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Hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite have an engaging conversation with Marco Moutinho, the innovative mind behind Dibbly Create.
Meet Marco Moutinho
Marco Moutinho, founder of Dibbly Create, joins us to share his journey from software engineering to revolutionizing self-publishing tools. His passion for books and technology led him to create a platform that not only integrates AI but also fosters collaboration among writers and freelancers. Marco’s story is a testament to how innovation can arise from combining different fields of interest.
The Journey to Dibbly Create
Marco’s path began with self-publishing ventures that didn’t initially succeed. However, perseverance led him to discover effective strategies, including Amazon ads. This experience inspired him to launch The Urban Writers in 2018, which evolved into a collaborative platform offering a range of services like ghostwriting, editing, and cover design.
Dibbly Create emerged as a solution to enhance security and control over content creation. It was designed to give authors full ownership of their work while incorporating AI tools like KIP — an intelligent assistant that aids in research, brainstorming, and writing processes.
Bridging Human Connection with AI
One of the standout features of Dibbly Create is its ability to connect authors with real people through AI. Contrary to the belief that AI eliminates human interaction, Marco emphasizes how it enhances collaboration. By recommending freelancers for various tasks like editing or narration, KIP serves as a bridge between technology and human expertise.
Navigating the Tool: How Authors Can Use Dibbly Create
Dibbly Create offers multiple ways for authors to interact with KIP:
- Chat Assistant: Similar to ChatGPT, users can engage in conversations with KIP for assistance.
- Prompt Library: A vast collection of prompts helps authors generate ideas for character building, world creation, marketing campaigns, and more.
- KIP Generate: This tool provides specific functionalities like drafting outlines or conducting research tailored for self-publishers.
The platform also facilitates collaboration by allowing multiple users to work simultaneously on different sections of a project without interference.
Embracing AI as an Extension
Marco views AI as an extension rather than a replacement for human creativity. He uses it primarily for ideation and initial drafting while ensuring the final output retains his personal touch. This philosophy aligns with Steph’s advice on validating AI-generated content before publishing.
Discovering New Possibilities with AI
Both hosts encourage listeners to remain curious about what AI can achieve. They highlight its potential in challenging traditional thinking patterns and opening new avenues for exploration. As technology evolves rapidly, it’s important for authors to experiment and adapt these tools into their workflow.
Conclusion
Dibbly Create stands out as a comprehensive tool that marries technological advancement with human creativity. For those interested in exploring this innovative platform further or seeking professional services like editing or cover design from experienced freelancers at The Urban Writers (soon-to-be-rebranded under Dibbly), visit Dibbly.com.
URLs Mentioned
Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to Brave New Bookshelf, a podcast that explores the fascinating intersection of AI and authorship. Join hosts, Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite, as they dive into thought provoking discussions, debunk myths, and highlight the transformative role of AI in the publishing industry.
Steph Pajonas: Welcome back to another episode of the Brave New Bookshelf. I’m one of your co hosts, Steph Pajonas, CTO and COO of the Future Fiction Academy, where we help authors use AI in any part of their business.
On a personal note, I’ve been doing a lot of flash fiction writing lately, which has been a lot of fun. I’m doing this workflow where I make an image in Midjourney, and then I bring it over to Claude, and we brainstorm some ideas, and then we produce a little 500, 600 word short story, and then I make a video out of it with some AI voices. So this is giving me a chance to try a lot of different things in my workflow. And that’s been a lot of fun. And hopefully I’ll be able to talk about that some [00:01:00] more too at the end of the month, once I’ve tried out all of these tools.
And I really love AI and publishing, and it’s been a lot of fun doing all of that.
Danica Favorite: All right. Okay, that sounds super fun. I’m like, okay, why didn’t you tell me you were doing this?
We need to, like, Sit down and do this. Yeah, I figured
Steph Pajonas: I wasn’t going to do NaNoWriMo this year, the National Novel Writing Month, in case anybody’s listening doesn’t know what that is. I decided that I didn’t have enough time. There’s a lot going on. I’m traveling next week. Danica’s traveling with me too, next week.
