How A Writing Pro Uses ChatGPT for Reading, Writing, and SEO - Ep. 2 with Nat Eliason

Have you ever used it for trying to figure out what it is that you're looking for?

Oh, no. That's an interesting idea. So,

being like I my my favorite sci-fi books are The Three Body Problem, Jurassic Park, and I don't know, The Martian.

Who's an author? That would be that would be a really good intersection of those three. We were talking about on

those three. We were talking about on Twitter the other day for like book recommendations. This machine book, that

recommendations. This machine book, that sounds super interesting. That's exactly

the topic that I'm looking for. I might

actually go buy that book. That sounds

really good.

That's partly the magic of chat GBT is like it misses a lot but then sometimes it just comes up with something where you're like that is absolutely perfect and I never would have found that otherwise.

You can't write articles better than me but it can maybe give ideas for a fiction outline better than I can do on my own. The other thing you can do is

my own. The other thing you can do is you can say like what do you think should happen in this opening scene?

[Music] Natt, welcome to the show.

I'm excited to be here.

Obviously, we've known each other for quite a while. you've gone through in that time you've gone through a couple different like phases as a thinker as a creator as a writer and I think when I

met you you were just coming out of the um sort of like marketing uh growth kind of phase and you were entering in your tools for thought and like Rome phase

you've subsequently gone into crypto you're writing a book about that which is super exciting or you've written a book and it's coming out soon and now you're into books and I just I'm just very excited excited to have you on this

show because I think you're you're just one of those people that that thinks really deeply about how to use software to help you think um for for productivity purposes. I think like you

productivity purposes. I think like you were one of the first people to discover Rome and really popularize it. You had

that like amazing Rome course. I did an interview uh with you on your Rome system and I'm just like I actually owe that uh to our our mutual friend Adam who uh originally turned me

on. Another part of this Twitter gang,

on. Another part of this Twitter gang, the the one of the the first every employee, the first real every writer, Adam Keysling. Um and so yeah, I just

Adam Keysling. Um and so yeah, I just have a feeling that you have some interesting ways of thinking about this and interesting ways to uh use it to extend your mind and your creativity.

And so I'm I'm really excited to get to talk to you about it.

Sweet. Yeah, I'm excited that you're doing this because I I have found some good use cases for it and it has slowly trickled into being a a daily driver

phone home screen app, but I I am also occasionally impressed by ideas other people have had for how to use it, too.

So, it it does feel like we're we're just very in the early days with discovering, you know, how can we use this strange thing, which is fun. We

haven't had a lot of tools like that in recent history.

I I sort of think uh all of the things that we thought you know in the note-taking days like the the Rome research or Evernotes of the world would do for us in terms of a second brain like that's actually a lot of it is

actually happening like the the birectional links was like not it this is it you know.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No the these are these are true tools for thought in the way that notetaking apps can never really be.

Totally. Totally. So let let's dive in like how do you use chatbt? Take us

through uh take us through some use cases. So it looks like you're using it

cases. So it looks like you're using it for getting book recommendations. I know

you've been trying to write a sci-fi novel and you were looking for some inspirations. So you went to ChatBT and

inspirations. So you went to ChatBT and you wrote Is there anyone today writing great near-term hard sci-fi science fiction without involving space like Michael Kiteon? Like why did you write

Michael Kiteon? Like why did you write that? Why did you originally go to Chhat

that? Why did you originally go to Chhat in the first place to ask that question?

Uh, it's the kind of sci-fi that I find the most interesting. And

um, and I was like, okay, well, you know, if I'm looking for more writers like this, what would be a good place or you who would I ask?

And the places I would normally ask would be Reddit, Twitter, or Google. And

uh you know with Google you've kind of got to like open a few links and cross reference between them. Um and then like with Reddit you might have to do the same thing. Twitter you've got to wait

same thing. Twitter you've got to wait for responses, right? If you post a question you have to wait for responses.

