This week on the podcast, we are exploring the cutting-edge frontier of AI-assisted creativity, filmmaking, and publishing. In episode 81, we sat down with a returning favorite: author, designer, and filmmaker Novae Caelum.
Before diving into the mind-blowing world of AI video generation, Steph and Danica shared some exciting updates from their respective corners of the publishing industry. Steph discussed the Future Fiction Academy and teased their upcoming structured learning “societies”. Meanwhile, Danica shed light on the realities of book distribution through Publish Drive, reminding authors that while the “F-word” (free) is tempting, quality distribution and tools always require an investment of either time or money.
But the real showstopper of this episode was Novae’s latest work, which had the hosts completely geeking out.
Meet Novae Caelum, Author and AI Filmmaker
Novae Caelum (he/they) is a multi-talented creative who has successfully bridged the gap between professional book cover design, novel writing, and cinematic storytelling. He is the author of The Kings Weaver series and co-founder of the popular Substack AI Marketing for Storytellers alongside Cassie Alexander.
Novae doesn’t just write books; he brings them to life. By creating daily AI-driven cinematic clips and full episodic shows based on his novels, Novae has established himself as a pioneer in AI filmmaking.
The Art of AI Filmmaking and the Myth of “AI Slop”
The episode kicked off with Steph and Danica raving about a new book trailer Novae created for author M.D. Cooper’s sci-fi/litRPG release, The Tide That Swallowed the World (part of The Sentience Gradient series). The trailer was so realistic, cinematic, and emotionally stirring that the hosts admitted they were on the edge of their seats, ready to throw their money at the screen.
Novae explained how rapidly the technology has evolved. While video generation used to be a tedious, shot-by-shot process, newer tools allow creators to craft genuine emotional arcs. However, Novae was quick to debunk the myth that AI filmmaking is “lazy” or “push-button” publishing:
- Time and Effort: The 2-minute trailer for M.D. Cooper took 20 hours of intense directing, editing, and sound design. For his episodic series, Novae averages about 10 hours of work for every finished minute of video.
- The “Director” Skillset: To make a cohesive video, Novae had to generate hundreds of images and video clips, meticulously select camera angles, and slice them together.
- A Patchwork of Tools: No single tool does it all. Novae used Kling 3 for character generation, Suno for the soundtrack (which he chopped and rearranged to hit emotional beats), and Seedance 2 for instant voice cloning.
When tools hit safety limits or quirky bugs—like Seedance refusing to generate an F-bomb, or Google’s VEO 3 insistently singing a dramatic line as a country song—the human creator has to step in, pivot, and find creative workarounds.
Writing with AI: The Power of the “Zero Draft”
Novae also celebrated the release of the fourth book in his Kings Weaver series, which he managed to write and publish in just two months to hit his KDP deadline.
For Novae, AI has revolutionized his drafting process. Historically, he would write a massive 100,000 to 200,000-word “zero draft” from scratch, throw it away, and rewrite the entire book to find the story. By partnering with Claude Opus, Novae was able to generate a 120,000-word zero draft in just three weeks—a process that normally would have taken him a year.
While Novae still rewrote the final prose of the book to ensure his unique voice shone through, the AI-generated draft acted as “Play-Doh.” It helped him:
- Keep track of complex, macro plotting patterns.
- Seamlessly bridge the gap from Plot Point A to Plot Point B.
- Avoid the dreaded “graveyard of unfinished drafts” by keeping momentum alive.
Steph echoed this collaborative sentiment, sharing that she uses Claude to get words on the page, but must heavily rewrite the output to inject deep, first-person point-of-view (POV) and character depth.
Defining the Work: Moving Toward “AI-Empowered” Art
One of the most poignant parts of the conversation touched on the intense backlash and “hate mobs” currently targeting AI-using authors in the indie community. Novae shared a frustrating experience where anti-AI zealots review-bombed one of his older, pre-AI books on Goodreads simply because he maintains an AI disclosure statement on his website.
