Writer's block has left many screenwriters staring at the blinking cursor. AI tools can help them get over the finish line, but that raises a few questions: Did you write that story? Or did your artificial helper do most of the work? And most importantly: Is the screenplay even any good?
I have a degree in screenwriting (and playwriting), and in college, I wrote many scripts, from shorts to features. I've hosted hundreds of podcasts about films, new and old, and, in my experience, I've rarely seen a bad movie. So long as a film is a genuine foray into art, it's good, even if it's bad. In short, I love cinema, the craft of a well-constructed story, and the work it takes to create art that is impactful and worthwhile.
For all those reasons, I want to understand emerging AI screenwriting tools. I don't want to simply dismiss what could end up being an important development in the history of an age-old craft. So, I put on my tech reviewer and screenwriting hats (both look stupid, but one is a fedora; have fun guessing which!) and set out to develop a script. My goal was to determine whether an AI screenwriter could write a mostly coherent first draft of a feature-length screenplay.
Writers' Workshop
Before I break down my testing process, let me introduce who's joining me in the writers' room:
As for testing, I devised a three-step process that resembles a mini Screenwriting 101 course:
So, let's jump in and talk about the thing every screenplay needs, and the thing every teacher, professor, and Hollywood executive wants before turning to page one.
The One-Sentence Pitch
"What is it?" That's the question Blake Snyder, writer of the infamous screenwriting book Save The Cat!, constantly asks. Screenwriters have to be able to sell their ideas to everyone in one sentence, from audiences to producers. In the industry, this is called a logline. Snyder lays out the four basic elements every logline should have:
Let's quickly look at an example. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring has the following logline: A meek Hobbit from the Shire and eight companions set out on a journey to destroy the One Ring and save Middle-Earth from the Dark Lord Sauron.
It's one sentence that has all the elements, and it's beautiful:
Enter ChatGPT
With all that in mind, I asked ChatGPT to generate a one-sentence pitch based on a single concept: a movie about a robot that wants to become a screenwriter. The AI spits out: "In a world where creativity is the currency of success, a determined robot defies its programming to pursue its dreams of becoming a screenwriter, sparking an unexpected journey of self-discovery and challenging the very definition of what it means to be human."
There's one part of this logline that sparks my imagination, and that's "currency of success." In this film, does money no longer exist, and do people need to make art to barter for goods and services? This glimmer of an idea helps me see how ChatGPT could be useful.
But there's no irony, so it doesn't pass the Snyder test. As he describes it, a compelling mental picture "must bloom in your mind when you hear it. A whole movie must be implied." You can't see the film in your mind when reading this logline. What does screenwriting and creativity mean in this world where robots and humans coexist? Audience and cost are a mystery. Finally, it's too long, especially for how vague it is.
I try again, adding more details about this robot, which I've named RA-33.
Does it hit the four elements? It gets closer. There's irony (a restaurant server becomes a screenwriter, a mental image (this robot is going to write the movie that changes the world), and an audience (baristas, bartenders, and machines). But the cost is unknown, and the title -- Artistic Circuit: The Screenwriting Robot -- is far from compelling.
I continue to give ChatGPT notes on its generated logline, trying to get it to make a good one-sentence pitch with all four elements. The final logline it presents and I decide to use is ... fine.
Titles are hard. Also, loglines don't include words like "captivating." That's for the audience to decide. This version functions as well and as worse as the second logline, but it's shorter and includes some tantalizing phrases like "narrative clash between creativity and machinery" and "reshaping both minds and metal." We now have a conflict, one that I'm interpreting as the battle between artists and machines, with RA-33 creating harmony between the two. Let's see how far Cogwheel Chronicles: The Robot Scribe can take me.
Establishing Acts
Writing is labor-intensive; the best way to maximize your time is to lock down your logline and finalize the three acts. David Trottier, author of The Screenwriter's Bible, further breaks down a film's three acts into six turning points:
Act 1
Act 2
Act 3
Now, it's time to ask ChatGPT to create a three-act breakdown based on the title and logline. Scroll through below:
The chatbot came up with some interesting ideas that I didn't expect, including making a found screenplay the MacGuffin and having a retired human screenwriter act as the mentor character. ChatGPT seems confused when trying to describe the dissonance between the artistic and technological worlds in the film, but it's a wonky idea and would require some finesse to make it make sense anyway. With a title, logline, and three-act structure all set, it's time to do the thing every writer hates: Write.
Generating the Final Draft
Here's where Nolan and Plotdot come into the picture. The free version of Nolan and the beta version of Plotdot allow me only a certain amount of generated actions before I have to pay. I'm broke, so I won't be doing that. Let's start with Nolan. I need only to enter my title and logline, as well as a few genre keywords (fantasy and drama) before it generates the first few pages of its draft of Cogwheel Chronicles: The Robot Scribe.
It's perfect in terms of formatting. Actions, character names, dialogue and inflections, and scene headings are all in the correct spots. It does refer to its first scene as an interior (INT) despite seemingly describing an outside establishing shot (EXT), however. In terms of quality ... I have notes. The characters lack character, other than RA-33 having a (not so) "subtle hint of longing in its eyes." The pacing from scene to scene is too fast, and Technopolis is the dumbest name for a city ever. Let's use this first draft as a tool. I rewrote this scene in my voice and with my vision of the first act of ChatGPT's breakdown. Here's how I did:
My draft is about double the length of the original. I wanted to add some human flairs like foreshadowing, humor, and one of the most important screenwriting tenets (showing, not telling). I also added a bunch of fun film robot names and references (if you know, you know).
