two
3:03:46recommendations, which I will link to
3:03:48below this video. Both of which are
3:03:50actually from the same parent company.
3:03:52For those on a budget, I recommend get
3:03:54covers, which you can see right here.
3:03:56It's incredibly affordable and you might
3:03:57actually spend less using them than if
3:04:00you were to use AI given the
3:04:02subscriptions that you may or may not
3:04:03need to create a cover with AI. The
3:04:05other one is called Miblart and they are
3:04:08essentially the more premium big sister
3:04:10to Get Covers. It's the same parent
3:04:12company, but Miblart is on another level
3:04:14when it comes to their quality and they
3:04:16are what I personally use for my covers
3:04:18these days. So when it comes to
3:04:19packaging your book up and making it
3:04:21look good, I recommend using one of them
3:04:23to make a good first impression with
3:04:25your reader as as they likely know your
3:04:27genre's cover conventions better than
3:04:28you do. So that's book covers. Next,
3:04:31let's talk about formatting. There are
3:04:32many ways you can format using writing
3:04:34tools like Microsoft Word or Scrivener,
3:04:37but they are extremely limited and take
3:04:39a long time to get everything right and
3:04:41you have to repeat the process for every
3:04:42single book. There are a lot of
3:04:44considerations that you have to learn
3:04:46when doing it this way. I instead use a
3:04:48tool like Atticus or Vellum. These by
3:04:50the way, I don't have affiliate links
3:04:52for these. I just think they're good
3:04:53tools. They are both tools that you only
3:04:55have to pay for once because they have
3:04:57lifetime deals and they are both
3:04:58excellent at what they do. Vellum is a
3:05:00little bit more expensive and it's only
3:05:02available on Mac. So if you want
3:05:03something available via Windows or
3:05:05Linux, aka a cloud-based program, then
3:05:08Atticus is the way to go. That's the one
3:05:10I will be demonstrating in this video.
3:05:12So this is your dashboard in Atticus.
3:05:14This is what mine looks like right now.
3:05:16You can see I've got a couple of my
3:05:17books here including
3:05:19some of the genre guides I've been
3:05:20working on. But basically all you have
3:05:22to do is come here and either say start
3:05:24a new book if you want to essentially
3:05:26start from scratch and maybe copy and
3:05:28paste each chapter in there or I would
3:05:30probably upload the book first. You just
3:05:32click on this, you upload a docs file.
3:05:35So you will need to make sure your book
3:05:37is contained in that docs file before
3:05:39you put it in here. Give it a book
3:05:40title, the author, and a project which I
3:05:44usually just select as my series name.
3:05:46And of course you can change all of this
3:05:48later so it doesn't matter a whole lot
3:05:50what you put here. Once you are inside
3:05:52of the book view for Atticus, it'll look
3:05:54something like this if you've uploaded
3:05:56everything correctly and you may have to
3:05:58spend some time playing around with the
3:06:01number of chapters and everything cuz
3:06:03sometimes when you upload a book, it
3:06:04doesn't get everything right uh right
3:06:06away. So, you may have to split some
3:06:08chapters, merge some chapters, you know,
3:06:10just clean it up a little bit. And then
3:06:12you can also add front matter. So, it
3:06:14comes with a number of copyright
3:06:16templates, for instance. It comes with
3:06:18templates for like a dedication. You can
3:06:20add full-page images in here if you
3:06:23want. I've got some of my maps. You can
3:06:25also So, you'll notice here I have a map
3:06:28for the print version, which is vertical
3:06:31or yeah, vertical, and a map for the
3:06:34ebook version, which is horizontal,
3:06:35because it just kind of works better on
3:06:37the page that way if if we have it
3:06:39vertical for the print version. I've got
3:06:41a note here uh just telling people where
3:06:43they can get this bonus book for free,
3:06:45and then it automatically generates the
3:06:48table of contents based on everything
3:06:51I've got here, and then we move right
3:06:52into chapter one. So, I would just
3:06:54scroll through this, make sure the
3:06:55formatting all looks good, and you might
3:06:58see some breaks. Now, I don't have one
3:07:01in this chapter, but you can add a scene
3:07:03break. It'll look something like this,
3:07:05and when you actually look at this break
3:07:07in the previewer, as you can see here,
3:07:11you can see I've got a scene break
3:07:13inserted into the scene, and uh you can
3:07:15change the style of what that looks like
3:07:17and everything. It's very helpful. So,
3:07:19you go through all your chapters, and at
3:07:20the end, you can add back matter. So, I
3:07:23have like an author's note. I have an
3:07:25about the author. Uh one of the nice
3:07:26things about this is this is actually a
3:07:29master page, which means this content
3:07:32that you see here is included on other
3:07:34books. And if I change it here for this
3:07:37one, I can apply the changes to all of
3:07:40the other books that use the same
3:07:41template, which is a real time-saver if
3:07:43you're updating a bunch of books. You
3:07:45don't have to copy and paste this
3:07:46template into each one. You can just
3:07:48change it in one place, and it'll change
3:07:50across all of them. I also have uh
3:07:52again, another ad for my uh this is what
3:07:55we call the reader magnet to get people
3:07:57onto my email list. I have a sample
3:07:59chapter of the next book and another
3:08:01like also buy from me. This is the part
3:08:04that will take you the most time in the
3:08:05formatting process is just making sure
3:08:07your chapters are okay, making sure you
3:08:09have front and back matter. Some of the
3:08:11things I recommend in your front and
3:08:12back matter are an advertisement for
3:08:14your email list and maybe you can give
3:08:16away some kind of free book there. Uh
3:08:18you also want things like a copyright
3:08:21and maybe an also buy page and stuff
3:08:23like that. But it really like there
3:08:25isn't a whole hard science about any of
3:08:27this. There's lots you can do there. So,
3:08:29I would maybe go look at some other
3:08:31ebooks on Amazon in the genre that
3:08:33you're doing and see what are they doing
3:08:35for their front and back matter. And
3:08:37then try to do something similar for
3:08:38yours. But in Atticus, up here at the
3:08:40top, there's the writing tab that we've
3:08:43been on and over here is the formatting
3:08:45tab. If we click on that, there are a
3:08:47bunch of templates that are pre-baked in
3:08:50to Atticus. And all you have to do is
3:08:52just click on any one of these and if
3:08:54it's one you like, you're essentially
3:08:55done with the formatting process. But
3:08:57most of the time you'll need to create
3:08:59your own and then just use that for
3:09:01other books. And the nice thing is, once
3:09:03you've created one formatting theme for
3:09:06your book, you can use it for every book
3:09:08in that series and everything will
3:09:09remain consistent. So, it requires just
3:09:11a little bit of setup on your first try.
