There is something wonderfully dangerous about being able to turn almost any idea into a story.
When I started developing Max Aura Dungeon, I wanted to explore a world full of strange creatures, questionable decisions, absurd humor and characters whose lives were about to become considerably more complicated.
AI made it possible to experiment with that world at a remarkable pace.
An idea that might otherwise have remained a loose note could become a conversation, a confrontation or the beginning of an entire chapter. I could explore a possibility, discover something unexpected in it and then decide whether it deserved a place in the books.
That was the exciting part.
The difficult part was discovering how often an AI could produce something that looked finished without actually being right for the story.
A character might behave sensibly when I needed them to behave like themselves. A mystery could be explained before it had the chance to become mysterious. An attempt to fix one mistake could introduce a completely new problem.
And occasionally, something that began as a throwaway idea would grow into an entirely different part of the world.
The creatures that eventually contributed to Tall’s creation began with a little tribute to the husks from Fortnite: Save the World. Along the way, they became strange loopers, possible artificial people, controlled workers and the beginnings of something much more personal.
That journey tells you more about how I write with AI than any description of prompts or software could.
I have rewritten parts of these stories many times. Sometimes AI helped me find a new direction. Sometimes I had to reject an excellent-looking suggestion. And sometimes the most important decision happened after I stopped generating text and simply read what was on the page.
These essays are about those experiences: building believable characters, struggling with revisions, discovering the limits of helpful AI, and trying to protect the strange things that make a story worth telling.
I have not reached the point where the process feels effortless.
I’m not entirely sure I would want to.
There is something satisfying about opening a draft, finding a possibility you hadn’t considered, and realizing you now have a completely different problem to solve.
Even when the solution means throwing away a perfectly good chapter.