How to Write a Series With ChatGPT - Full Series Prompt Tutorial

Chad jbt is actually surprisingly good at outlines and in this video we're going to take that to the beginner stage that most authors start with which is creating a series outline and see how that works for us let's get into it [Music] hello everyone welcome back to the channel and today we're going to be constructing a series outline we're going to be looking at a couple of different series lengths but hopefully with the ideas you'll get in this video you'll be able to adapt those series lengths to whatever your series should be um and that's just something that you're going to have to get a feel for for your specific series but we're going to be looking at a couple of different options now one thing to note about series is that a good series will have structure it won't just be one book after another after another after another never ending and at the same time it won't you know it has an overall Arc and we talk a lot in writing and writing workshops and things like that about having your character Arc and your plot Arc in a single book and one of the difficulties that newer authors will deal with at least I certainly did was giving the character another character Arc in the next book and then another one in the next book and then thinking like well I'm correcting all these flaws on this person by the end of the series they're just going to be super human essentially they're going to have no flaws left and so part of the challenge of a series is trying to come up with ways to make that character learn and grow in each book but also have an overarching structure and so it's because of that that I actually recommend that you pick one of the standard story structures that are out there and there are tons of them and we'll look at two today um and then use that as the basic framework for your series and using AI will actually make this a whole lot easier for you and so let's dive in a little bit so we're going to start with a Trilogy a classic Trilogy it's very common in a variety of different mediums um and and genres but the trilogy works because it is actually following the three act format usually and a really good example of this is the original Star Wars Trilogy I think Star Wars gets referred to more than anything when it comes to story structure because it actually got that part down Pat like it was it is so good at this uh the first Star Wars movie was a not only a tight well-contained plot of its own that followed the hero's journey and follow the three-act structure but then you look at um the orig the entire Trilogy so that's a New Hope Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi and all three of those together also follow a 3X story that that's a little bit more Broad and also follow the hero's journey and so it's a wonderful lesson in how to create a really well structured trilogy so what we're going to do is we're going to create a Trilogy based on the 3x structure and here's the prompt that we're going to be using I'm just going to copy this into here using the standard 3x structure create a three book series outline about the initial concept below we'll get to that each book mapped to the three acts of the perspective from the perspective of the protagonist because we want to make sure we're figuring out the main plot line with the main character even though each book is only part of the is only one part of the 3x structure each one should also be a complete story with that in mind make sure each book also follows the 3x structure and lists each Act for all three books the reason I add this last part in there is because I found that when you try to give it a story concept and say write a three book series modeled after the three act structure it will actually create just one book essentially and the first part where it's talking about the the First Act will actually be more like the First Act of a single book and so we want to make sure each book also has its own three act structure a beginning middle and an end and that helps the AI understand that each book should be a standalone more or less work that has a beginning middle and an end and then each one also progresses this larger plot so um after that we need to give it some story details so I usually add something like this initial story concept with a colon and then start adding in these details I've already put this together so I'm not going to type it out right now uh but here it is this is an urban fantasy series that involves Michael a woman who in the first book discovers she has certain abilities that make her uniquely able to find and destroy mythical monsters each book should primarily deal with a different beast from various World mythologies and each one should be appropriate for her character Arc at the end of book one she yeah at the end of book one she needs to die and in book two she struggles in hell and by the beginning of book three is leading a revolution in hell she is fully resurrected by her at the end of book three this is a story concept I'm actually going to be working on although I probably won't do it in three books I've adapted it for three books here but um but this is a yeah this is a story concept I'm working on now it's important to put whatever information you already know down here into this prompt so it has an idea of where to go if you just ask it to create a basic outline it will give you something very generic but if you the more you can give it the better it'll be and if I really wanted to I could flesh this out even further give it more details about the character their character Arc I could add in some information about some of the side characters you might not know all of this and so you might have to do some of the other tasks to build out the characters to build out the synopsis things that I've talked about in past videos so that you can then take that information and put it in here I figured this was sufficient enough to demonstrate what this is going to be about but ideally you know for instance I