3:09:14After that, it's just it's incredibly
3:09:17easy. So, this is a format that I
3:09:18created for my uh for this particular
3:09:22book. So, you can see it's got like this
3:09:24header. It's a very simple format, but
3:09:26you've got the header and like the first
3:09:29sentence is capitalized and so on. And
3:09:31on the right-hand side here, you can see
3:09:33that there are you can preview what it
3:09:35would look like in various devices. And
3:09:37the one I use the most to preview is the
3:09:40print one because this is where you can
3:09:42run into the most issues with formatting
3:09:45functionality. So, this is what it would
3:09:46look like. If I scroll through the
3:09:48pages, you'll see there's like a larger
3:09:51margin on this side than there is on
3:09:52this side. And if I go to the next page,
3:09:54now that larger margin is on the right
3:09:56side. This is what we call a gutter
3:09:58margin, and it's something that you need
3:10:00on any print book. Something that's very
3:10:02difficult to figure out if you're using
3:10:04a tool like Word, but it is
3:10:05automatically generated inside of
3:10:07Atticus or Vellum if you're using
3:10:09Vellum, because that gutter margin means
3:10:11the inner part of the inner margin that
3:10:14is closest to the spine must always be
3:10:16larger than the margin on the facing the
3:10:18edge. That has to flip flop depending on
3:10:20which page you're at, whether it's on
3:10:21the left side of the page or the right
3:10:23side of the page. And that's something
3:10:24that Atticus does very, very easily. So,
3:10:27let's actually look at all of the
3:10:28different things you can change with
3:10:29each of these themes so you can see just
3:10:32how customizable this is, cuz it really
3:10:34is amazing. So, I would just go here and
3:10:36say edit, or you can also say duplicate.
3:10:39And on here at the left, you have all of
3:10:41these different things that you can
3:10:42modify. Chapter heading, paragraph,
3:10:44subheading, scene break, notes, print
3:10:46layout, typography, header, footer, and
3:10:48trim sizes. And chapter heading is
3:10:50pretty obvious. So, over here on the
3:10:51right, you can see the chapter heading
3:10:53here. I could select a different font.
3:10:55Say there you can see it's now a
3:10:56different font. In this [music] case, I
3:10:58think I should select a stencil
3:11:00decorative. You can align it to the
3:11:01left, right, center. You can choose a
3:11:03style. So, right here I have chapter
3:11:04title and chapter subtitle selected. I
3:11:07don't have a subtitle on this page, but
3:11:08if I did, it would show. You can also
3:11:10have chapter number, so you can actually
3:11:12have like a second here. It's
3:11:14duplicated, so it says chapter 26 and
3:11:16then chapter 26. But let's say you just
3:11:18wanted it to say chapter 26, and then
3:11:20you have a separate title for the
3:11:22chapter, you know, reflects the content
3:11:24of that chapter. Or I could actually
3:11:26change this chapter number to instead of
3:11:29saying chapter one and chapter two, I
3:11:31could just have it give the number or
3:11:34spell out the number or say chapter and
3:11:37then spell out the number. I don't need
3:11:38that for so I can uncheck that. You can
3:11:40also have images, and this is really
3:11:43handy for a lot of different genres. You
3:11:46can have an image, and this is where you
3:11:48choose where the image is placed. It
3:11:50could be behind all of the text if you
3:11:52wanted something like a more decorative
3:11:54background. It can be inserted above any
3:11:57of these different chapter titles or
3:11:59subtitles. So, lots of things you can do
3:12:01there. You can have individual chapter
3:12:03images for every chapter if you wanted.
3:12:06With AI, it's not that hard to do and
3:12:09can really make a a difference. So,
3:12:11think most people have read the Harry
3:12:13Potter books. Those Harry Potter books
3:12:15have a little just like pencil drawing
3:12:17for each chapter. So, you could do
3:12:18something like that. You can also change
3:12:20the percentage with the those images and
3:12:22everything. Next is paragraphs. So,
3:12:25you'll notice here in my preview that
3:12:26this first line has a larger letter
3:12:29here. So, that's what these do. Has a
3:12:32drop cap and it leads in small caps. You
3:12:34can also have first sentence formatting
3:12:36before every scene. Going to subheading,
3:12:38this isn't really relevant for fiction
3:12:40authors, but for nonfiction, you might
3:12:42have headings within your chapter, in
3:12:44which case you can format all of those
3:12:46individually. And here's where we can
3:12:48talk about the scene break. So, I
3:12:50already showed you what my scene break
3:12:52looked, but you can actually change what
3:12:54each scene break looks like right here
3:12:57in the this list of images. So, here are
3:12:59a couple of scene breaks images that are
3:13:01built into Atticus, and you can also
3:13:03just create your own if you want. So,
3:13:05those are some options there. You have
3:13:07notes. So, this is one of the great
3:13:09things that Atticus does,
3:13:11particularly if you're into nonfiction,
3:13:12is that you can add footnotes [music] or
3:13:15endnotes at the end of your book. This
3:13:16is something that is incredibly hard to
3:13:18format yourself, and Atticus just does
3:13:21it automatically. I promise I'm not like
3:13:23I have no affiliate link or this is not
3:13:25sponsored by Atticus. I just use it a
3:13:27lot. The only other tool that is kind of
3:13:30like reliably do footnotes and endnotes
3:13:32is Adobe InDesign, and that one has a
3:13:34huge learning curve for it. Print
3:13:36layout, this is where you the gutter
3:13:39margin is established. So, if you didn't
3:13:40want that gutter margin, you could
3:13:42actually replace this number for
3:13:43whatever reason. Uh you can also select
3:13:45what happens with widows and orphans uh
3:13:48or versus a balanced spread uh page
3:13:50spread versus a hybrid. Uh this just has
3:13:52to do with like if you have a paragraph
3:13:54at the end of your page that has just
3:13:56like it goes to the next line and has a
3:13:58single word, it can kind of like make
3:14:00the flow of the page look bad. So,
3:14:02having that [music] established can be
3:14:04really useful. Typography, so here's you
3:14:06can select the actual font. This is for
3:14:09print only because ebooks depend on the
3:14:11font that's used in the e-reader that
3:14:13the user is using. For the print
3:14:15version, you can select what the font is
3:14:17of the book and the size of that font.
