Here’s how StoryQuake creates stories…
- We start with a highly-detailed story treatment and character-rich world that is fed into an AI writing tool. (The current project, “Ryan Random and the Mall of the Multiverse” is based on an unsold TV pilot and treatment created several years ago by John Derevlany).
- We scrape daily earthquake data from USGS websites.
- Using a proprietary algorithm, data from the largest earthquakes in California each day is transformed into specific prompts that are then put into the AI writing tool. (See the “Formula” below.)
- Illustrations are generated by another AI program based on original, hand-drawn artwork by the project creator.
- Everything is uploaded automatically (most of the time – bugs are still being worked out).
The process is a mix of human creation (original treatment and artwork), and AI-powered writing tools. The algorithm that creates the prompts is also a product of human creation and intervention.
The formula
All TV shows are driven by some kind of creative formula.
In this case, the formula is an actual math program. It uses the numbers from daily earthquake data to choose everything — length, tone, subject matter, style of story, characters, etc. Both whole and fractional parts of an earthquake’s Richter data trigger story elements (so one number can trigger a dozen or more story decisions).. Example: a 3.5 quake might be a “quest” story; a 2.7 quake might be a love story. Other numbers also impact characters, location, length, and “temperature” – how “weird” the story might be.
There are at least 50 or more story directions at the moment, with more being added.
The formula also attempts to incorporate the location of the earthquake into the story (example: The San Clemente SuperNova Bridge was based on an earthquake in San Clemente.)
Okay, so the big question is… WHY?
Two main reasons.
ONE. The first one, is personal. As a TV writer/producer, I’ve co-created or developed more than 20 shows that became TV series. But in a three-decades long career, I created many, MANY more projects that NEVER got produced. So I have, maybe, 60-80 failed pilots on various hard drives. Some of them deserved to fail. Others? Well, I kind of want to see how they would turn out if they ever got produced.
Lacking a staff, studio, and millions of dollars to shoot them myself, I’m instead creating AI tools to “produce” them. (And I’m also lucky to have a son who can do a lot of the heavy lifting on the coding.) “Ryan Random” is the first StoryQuake project.
TWO. AI is not going anywhere. You can criticize it and boycott it, or… you can figure out how to do some interesting things with it. This isn’t an effort to replace human storytelling, as much as it is an effort to enhance it. The underlying narrative and art of this project was created by a human, and has all the strengths and flaws of that human. The computers are just completing its original goal, albeit in all kinds of unexpected – and “earth-shaking” — ways.
And then there’s…
The Random Spark
I’ve always felt that there’s an element of randomness to true creativity. Great ideas are typically not methodically built and engineered. A thought, a song, or an image pops into your head for any number of reasons and then you, as a creator, run with it.
That’s not really something AI systems are built to do. They’re good at recognizing patterns and replicating versions of that pattern to give the (very impressive) illusion of “intelligence.” Well, except for the occasional “hallucination,” where they just make stuff up. But that is more of a bug than a feature, and it is becoming less and less common with the continued refinement of the Large Language Models.
StoryQuake is an effort to introduce that random spark that powers human creativity into AI content generation. But it is also an effort to make that randomness connected to something, and thus give it more meaning than, say, a simple RNG (random number generator). The random thoughts we all have as creators are often provoked by something in the world around us. They’re connected to things that have meaning in our lives and our world.
In this case, the StoryQuake randomness is connected to the very ground we stand on… and how that ground often shakes, especially here in California. So…
The Earth moves, and a story is born.