And I thought, well, maybe like a little flash fictions might be fun. So I’m, I’m doing…
Danica Favorite: Yeah. That’s awesome. That is awesome.
Steph Pajonas: And you could hear my lovely co host with me, Danica Favorite. How are you doing Danica?
Danica Favorite: I am great. I am great. Not as great as Steph. Like Steph is like on cloud nine here and I’m just like
Steph Pajonas: It’s been a week. It’s been a week.
Danica Favorite: It’s been a week. It’s been a week. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Danica Favorite. I am the community manager at PublishDrive. Where we help authors on all [00:02:00] stages of their journey from getting that manuscript formatted to finding the perfect metadata and book description, and distributing your book to the largest worldwide audience, and then after that helping you with your Amazon ads and various store promotions, and then finally when that money starts rolling in, helping you split royalties with your teammates.
So, a lot of cool things that we do, and of course, we absolutely love the AI, the AI tools, and love working with Steph and the Future Fiction Academy, because we really do love this new technology that’s coming out and whether you like AI or you don’t like AI, it’s here to stay. And we hope that we’re here to help you learn to use it in ways that really help you process and help you grow as writers. And so one of the things that we were just talking about before we started the show is that. For us, it really is about putting as [00:03:00] many tools as possible in author’s hands and telling them about it.
Letting them know what’s available to them. Use it. Don’t use it. It doesn’t matter to us. What matters is that we’re educating you, we’re helping you, and hopefully helping everyone else see there are great ways of using AI. And one of those ways is with Marco Martinho and he is with Dibbly Create and really excited to have him here.
Our good friend, Dale Roberts you might have heard our episode with him previously, where Dale spoke very highly of Marco and Dibbly Create. And so I was really excited when Dale made the introduction, we chatted a bit and thought, yep, this is a great service and tool that Dibbly Create has and helps authors.
Dale’s a big fan. It’s been helping Dale. But also I love the way that It’s kind of a hybrid thing that I want you to get into because it isn’t just an AI tool, but there’s also some [00:04:00] connections to real live humans who can help you with the writing process.
So, without further ado, I’m going to Introduce Marco from Dibbly Create.
Marco Moutinho: Thank you, Danica. It’s a pleasure being here and thank you both for having me. So I guess maybe just like a quick background on me and kind of how we landed where we are today. My background is not in writing. By trade, my background is in software engineering.
So I went to college and I studied software engineering. And, when I graduated, I got a job and then I wanted to do something different that was outside of, my day to day writing code, solving problems with computers. And I’ve always been passionate about books, mainly nonfiction books.
I do like to do a lot of self help, self development and stuff like that. And then in the tech space, I have a huge collection of tech books. Reference manuals. Everybody would think they’re boring. I love them. And that’s just the geek in me but [00:05:00] anyways, I did some research online.
I saw an opportunity to self publish and what kindle was doing in the space like at what amazon was doing for Indie authors and stuff. I’m like, this is really cool. I found a course. I took it. I learned it and then I had a book written. So I worked with a third party service to help me write a specific book.
I published it, didn’t get any results. My first few books weren’t successful, but I stayed on course. And then I eventually found a formula that worked for me. And then it also included Amazon ads.
But anyways, ultimately that led me to build a service that was much better than the providers that I was using.
At that time, it was here’s my idea. Here’s, what I’m looking to have written and unless I’m going to a freelancer and I can work closely, this service would , and it’s not just one multiple, they would take it, they would write it and then three weeks later, here you go and you’re like. Okay, like, what? There was [00:06:00] no collaboration. There was nothing.
And so we started the Urban Writers about a year later. This was in 2017. I started self publishing and in 2018, we released Urban Writers. The Urban Writers was originally a ghost writing company. And all we did was writing. That was it, right? So you’d come in we would get freelancers, you would pick the freelancer you want to work with. We made it as collaborative as possible at the time. Now it’s fully collaborative. And then you’d have your editors, they would help you and ensure that the final deliverable was what you were looking for. Today, it’s very collaborative. It’s a, essentially an Upwork or Fiverr with a completely integrated system.