3:14:19So, you can even do large print if you
3:14:21wanted to increase the size of
3:14:23everything and this line spacing as
3:14:25well. In fact, there is a large print
3:14:27button here that if you just select
3:14:29this, it will automatically put you at
3:14:31all of the legal settings cuz there's
3:14:34actual like recommended settings for
3:14:36what large print should look like. So,
3:14:37that's kind of cool. And now I'm going
3:14:39to have to like bring this back down.
3:14:41Okay. Then there's the the header and
3:14:43footer which can vary. So, you might
3:14:45want a like a title and chapter or in
3:14:48the center or on the sides or it could
3:14:50be author and title in the center on the
3:14:52sides or in the case of these first
3:14:54four, you have the page number on the
3:14:56top. Here you could have the page number
3:14:57at the bottom, you know, you just
3:14:59whatever you want there. You can also
3:15:00select the header and footer font. And
3:15:03then finally, but definitely not least
3:15:05here is the trim size. So, when you're
3:15:07creating a paperback book, the trim size
3:15:10matters a lot because cuz Amazon has
3:15:12specific settings for each trim size.
3:15:14This is the actual size of your physical
3:15:17book. I usually like to leave it at 5 in
3:15:19by 8 in. 6 by 9 is another standard
3:15:22that's typically the standard that
3:15:23you'll see for like your average hard
3:15:26cover book is a 6 by 9. I like things a
3:15:28little smaller myself, so I keep it at 5
3:15:30by 8, but they have all of these
3:15:31templates, and each of these are
3:15:33supported by there's KDP, Ingram Spark,
3:15:36and Lulu. So, if you see these colors,
3:15:39that'll show you that they're supported
3:15:41by those companies. Typically, you want
3:15:42to select one with this yellow
3:15:44orange-ish square here, because those
3:15:45are the ones that Amazon allows. So,
3:15:47those are the ones I would worry about.
3:15:49So, once you've done that, you can save
3:15:51it. I'm not going to, cuz I made some
3:15:52changes here, and I want to keep the
3:15:54template that I had. I'll just go ahead
3:15:55and discard that, but you can see like
3:15:57once you've gone through and created a
3:15:59theme that you like, you can just reuse
3:16:01that theme as many times as you want.
3:16:03Maybe create some alternatives. So, like
3:16:05for that instance, in this one, I
3:16:07created one that was essentially the
3:16:09same, but with large print. So, it had
3:16:12all my same settings, but was designed
3:16:15for a large print for that particular
3:16:16series. And I also created this one,
3:16:18which is also the same, but has a
3:16:20dyslexic friendly font on it, so I could
3:16:23create print books that were designed
3:16:25for people with dyslexia. Stuff like
3:16:27that. Very really helpful information
3:16:29here, and definitely a tool that I
3:16:32recommend if you want to save yourself a
3:16:33whole lot of time. It is a one-time
3:16:35price. I'm not going to tell you what
3:16:37the price is, cuz it could change based
3:16:39on when you're seeing this video, but it
3:16:41is a one-time lifetime deal, and
3:16:43definitely worth it, in my opinion,
3:16:44especially if you plan on doing this
3:16:46publishing thing for a while. Once you
3:16:48have everything you want, all you have
3:16:49to do is just say export PDF and export
3:16:52EPUB, and you now have the files that
3:16:54you need to upload to Amazon, or
3:16:56virtually any of the other
3:16:57self-publishing platforms, in order to
3:16:59actually publish your book. Combine that
3:17:01with your book cover, and you are set to
3:17:02go for our next module, which will cover
3:17:05the publishing process. Well, let's get
3:17:06into that next. Well done, you've made
3:17:09it to module 10, the last in this full
3:17:12course to go from zero to a fully
3:17:13published book. In this module, we're
3:17:15covering the self-publishing process.
3:17:18Now, we're not going to get into the
3:17:19marketing of your book in this course,
3:17:21because that could be another multi-hour
3:17:23full course in itself. We're just
3:17:24talking about how and where to get
3:17:26yourself published and set up for
3:17:28success in those areas.
3:17:30>> [music]
3:17:30>> And when it comes to self-publishing,
3:17:32there really is only one major player in
3:17:34the room, love them or hate them, and
3:17:36that is Amazon. Amazon currently
3:17:38controls about 85% of the book market
3:17:40for ebooks, especially when you take
3:17:42into account Kindle Unlimited, which is
3:17:44where you will likely make your most
3:17:45amount of money. So, the majority of
3:17:47this course will be focused on showing
3:17:49you the publishing process on Amazon
3:17:51because if you're not on Amazon, there's
3:17:52a decent chance you won't make a lot of
3:17:54money. Additionally, at a point in the
3:17:57process, I'll show you how to enroll
3:17:58your book in KDP Select, which makes
3:18:01sure that your book is in the Kindle
3:18:03Unlimited program. This means that your
3:18:05ebook, and just your ebook, must be
3:18:07exclusive to Amazon's platform, which no
3:18:09one really likes, but it is the still
3:18:11the best option for most books in most
3:18:13genres, as the number of readers on
3:18:15Kindle Unlimited, or KU as it's called,
3:18:17are enough to be the majority of your
3:18:19revenue, especially for certain genres
3:18:21like romance. Like, if you're writing
3:18:22romance, it's like not even a question.