This is just like much faster because I assume the information was out there somewhere. Um and it did a pretty good

somewhere. Um and it did a pretty good job, right? And the nice thing is like

job, right? And the nice thing is like you know you can always say like okay cool. Can you give five more? and we'll

cool. Can you give five more? and we'll

go out and grab more of them. Um, I

mean, the the one thing that can be kind of disappointing is it feels like, okay, these first two, it just went to this article, right? Like, okay, I probably

article, right? Like, okay, I probably could have just like gone to this article. I bet it's the first article on

article. I bet it's the first article on Google. All right. Um, but it at least

Google. All right. Um, but it at least filtered it for contemporary ones. Um,

that's a thing that, uh, if you Googled for it, there might be an answer. if someone has already created a list. But for a lot of those those kinds of queries, like for you,

it's like that does not involve space.

Like there's probably no list that's like specifically Michael Kiteon um Michael Kiteon uh like writers uh who've written about things that don't involve space. Like I don't think that's a

space. Like I don't think that's a pre-existing thing. And yeah, sometimes

pre-existing thing. And yeah, sometimes if you're if you're a creative person, you're like you want to find examples that fit this oneofone type category that cuts across lots of different

categories that like it cuts across lots of things that people may have composed into lists, but it's not there isn't one list because like that that's so specific to you and what you like. And I

think um chatbt is like really incredible for surfacing things like that um because it it can it can go through all the lists that have ever been composed and filter it automatically for this one of one

category that you just came up with.

Yeah. And I also just don't trust Google results. And so I I I'm sometimes

results. And so I I I'm sometimes disappointed when it just uses Google results for the answers because so like you were saying, I used to work in marketing and I specifically worked in search engine optimization and like most

of the results on Google are not the best answers to a question. They're the

ones that are like best engineered to be there. Um and so it's hard to find

there. Um and so it's hard to find actually good information. You used to be able to go to Reddit and find it, but even Reddit is being engineered now for SEO. So

SEO. So there there is a little bit of a like, okay, how do we surface good information, not just well-engineered information

and I think it is at least a little bit better than just going off of search results. Um, and it certainly helps to

results. Um, and it certainly helps to filter them, right? Because that that other list had what, 10 people, but this one has has filtered it down based on the criteria of like being alive and not

talking about space too much.

I think that's a good note for a tool like this. Um, it's it is sometimes nice

like this. Um, it's it is sometimes nice that it uses web browsing, but when it does web browsing, it's going to uh the results it gets are going to have

a really big impact on the quality of the response it returns. And if you explicitly ask it not to use web browsing, you might get different

results. Um the the trade-off there is

results. Um the the trade-off there is like uh when it's when it's not using web browsing, it's much more likely to hallucinate. So you may get it

hallucinate. So you may get it recommending authors or articles or books that don't exist. Um but it it it has the potential to be more creative because it's not being limited by the search terms it happens to use to like

find the answer to your question.

Yeah. And it looks like it didn't use search for this second set. So I'd be curious to look at some of these authors. Have Have you heard of any of

authors. Have Have you heard of any of these? Did any of them sort of like ring

these? Did any of them sort of like ring a bell for you?

No. And so like what I might do is instead of going and searching for them, I would say, you know, what are the best known works from each of those five

authors that fits and then just kind of see what it comes back with.

Now it's now it's browsing. So, it's

it's going to be pretty pretty likely to probably find something real or say, "Hey, by the way, I made that person up."

up." Yeah.

Um, no, I I love this. I love this for for um for this use case. It's like once you know what you're looking for, it can surface things that would you would never have found otherwise. Have you

ever have you ever used it for um the previous step, which is like trying to figure out what it is that you're looking for? Um, so,

looking for? Um, so, oh, no, that's an interesting idea. So,

being like I my my favorite sci-fi books are The Threebody Problem, Jurassic Park and uh I don't know, The Martian, right?

Like, who's an author? That would be that would be a really good intersection of those three.

That's a good idea. I haven't tried That's one of my favorite things to do because like I have I have all these lists of authors I like or quotes I like or whatever and I can just like take the list, paste it in and be like what are

the patterns here? And it just uncovers patterns of patterns in my taste that I never would have put words to before.

