How to host an AI storytelling workshop
The purpose of this guide is to help facilitators navigate a workflow for telling regenerative stories using a variety of AI tools. Storytelling is probably of the most powerful coordination technology available, and with AI our ability to tell moving stories just got much easier.
Time: 2-3 hours
Participants: 20-30
Dynamics: Alone time, small groups, storytelling at the end
Outline
Here’s a rough outline of the structure of the workshop:
- Introduction
- Story structure
- Guiding principles
- AI tooling intro
- Process
- End result
1. Introduction
At the beginning of the session, describe the purpose of the workshop:
The purpose of this workshop is to tell regenerative stories about our future here in [this_community]. The end result should be some form of social media post, and we really do expect each group to actually post their story—so make sure you can make something you’re either proud of or can laugh about!
Storytelling is one of the most powerful vehicles for making sense of the world. We used to sit around a campfire and tell stories about our past and our future. We now have these incredible devices in the palm of our hand—but most of the time we’re passive consumers of other people’s stories.
Now with AI, we have the ability to take storytelling to the next level across three mediums:
- Text
- Image
- Video
Before we dive into the ‘How To’ of any of these given tools, we are going to introduce some story structure and guiding principles.
2. Story structure
Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end.
Most stories follow a typical structure that goes something like this:
A hero has a problem, he meets a guide who gives him a plan, and calls them to action—that ends in success or tragedy.
So in our case, we do recommend that you take just 2-3 mins defining each component of the story:
- The hero
- The problem
- The guide
- The plan
- The outcome
3. Guiding principles
We all know a good story when we hear it, but the problem is—most stories aren’t convincing and don’t take us on a journey.
That’s where a few of these guiding principles are intended to help:
- Stick with what you know
- Be specific
- Be WILD
- Try something new
- Have FUN
The purpose of this workshop is not to become a master storyteller, but to have fun telling stories with friends using AI tools.
4. AI Tooling
There are thousands of AI tools out there, but we’re going to recommend using three in our time together—depending on what you want your story output to include:
- Text — ChatGPT
- Image — Midjourney
- Video — Kaiber.ai
You could also try to create a story that includes all three if you want!
Text - ChatGPT
ChatGPT is an AI tool that can help anyone write great stories. It uses machine learning to generate text based on a given prompt. To use it, simply type in your prompt and let the AI generate the story for you. You can then edit and refine the story as you see fit, or use it as-is for your final output.
Imagine that ChatGPT has infinite powers, you can ask it any question and it can perform just about any task! The trick is that ChatGPT gets a lot better with feedback—in fact, it needs feedback to improve.
Image - Midjourney
Midjourney is an incredible text-to-image generator that can take any prompt and turn it into any kind of image. It uses AI to generate images based on text input. You can describe the scene you want to create and Midjourney will generate an image that fits your description.
Keep in mind that the more specific your description, the better the image generated by Midjourney will be.
Video - Kaiber.ai
Kaiber.ai is a powerful AI tool that can be used to create engaging videos. It uses machine learning to generate video content based on your text or image input.
Combine all three
You can also combine ChatGPT, Midjourney and Kaiber for super interesting and compelling results!
5. Process
Here’s a rough outline of the process we recommend following for good results:
- Break into small groups of 2-3 people
- Create the core story elements using ChatGPT
- a character description
- Problem definition
- Antagonist description
- Story outline
- Thematic and sylistic elements
- Visual inspiration
- Use Midjourney to generate a movie poster
- Two main creative routes
- Imagine
- Use Midjourney to imagine from scratch using words from your story outline
- Describe
- Find movie posters that you
- Imagine
- Try several iterations and see what works!
- Two main creative routes
- Use Kaiber to create a short promo scene (optional)
- Film your own video with a script you co-author with ChatGPT
- Upload your movie poster and animate
- Add music from artlist.io
- Add text using Adobe Premier or a free video editing tool
- Bring it all together into your final piece
- Twitter thread
- LinkedIN post
- Tik Tok
- Give 3-5 teams a chance to go on stage and share their story!
- Have fun!
Conclusion
Storytelling is an often under-looked aspect of building community. The more powerful stories we tell, the easier it is to connect with people from different walks of life. With AI we have some incredible new tools that unlock our creative potential and can turn a single idea into a powerful visual story that can be shared with the world.
These new tools are evolving at an alarming pace and just by setting aside 2-3 hours to dive deep into these tools for one of your events—you can build capacity and enthusiasm in your community in such a short amount of time!