3:18:25You should be in KU. But, if you don't
3:18:26have exclusivity to Amazon, there are a
3:18:29few other platforms to be aware of.
3:18:31Besides Amazon, there are four major
3:18:32marketplaces: Apple, Barnes & Noble,
3:18:35Kobo, and Google Play Books. If you go
3:18:37through Amazon's uploading process,
3:18:39you'll find it very similar on these
3:18:41other platforms, so I won't show them to
3:18:43you here. But, like I said, you can only
3:18:44do this if your ebook is not exclusive
3:18:47to Amazon. And it can also be a lot of
3:18:49work to do all of that uploading,
3:18:50especially later on when you inevitably
3:18:52need to update small things and like 20
3:18:55plus books and have to do the whole
3:18:57uploading process again, which is why I
3:18:59usually recommend you pick an aggregator
3:19:01instead because they can not only get
3:19:03you into those four big ones, but into
3:19:05dozens of smaller ones as well,
3:19:07including all of the different library
3:19:08apps. The two best aggregators currently
3:19:11on the market that I know of are
3:19:12PublishDrive and Draft2Digital. They
3:19:14both have different pricing structures,
3:19:16and for most authors, I find
3:19:18Draft2Digital to be the best one with
3:19:20the lowest fees overall. But, for
3:19:21authors who are making a lot of money
3:19:23from just a handful of books, so like
3:19:26each book is making a whole lot of
3:19:27money, PublishDrive's pricing structure
3:19:29might actually make more sense for you.
3:19:31Now, I generally recommend that newer
3:19:32authors just stick to Amazon until you
3:19:35feel like you've mastered the game, aka
3:19:37you are making a decent income from
3:19:39Amazon alone. Only then will you have
3:19:41the skills and the knowledge to know if
3:19:42it makes sense to go wide on all of
3:19:45these other platforms. Another more
3:19:47advanced form of publishing that once
3:19:48again, I only recommend that you do
3:19:51after you're making a decent income on
3:19:53Amazon is this concept of selling
3:19:55direct. This is where you sell your
3:19:57books directly on your own store. There
3:19:59are a bunch of major advantages to this.
3:20:00For one, you get to keep 95% of the
3:20:03revenue instead of 70% or less. You also
3:20:06get all of the emails from your buyers,
3:20:07which is easily the best way to build
3:20:09your email list and is something that
3:20:11none of the other retailers do. And you
3:20:13get to control the entire process from
3:20:15how your landing page looks to how you
3:20:18choose to deliver your book. Want to
3:20:19include some bonus digital goodies with
3:20:21your ebook? You can do that. Want to
3:20:23bundle ebook and audio? You can do that,
3:20:25too. But, there are major downsides to
3:20:27selling direct, as well. The big one is
3:20:28that you pretty much have to use ads to
3:20:30drive people to your platform, otherwise
3:20:32no one will see it. So, not only do you
3:20:34need to master the art of writing and
3:20:36publishing, but you also need to have
3:20:37mastered the art of advertising and
3:20:39marketing. Plus, it's nearly impossible
3:20:41to make this model work with only a few
3:20:43books. You need a fairly large catalog
3:20:45to make selling direct make sense. I'd
3:20:47say a minimum of about 12 books is what
3:20:50you should aim for, personally. And that
3:20:51is why I recommend mastering the process
3:20:53on Amazon first, then potentially moving
3:20:56to a selling direct model only after
3:20:58you've gained experience and a large
3:20:59backlist, as well. But, it can be quite
3:21:02profitable if all of those stars align.
3:21:04So, with all of that out of the way,
3:21:06let's go through the entire process to
3:21:08upload your book to Amazon, including
3:21:10the generation of all the materials like
3:21:12your book description and keywords.
3:21:13Let's start there. So, in this uploading
3:21:15process, you will need to have a book
3:21:17description. And you might need to
3:21:19actually do this before you get to this
3:21:21stage because you need to put your book
3:21:23description usually on the back of your
3:21:24book, which will happen at the book
3:21:26cover stage. But, regardless, we're
3:21:28going to cover it here. And I since
3:21:31we've been doing a cozy sci-fi for the
3:21:33examples in this course, I decided to
3:21:36look up a cozy sci-fi to use as a
3:21:38template for a book description.
3:21:40Generally, the book descriptions, while
3:21:42there are a couple of aspects of
3:21:44conventional wisdom when writing these
3:21:46things, they do vary from genre to
3:21:48genre. It is a good thing to try and
3:21:50find a really good best-selling book in
3:21:53that genre, especially if it's indie. Uh
3:21:55the traditional publishing books don't
3:21:57quite put the same amount of effort into
3:21:59it as an indie publisher might. So, find
3:22:01a high-performing indie book like this
3:22:03one is. You can see it's got lots of
3:22:05reviews. And then you can walk through
3:22:07this process to create a template, cuz
3:22:09you know I like templates, to write a
3:22:11book description for your book. So, all
3:22:13you'd have to do is we'll come to this,
3:22:15and I'm going to just copy this book
3:22:17description, and we're going to go into
3:22:19Claude for this. And here I'm going to
3:22:21say, "I want you to do an analysis of
3:22:24this book description from a copywriting
3:22:26perspective, analyzing it sentence by
3:22:28sentence to see what it is doing." So, I
3:22:30just put that in there, then paste the
3:22:33book description in, and then let it go.
3:22:36And while that analysis is going on, I'm
3:22:38going to step into Story Hacker OS and
3:22:40grab our book synopsis that we created.
3:22:43In fact, we can just grab the entire uh
3:22:45story dossier. And because this has the
3:22:47general pitch of what our book is about.