And we can do cover designs, illustrations, translation, various editing services, various writing services, narration, for example. You can hire narrators and you can work very collaboratively with these individuals, and you can watch your content being written in real [00:07:00] time. Leave feedback, chat, video, et cetera.
And so we’re more of a software platform now, and we provide more services.
Now, this led to us building Dibbly Create because we were originally using Google Docs. And there wasn’t anything inherently wrong with Google Docs. We weren’t able to control and give a safety net to our customers of what happened with that content, because we were using an outside party to host it.
And so the idea for Dibbly Create was for us to have full control so that we can promise our customers. Nobody has access to this. We have full control. We give you full ownership and it’s not going to get leaked, et cetera. Or it’s not going to be used for AI to train. We can’t control what Google does .
And so, that was the main purpose and we started this project. Officially started development in 2022, just before Chat GPT went live. It was interesting how it unfolded because it was September. We started [00:08:00] officially writing the code for it. And then in November Chat GPT came out and we’re like, Whoa, like this changes things.
Now we need to integrate AI into Create. And fortunately enough, we already had development. We had a product, not MVP ready, but we had something where you could write. And by December we had an AI integration and KIP was born.
So KIP is your personal content assistant within Create. And then ever since then, we kind of evolved to this full suite of not just a writing tool, but integrated AI tools that can help mainly self publishers.
You can use it for marketing material as well which of course self publishers can take advantage of. We all need to market our books, but it is really designed for self publishers for writers for authors, and it’s the entire content creation flow.
And like you said, we are integrating it with our freelancer base so that let’s say you’re writing a book. And now [00:09:00] you need an editor. You can go to KIP and be like, Hey KIP, can you recommend an editor for my fantasy romance novel, for example, and KIP will give you recommendations of actual freelancers in our platform that you can invite to your project and have that individual start editing right away.
Steph Pajonas: I like the fact that you’re using the AI to connect people. Which is sometimes one of the things that people complain about is that AI is cutting people out of the mix. But actually, in this case, it’s connecting people.
Marco Moutinho: Yes, we believe that. AI cannot replace a human.
I think for us, our philosophy is AI is an extension, right? So it allows you to do things quicker, faster, gather data, gather research, help you brainstorm get rid of that writer’s block. But we don’t see it as a replacement. It’s an extension and that’s how we build our tools.
Steph Pajonas: Yeah, I like that. It’s really cool that you guys were able to shift so [00:10:00] easily. There you were, right? Creating something new and boom, this new technology comes in. And now you got to shift and make different decisions, right? It’s really important to be flexible in that.
And not a lot of companies were in the very beginning and didn’t jump on this quickly enough. And then they were gone, right? So it’s great that you guys were able to make that shift and do it pretty quickly. Did you have people on your team that were really excited about it to see it come around?
Marco Moutinho: Yes. We did experience both worlds because we have a pool of maybe 6, 000 freelancers that are on the platform, active freelancers. And, from their perspective, AI is going to get rid of their jobs, right? So our engineering team, they’re excited new things they get to build, right?
There’s so many opportunities now of really cool stuff that we can do. From that perspective, they’re excited but from our freelancers, they’re scared. Not [00:11:00] every single one some of them saw opportunity, but most were afraid that it’s going take their jobs And so we had to, really teach our freelancers Hey, like it’s an extension. It’s going to make you do your job more effectively. At the same time, it’s going to allow you to earn more money as a freelancer. Right. So, so yeah, there’s a lot at play there.
Danica Favorite: I love that. And I love. like highlighting that idea, because we talked to somebody else about this a few weeks ago where it really is an opportunity to earn more money if you leverage the tool properly.
And so I think that’s a really great thing to hear from someone like you who is outsourcing to a lot of freelancers and connecting freelancers with authors. To understand that this is actually a big opportunity if you’re willing to jump in and take it and learn how to harness it. So I think that’s really, really cool.
So one of the things I’d like to have you do is, we talked about [00:12:00] how Dibbly Create came about and all of that, but could you tell us a little more about the tool itself and how they go in and use the AI tool and what that AI tool looks like and how authors are using it within your platform?