Um but once I once I have it, it's a really powerful tool to like be like no no that is what I like. Like I really like uh emotionally re resonant like

philosophical analytical writing. Um,

and I know I know that because of chatbt.

Okay, this result is coming back pretty interesting actually. Like,

interesting actually. Like, right. So, like I already know that the

right. So, like I already know that the second one wasn't actually fitting what I looked for, right? Because like human interaction with the alien ecosystem is like I'm not looking for space, right?

Okay. But SB Divia, this machine book, have you read it? Have you even heard of that book? I don't

that book? I don't I've never heard of it. I think like that is that's partly the magic of chat GBT is like um it it it it misses a lot but then sometimes it just comes up with

something where you're like that is absolutely perfect and I never would have found that otherwise.

Okay, so you can't see this because it's on a different tab, but I'm looking at it on Amazon. This is how I know it's probably a good book. It's got a 4.2 rating, right? So it's not like a 4.7

rating, right? So it's not like a 4.7 4.8 mass market. Everybody just loves it. Only 600 ratings, right? So, it's

it. Only 600 ratings, right? So, it's

it's not super widespread, but it's an editor's pick on Amazon for best science fiction and fantasy.

And it the the top endorsement is from Ken Lou, who says it's Zero Dark 30 meets The Social Network,

and it got a it got nominated for a Hugo award. This is like a perfect

award. This is like a perfect intersection of like, oh wow, it's it was endorsed by Ray Kerszswe, too. Okay, like this is a fantastic recommendation, right?

I love that.

I love that.

You saw it here live, folks. Um

um yeah, I'm I'm super curious actually like um your evaluation criteria for whether or not a book is good. like you

just went through this whole list of things like where does that come from?

It's a good question. I mean

I think that you know there there are multiple reasons to read a book, right?

One is pure like you know popcorn, right? Like

I just I just want to be entertained. I

just want to have fun. I just want to like go on a little journey here.

And and there's nothing wrong with that.

Like that's a great reason to read a book. And if that's what you are looking

book. And if that's what you are looking for, then you want the 100,000 reviews, 4.7 stars, like you know, Oprah's book club, whatever, like you want those

books because those are like pretty much guaranteed deliver that experience if you enjoy um that that type of story, right? But if you want something that is

right? But if you want something that is like is not going to be a like, you know, for lack of a better term like cookie cutter plot, right? like

something kind of new and interesting or like there might be rough parts to it, but it's going to like maybe expand a little bit of what you think of as like what you can do with a novel or it's going to introduce some interesting

ideas, right? Like it's going to do

ideas, right? Like it's going to do something a little bit different so you're not going to feel like, oh yeah, I've like done this before. Then you

kind of have to look for something that has Yeah. the like maybe the not great

has Yeah. the like maybe the not great reviews, especially if it's a lot of like five stars and one stars, right?

Like that's a really good sign. um or

it's got incredible endorsements but then mediocre ratings, right? It's like,

okay, so some like smart literary people really liked this, but then a lot of like mass market readers didn't. Like

that might actually be a really good book. Um like those things to me are

book. Um like those things to me are often really good signals, right? Um

because it it's it's the books that like don't really say anything but are like wonderful junk food that get the best

ratings usually. Um, you see that with

ratings usually. Um, you see that with like non-fiction, too. So, um, that it's like if I'm looking for that kind of experience, then that's the kind of like

rating spread or whatnot that that gets me.

So, you're kind of like, uh, if if there's a love if there's a lovehate dynamic with the the the crowdsource reviews on Amazon, that's like a that's a book you want to you want to look into because it's probably saying it's it's

probably taking a real position.

Yeah. And if I think about some of the books that I have enjoyed most, right?

Like you know the anti-fragile or just like TB in general, right? Very divisive

person, divisive writing style. Like a

lot of people hate him, a lot of people love him, right? Uh it's like and but you know he's very opinionated. It's

interesting. I mean another one of my favorite fiction books I read in the last like year or two is this super manic kind of dark novel called Steven

Florida.

And yeah, it's got 200 reviews on Amazon with a 4.0 rating.