3:22:49And uh we're going to get back into
3:22:51Claude here. So, here it's done the
3:22:53sentence by sentence analysis. So,
3:22:55buckle up, it's going to be a smooth
3:22:57ride. This is the hook line, set apart
3:22:59at the top, and it's a small joke that
3:23:00announces the entire value proposition.
3:23:02Buckle up primes you for thrills, then
3:23:04smooth ride yanks the rug. So on, and
3:23:06it'll do that for every sentence. And
3:23:08say, "Okay, now that you've done that
3:23:11analysis, I want you to write a similar
3:23:15book description using the same template
3:23:19for a book with this plot. And now I
3:23:22just paste in our story dossier, which
3:23:24we should have created earlier in the
3:23:26process, and let it go. And now we'll
3:23:29see it write a high-converting book
3:23:32description. And then here is our book
3:23:33description. It looks a little lengthy
3:23:35to me, but you could always change that.
3:23:37And here it is, using a similar format.
3:23:40Two weeks, catalog the junk, sign the
3:23:41forms, sell it to salvage. What could
3:23:43possibly go right? Hello, I'm Daria
3:23:45O'Shea, and for 11 years I've approved
3:23:48other people's fresh starts from a
3:23:49cubicle the color of old mustard. So
3:23:51when a relative I'd met exactly twice
3:23:53died and left me a 30-year-old orbital
3:23:55monitoring station, I had a plan. Spend
3:23:57a fortnight cataloging the rest, sign
3:23:59transfer deed 88 Delta, and sell the
3:24:01whole bucket to Apex salvage before my
3:24:02lunch break ended. I did not plan on the
3:24:04squatters. So already it's using a very
3:24:06similar format to this one that we had
3:24:09here. Very, but not like copying it, as
3:24:12you can see. Cuz this one starts out,
3:24:14buckle up, it's going to be a smooth
3:24:15ride. Howdy friend, I'm Rusty and so is
3:24:17my big rig's engine. When the old girl
3:24:19finally gave up the ghost in the middle
3:24:21of nowhere, I wasn't expecting to get a
3:24:22tow from an alien mothership, but the
3:24:24next thing I knew, me and my buddy Mike
3:24:25were halfway across the galaxy in an
3:24:26oversized hubcap full of the weirdest
3:24:28space creatures you ever did see. So you
3:24:30can see it's using a very similar tone
3:24:32with what we have here. I would say this
3:24:34probably is a two a little bit too long,
3:24:36so I might ask it to shorten it a little
3:24:39bit. So it's maybe like cut two
3:24:41paragraphs from that. But overall, this
3:24:42is good and we can use this. So that's
3:24:46asset number one that we need to develop
3:24:48before we start the publishing process.
3:24:49The other asset that we haven't covered
3:24:51yet is the keywords. So keywords are
3:24:54interesting. If we go to Amazon and you
3:24:56look at this, you know, this search bar
3:24:58up here, and we type in cozy sci-fi,
3:25:02you will see usually there's some
3:25:05suggestions that come up. Okay, so here
3:25:06we are like cozy short mystery, cozy
3:25:08sci-fi, cozy series, cozy supernatural,
3:25:11cozy spicy romance, slice of life
3:25:13fantasy. All of these things pop up.
3:25:14These are keywords that people are
3:25:16actually putting into Amazon. Now, I'm
3:25:18seeing a few more cuz I'm using a plugin
3:25:21called AMZ Suggestion Expander or
3:25:23something like that. And so it's giving
3:25:25me a few more to look at. But that's one
3:25:27place you can go to see what keywords
3:25:28are there. Now, if you've done a lot of
3:25:30genre research, you would may know a lot
3:25:32of your cozy your keywords already. And
3:25:34a common practice for fiction,
3:25:35especially, is to put one or more of
3:25:38your keywords in the subtitle. As you
3:25:40can see this one did here. It put the
3:25:41word cozy, it put low stakes, it put
3:25:44slice of life sci-fi adventure. So this
3:25:47clearly is aiming towards that cozy
3:25:49slice of life genre. And so these are
3:25:52might be if you look through other books
3:25:54in this genre, you might find a couple
3:25:56of keywords that are like, yeah, that
3:25:57should probably be included either in
3:25:59the subtitle or in your designated
3:26:01keyword slots. Amazon gives you seven
3:26:03keyword slots. And there are various
3:26:05strategies for them, but we're not going
3:26:07to worry too much about like all the
3:26:09fancy strategies because a lot of them
3:26:11also require paid tools. I will show you
3:26:13one of those. It's called Publisher
3:26:15Rocket. You can do a keyword search
3:26:17here. So if we do cozy sci-fi and select
3:26:21go get 'em rocket, it will give us a
3:26:22couple of matching related keywords. We
3:26:24can see how viable they all are. They
3:26:27all have good competition scores, but it
3:26:29doesn't look like a ton of people are
3:26:30searching for them. This is a very niche
3:26:32genre, so I'm not surprised by that. But
3:26:34another thing you can do in Publisher
3:26:36Rocket that I find really helpful is
3:26:37that you can grab the ASIN number for
3:26:39any particular book. So we're going to
3:26:41grab the one here from its product
3:26:43details. You can also get it in the URL.
3:26:45If we copy that and then go into
3:26:47Publisher Rocket, we can actually do a
3:26:49reverse ASIN lookup and see what
3:26:51keywords is this book ranking for. So
3:26:53I'm going to paste that in there, say go
3:26:55get 'em rocket. And here it gives me
3:26:57some of the keywords that this one is
3:26:58ranking for. Now, obviously it's going
3:27:00to rank for its name and its author
3:27:02name, but then here are some others that
3:27:04we can look at like low stress space,
3:27:07interesting. Space fantasy adventure, no
3:27:09stress book. So, now I can see like, oh,
3:27:12maybe no stress is actually a keyword I
3:27:14want to target. No stress sci-fi,
3:27:16science fiction and fantasy no romance,
3:27:18interesting. Low stress fantasy, space
3:27:21adventure SF book series. So, this is a
3:27:23great place to mine keywords for your
3:27:25book. So, I would probably pick
3:27:27something like low no stress book or no
3:27:30stress space, no stress sci-fi, etc. and
3:27:34try to incorporate some of those into
3:27:37the uploading process. Once you've got a
3:27:39list of at least like seven or eight
3:27:41keywords, it's time to actually start
3:27:43uploading your book onto Amazon. So,
3:27:44let's go look at that now. Now, to get
3:27:46started here, you go to create new title
3:27:48or series, say click create ebook, and
3:27:51you'll come to this page here that'll be
3:27:54all blank with nothing in it. And you
3:27:56can see some things like this is where
3:27:57the book description goes, this is where
3:27:59those keywords go. I'm going to actually
3:28:01show you a one that is all filled out.
