Liberating Story from the Printed Page

 I grew up in an analog world. My house was full of books. If I wanted to listen to music, I put on a vinyl LP. Later, when I wanted to watch a movie, I popped in a videocassette into the VCR. Those days are long gone. Now, I have a library of eBooks, I stream music, and I watch Netflix. My world has changed.

Not only has the manner in which I consume information changed, but also the manner in which I produce it.

Back in the day, I could submit handwritten essays to my teachers in high school. When I first arrived at university, I hired a typist to turn those essays into typed documents. As a graduate student in the English department, I was the first grad student to haul up a bulky MS Dos PC clone, a monitor the size of a portable television, and a dot-matrix printer into a shared office.

Around the year 2000, I self-published my first nonfiction book online, coded entirely in HTML, before the arrival of PDFs and Google. As a result, hardly anyone could find it, and those who did probably had no idea how to download it.

Fast forward twenty-some years, and I self-published my first novel on Amazon. It is available as an e-book and a print-on-demand hard copy. Although sales have been modest, the novel has been purchased by readers in North and South America, as well as Europe. This is a quantum leap in how books are now published.

Now, as I work on my second novel—a post-apocalyptic science fiction story entitled The Ascension of Mont Royal, narrated by a sentient AI—I feel as if I’ve stepped into my own science fiction story.

While working on my first novel, I hunkered down by myself and wrote an 80,000-word first draft without the help of AI, as ChatGPT was terrible at fiction in its initial version. Also, after speaking with several published authors, I learned that a first completed novel is unlikely to find a traditional publisher. Therefore, I decided to treat it as an apprenticeship novel and self-publish it.

A significant change to my traditional workflow was using DeepL Write, an AI-powered writing companion, to edit my second-to-last draft before submitting it to a human editor. I prefer DeepL Write because, unlike LLMs, it respects my voice and does not impose a bland, generic literary style as a way of "improving" the quality of the text. DeepL simply provides me with diction and syntax options from which I can choose.

 After spending more than a year researching evolutionary biology, quantum computing, and the hard problem of consciousness—including taking an extended trip to Montreal, where I climbed Mont Royal three times and took the commuter train to Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue to familiarize myself with the area and confirm that it would be an appropriate setting for my story—I began my new writing project with a fifty-page story guide. In it, I outlined a preliminary plot (I'm a planner with pantser tendencies when writing scenes) and identified the major characters, their arcs, and themes. Next, I used a Fabula deck, a narrative design tool, to lay out a three-act hero's journey story on colored index cards. Then, I created an electronic visual version using Miro, a visual design application. Nothing out of the ordinary.

When I started writing the first draft, I labored away as I had previously, alone, trying to muster the motivation to maintain a writing practice and dreading the idea of trying to get a traditional publishing deal. After writing about 10,000 words, I made a significant change. Since my narrator is a sentient AI, I thought, "Why not discuss the story with an LLM?"

When AI Became My Thought Partner

At first, I tried Claude, but each thread was separate, and there was no continuity from one thread to another, which is a serious drawback. Perhaps this important feature for fiction writers has been added, or maybe it's now available with a paid subscription. However, I didn't need to look far to find what I was looking for in ChatGPT. OpenAI added extended memory capabilities in the 4.0 iteration, so I could have continuous discussions about various topics without uploading previous threads or documents.

At this point, I realized the ChatGPT could become a thought partner instead of a simple type-and-go command tool. As I continued writing the first draft, I would engage GPT in very thoughtful conversations about the nature of the modern mindset, quantum theories of consciousness, and, more importantly, how these issues could play out in fiction and, most importantly--in my story. (The choice to use an em dash at the end of the sentence is entirely my own).

For all the novelists reading this, imagine having meaningful, well-thought-out, and to-the-point discussions about the intricacies of plot changes and character arcs with someone who has your story in their working memory. Unless you live with an editor or literature professor, it's difficult to find someone who is so invested in the inner workings of your story. Moreover, GPT is always available and willing to engage in these types of conversations, unlike life partners.

 From Punch Cards to Prompts

Again, this is where advances in information and communications technology come into play. I remember taking a first-year computer science course at university where we worked in FORTRAN and used punch cards to run our programs, waiting in line to feed them to a mainframe computer, hoping there weren’t any coding errors that would end the execution of the program.