Um, but it has a very strong endorsement on the cover from the author of A Little Life, right? Which is like, you know,

right? Which is like, you know, incredibly well-known like literary fiction, right? Um, so it's like there

fiction, right? Um, so it's like there there's there's a disconnect there and it's a great book. So,

but to your point, this this would be an interesting way to use chat GPT, right?

To say, I mean, we could even try that, right? Like, let's just give it a go. I

right? Like, let's just give it a go. I

really enjoy manic dark fiction like infinite chest, choke, and Steven Florida.

What? Um,

you might want to ask like how would you like how would you describe that or like you know like ask it from Yeah.

How would you describe the overlap?

How would you describe the taste in books for someone who really likes Infinite Chest, Choke,

Bike Club, Stephen Florida? Uh, do I have any other

Stephen Florida? Uh, do I have any other examples? My fiction bookshelf is at

examples? My fiction bookshelf is at home.

Oh, Blood Meridian.

I mean, that's a really good description. I really love that.

description. I really love that.

Like that that bottom one, intellectually challenging, offer unconventional narratives, and don't shy away from darker, more complex themes.

Like, one of the things that I get from this actually, which is like so interesting, is it's it's a huge part of how you write, too. Like I'm I'm not surprised

write, too. Like I'm I'm not surprised that that's the kind of those are the kind of books you like because um I think a big part of your writing is like sort of challenging conventional

narratives and offering an unconventional one. Um

unconventional one. Um uh and and yeah, I think your writing is is highly intellectual. Um it's a it's a really interesting it's a really interesting thing.

Yeah, this is super powerful, right?

like you know a great way to expand your um yeah your your readership. I I also like you know honestly that sometimes these

these thing or whatever uh an interesting way for me another followup interesting question for me to ask would be like who are some women who fit this theme right or who are some like uh

Asian writers or Indian writers or uh Russian writers or something who like fit this theme because it's like I mostly read American white guys and like it's it's not like a deliberate

choice it's just like what ends up coming in front of my do. Um, but there there are definitely like people with different backgrounds who like touch on this style too. And so it would be an

interesting it would be an interesting way to like broaden that lens without doing it in kind of like a forced tribes like checking the diversity box.

No, I like that. I think um you know it's like okay first you get the words you know you get the the dark complex themes like grittiness all that kind of

stuff and then you get the I want you to expand this definition in this in this one dimension like I want to read I want to read writers that are not just like white guys like who else has done this but like it would be almost impossible

to Google for that what you what what you'd need ordinarily is to like ask someone else who has the same taste as you but like is slightly different in that dimension and I Yeah, you're right.

Like chat GBT. Say that again.

Exactly. It' be hard to find, but chat GBT is that person.

Yeah, totally.

Um, okay. I We should I should show you

okay. I We should I should show you something.

Yeah. Wait, I just want to see. So, so I guess like think about like have you read um you know above it said Don Dilo, Don Dilo, Thomas Pinchin, Margaret now it's saying Margaret Margaret Atwood Tony Morrison

like see this is interesting um Tony Morrison and uh Octavia Butler have both been on my like list to get to at some point and

so it's like it's kind of confirmation, right?

Yeah. like um Margaret Atwood obviously I know of her but she hasn't been on my list as much. Um and then Joyce Carols I

have like her um I have her short uh short stories on my shelf at home but I I Lydia Davis is great. I really really I love her short stories. They're really

good.

Dude, I I don't like reading short stories. I don't know if that's weird.

stories. I don't know if that's weird.

I I was the same way. And then I read I read some Lydia Lydia Davis and Ted Chang and I was like, "Oh, I actually like short stories."

Okay cool.

Um, cool. But yeah, let let's um let's let's move on. So So you're using it to help you find new things that are sort of on the same vibe um of of things you

like. Um yeah, what what else are you

like. Um yeah, what what else are you using it for?

Okay, I I mentioned this one. I just

want to bring it up in case nobody else brings it up in these interviews.

It's so good for recipes.

