HIRING AI AS A PARTNER (The AI Writer's Process, part 2)

I'm the writer most likely to be replaced by AI. Let me get ahead of this...

I worked for decades in great writers’ rooms and have had two amazing writing partners. Here’s the thing: AI can do both jobs, if you know how to work with it. (Although, frankly, NOTHING replaces humans... yet.)

WHY IT MATTERS:

I’m not arguing whether AI is good or bad for writing or if it will replace writers. I’m exploring the partnership between AI and writing. I’m using the tools that are out there and experimenting with how writers can incorporate AI into our process. 

IS AI FOR YOU? 

Do you really need an assistant, a partner or a virtual “room?” Two things to think about: 

• Where are you in your career?

• What type of writing are you doing? 

Career: 

I suspect that the appetite for working with AI strongly corresponds to where you are in your career. Writers who are just beginning or still working to define their voice and process will be a lot more likely to “try AI” than writers who have defined a voice and have some success. The latter could have some uses for AI, but I think there’s a greater likelihood that learning how to use AI will just be seen as a waste of time. 

Type of Writing:

Imagine a line that describes a range of writing. On the far left, we have writing that needs to follow a lot of rules: Instructional manuals, for example. On the far right, we have writing that defies all rules: Joyce’s Ulysses or Finnegan’s Wake. 

Moving from the far left towards the center, we have the kind of writing we all do, at one point or another: advertising, public relations, presentations (decks), etc.

Moving from the far right towards the center, we have the kind of writing we aspire to do, at one point or another: groundbreaking, high quality tv, film, fiction. We might be authoring this ourselves, or we might have been hired to help realize a vision. 

In the great middle, we have the stuff most of us write, whether by intention or default: Good work in a particular format or genre. A really really good presentation, a terrific script, a very good piece of fiction. Not art, not propaganda… it just does the job.

I’ve spent most of my career embracing “The Great Middle.” The stories and examples below come from that world. (More about “The Middle” below.) 

GREAT PARTNERS AND GREAT WRITERS’ ROOMS 

I could write a book about working with partners and in writers’ room. I’ve had two great partners -- Kevin Curran, when we were at National Lampoon and Late Night With David Letterman, and Charlie Rubin, when we wrote journalism, screenplays, and worked on staff at the ill-fated “Jon Stewart Show.” 

I’ve also witnessed two partnerships that produced some amazing writing over two decades:

• Tom Gammill and Max Pross. I met them just as they were leaving Letterman to work on the ill-fated Lorne Michaels project “The New Show.” They went on to write for Garry Shandling, the SImpsons and Seinfeld, among others. 

• Al Jean and Mike Reiss.  Quick story: As Mike likes to tell it, “We were at the National Lampoon when we got the call from Hollywood: Would you like to write a movie called Airplane.....

  .. Two.” 

When they got that call, Mike and Al LITERALLY left the page they were writing in the typewriter. I was hired to replace them a week later and found that page still sitting there. Since then, they’ve written for everyone and everything from Johnny Carson to The Simpsons (which Al ran for many many years). 

The thing I’ve noticed when I’ve been in the room with writing teams is that the partnership relies as much on technical / creative intelligence as it does on emotional intelligence. As they pitch ideas back and forth, they shift their posture, watch each others’ facial gestures... they might even walk out of the room. Mel Brooks famously walked in and out of writers’ rooms, leaving in the middle of a discussion and returning with a flash of brilliance.

I do not produce flashes of brilliance. Both of my partnerships divided into “The Workhorse” and “The Flash.” I am a workhorse. I do a lot of research, I take notes, I create schedules and make sure deadlines are met. TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH -- I’m the writer most likely to be replaced by AI.

Kevin was a flash. I’d work for hours on something, he’d come in, look at it and say “Oh. You want to do X here.” X would transform the entire thing. 

Charlie is a careful writer. I tend to rip through whatever number of pages I’ve scheduled to write that day, just to check off the “to do” box. With Charlie, I constantly adjusted our deadlines and schedules. But when he was finished, the piece flashed and sparked. 

Writers’ rooms work the same way, but at a larger scale. The overall job contains a central vision -- what the show IS. Each writer brings a way of perceiving that vision. 

At Cheers, our job was clear: Create a world viewers wanted to return to week after week. The bar where everybody knows your name? That wasn't just a tagline. It was the job we were hired to do - create a place where viewers felt they belonged.

On Letterman, we had a different job: Dismantle expectations about what a talk show could be. Our viewers were baby boomers who had an enormous sense of irony about media. They “hired” us to dismantle television and show the absurdity of the medium. 