3:28:03This is my book how to write urban
3:28:05fantasy. So, you start with language, of
3:28:07course, select whatever language your
3:28:09book is in. I assume most of you will be
3:28:11putting that in English. Then you want
3:28:13to add your book title and your book
3:28:15subtitle. In this case, because this is
3:28:17a nonfiction, I put my book my main
3:28:19keyword in the title, but if you didn't
3:28:21put it in the title, you would want to
3:28:23put it in the subtitle. And if you're
3:28:24doing fiction, definitely I recommend
3:28:27putting the genre that the specific
3:28:29subgenre that your book is in in the
3:28:31subtitle. It makes it really easy for
3:28:33readers to identify what type of what
3:28:35type of book you have. Then you can add
3:28:37a series. So, you these you have to kind
3:28:39of create separately and then tie them
3:28:41in here. So, if your book is book one of
3:28:43the series, you can add that in here. If
3:28:45your book is a second or third edition,
3:28:47you can add an edition number here. For
3:28:49most people, that's not going to be
3:28:50relevant. And then of course, your
3:28:51author name or your pen name here. So,
3:28:54if you're using a pen name, use that. If
3:28:56you're using your main author name, use
3:28:58that as well. You can also add
3:28:59additional contributors here if you so
3:29:01desire. They include but editor or
3:29:04another author. So, if you do a
3:29:05co-authored book, you can put that
3:29:07author there. Can add editor or like
3:29:09forward by or like your book cover
3:29:12designer, you can put it in here. If
3:29:14you're translating a book, you can put a
3:29:15translator. All of those additional
3:29:17contributors can be tracked here. If
3:29:18you're just writing a book yourself, you
3:29:20don't need to put anything here really
3:29:21unless you really love your book cover
3:29:24editor or your book cover designer or
3:29:26your editor or something like that, you
3:29:27can put their names in here. Get their
3:29:29permission first though. And then here
3:29:30is where you put your book description.
3:29:32So, in this case, if I if we were doing
3:29:34a brand new book, I would just come here
3:29:36to this book description that we
3:29:38generated, copy it and put it into here.
3:29:40The only thing I would pay ask you to
3:29:42pay attention to is the formatting. So,
3:29:44you do have a basic formatting options
3:29:47here. The only one that I would
3:29:49definitely make sure you do is make sure
3:29:51your opening line is a heading. So, that
3:29:53will show up as bigger. And you can't
3:29:55really see it in this preview that we
3:29:56have here, but if you notice here, it
3:29:58says when I've got this text selected,
3:30:01it says normal here. But when I select
3:30:03this header, it says heading four.
3:30:04That's what you want to select. So, make
3:30:06sure your header is a heading four and
3:30:08then make sure any parts that need to be
3:30:09bolded or italicized or set into bullet
3:30:13points like I have here, which is more
3:30:15common with non-fiction, those can all
3:30:16be formatted here. You just want it to
3:30:18look nice and not look like it's all
3:30:20just huge chunks of paragraphs all kind
3:30:22of squished together. That's what you
3:30:24want to avoid. Uh you want it to be
3:30:26relatively like pleasing to the eye for
3:30:28the person who is going to read that
3:30:31book description. All right, the next
3:30:32section is the publishing rights
3:30:33section. For most of you, you'd select I
3:30:36own the copyright and I hold the
3:30:37necessary publishing rights. We could
3:30:38talk a lot about copyright regarding AI,
3:30:41uh but as long as you've put in human
3:30:43effort, you do hold the copyright to
3:30:45what you've created. If you're
3:30:47republishing a public domain work or
3:30:49something, you can select that. Keep in
3:30:51mind, this only applies if you were like
3:30:53literally copying and pasting huge
3:30:55chunks of a public domain work into what
3:30:58you're producing here. Like if you
3:31:00produce the entirety of Pride and
3:31:01Prejudice exactly as it was, and maybe
3:31:03just added your own little commentary or
3:31:06something like that, that would be a
3:31:07public domain book that you would want
3:31:09to select this. If you are writing,
3:31:10let's say Pride and Prejudice fan
3:31:12fiction, or a derivative work that's
3:31:14clearly inspired, might have the same
3:31:16characters, but is a new book, that is
3:31:19your book. That is not public domain. It
3:31:21is based on derivative from a public
3:31:23domain source, which means it's legal
3:31:25for you to do that, but at the same time
3:31:27you would not select public domain here.
3:31:29Next, you want to go through primary
3:31:31audience. This is where you mention if
3:31:33you have any sexually explicit images or
3:31:35a title. So, this could be this is
3:31:37really only relevant if you write
3:31:38erotica or something like that. Or does
3:31:41the book's [music] title contain
3:31:42sexually explicit language? So, this is
3:31:44only for the cover or the title. If you
3:31:46have spicy scenes within your book, you
3:31:49don't have to disclose that here. That's
3:31:51just something separate. You can also
3:31:53add the reading age here. This is
3:31:55important if you're doing like
3:31:56children's books or teen books, but
3:31:59unless you're doing that, I would leave
3:32:00these alone. I never fill these out.
3:32:02Select your primary marketplace, which
3:32:03for me is amazon.com, but you have
3:32:05.co.uk, .ca, you know, .de, all of these
3:32:09are available to you depending on what
3:32:10region you're in. And then you select
3:32:12your categories. So, with Amazon, you
3:32:15were allowed to select three categories.