So, basically, I was like, I have a bunch of ground pork in my freezer because my friend gave me a quarter pig and I was like, "Okay, I want to make a stir fry or I just want to make

something with this like Asian style with rice. I also have a bunch of green

with rice. I also have a bunch of green onions in the fridge, so like give me a recipe."

recipe." And it did.

That's amazing.

Um, like a very simple stir fry. And you

know, I changed some things out here, like I just didn't use vegetable oil. I

used like ghee instead.

Um, but like this isn't a complex recipe. It gives you all the

recipe. It gives you all the instructions. You don't have to get

instructions. You don't have to get through, you know, 2,000 words of someone's life story to get to the recipe. Um, and it's it's good. Like it,

recipe. Um, and it's it's good. Like it,

you know, I've cooked this a couple of times now. It's a great recipe. But

times now. It's a great recipe. But

here's the really fun thing, okay?

Because like this is all I gave, right?

Asian ground pork, good with rice, green onions, and it comes back with this. The

problem was I didn't have any poison sauce.

So I said, "I don't have hoison sauce.

Can you modify the recipe?" And it's like, "Yeah, no problem." And it replaced it with brown sugar, which is apparently a good substation.

Um, which I didn't realize. And then,

you know, everything else is the same, but it's like, "All right, cool." Like,

you've got this recipe. It needs to be modified, and it can just do it on the fly. And the thing I haven't tried that

fly. And the thing I haven't tried that I bet would work is if you take a a picture of a recipe with your phone and upload it and say, "Hey, can you extract this recipe and then modify it to replace

this ingredient because I don't have it?" I bet it would work. I haven't

it?" I bet it would work. I haven't

tried that, but if you're working with a cookbook, I'm sure it definitely it definitely will. It's

the vision stuff is so good and it's it's so useful for stuff like that.

So yeah, it's like if you've got, you know, stuff in your freezer that you haven't put to work yet or like you want to try new recipes but don't want to flip through a cookbook. I mean, this is really really powerful. Um,

it it's awesome. I love cooking with it.

That that's amazing. Um, I saw I saw up like sort of if you scroll up on your sidebar, I think I saw something like recipe related in your in your custom

GBTs. Is that did I remember that right?

GBTs. Is that did I remember that right?

No. Okay. Okay, so this is just something else I've been playing with is on the like book notes.

So like um because I have, you know, like 300 of my booknotes published on my site. So I've been trying to work on a

site. So I've been trying to work on a custom GPT to like surface results from them.

Is it working?

Um what are it's it's close. It it

sometimes has this issue. Let's just see if it works. Um how do you uh reduce anxiety?

The way I have it set up is it looks through. Right now it's just going to

through. Right now it's just going to the web version, but eventually I'll upload all of them. So, it'll just be able to search.

But what it does is it goes through like all of my 300 notes pages, finds them and then pulls out the like relevant piece from that book and then links to that book.

So, you can be like, "Oh, this book seems to be talking about this idea.

Like, if I want to explore it further, like here's a great place to start."

Fascinating. Are you do you find yourself using this?

No. Um, one because it's not totally working yet, but two because I want to make it part of my like book influencer thing.

So, basically, I want to have this as something that people who follow me on Tik Tok and Instagram can like go use if they're ever looking for book recommendations because people ask me all the time in my comments on videos. They're like, "Oh,

can you recommend a book on XYZ?" and

it's like I can't respond to all of them, but they can come here and they can plug in a question and it'll tell them every book I've read that touches on that topic

if they want to go like and it it links them to like my notes on that book. So,

they can go see all the notes, they can see my review of the book, um everything. And look, this is a pretty

everything. And look, this is a pretty good result, right?

I love that. Yeah. I

And like the first thing that came to my mind was 10% happier, but like oh, deep work talks about anxiety too. And like

work clean is not one that I would have thought of, but it totally does now that it's mentioned that.

One thing you could do which could be kind of fun is you could load into a GBT your list of books that you've read like one sentence about what you liked or

didn't like for each book, which would fit into one prompt. And then you could have chatbt recommend as you like based on even based on it doesn't even have to be like a book that you've read. It

could just be like a book that fits the taste that it knows you have.

That's a good point.

I'd be really curious to know if that works.