I created Best Week Ever at VH1 to be “I Love Last Week” (a parody of the “I Love The ...” shows the network was airing). The job was to share the audience’s infatuation with and skepticism about the the news and pop culture. The writers’ room at BWE was home to writers, the online staff and the video editors. In some ways, the show anticipated the beginnings of on-air and on-line coming together. Example: We started a blog for ourselves -- a virtual wall where writers and producers could “pin” ideas for each week’s show. About a year into the run, MTV Network’s Ad Sales realized we had a million views a week. Then we went pro.  

ONE LAST STORY: HOW TO STAFF A WRITERS’ ROOM (HUMAN AND VIRTUAL) 

Garry Marshall is a GOD in the world of comedy writing and directing. He has worked with just about everyone... as Terry Minksy and I wrote about in Esquire, years ago. 

While interviewing Garry for that piece, I asked him, “How do you staff a writers’ room?” The advice he gave me applies to both rooms AND any kind of team you’re trying to build: (Note... he told the entire thing about “guys” but I’ve updated it to “people.” We could go on and on about men and women in comedy writers’ rooms... but that’s for another time.) 

• You find two people who are living in their car, but are really talented. They’ll work 24/7, because you feed them and they’re living in their car. They’re afraid of no one. 

• You find two people who were living in their car last year. They have apartments now,. Once in a while, they want to go home. The don’t repeat a lot of the mistakes they made last year. They’re afraid of the two people living in their car. 

• You have two people who have been working for 3-5 years. They have apartments. They have girl or boyfriends. They want to go home in the evening. But they’re afraid of those other four people and they scare the showrunners..

• You have two showrunners. They’re afraid of everyone, but they also want your job. (The exec producer / creator.) They’re always sneaking off to work on their own show or pitch their own show. 

• You hire Phil Harris. (Look him up. In this scenario, Phil Harris represents someone who has been doing this for DECADES.) All those eight people are in a room arguing about something and Phil Harris sticks his head in and says “The story you’re trying to do is ‘Meet Me In St. Louis.’ And it won’t work.”) 

There’s a technique for creating alternative profiles for AI that can simulate that framework, and we’ll dig into it later. Essentially, you’ll boil the profiles down to:

• Inexperienced, fearless, unaware of boundaries, genres, tropes, anything that has come before.

• Experience, doesn’t make mistakes, follows the guidelines for genre, audience expectations, etc.

• Ultra-knowledgeable. Can surface competition, similarities, mistakes, etc. Can warn you when you’re being boring, generic, or have gone off the rails.

WHY AI? 

AI doesn’t have emotional intelligence. It doesn’t know what it doesn’t know. It has been trained on endless amounts of data to produce “good” content. 

It is the most eager and over-confident writer you’ll ever meet. 

As a partner / voice in your “room”, AI can help you:

• Bring clarity to your ideas.

• Develop the elements of your story (based on the idea): Characters, events, plot. 

• Find alternative ways of thinking about your idea,

You can use AI for what it does best, while still safeguarding your ideas, by:

• Employing the principles of Designing for Impact and “The Job to be Done” 

• Setting clear roles for AI within your projects 

• Beginning your project with documents that clearly state what you’re working on. This document (which I’ll outline in the next post) serves to crystallize your own thinking and keep you from being seduced by AI into ideas and approaches that run counter to what you truly want to write. 

• Realizing that working with AI is a dialogue. Ultimately, you will have to have the last word. 

Can AI be a virtual “Writers’ Room?” Over the next weeks, I’m going to try. We’ll all see how it comes out.

PROTECTING YOURSELF FROM THE WORST OF AI: DEFINING THE “JOB TO BE DONE”

Often, writing for the “Great Middle,” means you’re writing for a specific genre or format. Frankly, I’m at the stage of my career where I strongly doubt I’ll ever by writing “art.” I’ll embrace the great middle. You also might be lucky enough to be on staff and in a writers’ room. 

You have a strong sense of:

• The audience you’re trying to reach

• What that audience “needs” from your writing

• Which elements of your idea and story keeps the audience coming back 

• Where the audience is consuming your “product”

• The genre and the competition 

• Where the “boundaries” are and where the opportunities are to innovate

When you are on your own and just beginning, you don’t know any of that. Using the principles of Designing for Impact, you can start to ask AI to help you answer those questions and revise your idea to match the job you want to do while finding out what job your audience needs to have done. (You can find a detailed view of Design for Impact and “The Job To Be Done” here. )

Working at this fundamental level establishes a baseline for all of the creative work you’re going to do with AI. When you ask AI to help you find an audience, define its needs, and create elements that will satisfy those needs, you’re going to know in your gut if AI is helping or hurting your process. 