Marco Moutinho: Absolutely. So there’s various versions of KIP. So KIP again, is that AI assistant that exists and it’s completely integrated into Dibbly Create. So if you were to log in right now, you’d be presented with the dashboard. You can start new projects base it off templates, blank projects, and you always have KIP there.
So KIP acts as a chat assistant. Similar to Chat GPT, you can interact with KIP like that. You can highlight text and ask KIP to do various different things with it from checking grammar to rewriting. We’re actually about to release a new tool soon called Fact Checking. You’re going to be able to highlight a piece of text like a paragraph for example and ask KIP to search the internet to make sure that what that text says [00:13:00] is factual and pull sources for you. So now you have relevant sources that either prove or disprove. And if KIP isn’t sure KIP will let you know i’m not a hundred percent sure, but here’s a source where we pulled some information relevant to that.
The other way is we have a vast prompt library with tons of prompts. You go in, you pick your prompt and then you enter some information. So for example, let’s say you wanted to create some social media campaigns and you wanted some ideas that we have a prompt for that. You would just enter your book product, like a little snippet about your book. And then it would create a bunch of different ideas and it would tell you which platform that idea fits.
So you’ll have different ideas for Facebook, different ideas for Youtube, different ideas for Instagram, for example. And so we have a lot of these prompts, character building prompts, world building prompts, that you can take advantage of, along with all the marketing stuff.
And then the other, I would say probably the biggest one is [00:14:00] something we call KIP Generate. And it’s a list of various different tools that are highly specific to a certain task. So for example, let’s say you want to KIP to draft an outline for your book and do some research for you while it drafts the outline. You can open our outline tool within KIP Generate. Feed KIP some information about, who your audience is how long your book is, how many chapters, and then like an overview of what you want the book to be about, and then KIP will give you an entire outline. And if it’s nonfiction, it’s going to find sources for you for each chapter, and if it’s fiction, it’s going to build your characters, build your world, and give you kind of a breakdown of how everything, the whole story flows based off the story that you inputted and that you want. So that’s just one example of one of the tools.
Danica Favorite: Really cool. So one of the questions I have for you, and I didn’t prepare you for this. So if It’s not a good question. You can just, we can delete this [00:15:00] part.
But so one of the questions I have for you is a lot of authors are looking for story Bibles, and I feel like this might be a great solution for that. Is there a way to put an existing work in there and get kind of that Story Bible thing out of it? Or is this really just a creation tool?
Marco Moutinho: We have something called summarizer that kind of does that, but it doesn’t build an outline. It can consume up to, a hundred thousand word file, and then give you a kind of like a brief overview of the key points and we have detailed or less detailed options.
So that is something we can definitely build if that was kind of in demand and something that our users wanted, absolutely.
Steph Pajonas: That is definitely something that a lot of authors are looking for. They’ve written this book and maybe it’s like the first book in a series, and now they’re gonna have to go on to the second book in the series, and like, I don’t even remember what I wrote in that first book, right?
So they want to be able to upload their book and have the AI give it like a summary and a [00:16:00] brief outline of everything that happens, maybe mention the characters and some traits of those characters, just to refresh their memory. And then they only have to read, maybe like 2, 3, 000 words instead of 150, 000 words, and then they can move on to the next book in the series.
So that’s basically what a story bible does for them.
Marco Moutinho: Got it. Okay. So, based off what you just described, you can actually use our summarizer tool to do exactly that. And the cool thing about our tools is we allow users to enter up to either three or four custom questions to ask KIP. So for example, you’re uploading your book.
And you want to create a summary of it. You can ask him, okay, make sure you list all the characters. I want to know all the places that took place. I want to know how the story ended or what was the main plot, whatever. Any question you want and KIP will just give you that 3000 word summary along with those other points so you could technically do that [00:17:00] right now.
Yes. I do want to mention one thing we do have in the roadmap to build our outline tool to allow you to create a series of outlines that intertwine with each other so you can create a full scope. I don’t know, maybe 10 books all around the kind of the same story and have it flow really nicely for you.
