Can you tell me a story, ChaptGPT? Ugh. A collective shudder, especially for writers, as we stare into the screen and hear the monotone recitation of our work. The fear of AI, the freak out over AI, and then the, hmmm, curiosity of AI, are in our face right now. What’s a creative to do? 

I’ll let others rightly address concerns of copyright and creative output — SAG/AFTRA and the WGA, for instance. I’ll let others deal with the identity concerns and red flags. Our own Lisa Lanser Rose offers great insights in an earlier blog here. 

I want to talk about us — the writers, freelancers, really any small business owner, that creates content and then needs to promote that content. 

As a writer, I continue to be confident in my creative work and the inability for anyone, a robot or human, to reproduce my creativity. Sometimes, I can’t even produce work from my own creativity. My creative work is born from my experience, my personality, my context, my ability, my talents, my skill level and my thoughts in the moment.

But…the promotion of my writing? Well, that’s another story. The email funnel. The weekly posts. The promotion plan surrounding my book launch. I wish I could hire a team. That’s where the curiosity arises. Using ChaptGPT to help streamline this type of content may provide benefits along with challenges, but the biggest challenge is still to tell a GOOD story. Not just have robotic content created on an assembly line. 

That makes storytelling all the more important. Sure AI can churn out content for you, but you need to know — what is going to pull at the heartstrings? What is going to cause people to light up and be excited? What is going to engage my audience? 

This means that you need to move from copywriter to a higher role — content designer. Using AI to produce your social media or email content means you need to be designing your content, evaluating it and making higher level creative choices. And to do that you need to know the elements — what makes a story a good story. 

Which brings me to my book. Yes, full disclosure, my book comes out in November — and it is designed to give you the tools to tell a story, not just any story but a good story, a great story, and a story that engages your audience. 

Tell Your Story: Tools to Take You from a Tweet to a TED Talk. Yep, that’s the title. I use Tweet and TED Talk ubiquitously here for a post on any platform or a speech. You need tools to tell your story in short form to long form communication and everything in between. 

Everything in our culture right now is being driven by story, by the story we’re telling our target audience. Our story is what sets us apart and makes our business, our brand, stand out to a potential customer. 

I experienced this face to face with audiences when I was a performer at Walt Disney World. For over 20 years, I was a live actor in the theme parks, engaging the audience and telling them stories. If the story wasn’t working, they just walked away. I learned very quickly what made a story work. 

I put together workshops for nonprofits and for other authors to help them use those tools in promoting their work. That workshop is now this book, with over 50 tools to help you tell your story. In any and every format.

The heart of the book is what I call the Story Formula: Universal so we relate, specific so we care. The story formula is an easy way to remember what makes every story great. When a story is good, it will have a universal theme that anyone can relate to. To maintain their interest, it will have specific details that start to paint a picture, a picture that the listener’s brain starts to see in their mind’s eye. 

You can see great examples of this right here in the Siren’s essays — details that bring stories to life for the reader, along with some underlying thread that pulls you in and makes you feel “yeah, me too.”

The glut of content you and I need to create to promote our actual writing seems overwhelming. That makes the story formula, and all the tools in the book, all the more important.  If you do lead a team with a social media manager or if you’re plugging your content into AI asking for a string of emails, or if you are slogging it out on your own keyboard — you can guide and shape the story you need to tell. My book intended to make the work of creating content to promote your content easier. And yes, a good story. 

I’m excited to share this book with you and make your promoting life, if not your writing life, better. You can pre-order the book at any of your favorite online or in person bookstores. You can visit my website and get the workbook, sign up for a live story session and pre-order the book there. You can stay tuned to the Gloria Sirens for more great stories and news of the book launch in November.

Because more than curling up with a cup of tea and ChatGPT, I want to hear your story. 

 Author’s note: None of this was written with the help of a robot.