Nolan generates only the first few pages of a draft for free, as mentioned, so now let's pass the baton to Plotdot. Plotdot's aim is to develop a screenplay through precise outlining. It has a sleek interface that doesn't even force you to use its AI features. Even as a plot organizer, I can see it being useful.
At this stage, I already have a lot of the work done. I have a title, logline, and a three-act breakdown. I let Plotdot generate my antagonist, Marcus Wilson, a "pretentious human screenwriter that is certain that true art requires a human touch."
As I move further along with Plotdot, I let it take the wheel and start generating as much as possible. By the end, the script deviates pretty drastically from my Nolan draft. But, eventually, I have the first full draft of Cogwheel Chronicles: The Robot Scribe. By full, I mean it's a mere 25 pages. And by draft, I mean a mostly incorrectly formatted series of pages. Let's take a look at Plotdot's version of the film with some highlights from the script:
To reiterate, this is not how a screenplay should look. The giant bold font for character and scene headings and indications of the specific act is far from the industry standard. You can ignore the page numbering, too; it duplicated the story upon export.
Technical follies aside, let's talk about the actual writing. Here, we have RA-33 doing tasks at the restaurant. There's an interesting scene in which RA-33 daydreams during an interaction with a customer. That's an idea Plotdot came up with entirely by itself, and it's a good one! Showing RA-33 disassociate while helping a customer at his day job is relatable content.
The next day, RA-33 finds himself in a storage room, presumably in the cafe he works at. There, he finds a screenplay called "The Human Condition." Yes, I know. I laughed, too. In the next scene, he finds a screenplay again, and it's called "Piece by Piece" by Mandy Machina. In other words, it's starting to hallucinate already.
In a later section, it comes up with the line, "Can I get you a can of oil?" Screenwriters should be cowering in fear. Why was Mandy Machina expecting RA-33? Why are we getting another character description for him later? There's also ZERO conflict. In the description for Mandy Machina I specified that I wanted her to be a retired screenwriter who was reluctant to train RA-33. The reason? Her previous work was plagiarized by my villain, Marcus Wilson. Instead, she just says, "Sure!"
Like a Jedi learning the force, RA-33 comes to understand the mystic ways of screenwriting. Mandy teaches him how to brainstorm before they move on to the three-act structure. RA-33 seems to ace every exercise Mandy throws at him. Eventually, he ends up in a writing workshop and presents his first draft to the room.
The feedback RA-33 gets on his script from his peers is overwhelmingly positive. They say his dialogue is "so natural" and that his script has "great atmosphere." This scene also has human writers and "peer bots," which is annoying because the whole point of this movie is that RA-33 is the only robot who's trying to do this.
Soon, we have a terrifying moment of conflict in Act 2: That's right, he just kind of...explodes. I imagine it's an allegory for RA-33 defying his nature as a robot. Also, Plotdot changes the name of Mandy to "Mentor" and doesn't mention her again.
Let's hit fast-forward. Eventually, RA-33 needs to pitch his film to a bunch of executives. Everyone is jazzed for him to be here, and he gets right into it: A momentous opportunity for us all indeed. His logline isn't very good, but it doesn't seem to matter. Cogsworth, the musician who's worth more than his weight in cogs and gears, is actually a really good invention. Despite the executives being extremely impressed with RA-33's script, he still gives several monologues about why machines can create art.
Later, the executives ask RA-33 to "rewrite scene 12" of his script. He does and subsequently reads the scene out loud. It's jumbled because the characters of RA-33's script make it into the one we're reading. I don't know what RA-33's movie is about anymore, but, as the executives say, "Let's Greenlight This Picture!"
In the final five pages of the screenplay, a Rival Bot appears and destroys all of RA-33's work during the production of his film. It's all very confusing because the robot is cartoonishly evil and seems to be advocating for human creativity despite being a robot. I'm not clear on what the rivalry is. It would make slightly more sense if this character was my favorite antagonist of all time, Marcus Wilson, the pretentious screenwriter. Instead, we encounter him on the second-to-last page, blown away by RA-33's final speech. Marcus hugs RA-33, and the Rival Bot shakes his hand.
The YouTube video I watched that showcased Plotdot was titled "This FREE AI Screenwriter Is What They Were Worried About!" I know that artificial intelligence will only improve and get smarter, but I'm not worried about that. What I am afraid of are the humans so eager to replace an artform. Nothing I did in this article required AI, and I'm as amateur as they come.
Do I think AI screenwriting is bad? Yes. Here, it produced a bad movie that's actually bad. It regurgitates the work of artists it has eaten into barely legible scripts. As a writing assistant, it turned my original ideas into worn tropes with boring narrative conclusions. Some of these AI writers might understand screenwriting structure, but they don't understand the art of the process. All that said, my tests pushed these tools a bit far. They are ultimately meant to assist screenwriters.
AI isn't the solution to writer's block. The solution has been and always will be human. And besides, writer's block isn't something that you should try to solve with a tool. It's something you work past to produce better work. It's a rock you should pressurize into a diamond. I'm not going to sit here and tell anyone how to write something because we all have our creative processes, but I can definitively say that you don't need the help of a robot to write your script.