Steph Pajonas: That’s great tool. I love it.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, I think that’s really exciting. That’s why I wanted to ask about some of the features. Cause I knew I was lucky enough gosh, this has been a couple of months now where you and I sat down and you gave me a full product tour of Dibbly Create, and even then I was like, Whoa, this is super cool.
I just, unfortunately haven’t had time to sit down and play with it, but I really want to even now listening to us talk about it, I’m like, Oh, I’ve got a few things I want to try with it, so, I think this a really, really cool tool for authors especially because what I liked about it when you were first telling me about it is it really did start out as a project organization tool to be able to work with co [00:18:00] authors and various people collaborating with you on a project.
And it sounds like it, it really has done that. Multiplied. So do you want to talk a little bit more about the collaboration thing? Because I think this is something really unique to what you guys do is how authors can use Dibbly create to collaborate with other authors or team members on a project.
Marco Moutinho: Yes. So, because of the nature of freelancing and working on projects we’ve built Create to be fully collaborative, as a necessity. We had no choice, right? So in order for our customers to work with our freelancers, we have to make sure that they can go in the document, in real time, be able to leave feedback, comments, suggestions, et cetera. And so right from the get go, that’s how we built the platform.
Coming in, you can think of it like Google Docs where you can Share and Invite someone directly into [00:19:00] the project. You can also just share a link where once they visit the link, they’ll be able to view the project right now. That’s view only, but we’re going to add an addition where they can also make modifications.
And then that individual, they can leave comments. They can leave suggestions. There’s a common panel. And the common panel acts exactly like Google. You can reply to comments and you keep going back and forth.
Some of the things that we’re going to be working on and that we’re going to be adding to the collaboration is Chat. Real time chat as well as video communication. So if you’re both. Or whoever, how many people are on that project, you can jump on a call and kind of go through a section together.
We split things from Notes, the sections within a project where notes is the requirement gathering, character building, anything that’s supplemental to the project you’re working on, the book that you’re working on and sections kind of act like the final chapters or the drafts for the actual book content. And that’s how we divided it.
And the cool thing is, let’s say you’re working on a [00:20:00] multi author book. You can have, one person working in one chapter, another person working on another chapter, third on the third chapter, for example, and there’s never going to be an issue of going over someone else’s work because the way we divided it in the way we built the system allows this without any confusion.
We’ve from the ground up, it’s been built to be completely collaborative and super easy to work with other people.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, I love that. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Like I said, I wanted to make sure that we talked a little bit about that because I think that’s something unique to what you guys are doing that we haven’t seen in a lot of the people we’ve talked to and might be of interest to authors.
So let’s go back to the AI question stuff. As I mentioned, I ask everyone three questions, and some of this you already talked a little bit about but it’s nice to highlight. My first question is, how are you approaching AI and publishing?
Marco Moutinho: For me, I use AI as an assistant. Whether I need to do some [00:21:00] research, collect some data, brainstorm some ideas. Even like if I’m uncertain of how I want to start something, whatever I’m working on. I go to KIP and be like, Hey, KIP, give me some input on this or help me with this. And then KIP kind of starts that process.
I copy that, or I insert that into my document. And then I have this base that I can work off of, and now my brain is flowing. So at the moment, that’s how I use AI. I don’t generally use AI to write the content out, at least not the final. I might get KIP to give me a draft, a snippet, and then I’ll extend it, but I don’t use AI as a writing tool. That’s not what I do. Strictly an assistant.
Danica Favorite: Okay. That’s really interesting. And I love that you give the people who use your product the option to do that or not do that, which is also very cool. So let’s talk about the fact that you’re using it in that brainstorming process and the assistant process.
What what does your workflow with AI look like?
Marco Moutinho: It [00:22:00] really depends on the project that I’m working on because I work on various different projects but how it starts is just get my brain thinking right? So if i’m stuck on an idea I instantly get KIP to help me with getting my juices flowing get getting my creativity flowing. That’s the first thing I do Generally from there, depending on what I’m working on I may either expand on that idea myself or ask KIP to do that for me.