To combat the stigma and better describe his workflow, Novae has embraced the term “AI-Empowered.”
His books and videos are not “AI-generated” (which implies a hands-off, prompt-and-publish approach), nor are they merely “AI-assisted.” Instead, they are human-directed productions that utilize AI-generated assets—much like a graphic designer uses licensed stock photography—recombining and editing them through human taste, talent, and vision.
Masterminds and Substack: Empowering Authors to Build Their Own Tools
If you want to learn how to integrate these workflows into your own creative business, Novae and Cassie Alexander have you covered. Through their Substack, AI Marketing for Storytellers, they host weekly Friday “incubator” calls where paid members can see live show-and-tells of the newest tech.
They are also launching mastermind structured courses focusing on AI filmmaking and automated marketing tools (like generating Amazon keywords and managing ad dashboards). Novae’s mission is to teach authors how to build their own custom “command centers” so they can escape the costly cycle of paying monthly software ransoms to dozens of different platforms.
Key Takeaways from This Episode
- AI Filmmaking is a legitimate art form: It requires directing, cinematography, editing, and sound engineering skills to turn raw AI clips into a cinematic experience.
- Use AI to conquer the blank page: Generating a “zero draft” with tools like Claude can save months of plotting agony, even if you end up rewriting every single word.
- Embrace the “AI-Empowered” mindset: Don’t let the fear of backlash stop you from using tools that enhance your productivity and bring your creative vision to life.
- Take control of your tech stack: Learn how to build your own custom dashboards and automations rather than relying on expensive, disjointed software subscriptions.
Resources Mentioned
Here are the links and resources discussed in this episode:
Transcript
Speaker 2: [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: Hello everyone, welcome back to Brave New Bookshelf. I’m one of your co-hosts, Steph Pajonas, CTO, and I guess now I’m also the CMO, we’ll talk about that in a minute, of Future Fiction Academy and Future Fiction Press, where we’re teaching authors how to how to write with AI and put in AI in any part of their process, and we’re publishing AI forward books on the press.
And speaking of which, we are moving into doing lots more with the Future Fiction Academy. We’re moving, um, into, like, these areas where we’re gonna have societies, and this is probably out by the time this particular podcast goes live, where we’re, we’ve got an Ink & Code Society, we’re gonna have a Midnight Draft Society.
And then be able to give people pathways to learning [00:01:00] about those certain things. Like, a, like, either we can suggest a path that they can go along or they can go ahead and just check out things a la carte within all of our subscriptions. But this is a really big shift for us, because we’re trying to be more centered on the different things that authors need between writing and marketing and, you know, all of the cool stuff that we’re doing as authors.
And so in that transition, I’m also head of marketing now, which is great. I actually really love marketing. I think it’s a fun thing for me to wrap my brain around. I like funnels and I like to learn about all those kinds of things. I listen to lots of marketing podcasts, especially ones that focus on AI and writing AI and marketing.
So I’m looking forward to this new challenge, and I’m sure my title will change over the years many times, as it does when I work with my particular, um, coworkers there. We’re always coming up with something new, and it’s always a bit chaotic there, but it’s fun, and that’s what I really love about [00:02:00] it.
So we’re doing all that at the Future Fiction Academy and Future Fiction Press. Um, and we’re probably coming into summer pretty soon. So all of that good stuff is coming for us, as I’m sure that during the summer then, on top of that, there will probably be new models and all that good stuff to challenge us even more.
All right, so that’s enough of me blabbering along. I’m here with my lovely co-host, as always, Danica Favorite. How are you doing today?
Danica Favorite: I’m good. Thank you. Yeah. I am so excited to hear about all of this stuff. I hope you have a society for people called Danica who don’t have their crap together and are desperately trying to do it.
Steph Pajonas: We’re doing our best. We’re doing our best for you, girl.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. I like, I, I love hearing about this just because, I think that there is a different place for everybody in the AI world, and I know that I am still finding my place just because I’m playing and experimenting [00:03:00] and I’m having fun with it.
