This is author MJ Muñoz here with a 20 minute writing session update from February 15th,
2024.
I actually, it's supposed to only be 10 minutes but something happened and I ended up going
20 minutes so I thought you know I'll just stick with it and what you're going to see
here over the next three or so minutes is a condensed version of me writing for 20 minutes
and it's, it's you know writing is rewriting they say and so that's what I have recorded
here and I figure I'll just be as open, you know I want to continue to be as open and
transparent with my creative process as possible so this is part of it.
I, not with any shame or trepidation or nervousness I admit or you know tell you, you can plainly
see if you looked at the beginning of this video that I was using ChatGPT as part of
my creative process.
I actually, actually it was Claude, I'm using Claude AI, I pay for that, 20 bucks a month
and I like it.
I think it's a very good tool for me to use and I specifically in this instance am using
it to, I used it to generate abilities of Digimon like characters, character traits
for them, something about their look, you know a lot of different things.
I directed it to make them look a certain way or to give me information about them.
I'm currently writing a Grobug Tale book and it's a chapter book, middle grade chapter
book or I guess it's a middle grade and I have a character interaction that I need to
make between these four critterbot guardians and this character Hopper who's a Grobug who
doesn't quite know he's a Grobug yet and it's, anyway I know Hopper fairly well because
I've written him for a while and I have a good sense of his personality and what he
thinks and the way he is although I'll also be showing him as he's kind of waking up in
a new world with lost memories and not quite knowing who he is so I needed to figure out
who well I can be a little bit vague with who he is as I'm trying to figure that out
and I figure his personality will come out as he's interacting with these characters,
the critterbot guardians but I also, well but I did not want to get stuck on figuring
out who these critterbot guardians are and as strange as this may sound to some extent
it doesn't really matter who they are.
I'm not going to spend a lot of time developing these characters because I just need them
to be characters to serve a purpose and that purpose is to tell this little bit of the
story to help texture and contextualize who Hopper is and what he's doing in this world
and how they as these guardians of this world interact with him and I know the broad strokes
of it but just you know what are their specific personalities like and how do they interact
with him?
I don't know.
I didn't know so I asked Claude to help me with that and it gave me some stock stuff.
If you look at the beginning you can see I'm revising a lot of what it put in.
It went a little too technical.
It wanted to talk about Cinderstripe having like 3000 degree flames coming out of his
claws or whatever and I thought that's silly.
I don't need that.
I want to use like a more soft magic system.
I don't need to know the particulars of how hot the flame is or whatever and just I wanted
to be simple.
He shoots fireballs out of his mouth.
He swipes at enemies while his claws are fiery or hot because his paw pads have flames coming
out of them.
He's got burners on his back that he can burst fuel from to jet propel himself forward and
he can shoot out a stream of stuff to make a flame wall to either trap prey or to defend
himself and whoever he's with and whoever he's protecting.
So those are the things that matter not the degree of the flame and those are just silly
like fun Digimon like abilities that were generated for this character who uses the
element of fire and is in the shape of a tiger even though he's like a cyborgish sapient
human intelligence level type being.
So yeah I am refining all these ideas because I don't like some of them and I'm rejecting
some of them and you can see in the video process or you can see in the process me rewriting
that stuff to bring it more into alignment with what I want the tone of the story to
be and how I want it to be simpler.
What I'm going to do with this is refine it down to a point where it's a quick reference
which I also had Claude help me do because I came up with what are the abilities, what
do they look like, what are their names, how are we going to develop them, blah blah blah
and I went through this whole iterative process and then I said okay let's combine these into
a quick guide for me to have to reference and then it was too condensed and I asked
it to un-condense it so it did so it just expanded that stuff out and now I'm editing
that that's what you're seeing on the screen if you're looking at that part and it's good
it's interesting it's very useful I'm still putting in the creative work I'm still making
the character arcs I'm still going to have to make these characters who they are and
I think it's really interesting and the people who Poo Poo AI assisted writing, that's fine
my wife doesn't want to do it at all and I've told her that I'm doing this and she's like
oh that's kind of weird why don't you just write it yourself well you know because I
am writing it myself I just have you know a robot man, Frank, Frank is what I call him
to help me you know speed through these ideas and the nice thing is I get to reject a lot
of them and then come up with my own and it's just it's almost like the Edison thing like
if Thomas Edison had somebody helping him there who you know showed him how not to make
a bunch of light bulbs then he said okay fine I won't go that path I'll go another path
he would have gotten to the light bulb a little more quickly I think so that's what I feel
like it's like it's an amplifier of my my ability and effort so it's pretty cool I'm
digging it and yeah so I'm got to keep plugging away at this book this is actually well I
intend on well it doesn't matter what I intend it only matters what I do so I will continue
to work on this book and others and I will update you on when they are released when
they're available and you can find all that information over at MJMunoz.com as always
until next time folks take care be well!