And then I’m going back and again, I’m putting my input into it. I’m thinking about those outputs and how that applies to what I’m working on right now. And then there are cases where I’m like, Hey KIP, write me a paragraph on X, right? Whatever it is, KIP will write it. And then I will use some of that ideas and some of that wording that KIP put together to formulate my own.
Because anytime I communicate, anytime I write something, I want it to sound like me. And even though there [00:23:00] are prompts and you could get KIP to sound similar, I still feel like I need to have my input in there and that’s just a personal preference, right? We all have preferred ways of working.
So really it’s like ideation, help me get my creativity flowing, maybe help me draft some content, but then at the very end, I’m still going in and putting my touch.
Steph Pajonas: Yeah, you’re validating everything before it goes out, and this is the thing that we’ve been telling authors, as part of their process, even if they want AI to do, like, all the drafting and help with the editing and everything, it’s just that if it’s gonna go out there, then you just have to validate all of those words and make sure that it is matching what you were hoping to accomplish, is it hitting all of the right notes, is it in your style, in your voice. Just make sure that all of these things are being accomplished so that when it goes out there, it doesn’t feel like it’s a disconnect from anything else that you’ve done. And yeah, [00:24:00] I agree that it’s one of the important parts of the process is being in there, being the human and putting your mark on it.
It’s super important.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, I love that you make the whole point of, it has to feel like me and you have figured out what that process looks like for you and how to make you feel like it’s your process. Because I think ultimately no matter who is writing or what you’re writing or what you’re doing there’s still that piece of authorship in there that we all need, and I think that is part of what keeps us as the creatives in the process.
Marco Moutinho: Exactly. It’s really about tailoring it to how you like to work and what your output looks like for you. We all have our own preferences and that’s just my preferred way of leveraging AI.
And, if AI didn’t exist. All these things would take me so much longer to create so much longer. I would have to go to Google and start doing some research and putting these [00:25:00] pieces together and okay, now, like I have this, but how do I put this into words or how do I formulate this?
I don’t have this person. This tool to guide me, and now we do. And I think that’s how you have to look at it. It’s really a productivity multiplier. It makes you more effective at whatever it is you’re doing.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. I mean, I’m, I’m literally right before we jumped on this recording, I have a report that I have to write for PublishDrive.
We have this monthly report that we turn in and gosh, I had to figure out something that I needed to put in there and I didn’t know how to do it. And I’m sitting there asking ChatGPT okay, what do I do here? And it was telling me and that used to be one of those things that they’re going, ah, think, think, think, think, think, think, think, And then, two hours later, like, aha, I have it.
And it got me there in five minutes. So, I, I love that productivity multiplier because now I have time to do other cool things, like hop on a call and talk with some really cool people. So, I [00:26:00] really love that part.
Marco Moutinho: Yeah. It’s, it’s amazing how much more time you gain.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, for sure. For sure. So tell us, I know you’ve already told us a lot.
And I, I know there’s a bias here, but what is your favorite AI tool?
Marco Moutinho: Well, yes, I’m going to be very biased and say Dibbly Create, of course. But maybe I can get specific in terms of which tool within our platform.
Danica Favorite: Yes, please do. Please do. We would absolutely love that. .
Marco Moutinho: For me, it’s kind of a split between our research tools and the outline tool.
We have a content writer tool. And the reason why we built content writer was because we saw that there was a demand for users who want AI to be able to create drafts of content. And so we built a content writer tool, which is, very powerful, by the way, it does the research for you. It gathers references. It builds your chapters. And we have various different tones and styles that you can leverage to try to match that style and tone you want to go [00:27:00] for, whether it’s like a personal one or maybe you enjoy a certain type based off how you read, et cetera. So we have methods of doing that and it’s very powerful, but for me I’m always impressed with what the outline tool produces.