Not really upset about that other than I’m kind of like, “Gosh, you know, I have, like, all of this stuff I just need to do something with.” And so hopefully I’m in my doing era instead of playing era, but we’ll see. And for those of you who don’t know me, I’m Danica Favorite. I am the community manager at Publish Drive, and we help people on all stages of the author journey from getting that manuscript formatted to creating metadata and book descriptions, then to publishing it to the widest audience possible.
And then finally, once your book is out there, we can help you with some promo things as well as royalty splitting. And it’s so interesting because I know this will be old news by the time this episode comes out, people are angry about our competitors charging money for access to the platform, blah, blah, blah.
And obviously Publish Drive, we’ve always been a payable service, at least for many years. We once started. But [00:04:00] I think what people have to understand is that distribution isn’t free. There is a cost to every business, to every person putting things out there. And, you know, even AI, we talk about AI, but AI is also not free.
Sure, there are free models and there are ways that you can access it, but there also comes a cost to that, and that cost is how much time, how much effort you’re gonna be putting into that. And so I just wanna encourage people out there to understand that as much as people love that F word of free, nothing in life is free.
And I also understand that I can say that from a place of privilege, that I can pay for a lot of things. And knowing that I don’t necessarily have the time or the desire to develop skills that will help me do more things for free. And so we here at [00:05:00] Brave New Bookshelf are always gonna try to give you a wide variety, things you can do for free, some things you’re gonna pay for, and all of this is gonna cost you time, and it just depends on how much time you’re gonna want to put into something.
And it is really okay if you’re like, “This isn’t for me right now,” or, “I-” I have too much on my plate. My goodness, we were just talking behind the scenes about, “Ooh, I wanna take these courses that Novae and, and, uh, Cassie are about to be putting out.” And I’m like, “I don’t have time for this.” And then I’m like, “Yeah, but…”
And so we all do it. And it’s really okay. So give yourself a break if you’re gonna be listening to this podcast or any other podcast and think, “Ooh, I wanna do that,” but I don’t have time or I don’t have money. It’s okay, because it will also be here, and the technology is getting better. And that’s why I’m super, super excited to have Novae here with us today, because we [00:06:00] had him here a few months ago, and he was talking about his video development with AI.
And it has gotten so much better since then. And we just were totally geeking out. He just put out a video for Mallory Cooper’s new release that’s going to be out by the time this episode is live. But it was so amazing to see how he brought the story to life in this trailer video.
And both Steph and I were just completely geeking out over how good it was. And I really just cannot understate how amazing this video was and just how impressed we were with Novae’s work. And so we will be talking about that. But for those of you who are like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t even think about doing videos,” it’s okay.
It’ll still be there. But please listen to this episode, and please check out all of the resources, especially this video we’re [00:07:00] talking about. And I know Novae’s got some other great videos that he’s done that he can point us to. So yeah, with that, I want to introduce our friend, Novae Caelum. And please, Novae, tell us about yourself.
Tell us about all the stuff you’ve been doing.
Novae Caelum: So I’m Novae he and they. I call myself an author and a filmmaker now, which is wild because I never thought I’d put those things together. Um, and it’s, it’s something that I have been pursuing cinematic things in my art. I was a professional book cover designer for many years.
I’ve been pursuing that in my art for ever, forever. And even in my writing, like when I was 13, I mapped out the opening credits to my novel in my head. So I’m gonna make that someday just to satisfy that. But I am making shows out of my books now, and I I haven’t tackled a movie, but I- I’m more [00:08:00] building around like the shorter I don’t wanna say attention spans, but attention spans of the internet.
But it’s … So I’m building shows, and I am putting out many I post at least one AI movie a day. Not movie social- socials a day. So it’s, there- there’s a lot I’m putting out and I’m teaching it. I teach on Substack with my friend Cassie Alexander. We have AI Marketing for Storytellers on Substack.
But yeah I’m developing shows and it’s, it’s cool. It’s just fun. It’s so much fun. I can’t even describe the feeling of watching your book come to life. Even if you were doing it, it’s still is like it’s magic. It’s totally magic.