So that that's been a fun little project.

Um let me see. There's a couple other little ones I wanted to quickly show you. Okay. Yeah. If you've got something

you. Okay. Yeah. If you've got something so Okay. So if you have like data that

so Okay. So if you have like data that you just want formatted slightly different way like these are timestamps for a YouTube video pasting it in and saying can you put brackets around the

times and remove the spaces is like way faster than doing it yourself which is like a a silly thing but it's helpful.

Um, yeah, I do think like chatbt is like really good for there are all these things that that we do in life that that we're like we're

doing subtle translations for. We're

subtly transforming a piece of information that's in one format into another format and like you know computer uh computer language was developed um or machine learning was

developed in large part to do like actual translation between like English and French or like French and German or whatever. Um, but I think it turns out

whatever. Um, but I think it turns out once now now that we have language models that work really well that there's a lot of translation that needs to happen between English and English.

Um, and sometimes it's like between just like one format and another. Sometimes

it's like there's a subtle way that people in tech talk for example like if you're trying to write a a product spec for a you know piece of software you're building and if you're not a tech person you can't write that but now you can.

And I think that's so powerful.

I agree. Um,

okay. Another quick one.

Uh barb barb bet type things it's really good for.

So, I was having this conversation with my friend Neil. It was like there there will be probably within our lifetime companies that build businesses around

converting atmospheric CO2 into like stuff because all you have to like if you just pull off the carbon atom then you could like use all those carbon atoms for like something else, right?

And that would be like one way to try to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Um or you know maybe it'll just be profitable to do it. I don't know, right? Um, and so I was like, well, how

right? Um, and so I was like, well, how much air would you need to make a diamond, right? Like, could you have a

diamond, right? Like, could you have a business that just captures CO2 and then like poops out diamonds and oxygen?

Like on the on on the like physics level, it should be possible, right?

But, you know, is it energy efficient?

Whatever. And so, I was like, well, how much air is it? And it just like does all the math, right? Just like

really, really cool.

Uh, it walks you through every step. And

dude, the volume of air is much smaller than I expected. It's a little less than a cubic meter. And so then I said, "Okay, well, how much CO2 does a person exhale in a day?" And then it gives you

how much air you give out in a day.

About 10 cubic meters of CO2 per day. So

you could make about 10 diamonds a day just by breathing.

Just by brea or 10 one karat diamonds per day by breathing, right? Like, man,

I mean, like, I'm working so hard now.

Like, you know, like I don't need to be working this hard.

We're wasting all of this.

I just thought that was super interesting, right? Like,

interesting, right? Like, um I don't know what I was reading recently.

Maybe it was in anthology ofology. Maybe

it was in Novacene. Yeah, I think it was in Novacene. Um he was talking about how

in Novacene. Um he was talking about how like uh we might eventually have diamond based processors.

Interesting.

Because it could like it might just be a superior material for it, more efficient one.

Uh yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting. And and so if we were like if we just have machines that pull carbon out of the CO2 in the air and then print, you know, poop out diamond

processors for like self-replicating machine or like that. That's actually not that

like that. That's actually not that crazy of an idea physics- wise. Um it's

kind of fun to think about. It's like a very where's my flying car type idea.

Novacene is the is the book by Jim Lovelock who's the guy the guy the guy hypothesis guy that sort of looks at the earth as like one living organism as opposed to many organisms.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's great.

Let me see if I have any other fun ones here.

I've used it for new stuff sometimes.

So that's helpful for like I I literally just I don't follow any news stuff. Like I just don't let it into my life. But sometimes I'll hear something mentioned by a couple of people, but I like I don't want to go to New

York Times or whatever. I don't want to go read a piece on it. So I'll just ask Chad GPT to like summarize the information for me.

I love that. Um,

I honestly did that recently when I was I had to write a summary article of what happened at OpenAI Dev Day and like the I started by just being like what happened even though I was there. It was

really helpful, you know, because it just like puts it all into a format that makes it easy to be like, oh yeah, that happened. I need to put that in there.

happened. I need to put that in there.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think that's really smart. Um,

I can keep doing like scroll up if if you don't mind. Like I would love to just like look through it and see if I can pick through anything that looks kind of interesting and and if you don't want to show us anything like you know that's totally fine.