Not just from a perspective of I’m going to now take this outline and write a book, but like, wow, I never thought of that, or I didn’t realize these ideas. Or for example, let’s say I’m doing some research on some type of topic for a non fiction book. I may make discoveries that I recently didn’t do on my own through that tool because I didn’t realize that was part of this topic,
And so the outline tool always impresses me. And the more you feed it, the better the results, of course. But we give the user the option of being as vague, like, Hey, just, I want an outline for a, I don’t know, a romance fiction and has to have a happy ending. You can be that vague. You can be less vague than that. It’s really up to you, but I find [00:28:00] that the more you pass in, the better the quality of the result that you’re gonna get. And so that tool always blows me away.
And then the research tool. It is by far, the quickest way for me to do research. Whether it’s on Google, YouTube, Amazon, go in there, put in some inputs. I can tell KIP exactly what I wanted to collect And it can do that for me.
Here’s a cool example. Someone brought in like, okay. I want to pull some recipes from the internet with sources. And i’m like, hmm. I don’t actually know if we could do that, but let’s just try. I’ve never personally done that. We went to the google research, tool we had, and we gave it some, some recipes we wanted. And then we told KIP, okay, gather all the ingredients, gather the instructions of how to put it all together, and it always gives you the sources no matter what. And it, it worked. I was like, wow. So instead of me going on Google, pulling this information, I was able to just go there. There’s [00:29:00] a text. I save it into my project. And then now I have it there with minimal effort.
You discover these things as you get to play more with it and be like, I wonder if it could do this because AI is powerful.
So it’s right now, those are my two favorite. With a content writer, I don’t use it that much personally, but the results is quite impressive.
Steph Pajonas: We recently had a guest on who said that she uses AI to challenge her thinking. Like you said in your first part that you’re looking for more ideas, like more avenues, she uses it to challenge your thinking, because she was like, Oh, well, I thought of A, B and C, that must be enough, right?
I love the fact that AI is out there and it is challenging us and making us look at different ideas and different sources. So you’re never not stuck in one lane. right?
Danica Favorite: My favorite thing that you said was this idea of, I wonder if it can do that and really getting curious [00:30:00] and always wanting to play and explore, because I think that’s how both Steph and I learned so much about AI was Well, I wonder if it could do that. Like Steph was talking at the opening of the show about this flash fiction thing she’s doing. It started out with this, I wonder if I can do that. And here she is doing that. And I was just thinking throughout the show and when you initially showed me Dibbly Create, one of the projects that I’ve been working on, I started this project probably like five years ago. There’s a nonfiction book that I’m writing.
I have an embarrassingly large bag that’s all my notes on this nonfiction project. At one point, had the spread all over my living room, trying to put all of these different notes together. And I remember thinking, oh, I bet Dibbly Create will help me with this.
And I haven’t gotten to it yet, but I did try some straight AI tools. I tried doing some stuff with ChatGPT and things like that. And I know some of it is, I just [00:31:00] hadn’t figured out the correct prompt for it. And also, when I first started working on this the AI wasn’t there yet.
That’s the thing is, you try something, it doesn’t work. And it’s like, Oh, is it my prompt? Which oftentimes I’ll admit that’s my problem. But then also, is it just something that the AI can’t do? Back when I first was trying it, it was absolutely something that AI couldn’t do. And now I’m like, wait a second. The AI is better. And you guys have a tool that’s got the prompt already figured out for me. I think I’m going to try again.
I love that curiosity and that wonder. And that’s something I encourage anyone listening that if they tried something and it didn’t work, try it again. Try different tools or different prompts or things like that, because I think we’re there now.
I just haven’t pursued this project in awhile. So I’m like, I’m going to try and work on this some more.
Marco Moutinho: Things are evolving rapidly. So two years ago, the AI [00:32:00] models, you would have to be much better at prompting than you are today because now it can understand better. And as it continues to improve, it’s going to be much easier to interact with of course. So, so yes definitely give it another shot.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. Yeah. I’m excited. I’m going to throw my notes in there and say, okay, here’s all my notes. Give me an outline and see what it does. And
Marco Moutinho: yeah,
Danica Favorite: because you just never know.
And I’m so glad that you were here and gave us that reminder of the outline tool, because I’m like, wait a second. I bet you, I have enough to get. A decent outline from, and again, like it literally is, like the big canvas grocery sacks, it’s full of just notes and sticky notes and this and that.