have um the bit about how each book needs to deal with a different mythical monster I might already want a list of what those monsters should be and that's something I would figure out in a brainstorming session with jgbt but there you go so that's where we're starting with and we'll see if this gives us a decent three-act structure broken into three books all right so we have finally got this outline and it did a pretty decent job so first we have book one Michael's Awakening which it's labeling as the setup and act one which is what we want we want the first book to basically act as act one of the entire series and it is successfully broken this down into three acts we have the introduction of Revelation so Michael is living a normal life in the city until she starts experiencing inexplicable events uh she meets Gabriel a seasoned Monster Hunter finds out she's a hunter a little generic little Supernatural but I'll allow it and then we get the name lion so it's figured out one of those mythological beasts and that seems to be the subject of the first book and like I asked it to uh she slays them to me and lion but uh dies in the process and so moving on to book two Michael's trials which is a good name for something that's act two of something the confrontation in act two this one also has three acts Michael finds herself in Hell stripped of the her Hunter abilities here she encounters the mythical Cerberus initially she feels despair in isolation and struggles with her loss of power this is pretty good in my version it'll be a little different um not planning on having service in there but who knows um so that's a case where I would want to give it more details so it could use that and then book three also in in a 3X structure but acting as the third Act of the entire book series so that is a standard Trilogy and honestly if I were to follow this outline exactly this wouldn't be too bad um it's not quite what I want for the series that I've been dreaming of for a couple years now but uh that this you could work with this and it wouldn't be too bad and so if I were to do this for myself I would just work with it a little bit more to get the specifics of what I want but I might just start with this and just write it all myself anyway so that is a Trilogy we're going to open up a new window here for uh gpt4 and then we're going to do this again but this time with a different story structure and the story structure we're going to be using is the hero's journey the nice thing about the hero's journey is that it is broken up into well at least the the version popularized by Christopher Vogler is broken up into 12 parts which means if you have a if you want to do a very long series the hero's journey can actually be a really good model for your books that um for for a long series for the uh for those purposes and so we're going to use this prompt and the prompt is very similar all right I'm just going to copy the whole thing into here using the hero's journey as defined by Christopher Vogler created 12 book series outline about the initial concept below each book mapped to the 12 stages of the hero's journey from the perspective of the protagonist even though each book is only one part of the hero's journey each one should also be a complete story with that in mind make sure each book follows the three act structure and list each Act for all 12 books so that might sound familiar it's very similar to the 3x structure one that we just did except modified do Encompass E12 book series that is focused on the hero's journey now I should point out I'm able to use the 3x structure and the 12 Stage Heroes Journey because chat CPT knows what they what it is and it knows really well if I were to use say the 24 chapter novel outline which I've used in past videos I would need to input that information myself or you might have your own structure that you particularly like for a series you like you know book one to do this book two to do this and so forth and so you would need to add that in there and if I were doing that I would come here under this first paragraph and add like here is my series framework then I'd start with number one and then I'd say book one colon and then whatever information you want to give it about book one in a series and and the role that it plays and then you could do that but we're not going to do that because it already understands the hero's journey really well but if you are using a structure which you should use a structure that chat GPT does not know very well then maybe you might want to consider inputting that into the prompt as well so the initial story concept is pretty much the same except expanded for 12 books this is an urban fantasy series that involves Michael a woman who in the first book discovers she has certain abilities that make her uniquely able to find and destroy mythical monsters each book should primarily deal with a different beast from various World mythologies and each one should be appropriate for her character Arc as defined by the 12 steps of the hero's journey at the end of book six she needs to die and and in book seven through eight she struggles in hell and by book nine is leading a revolution in Hell she's fully resurrected at the end of book 10 or the beginning of book 11. let's see what it gives us and we now have a pretty solid series outline for this series and I actually was reading this as it was generating I got kind of excited because some of the ideas really sound kind of cool so we have book one the silence echo which represents stage one of the hero's journey The Ordinary World Michael lives in a mundane life and in Chicago working as a barista and daydreaming about escaping her hundrum existence one night she starts hearing strange melodic sounds no one else seems to hear and follows them to a vicious siren causing Havoc she unexpectedly Wills power that neutralizes the siren act three refusal the call shaken by the events Michael Retreats back into her normal life Define denying her Newfound abilities I did notice that it's kind