3:32:17And back in the day, there's like a
3:32:19whole bunch of like almost quasi scammy
3:32:22advice on how to game the system with
3:32:26categories. And [music] I won't get into
3:32:27what that all looked like, but it led to
3:32:29a whole bunch of people putting their
3:32:30books in categories that they didn't
3:32:32really belong in, just so they could get
3:32:35more visibility in those, you know,
3:32:37lower competition categories. These
3:32:39days, that doesn't really work. And one
3:32:41of the reasons Amazon made it so that
3:32:43you can only select three categories is
3:32:45to kind of force you to select the most
3:32:46important categories. So, you're not
3:32:48selecting like, okay, three relevant
3:32:50categories and then seven categories
3:32:52that aren't really relevant, but you
3:32:54could maybe have a chance of being a
3:32:55best seller in that category. You can
3:32:57only pick three now. And what I would
3:32:59strongly recommend is that you pick the
3:33:00three most relevant to your book. Do not
3:33:03worry about trying to game the system
3:33:06and try and get a low competition
3:33:07category. There are tools out there,
3:33:09even Publisher Rocket, which I just
3:33:11showed you, that will kind of show you
3:33:13which categories are growing, which ones
3:33:16are low competition, and that's fine
3:33:18information earlier when you're doing
3:33:20the research process for your genre. If
3:33:22you want to find a genre that you know
3:33:24is going to have good growth or be low
3:33:25competition, you should do that before
3:33:28you start this process. Once your book
3:33:30is published, I find that it's most
3:33:32important that you pick the most
3:33:34relevant categories for your book,
3:33:36[music] and just leave it at that. So,
3:33:38to do that, you just go to edit your
3:33:40categories, and because I already have
3:33:43three here, I would have to like go
3:33:44through
3:33:45these different categories and
3:33:47subcategories to find the ones that are
3:33:49most applicable to me, but this is where
3:33:51you do that. And then finally,
3:33:53for this page, you can add in your
3:33:56keywords such as they are. And once
3:33:59again, when you're doing research ahead
3:34:01of writing the book, you can, you know,
3:34:04find a genre, find keywords that are
3:34:06really good, that are people are looking
3:34:07for, but after the fact, you want to
3:34:10make sure that your keywords are just
3:34:12relevant to the book. I would put your
3:34:13most important keyword, which is usually
3:34:15the subgenre that you're in, in your
3:34:17subtitle, and then the rest of these can
3:34:19be like variations of that, or it could
3:34:21be like strong female lead, or anything
3:34:24to do with your protagonist, or your
3:34:25world, or anything like that. So, you
3:34:27can put those in there. And then you
3:34:28move on to the next stage. Well, I
3:34:30should also point out that you have the
3:34:31option to set your book for pre-order.
3:34:34Uh if you're doing this for the first
3:34:35time, obviously, in my case, this is a
3:34:37form like I published this book already,
3:34:39but you can select when it goes out.
3:34:41Like, is it going to go out the day you
3:34:43hit publish, or is it going to go out in
3:34:44the future? You can select that there.
3:34:46So, from there, you would go to the next
3:34:48stage, which is Kindle eBook content.
3:34:50So, we just established Kindle eBook
3:34:52details, and there's a content page and
3:34:54a pricing page. So, for the content
3:34:56page, you upload your manuscript here,
3:34:58and you can select whether you want
3:35:00digital rights management for that,
3:35:01which in most cases I select no. Then
3:35:03you upload the book cover that you have
3:35:05for your eBook, cuz we're only doing the
3:35:07eBook right now, and you upload that
3:35:09file here. And then we get to the
3:35:11AI-generated content section. And this
3:35:13is where you actually disclose where
3:35:15whether you use AI or not. And I
3:35:18strongly suggest you be honest with this
3:35:20section, because this not being honest
3:35:23is against Amazon's terms of services.
3:35:25They do not ban you for using AI.
3:35:27They're not going to penalize you for
3:35:28using AI, but they will penalize you for
3:35:31being dishonest and going against their
3:35:33terms of service. So, make sure to be
3:35:34honest in this section. So, for this,
3:35:36this is a a short guide that I created
3:35:38on the genre, and it was heavily written
3:35:41by AI, and then I went through, did
3:35:44extensive editing, and there are
3:35:45elements of the book cover that were
3:35:47AI-generated. Not everything. In fact, I
3:35:50did actually pay a designer to do this
3:35:53particular cover. I just manipulated it
3:35:55a little bit and added some things that
3:35:57were AI-generated. So, I put for the
3:35:59text, you have the four options. You
3:36:01have some sections with minimal or no
3:36:03editing, some sections with extensive
3:36:05editing, entire work with minimal or no
3:36:07editing, or entire work with extensive
3:36:08editing. So, just pick whichever is most
3:36:11relevant, and then you can also put the
3:36:12tools that you used in this process.
3:36:14Same goes for images, you have the same
3:36:16options. One or few or many with minimal
3:36:19or no editing or extensive editing, and
3:36:22>> [music]
3:36:22>> you also put the tools that you used
3:36:24there. And you can also do this for
3:36:25translations. So, if you were
3:36:27translating a book from one language to
3:36:28another using AI, you'd want to put that
3:36:30here as well. Or if there's no AI
3:36:32involved whatsoever, just select no.
