THE WORKHORSE AND THE SHOW PONY

What Writing with AI can learn from pen, paper and Mel Brooks

This is the second of three pieces about Writing in the Age of AI. Here’s the first one. 

Every great writing team has a Workhorse and a Show Pony. One who does the “grunt work” and one who’s the “genius.” I’ve discovered that AI can be your Workhorse and give you more time to prance! 

How does someone who began writing with just pen and paper, and for whom the purchase of an IBM Selectric (the one with the “magic ball” that meant “Going Pro” in the 80s) end up embracing using AI as a collaborator?

It’s because I have had great human collaborators that I am able to embrace AI as a partner.

The tools we use influence the way we think and how we write. In this piece, I’m going to go from writing alone (pen and paper) > to writing with a writing partner >  to writing in a human writers’ room > to using multiple LLMs to create a virtual writers’ room. 

Every one of those steps changes the way we write, the way you think of ourselves as writers, and the kind of writing we produce. 

FROM PEN AND PAPER TO AI ASSISTANTS

It is a common misunderstanding that writing with AI means that AI is doing the writing for you. It’s NOT. You are still making all of the tough decisions — including some tough decisions about your new “collaborator.” 

You will work with this new writing partner / collaborator because it has powerful capabilities that no human has. Writing with AI has huge benefits, as long as you’re able to recognize what it’s “doing” to you and your work.

I write my first drafts longhand, pen and paper. I have a certain looseness when I write that way. The page is filled with cross-outs, arrows, boxes, side notes. I’m just grabbing what’s in my head and throwing it onto the page. 

When I sit down at a keyboard and turn those notes into a document, I become a different kind of writer. It starts to look so… finished. I resist “finished.” I want to keep playing. So I tell myself, “You can rewrite this later.” (And I do.) 

As I said, because I’ve had two great writing partners and participated in three great writers’ rooms. I love other voices and other perspectives. I love the fact that someone else in the room is taking notes and organizing them. I love hearing someone’s suggestions for a better draft, another way of doing things. 

The act of collaborating has never let me down. And that includes collaborating with AI. 

Which doesn’t mean AI can’t be exasperating, and even completely wrong. But then again… so can humans.

I’d love to hear from you—do you write first drafts by hand? Have you tried using AI early in your process, or does that feel like skipping a step? Hit reply or leave a comment.

WRITING ALONE

Alone, I use pen and paper. My thoughts are uninterrupted, free to flow. The “speed of pen” moves a bit slower than my brain, so that I’m revising as I go. I cross out, I draw connections, I revise in the margins. This is the way I trained as a writer. The physical sensation of writing tells my mind “we’re working now.”  

I can type around 100 words a minute, so when I move to a keyboard the words on the screen appear pretty closely to when they’re in my brain. The drawback is that the product starts to look “fixed.” Working with AI just exacerbates the problem of “feeling fixed.” LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT are too “supportive.” They’ve been programmed by humans to seem that way. (I’ll be posting a way to dampen their enthusiasm soon.) 

Working with a keyboard also makes it easy to correct mistakes. I believe mistakes are an opportunity to revise. James Thurber used to type his manuscripts himself. If he made an error, he pulled the page out and typed it again, often rewriting as he went along. I’m guessing it’s no wonder that he made a career out of short pieces -- you can only type and revise so much. 

Writing is REWRITING. Going from pen and paper to typed documents is one of those steps I really value. Fresh eyes, even if they’re only yours. 

WRITING WITH A PARTNER: THE WORKHORSE AND THE STAR PONY

A great writing team is defined by a shared vision of the future. They are building a relationship based on values (truth, humor, quality, etc.) and a dedication to the business of writing. Above all else, they are devoted to constantly working to make their partnership and the writing it produces BETTER. 

The minute one of them starts to lose their loyalty to the shared vision of a future, they’re done. 

When you go from being a solo writer to being in a partnership, you gain someone who can share the workload. I’ve spent a LOT of time writing with other people. I had two incredible writing partners in my career, and have been friends with countless other writing teams. Here’s what I know:

Every writing team contains at least one “Workhorse” and one “Show Pony.” 

As the partnership works together, the workhorse types away, capturing and editing the ongoing conversation in the room, creating a product of some kind, some surface (usually a document) that reflects the work being done. 

Most likely, the work horse also takes on the responsibility of hitting deadlines, showing up for meetings, etc. etc. 

The Show Pony is in the room, participating, thinking out loud, but… 

 

Famously, in the writers’ room for “Your Show of Shows” (which contained Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart, Mel Tolkin and others), Mel Brooks would wander out of the room, seemingly disconnected from everything. A few moments later, he’d re-enter, say something, and the room would light up. 