of layering the different steps of the hero's journey we have each book is is following the hero's journey to a certain extent but it looks like it also made each Act also following the hero's journey which we don't want so I might regenerate this um but so far I'm okay with it let's just keep reading book two Gorgons Vale when the serpentine Gorgon starts turning people into stone Michael realizes she must confront her Destiny she's assisted by an enigmatic Mentor retired Monster Hunter named Leo who helps her harness her abilities accepting her Destiny and Michael vows to save her City battling and defeating the Gorgon so let's move ahead to like where I started to give it some information so I told her that the big at the end of book six that she needed to die so Michael dies in the arms of her allies symbolizing the end of her journey in the Mortal realm that's correct Michael wakes up in an underworld and struggles to understand her new reality she battles demonic creatures while delving deeper into the underworld ultimately getting captured by Hades himself Michael ends up in Haiti's change of chains a prisoner in the Underworld and so on and so on and this is all matching the hero's journey pretty well actually um I particularly liked it once I got to this point um Michael starts building a fair rule in the Underworld but yearns for her previous life a chance for Resurrection presents itself but it's perilous and involves leaving her kingdom she chooses her City over the underworld embarking on a journey of Resurrection she's resurrected but her city is under attack from a colossal Titan and then the last one was uh actually she fights against the Olympians so it got really epic here at the end and again that's not exactly where I would go with it but this is a great place to start for me if I wanted to create that series outline and when you're creating a series outline you don't necessarily need to know too much yet you can just have the bare details of what happens in each book and then we would take each book and then further flesh it out to get more information about what happens in that book and let's just give an example of what that would look like so let's say we don't have any modifications to this first book um we'll just say take the first book and flesh it out further into a full synopsis following the three act structure add additional information about the character Michael add a mentor figure called who is actually the mythical god Osiris who mysteriously appears now and then so this is just some of the details I have in my head add a side character who is a friend of Michael give and add a subplot to the story and track it across all three x and I think that's good we can stick with that and then see what it gives us for book one and we now have this more detailed version of book one which is really awesome actually I I quite enjoyed reading it again it's not quite exactly where I would go with this but but you absolutely could go with this and it would be a coherent interesting story one of the things that it did is it added the subplot about her friend Luke Luke has been struggling with his music feeling like he's lost his creative Spark and so that's the subplot for act one in act two it continues inspired by these extraordinary events Luke finds a new inspiration for his music translating these events into songs while helping Michael navigate this new reality and then at the end throughout the ordeal Luke helps Michael and provide provides moral support all the while creating an entire album inspired by her experiences which is just the perfect amount of levity that I think could actually make a decent subplot it it doesn't have much to do with the plot of the story um and so it would need to be a very subtle not too important subplot just a little thing on the side to kind of add some humor and things but uh it did a pretty good job it added every one of the details that I asked it to and now we have I'd say a decent synopsis here that we could then take and start expanding into chapters and so forth and so go and watch my first video about writing with Chachi PT's the first one I ever did and you you'll see the process I do from taking a concept to a synopsis and a synopsis to a more fleshed out outline and then to from that to story beats and from that to finish Pros so this is a good place to start I hope this has been useful for you and if you do need to use a series structure that is different than the hero's journey or the 3x structure say you only want five books you can figure out a structure that models itself near one of these main story structures that are out there and find a way to do it in in five chapters as a general rule of thumb the First Act and the third act tend to be shorter so for instance something a good example of what this might work is if I wanted to do a four book series I would maybe take the three act structure and split Act 2 into two books because the first book could be act one and the last book in the fourth book could be act three but those tend to be shorter acts anyway so you could have two and three as uh as book as the second act respectively so that's just one good way one example of a way you could flesh this out to work for more than three or more than or different than three or twelve books but it really depends on the structure you give it that's the most important thing is that you develop some kind of structure before you ask it to give you a series outline hope this was useful and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: The Nerdy Novelist

Views: 23,420

Keywords: storytelling, how to write a novel, how to plot a novel, worldbuilding, chat gpt, chatgpt, claude, sudowrite, ai writing, writing with artificial intelligence, chatgpt tutorial, prompt engineering, how to use chatgpt, artificial intelligence, chatgpt prompt, prompt engineering chatgpt, chatgpt prompts, chatgpt examples, generative ai

Id: MrMHy-GXMhQ

Length: 20min 23sec (1223 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 22 2023