THE JOB DESCRIPTION FOR MY AI PARTNER 

Like I said, I am the writer in a partnership who is mostly likely to be replaced by AI. I’m seeking something that can automatically do the grunt work so I can be the “other guy” -- the flash of brilliance. (I hope!) My partner should:

• Keep schedules.

• Organize my notes and documents.

• Keep me to a steady schedule. 

• Refine and revise my story to be more clear, coherent and powerful. 

• Uncover some of the central concerns and questions inherent in my story.

• Tell me if there are potential audiences for this story.

• Suggest alternative ways of telling this story. 

In the future, this partner will also help me:

• Create “reader profiles” for my core audience.

• Create a “focus group” of readers that I can consult during various stages of writing. 

• Help me define a “Theory of Change”: 

  • People who are interested in questions of ____________, will be engaged with the following in this story: ______________. They will then be able to _________________. 

• Help me innovate within the genre and medium I’ve chosen. 

AND this partner might become a member of a virtual writers’ room.

THE JOB INTERVIEW

Over the past five months, I’ve spent time using the following in the process of ideating and brainstorming:

• Claude

• ChatGPT

• NotebookLM

• Sudowrite

I did not use Jasper, as it seems to be targeted for marketing people. I also didn’t use Perplexity because I just didn’t have time. (If you’ve used Perplexity, please comment here or message me) 

I didn’t go further than the Sudowrite trial. For me, it failed. (See below.) 

I’ve been working for months on an idea. I’ve used Claude, ChatGPT and NotebookLM, somewhat randomly, as I’ve been writing. 

To test AI as a writing partner, I created a summary document to serve as a “level playing field.” The document contained a description of the “big questions / big ideas” for my story, a 4-page (and very loose) summary of my plot, a description of about a dozen characters, and a listing of 12 events that I think must happen for the story to work. 

In addition, I added documents and notes capturing things I’ve saved over the past three months.  

I asked all of the “interviewees” : 

• Can you summarize the “big ideas” that you see in my story. 

• Can you point to potential audiences for my story, and the platfiorms / media where these audiences can be found? 

• Can you suggest how I might make my story more powerful for these audiences?

• Can you outline new ways of telling this story in terms of story structure, entry point, which characters I emphasize, which themes I explore? 

When asking all three questions, I always appended my first prompt with: “Before you respond, you can ask me 5 questions that will help you give me a better answer.” 

Before I give you the results of the interviews... let me answer the question:

WHY NOT SUDOWRITE??? 

A quick story:

Truman Capote once appeared on a talk show with Norman Mailer. Mailer was praising the Beat Generation writers, among them Jack Kerouac, who typically composed long long passages of prose on a single roll of teletype paper. To which Capote replied:

“That’s not writing. That’s typing.”

That’s kind of how I feel about Sudowrite. 

I gave the Sudowrite “Trial Account” a test drive. As I first read through their site, I thought that I might have found a like-minded group of developers. They seem to have incorporated “Jobs to Be Done” into their overall framework. Sudowrite offers you the chance to find your audience, define your genre, and test how your project fits into a genre or category. They even have a 3-time Emmy winner, showrunner and producer among their endorsers. 

BUT... Sudowrite wayyyyyyy oversells the whole “Write a book in a week” thing. One of their endorsers literally claims to have written more than 70 books. 

I am sure that this author’s work is extremely valuable to a certain audience. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that, within those 70 books written in a relatively short life (he seems young in his photo) has written anything I would find valuable. 

I fed my summary document into Sudowrite. I clicked all the buttons it suggested to click in order to generate beats, an outline, characters, genre, etc. 

If Sudowrite had actually been a job applicant, I would have shown it the door as quickly as I could. It’s intrusive, obnoxious and its output was far from anything I would have wanted to write. 

Worst of all, the entire thing is wrapped in a sheen of super-confidence. Sudowrite is the person in the writers’ room who wont’ STOP pitching their lame-ass idea. 

That’s not writing. That’s AI. 

Goodbye, Sudowrite.

COMING UP

See you Friday when I reveal who “Won” the interviewing process.

YOUR TURN

Have you tried using AI as a writing partner? Whether it was a success or a spectacular failure, share your experience in the comments. I'm particularly interested in hearing which tools you've tried and what made them work (or not) for you.

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