And I’m like, oh my goodness, at some point it’ll get there.
Marco Moutinho: Well, it sounds like a lot of work on your part for sure.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. So, so let’s get the AI in there to make it a little easier, I think.
Steph Pajonas: I think that you should take photos of all of your notes, [00:33:00] right? Take photos of all of them and then just start uploading them because a lot of these tools now have vision and they can read your notes and then have it start compiling all of your notes together.
Danica Favorite: Yes.
Marco Moutinho: Yes.
Steph Pajonas: Like 10 a day or something like that. Open up a notebook and take 10 pictures and do 10 a day.
Danica Favorite: I totally love that idea. And actually, and this is hopefully we will get him on the show. So let’s just call it Kevin McLaughlin here.
Steph Pajonas: Yeah.
Danica Favorite: Because he was the one who told me that trick several months ago. And actually that has been wonderful because I am a handwriter. I handwrite everything. And so learning that trick and just being able to take a picture, send it to ChatGPT and have them give it back to me has been wonderful. I think there’s just so many cool things we can do.
Marco Moutinho: There is,I’m going to mention one thing, cause you said you like to handwrite.
I did see, this tool, I’ve never used it, so it’s actually a pen where whatever you write, it’ll upload that into the [00:34:00] cloud and give you a digital version of it. How effective it is, I have no idea. I’ve never personally used it, but you just reminded me of because you like the handwriting, but also you want to capture it digitally that does it at the same time. It was just an interesting technology that I saw somewhere on Facebook, maybe it was an ad or something that was pretty cool.
Steph Pajonas: We’ll have to look it up. We’ll go searching for it and see if we can get it for Danica.
Danica Favorite: That’s right. And that, that is the thing, like, I, I, all these people are like, oh, AI, it’s so scary.
It’s all technology. Like I am the least technology person I think of anyone who’s ever on the show. And I’m the co host. But I’m determined to learn it and I’m determined to make it work for me because this is the way of the future. So, you, you will pry my notebooks and pens out of my cold, dead hands. But I’m also going to leverage that and add that technology.
I think technology, like what you have with [00:35:00] Dibbly Create is wonderful because it really does allow people to be able to work together using the technology, or, if you’re one of those people who like you, you’re like, okay, I’m going to use the AI for part of it, but then I want to do part of it.
But then also maybe I want to hire an editor to help me with that. That’s all right there in that platform. And so that’s something that I think will help a lot of people. Have that really nice balance between human and AI working together to come up with the best possible product.
Steph Pajonas: All right. We’re running out of time, so I want to make sure that we tell everybody how they can find Dibbly Create and any of your other tools. So let us know how the listeners should come and find you.
Marco Moutinho: Yes. So, they can go to Dibbly. com slash create. So that’s where you can access Create and sign up. It is free for everybody, by the way. You can use it as a writing tool. You can have projects. You can collaborate. Share. So that’s all free. If you want to take [00:36:00] advantage of KIP though, you do have to subscribe.
Otherwise we’re rebranding The Urban Writers to Dibbly, which will be out in the new year. And a new website dibbly. com will be out soon where you can get all the information of our services. So if you need help with editing translation, cover design, literally anything you can think of for you as an author, as a writer we have services for that.
Steph Pajonas: Excellent. Great. Thank you so much for coming today and telling us all about Dibbly Create. For our listeners, we’re going to produce a blog post about this particular interview, so it’ll have all of this information and all the URLs that were mentioned here today.
I want to thank Marco for showing up. We really appreciate you being here.
Don’t forget to come like us on Facebook. Danica loves it when I tell people to do that. She says she doesn’t like shouting out into the ether all on her own. Please come in like the posts and say something to her.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, come talk to me on Facebook. I’m lonely. [00:37:00]
Steph Pajonas: And then like and subscribe on YouTube as well. Hopefully we will see you guys all in the next episode. Okay. Bye everybody. Bye.
Thanks for joining us on the Brave New Bookshelf. Be sure to like and subscribe to us on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. You can also visit us at BraveNewBookshelf. com, sign up for our newsletter, and get all the show notes.