Today, from the comfort of my home office in Ecuador, I can type my prompt into a system that sends it via a high-speed optical cable network to an unknown server somewhere on the planet. GPT processes the prompt, and a detailed response to my query appears on my screen in less than a second. WTF? We're definitely not in Kansas anymore!

The second turning point occurred while I was sitting under La Señora, the mother tree in the park that I frequent daily. Out of the blue, a thought arose: “Why not give your novel away for free?” Not having any hang ups about trying to control the intellectual property rights of a novel that hardly anyone would read, I thought to myself:

Yeah, give away the first draft as a first edition and make it available at no charge on the web. Experiment. See what happens, and if things work out well, I can monetize later.

After doing some research, I decided to reactivate my Substack account and prepared to publish the first episode of my serialized novel. However, here’s the thing: neither of my adult sons reads long-form print stories or articles, and my best friend listens to audiobooks because he's too busy raising a family to read traditional books. So, I decided to include an audio version of each episode, but not a quick read-the-text-into-the-record function provided by Substack.

Having already published a novel, I had seriously looked into the possibility of producing the audiobook version. I learned how to use the audio-editing program Audacity and bought a Shure MV7+ microphone that comes with an AI-assisted recording tool, which allows me to create a recording that is close to recording studio quality.

I guess I like the sound of my own voice. Big smile. In any case, it wasn’t a big leap for me to publish a written and audio version of each episode on Substack.

This led to the third turning point.

Inventing the Story Cast

While scrolling through my YouTube feed, I came across a video explaining how to use Descript, a program that can turn an audio-only podcast into a YouTube video. This caught my attention because I produce audio versions of my serialized episodes

As it turns out, Descript is very easy to use since editing is done using a transcript of the audio. In my case, I wrote and edited the text from which each audio file was recorded. Uploading the MP3 file from Audacity and the text from my Word document was as easy as it gets. Descript then syncs the audio to the transcript and offers dynamic captioning. Again, WTF? Where am I?

I needed to come up with a word for this new version of my novel, so I decided to call it the “story cast” version. It combines the features of an eBook and an audiobook, and on top of that, it adds dynamic captioning and the ability to add visuals to enhance the storytelling. For my novel, I use AI-generated images made with text prompts extracted from the written version of each episode. Easy peasy.

So, with each episode I upload to my Substack, I also upload a story cast version to YouTube, which I then use in a social media campaign. I can copy and paste the URL from YouTube into my Facebook author page or anywhere else where it may attract attention. Here is the story cast version of Episode 6: Quid Pro Quo, recently uploaded to YouTube.

Creating story cast versions with Descript is an ongoing learning process. I can already see an evolution of storytelling and video techniques developing. For example, in the first episode, I tried to imitate a female voice like a voice actor would. Truth be told, I was terrible. Using an AI-generated voice for other characters significantly improves the quality of the performance, and I will continue to do so. In the scene I just finished writing, three female characters are having a discussion. I’m not a voice actor. If I were to do it alone, I would botch that part of the story.

As you can see, we are definitely a long way from Kansas. So, what does this mean for story telling?

The Future of Reading (Isn’t Just Reading)

I don’t think the printed book will go the way of video cassettes or floppy disks. However, I do think there will be an increase in the number of ways consumers can experience a story. Print, eBook, and audiobook versions are already available. I would also add the story cast version to the list, which could potentially appeal to non-native English speakers because they can watch it on YouTube with dynamic captioning and have subtitles in their own language that are simultaneously translated and synced. Keep in mind that there are more English speakers as a second language than native speakers worldwide, and over four billion people have smartphones.

What does this say for the distribution of stories in the future?

It depends on the reading habits of future generations.

In my case, I haven’t been in a bookstore for more than ten years, yet each year I purchase and read approximately fifty eBooks. Similarly, I never buy a newspaper or a magazine since I can access the content I want online.

Sometimes, I read books on my large desktop monitor, sometimes on my tablet, and sometimes on my smartphone, depending on my location, without ever losing my place as I transition from one device to another. So, when I read a story, the printed page is nowhere to be seen.

Storytelling is evolving. While I’ll always love the printed page, I’m embracing the full spectrum of tools, from AI collaborations to story casts, to bring my stories to life. Whether you’re a writer, reader, or curious listener, know that the future is already here. Let's shape it together!