Yeah totally.

Uh it's great for writing.

Yeah. How do you how do you use it for writing? Do you have any examples of

writing? Do you have any examples of that?

Yeah. Um so I've been doing a lot so I I haven't found it very useful for non-fiction writing to be honest. And

like saying this with the utmost humility, I think it's just because I'm like much better at it than it is.

And so like if I need something explained, it can be helpful. Like you

know how how you know how would I describe this thing or like can you know so I can fact check myself. But like

actually writing um I haven't found it very useful. But

with fiction writing I found it more helpful just because I'm like much weaker there. And this is one good

weaker there. And this is one good example, right, which is like this emotion comes up kind of often, right?

Like I feel a sinking feeling in my stomach, but you don't you don't want to write that 10 times in a book, right? Or

like 20 times in a book.

And so it's really really helpful for alternative ways to describe things.

Um, and you know, some of them are like a little contrived, right?

um a heavy sensation way to put down my insides or like weird but um you know and even some of these can be modified to be better right like I was stricken

with nausea or uh you know a pit formed in my stomach right uh stomach dropped right these are all like good alternatives

um so it's it's very helpful for that I've been using it for I don't know if I want to show this one on the chat but I can describe it, right? Like

right? Like um basically like pasting in details on a scene in a novel

and then asking chat GPT what questions it has about that scene is is really helpful. Um what's helpful?

We can just do one live quickly.

Yeah, let me just show you. Uh I'm

working on an opening scene for a sci-fi novel.

Let's say I'm working on a sci-fi novel where uh what happens with the sci-fi novel?

We could even like um you know take a chapter of a book that you have that's like already a release book and just paste it in there if you have one available.

Oh yeah. I mean we could just um Okay, let's just take my club, right? I'm

working on a novel where a man disenfranchised with society and slightly

psychotic starts a secret underground fighting club with other men

as a dark form of therapy.

his best friend turns out to be a hallucination spoiler alertation.

In the opening scene, he is flying home from a business trip and discovers, I don't remember if this

is opening scene or not, that his apartment has exploded.

And then you could and like normally I would paste in five or six bullet points about like things that I think are going to happen in the scene.

Um but the other thing you can do is you can say like what do you think should happen in this scene? And we should probably preface

scene? And we should probably preface this by like chatbt knows about Fight Club so it may Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's probably going to just pull in stuff from Fight Club. But

um but some of these questions are really good, right? Like what's his emotional response to seeing his apartment blown up, right? Like

is he secretly happy about it? Is he

freaked out? Or like what's the interiority, right?

Yeah. Like, oh yeah, okay, police and firefighters should be in the scene.

Like what does that interaction look like?

Um all these little things can be quite helpful um if you hadn't like thought about them. And what I usually find is when I

them. And what I usually find is when I do this, I'll ask it to give me like 10 responses.

It usually does, right? like it seems to be going towards 10 right now. And one

or two of them will be very helpful.

Like most of them won't, but they'll occasionally have um some like very helpful details in

them. Um, it's it's also helpful for

them. Um, it's it's also helpful for like you can say um or okay uh you could like if you if you

had an idea for a story and you wanted to flush it out, you can say something along the lines of I'm still working on flushing out the whole story. Can you

give me a Joseph Campbell heroes journey outline of what this whole story could look like?

And the I I've found like a couple interesting ways to do this.

So, one is to feed it a bunch of these story frameworks.

So, feed it the hero's journey, feed it the seven part story structure, feed it the five or the nine part story structure, feed it the three-act structure, feed it five act structure, right? Like um you can give it a bunch

right? Like um you can give it a bunch of them and see what it comes up with and you can regenerate each response a few times and then like from that you can make an outline.

Uh or you can like apply whatever you like in it to your existing outline and then you can feed that outline back in and say like you know what questions do you have about this outline or what holes do you

see or like you know anything along those lines. That's really interesting.

those lines. That's really interesting.

