STORiCORE

Two years ago, I set out on a life-changing adventure. I chose to turn much of my focus to keeping up with the advancements in AI, deciding to see what I might learn and be able to incorporate into my areas of interest—writing, graphic novels, filmmaking, blogging, and video games. 

Things didn't exactly start that way. There was a serious young woman whom I had never seen before on a news show in February of 2023, talking about the jobs AI was most likely to take. Writing was one of the ones she highlighted. Not only was I concerned with what might happen to screenwriting and novel writing, but also with any other type of work I might be able to make money doing if what she said was true. It was a moment of existential dread when I realized that a machine or machines could potentially replace me and the value I can provide with my mind and my hands. 

Then I realized that even if that were to happen, we still had some time before all of that was possible because the tools, the machines, had not gotten to the point where they were replacing anything. There was value in what they were outputting. But the moment had not yet arrived when they would replace all of us. It may come. Maybe sooner than we think. Maybe later than some expected. 

We may still all end up like those obese passengers on the spaceship in Wall-E, with nothing to do but look at a screen and be moved around with little to no physical exertion, while your every whim and impulse is rewarded by a personalized automation system designed to keep your mind preoccupied with the screen.

Instead of walking the wrong way down a narrow street, I chose to fumble into the woods of uncertainty and learn all I could about AI to see if I could make some of my long-held creative dreams a reality. 

As a storyteller, I have thirty years of experience. Once I had gone through that initial dread phase in early 2023, I began doing constant research on the ever-changing AI landscape. 

What does this have to do with STORiCORE? Everything! Sorry for shouting like I was Luthen Rael in Andor. Loved both seasons. 

If I didn't embrace AI back then, there would be no 1st Draft App and no STORiCORE. If I had dismissed the call instead of answering it when I did, I might still have answered it sooner or later, but I wouldn't have started a business and created an App as the first product. I wanted the first App I created to be as simple as possible. 

Am I what is called an early adopter? No. Early adopters are those who actually had some tangible experience with earlier AI models back in at least 2022. It has been interesting to see those whom I began to follow when I decided to make the leap. They are being hired by big companies or finding their own niche, while some are gaining a foothold as powerful influencers with massive followings that big tech looks to when they release products or seek advice. 

I am not a computer scientist but a creative soul who is inquisitive by nature and willing to learn and stick to building something until it is finished. I found this out about myself working on the four-part Monarch series. I knew once I had finished releasing all four books within a year that I could write anything. My creative confidence could only have been higher had I sold millions of copies. 

As expected, it has gotten easier to for newcomers to adapt to this new AI-driven world than it was in 2023. For those just joining in, it may no longer be necessary to take all the courses and do all the research that I did over the past 2 1/2 years. Now you can just jump in and be up to speed in no time. It is that rapid speed of change that makes me confident I can potentially deliver the other two apps I had in mind within a few months. 

What is your vision for STORiCORE? 

The 1st Draft App is part one. Two other apps that I have been thinking about making for a year are next. However, my storytelling creative side needs some exercise, too. While I have been able to work on a few projects with the 1st Draft App as I was building it, I had hoped to work on a few AI shorts when I made the original plan for STORiCORE. So, after we do the wide release on the APP stores in addition to the now available web app version for 1st Draft, then I expect to start implementing AI Agents into my workflow so I can more easily switch focus between App building and storytelling in a variety of ways. You can check out the app at 1stdraftapp.com.  

I'll wrap things up with a brief story about how I came to believe I could even dare to start a company like STORiCORE. It was the Spring of 2023, and I had just spent a month or so messing around with GPT-4. That was when I learned that I could use it to restructure my screenplays into graphic novels or novels. Something I had struggled to do when I had first attempted it on my own well before AI. The creative spark was not there like when I was writing the first draft of the screenplay. It felt like work. When I realized that I could use AI to help me turn dozens of scripts into books with AI's assistance, I was all in. Why? I looked back over the past 30 years of storytelling and realized that had I had these tools (which are only getting better literally by the day) back then, I could have done so much more by now. So much more. But I wouldn't have learned many of the lessons I learned along the way. Some of those lessons that I am trying to imbue into these three apps. 

So, I made an educated guess, or wish for you Deadpool and Wolverine fans. I determined in the spring of 2023 that these tools would continue to improve. I realized I could either wait a few years until these tools were easy enough to use that anyone could create a movie or story with a click of a button, or I could go along for the ride and try to use them as they improved. Not only to create stories in a variety of mediums, but to create new tools to help others and myself with the creative process. 

That's how it started. By the summer of 2024, coding models had improved so much that I decided to shift from the path I was on, which was making short films with AI, to thinking about App ideas. I know it's not as popular as it used to be in this ever-changing world, but helping others, or at the very least not harming others, has always been at the core of how I live my life. Even as a creative person, I try to imbue my stories with lessons I've learned along the way. Life is about learning and sharing what we have learned with others. It's kind of the main reason why we are all here. Something occurred to me in 2023 as I was consuming all the AI info I could consume. I was thinking of all the stories that have gone untold because people are busy, never learned how to write, or for a whole host of other reasons.

I thought if I could help others tell their stories, then that might possibly have a positive effect on all of us. Hearing other perspectives that we've never heard before seems valuable to me. I want everyone who has a story they have always wanted to tell to be able to do so, and in a way that makes it enjoyable. 

There are few emotions I have felt in life that compare to finishing the first draft on a story. The process of going from idea to book is a journey. Before 2023, it was an arduous journey, and I have the scars to prove it. That doesn't need to be the case anymore, especially for those who aren't writers but who have a story to tell. Everyone has a story to tell. Not everyone wants to spend a year or more trying to write it. 1st Draft is the first of three apps that are meant to enhance the storytelling process. With my own creative storytelling endeavors underway as well.