Let Chat Write Your Script

Hey there. It’s been a minute, lately everyone - from clients to close friends - seem to be curious as to my thoughts on the state of the industry and the looming threat of AI. So I thought I’d break my silence.

For transparency, the following will be completely HI (human intelligence) generated. I only asked Chat whether my subject line would trigger spam filters, which - of course - didn’t just end in an answer - it ended in “options…”

We’ll get back to all that, but first - let’s start with some news.

Pros and Cons

As brutal as last year seemed for early to mid career scriptwriters, the actual stats and this year’s outlook have been even worse. The recent numbers from the trades peg the decrease in writers’ room jobs in 2023-24 at 42%. Yikes. On top of that, production is down, IP continues to be king, and there are less buyers in the market than ever before. Those writers out there pitching original ideas are selling in a barren landscape.

So why not just hit “sim” (you know, like in a sports video game where you skip through to the end of the season and simulate the season) and let the computer write your script for you? Why not throw out a loose concept, a few key words, and let AI do its thing? We all know Chat is dying to just show those first 10 pages.

“Would you like to see the first 10 pages of what that would look like?”

Then you could focus on building a real business, quit toiling in the fields of narrative, and let the robots guide whatever’s left of your stuck or nascent scriptwriting career.

Here are some pros to letting ChatGPT write your screenplay:

AI is fast

AI doesn’t grapple with self doubt

AI outlines on the fly

AI can do all the deep research you need in-app for ease of use

With millions of pages more of training than you, AI is clearly a better writer than you

If you fail, you can just blame it on the tech

And the cons

AI is not great at transmitting “feelings” to the page

AI gets lost when you try to teach it to build and sustain a mystery

AI is not great at coming up with “out of the box” narrative ideas

If you have a lot of craft, AI is not even close to how good you could be as a writer

Even if you have only a little craft, you’re still a way better writer than ChatGPT

My AI Story

Recently, I asked ChatGPT to slim down a client’s pitch. The pitch was devised and written in the Page One laboratory and had already been delivered to one EP who was highly motivated to move forward with the project. But this version needed to be sharper, so I asked Chat for rewrite “suggestions.” Being on a time crunch, we greenlit about 60% of Chat’s suggestions to make the language more efficient.

AI’s revisions made the pitch more to the point, but I had this weird feeling that the language didn’t feel natural to the human voice. It was like in making the pitch shorter, Chat somehow sucked the life out of it.

It wasn’t until the night before the pitch that I called my client, worried, and suggested we change every line ChatGPT edited back to the original or better. It took all night and all morning but we switched the language, found a way to make the new version move, and kept it in my client’s true voice.

The pitch was a smash; this new producer loved the project - he then explicitly made a point to reference the word usage, singling out a particular narrative motif we’d devised as the thing that kept him keyed in and wanting more.

Had we stuck with what felt easy and fast, had we played to our lesser instincts and obeyed the doubt voice that said Chat knew better than us, my client might have lost serious momentum on that project.

But today’s argument is not solely about whether you should use ChatGPT to write your screenplay. Desperate and non-desperate writers are going to look wherever they can to speed up their process and gain an upper hand. And there certainly will be some scripts that sell in the next few years which were devised largely by AI.

I’ve talked about this - and evolved a lot on my ideas on this subject - since the AI episode of Beyond The Script.

In a moment, I’ll tell you how to beat back the machines in your writing career, but -

Dark Times

Today’s deeper argument slash meditation is about the death of narrative skill altogether. 

Are we ready to live in a world where a majority don’t know to craft an email, a text, a story?

Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude’s developers want us to believe that emails are a nuisance, writing essays is for the birds, and story telling - isn’t there something better we can do with our time?

What other skill is more human than learning to use words to elicit emotion, inspire action or change, or expand the imagination of the reader?

What could we be doing that's more important?