What kind of writer are you - Workhorse or Show Pony? Or do you shift between both? Share your style in the comments.

The show pony might not even be in the same ballpark as everyone else… that’s the point. They totally redefine the work. Suddenly, BOOM! You’re at the next level. 

To quote Paul Simon’s “One Trick Pony”:

He makes it

Look so easy, it looks so clean

He moves like God's immaculate machine

He makes me think about all these extra moves I've made

And all this herky-jerky motion

And the bag of tricks it takes

To get me through my working day

Although the genius human Show Ponies are not one trick ponies. They do it day after day, plugged into something almost other-wordly. Burning with some secret fire, some universal current that feels unavailable to the rest of us. 

AI can do much of the Workhorse role. And while it won’t turn you into a Show Pony, it can give you more time to think bigger, crazier, wilder thoughts. It will ask you questions about things you hadn’t thought of. It will make bad suggestions that cause you to think of better ones. 

You can feed an artificial intelligence your latest draft, and it can present you with ideas or drafts that your inner Show Pony will hate and desperately want to rewrite. 

Once you’ve had one partner, why not get two or three? Why not assemble a virtual writers’ room? 

VIRTUAL WRITERS’ ROOMS: WORKHORSES, SHOW PONIES, AND THE WHIP.

I have worked in at least three great writers’ rooms, containing the writers from Late Night with David Letterman, the writers of Cheers and the writers of In Living Color.

I can’t overstate the value of a really good writers’ room. At their best, they share a sensibility, are flexible and fast, capable of being both work horses and show ponies. A good writers’ room will either produce work that is exponentially better than any one or two members could produce or... they’ll ruin everything. 

You can create your virtual writers’ room by working with multiple LLMs (Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, xAI’sGrok, NotebookLM, etc.). You’ll get multiple work horses, multiple perspectives (they each have a “personality”) and -- as you converse with each, the occasional suggestion that will spark your own flash of brilliance. 

BEST OF ALL: By using multiple LLMs, you will be able to preserve your own voice and work better than if you rely on just one LLM. 

A great writers’ room begins by hiring the best possible staff you can find and afford. Or -- as was probably my case -- the best you can find at the time. They are hired to fulfill certain roles: Workhorses who can churn out scripts quickly, show ponies who contribute brilliant lines and observations, assistants who can capture everything and put it into an outline, script or other document. They are also hired based on background: where they’ve worked, what “DNA” their work contains. 

Put simply, writers are hired because they can have a large positive impact on the “job to be done” by writing. You can hire a virtual writers’ room to have a large positive impact on your writing. 

You’re the Show Runner. You hold the “whip.” (And no, I’ve never had a show runner who used a whip... or even acted like someone who held a whip. I did have one who was regularly compared to a hapless prison guard... but that wasn’t one of the great writer’s rooms!)

As the Show Runner in this virtual writers’ room, you can be VERY specific about your values and goals. You can specify exactly the role that you want each LLM to undertake, and take advantage of each one’s “personality.” You can create processes that you’ll be able to improve over time, helping you to write better. 

Multiple LLMs will give you:

• Different approaches and answers to the same problems. (LLMs are programmed by different sets of humans, they have different personalities.)

• The ability to improve the ideas of one by feeding them into another.

• Unparalleled ability to store, remember and organize your work. 

By engaging in open dialogue, you will get “sparks” of brilliance from your LLMs and -- more often than not -- have your own sparks ignited by their questions and suggestions. 

WRITING WITH AI IS REWRITING IS WRITING 

You’re the head writer in your virtual writers’ room. You decide where you’re going to go, what work needs to be done, what’s getting better and what’s getting worse. 

I’ve been doing this for the past 5 months, working on a long story (which I’ll begin publishing as a “proof of concept” next month). Writing with my “room” feels less lonely, more playful, more fun. I enjoy knowing that the draft I’ve begun with pen and paper will get rewritten as I type it out, and will get comments and suggestions from multiple LLMs, based on how I’ve defined their roles in my room. 

I’ve learned one REALLY HUGE thing as I’ve been doing this:

We all know that writing is rewriting. As I work with my virtual writers’ room, I have to constantly rewrite and restate and revise the things I’m sharing. When I prompt, I’m writing and reframing the ways I’m thinking about my work. When I reprompt, I rewrite. 

Writing with AI is writing. 

YOUR TURN

Your turn: What's holding you back from assembling your own virtual writers' room? Drop a comment - I'll personally respond with suggestions for your specific needs.

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