So, when you say feed it, like are you putting all of those structures in at once? Are you starting a new chat?

once? Are you starting a new chat?

You're saying, I want to do Joseph Campbell's uh, you know, hero's journey.

Here's the here's the premise of my book. Like, can you help me flush it out

book. Like, can you help me flush it out into a hero's journey? And then going on to the next one. Are you doing like here are a bunch of different structures? I

want you to flesh out this idea in all those different structures and doing it all at once.

I would probably do it all in this chat.

So I would be like, "Okay, great. Hold

on to that thought. Can you try again using this structure, but like don't carry over anything that you just thought of, you know, start from scratch, something like that." Um,

but like this is a pretty good outline, right? And like again, it's probably

right? And like again, it's probably pulling from Fight Club. Um, but you know, it's it's not doing um like it's not it's not doing a bad

job. we could pull a pretty great story

job. we could pull a pretty great story out of this.

This is this is fascinating. Um, and

this is great, too, because I, you know, I'm sort of I'm s sort of in the beginning stages of fiction writing again and like I've been wanting to outline because I do think the outlining is helpful for like doing great plot

driven stuff, but I'm just not like an outline person and this is cool for that.

And the thing I've found is like kind of like with non-fiction writing, it's not very good on its own. you have to give it a lot of your own creativity and guidance, but it can give you that extra like 10

20%.

Um, or it can like help speed up the process.

So, it's been very very helpful.

I'm sort of curious like you know I you know even moving away from some of the like practical hands-on stuff like for you like I think a lot of people try chatbt and they're like ah like it

doesn't give me the right answer or whatever and they sort of get frustrated and move on. But it seems like you've managed to um be okay with the fact that it's dumb sometimes or maybe it's dumb a

lot.

Um and you've also managed to find lots of different places in your life where it can be useful like um tell tell me about that. Like tell me about the

about that. Like tell me about the mindset that you have to learn to use this. Well,

this. Well, yeah. I mean before we go on I should

yeah. I mean before we go on I should mention this use case in particular the outlining I actually got from our mutual friend Nathan B who talks a lot about like storytelling and fiction writing on

Twitter. So people are curious in this

Twitter. So people are curious in this type of stuff they should go follow him because he has like a lot more resources on it and it's something we talked about quite a bit. But yeah

that's a good question. I mean, I know I think it's like a, you know, it's like any person, right? When you work with other people, you realize that they're like good at some things and not good at

other things. And if you expect them to

other things. And if you expect them to be amazing at everything, then you're just going to be disappointed, right?

So, I kind of just think about it that way in the sense that like right now it's it's like a very eager teenager

with an internet connection, right, is probably where I would put it.

And like I'm better than a teenager at like most intellectual things probably, but not everything, right? And certainly

not at the things that I have never done before.

So yeah, it can't write articles better than me, but it can maybe give ideas for a fiction outline better than I can do on my own.

And it can certainly do these little things that I could do but, you know, don't want to do, right? The way you might outsource something to a VA.

Um, and so I don't know. I think just like having that idea that this isn't, you know, it's not a god, right? like

we're we're still very early in it in its evolution. Um,

its evolution. Um, and kind of like having that mentality is very helpful and being willing I think also like I

don't know I mean we we all grew up in the era of you know having to install drivers on our Windows machine and like pop the disc out of the N64 and blow on it and pop it back in. Like it takes a

few tries to get stuff to work. Not

everything is an iPhone. Um, or at least it used to be that way. I feel like people are getting spoiled by technology now.

Back in our day, you had to struggle with it. You didn't know if you were

with it. You didn't know if you were getting a virus or a real song from Lime Wire. It was exciting.

Wire. It was exciting.

It gave you the gumption to explore new technologies, you know, not the kids today.

No, no, just ask Siri for everything.

Um, no, this is this is wonderful. Thank you

so much for uh for taking the time to show this to us. Um excited to excited to get to chat with you once again about sort of tools for thoughts stuff and uh I'm psyched for your book to come out,

man.

Excellent. Yeah, July.

It's coming up soon.

All right. Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks, dude.