The urge to create has been a constant companion throughout my life. From my early days watching my parents build our family home to constructing elaborate forts and mountain bike tracks in the woods. The desire to bring something new into existence has always been there. This creative drive led me first to a career in photography, where I found joy in capturing what was around me and then working through digital manipulation of those images. Later, it guided me to a second career in software development, where I continuing to build and innovate in a different medium.

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One of the most challenging aspects of any creative endeavor for me is facing the blank page or empty canvas. In photography, I discovered that capturing an initial image provided a starting point, a foundation to build upon with digital manipulation. Similarly, in software development, boilerplate examples offer a framework to begin the construction process. These starting points have always been crucial in overcoming the initial hurdle of making something new, as it’s not really new, the concept is formed and a framework is in place and established to work from.

My love for creating extended beyond my professional life into my hobbies. From HeroQuest to D&D to Warhammer and back to D&D, I’ve always been drawn to fantasy games. These worlds of imagination offered yet another outlet for creativity, whether through painting miniatures or crafting intricate stories with friends, you could say I’ve been a lifelong dork.

Recently, with the advancements of AI, the tools at our disposal have become exponentially more powerful and intelligent. This brings us to an exciting new chapter in my creative journey. My friend Zac and I have embarked on an ambitious project called “Guardians of Aeldoria.” We’ve set out to create a rich, new world filled with diverse characters and locations, utilizing AI as an additional collaborator.

Our goal, from our first discussions this past spring, was to use AI to help us create five origin story novels. Each book featuring a different setting, main character, story arc, and writing style. However, they all take place in the same world at the same time, with overlapping elements tying the narratives together. This project would not have been possible without the AI tools now at our disposal.

The process from concept to creation involved countless hours of collaboration between Zac and myself. We used AI to generate potential ideas for the world and the challenges our characters would face. Once we had a solid foundation, we split off to work on individual stories, constantly feeding the AI with the necessary context to maintain consistency in timelines, locations, character traits, and motivations.

Interestingly, we found that the stories grew organically once we got into them. While we had a general direction in mind from the start, as our characters became more fully realized, their choices seemed to guide the narrative. This often led to regenerating certain sections as the AI attempted to steer the story in unexpected directions.

It’s important to note that AI, in its current form, is just another tool in the creative arsenal. While it can simulate intelligence, crafting a complete 200+ page novel with a coherent story, vivid descriptions, and well-developed characters still requires significant human input. The writing styles produced by even the most advanced language models can be repetitive, often relying on the same descriptive words and phrases. All this results in the editing process being absolutely essential.

The speed at which we completed these stories was remarkable – from concept in late March to self-publishing on Amazon in late August. This rapid turnaround wouldn’t have been possible without AI assistance. However, the amount of work required to “humanize” the writing was extensive. After creating a book, Zac would share the document with me and I with him for the first round of edits requested. Then it’s a long matter of re-reading the book, and adjusting descriptions, character motivations, pacing, wording and grammar to create a smooth experience.

The craziest bit to me after that first review, was turning over the document to AI again and asking it to become a book editor and supply additional modifications and reasoning for the changes. Some of which were great, others, not so much. For this we used Gemini, as the large context window could hold an entire book in memory and make recommendations, where ChatGPT4 was used for the majority of the initial writes.

In the end, this project has reinforced my belief in the power of human creativity. AI is an incredible tool that can enhance and accelerate the creative process, but it’s the human touch that brings true depth and meaning to the work. As we continue to explore the possibilities of AI-assisted creation, I’m excited to see how it will further transform our ability to bring new worlds and stories to life. It really is incredible to see how much more efficient you can be by utilizing these tools with an solid end goal in mind.