3:36:35Keep in mind that your designers,
3:36:36depending on who you get, may be using
3:36:39AI in some of their elements, and so you
3:36:41want to make sure you know from them
3:36:42whether there was AI used in your cover
3:36:44or not. All right, and then you can do
3:36:45the Kindle preview, which will just give
3:36:47you a brief preview to look at what it
3:36:50might look like for the user on a
3:36:52particular device. Uh you can have
3:36:54tablet, phone, or a Kindle e-reader, and
3:36:55I just kind of flip through the first
3:36:57few pages of this just to make sure
3:36:58everything looks okay, and it does, so
3:37:01I'll hit back. Then you can put in your
3:37:03ISBN and publisher if needed. I never
3:37:06recommend people use ISBNs because
3:37:08they're insanely expensive, and you
3:37:11don't actually need them. Uh I could do
3:37:12a whole video on that perhaps in the
3:37:14future, but basically, you don't
3:37:15actually need an ISBN to publish your
3:37:17book anywhere you want to publish that
3:37:19book. There's very very little advantage
3:37:21that you get from having an ISBN, and
3:37:24nothing no monetary advantage
3:37:26whatsoever. All right, and then there's
3:37:27access accessibility features. This one
3:37:29was added recently. If you're adding
3:37:31images into your book, it's good to have
3:37:33things like their alt tags, which
3:37:35describes the image, which you can do in
3:37:38a tool like Atticus, and then you can
3:37:39select, you know, what you've done there
3:37:41with those alternate text and images
3:37:44descriptions and all of that. Once
3:37:45you've gone through all of that, that's
3:37:47the bulk of what you have to do. The
3:37:48last thing to select is the pricing, and
3:37:51let's go to that next. And here is where
3:37:53you will have the option of KDP Select
3:37:56enrollment. This is how you get your
3:37:57book into Kindle Unlimited or KU. It's a
3:38:00free 90-day program offered to Kindle
3:38:02ebooks. It allows you to run discounts
3:38:04in promotions like Kindle Unlimited. To
3:38:06enter the Kindle Storyteller contest,
3:38:08your book needs to be enrolled in KDP
3:38:09Select. So, there are advantages besides
3:38:12just Kindle Unlimited to having your
3:38:13book enrolled here, and you can enroll
3:38:15it here at this stage if you want, but
3:38:17do remember that means your ebook will
3:38:19need to remain exclusive to Amazon. It
3:38:22cannot be available on other ebook
3:38:25websites. You could do whatever you want
3:38:27with your print books. Those can still
3:38:28go to other websites if you want, but
3:38:30for ebook, it has to remain exclusive to
3:38:33Amazon. Next is territories. I just
3:38:35always select all territories. And then
3:38:37the primary marketplace, again, select
3:38:38whichever one is most relevant to you.
3:38:40And then you have pricing, royalty, and
3:38:42distribution. So, there are two options
3:38:44here. You can get the 35%
3:38:47royalty or the 70% royalty. And you
3:38:50might ask, why would anybody want to
3:38:52have the 35% royalty? Um most of the
3:38:54time you don't, but there are limits to
3:38:58what you can do at the 70% royalty. The
3:39:00big one is that you need to have a book
3:39:03that is priced between $2.99 and $9.99,
3:39:07uh at least with the US pricing. I don't
3:39:09know exactly what it might be for other
3:39:10markets. So, it needs to be within that
3:39:12window, or you have to use 35. So, if
3:39:15you went and wanted to sell a book for
3:39:17$20, you'd have to use the 35% royalty
3:39:21rate, which would actually be the same
3:39:23amount of money coming to you as if you
3:39:25sold it for $10 at the 70% rate.
3:39:27Generally speaking, the most you want to
3:39:29charge for a book is 70 uh is $9.99
3:39:33because that is the most you can get at
3:39:35the 70% range here. You could always
3:39:37sell a book for $100 and get 350 from
3:39:40that and get $35 from that sale at the
3:39:4335% price, but it's just easier to stick
3:39:46to the 70 whenever possible. The only
3:39:48exception that I see authors regularly
3:39:50do is if they want to do a sale on their
3:39:53book and sell it for, say, $0.99, in
3:39:56which case 35% is what you would have to
3:39:58select. Sometimes that's worth it if
3:40:01it's, say, in a series. So, let's say
3:40:03you have a long series, like eight books
3:40:04or more. You can put your first one at
3:40:06$0.99, and you're only making $0.35 for
3:40:09that book for every sale, but maybe a
3:40:11lot of those people, you'll get more
3:40:12people buying it at that price, and then
3:40:15they'll go on to read the full series,
3:40:17which you can have at a higher price. In
3:40:19this case, I keep this book at $4.99.
3:40:22What price you select for your book
3:40:23should depend on what your competition
3:40:26is doing. So, look through other books
3:40:27in your genre. What is a common price
3:40:30for them? And just go with something
3:40:31like that. Usually, something around
3:40:33$4.99 is about the average. Although, if
3:40:36you write non-fiction, $9.99 is pretty
3:40:38common as well. Once you do that, you go
3:40:40ahead and make sure that you go through
3:40:43all of the other prices, make sure they
3:40:45look good. The only ones that I really
3:40:46tend to manually do, because it'll do an
3:40:49automatic conversion, I usually like to
3:40:51set the prices for the British pound and
3:40:55the euro at the same that I put it in
3:40:57dollars, just so it looks nice, so it's
3:40:59not like a random number like $4.32
3:41:02or something like that. Uh but the rest
3:41:04I just let the automatic conversion go,
3:41:06and then you just hit publish. And
3:41:07congratulations, you have published your
3:41:09first book on Amazon. The next step is
3:41:11marketing, which uh as I mentioned is
3:41:13not going to be in this video. And also,
3:41:15I want to say congratulations for
3:41:16getting through this entire full course
3:41:19video. That was a whole lot to process.
3:41:21I hope it was useful for you. You feel
3:41:24free to go back and review it as often
3:41:26as needed, because obviously, there's a
3:41:27lot to this process. But I want to
3:41:30congratulate you, because not too many
3:41:31people are going to be getting through
3:41:33this entire thing and actually doing the
3:41:34work and going through the process. So,
3:41:36once again, I just wanted to put in one
3:41:38final plug for my community. If you want
3:41:40more access to me and a community of
3:41:43like-minded people to share thoughts
3:41:45with and to get questions answered, as
3:41:47well as my Story Hacker OS software,
3:41:50which I've featured a few times
3:41:51throughout this video, go ahead and
3:41:52check out the first link in the
3:41:54description down below, and I will see
3:41:56you in the next video.

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