If Gen Alpha (my son’s generation) doesn’t need to learn how to tell stories, what will that mean for society at large? If, like the script writing teacher Robert McKee says “stories help society evolve,” then how will we progress as a species without parables, allegories, fables, metaphors?

Like most things in tech, the desire to innovate always usurps moral and ethical considerations - so we can’t leave it to our tech overlords to pump the brakes. And Hollywood? Hollywood will do whatever sweetens the bottom line - if movies written by robots make a profit you better believe we’ll be seeing billboards for John Wick 8, Written by HB7-0980-7832 in the near future.

So it’s up to you. It’s up to you to not use gemini to write your emails, it’s up to you to pen essays and memoirs that move people so deeply they feel like they “know” you, it’s up to you to only use ChatGPT as a lowly assistant and search engine.

It’s also up to you to pass up every opportunity to just see those “first 10 pages” Chat wants to generate - to stop being lazy, to dig into your own trauma, pain, and truth to craft the most profound emails, essays and screenplays ever written.

Am I asking too much?

Look, do you want “writing a simple essay” to go the way of knowing instinctually how to drive places? Or remembering important phone numbers? Cell phones and Google Maps normalized giving up valuable skills we had for decades.

You want that to be what “crafting a basic narrative” was like?

Our literal societal evolution depends on you not taking the easy way out - for once - to keep the narrative muscle strong.

So don’t let me down.

Now, the real real on fighting off AI in entertainment…

How To Beat The Machines

Let’s face it, AI is going to learn how to write genre films that rely heavily on formula in the near future, if it hasn’t already. Chat, Claude and its competitors are going to continue refining the skill of repackaging moments we’ve already seen into something that for - just a second - feels brand new.

What AI can’t do is come up with bi-associative (read: holy shit surprising) narratives that wow executives and confound audiences. It just can’t. It can’t come up with a “sexy” show about a Pope who doesn’t believe in God, it can’t come up with a five season arc that starts as a family-driven series about a spineless chemistry teacher and ends with that same teacher striking fear into the hearts of vicious sicarios.

AI also can’t write rich dialogue. ChatGPT can’t write dialogue like Past Lives, or White Lotus, or Succession - it doesn’t have the “ear” for language that people do. Chat doesn’t naturally write in a way that engages the heart. The heart! The main motivating thing that draws you to writers/directors/actors. How they make you feel. 

So, if you're still in this writing landscape - and I encourage you to stay because the writing eco-system needs you - I encourage you to stay because without original ideas we’d have no Severance, Insecure, or Baby Reindeer - I encourage you to stay because without writers transmutating their real and true joy and pain into small, conflictual and tension filled scripts with narrative momentum and pace we’d all know ourselves a lot less today -

If you’re still in the writing landscape - you need to grab all the craft you can to pen something truly undeniable to fight off the latest threat to our futures.

• You must learn to transform your pain, realizations, and awakenings - into powerful story design - not just rote outlines or rehashed beat sheets.

• You need to learn what is being most-pitched around town and pivot to the write the “take” no one else is even thinking about.

• You need to possess, then harness, a deep knowledge of the buying and selling marketplace to make your script more a business plan then a vibe check.

• You need to cultivate an ear for dialogue that allows you to visualize the characters around you in the room as you type.

• You to need to be relentless in learning about yourself (read: therapy) so you can imbue your characters with actual life and not just a simulation of life.

Working with a writing coach and strategist like me can definitely help. I’ve had clients sell scripts, attach top level talent to their films, and pitch at major studios with the skills above. If you’re “not going anywhere” in this writing game, email me back at [email protected] and I’ll add you to my wait list.

Look - like Watson, the IBM computer who took on the world’s best chess players - this IS you against the machine - it’s a competition - and you’re gonna win - because you have something it can never have - a rich, storied, human history and the ability to bring that rich history to life on the page.

So don’t let narrative die, and don’t let chatGPT write your screenplay.

Nick