Danica Favorite: It is magic. And I know that I gushed about this in our previous episode with you, but I had already read The King’s Weaver when you started doing these videos about this book, [00:09:00] and it was just absolutely breathtaking for me as someone who is very biased against the movie version of a book.
And obviously you’re the author, so you were able to make the movie look just like the book, and I was just like, “Oh my gosh, that’s the book. That’s it. That’s amazing.” And you’ve done it again with this trailer for Mal’s video. Malorie Cooper I- although I believe she’s writing this book under M.D. Cooper.
Novae Caelum: M.D. Cooper, yes.
Danica Favorite: And-
Novae Caelum: And the book is, the the series is The Sentience Gradient. I forget the title of the book, but the series is The Sentience Gradient, so that is yeah, that will be out.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. So it will be out, but it was really funny because I know absolutely zero about lit RPG, and this book is a lit RPG book. And watching that trailer, I literally messaged her wife and was just like, “Jill, I want this book right now,” because it [00:10:00] was just that good, and just the power of video. For those of you who aren’t following Novae on social, seriously, his Instagram has so many of these videos and things that I could just… I have my list of things that I watch to, um… They’re my bloom scrolling. In addition to the octopuses Novae’s videos are another one.
Novae Caelum: Oh, thank you.
Steph Pajonas: You’re up there with the octopuses. Up there with the octopuses.
I just looked up M.D. Cooper’s book. It is called The Tide That Swallowed the World.
Novae Caelum: Yes. Thank you.
Steph Pajonas: So it’s got a great title as well. And I’m just gonna pipe in here to say that I watched this video, and I was literally on the edge of my seat the entire time. I was like, “What is happening?” First of all everything looked so, so real. Like, like, it’s crazy to think that these are not real people.
Novae Caelum: It’s possible now, yeah.
And so-
Steph Pajonas: It’s totally [00:11:00] possible. And then it just had every element. Novae did such a great job with all of the edits, the, just the, the- the camera angles, the music. It was very stirring. And then you layer on top of that Mallory’s amazing storytelling and what she has envisioned for this novel, which I knew that it would
It took a long time for her to actually write in this world. So that’s exciting too. You put that on top of it and it was just like, I was like, “Take my money. Here you go.” I would love to actually see this as a movie, and I think that actually might trick a lot of people who are watching it, thinking, “Oh, this is a movie.
I can’t wait to go see it.” But no, it’s just a book. Oh. It was that good.
Novae Caelum: Yeah. It, so the script was Mal’s, and then I pulled in, I made the characters. We went back and forth on the characters, and then we pulled it all together, and Kling 3 had come out right [00:12:00] after we were doing this, and up, up until about a month ago, the way to make videos was shot by shot by shot.
It was like one clip, one clip, one clip, so you’re stringing all this together. But after Kling 3 and the new one that’s rocking the video world right now is Seedance 2. And this was pre-that actually, but the way the newer ones work is you’re almost crafting in emotional moments.
And so that was so interesting to do that because I had not done that before because the last episode of my show that I was working on was pre-write that. So it was like I m- was working with this totally new way. It broke my brain a little to rewire how to do that. But I think … So when I post my own stuff of my characters, I get comments all the time, “Oh, is this a show?”
Oh, w- where can I watch this? Or people even ask me, “Did you hire actors?” I’m like, oh my God. [00:13:00] Like, there’s no way I could have that budget for that for the costumes and the scenery and flying everyone to Europe to a castle, all of that. But it, y- you do get that. But also, I think people are coming, I don’t know about expect, but they’re more comfortable with seeing the videos now and going, “Oh, that’s a book.
Oh, that’s a cinematic experience of a book.” Um, like, Leila Faye is someone who was just she was one of the first ones that went viral with the hot sexy man walking videos that were on TikTok for a while. I actually think she was the first one who went viral with that. And it just pushed and pushed and, and people were, like, buying that book like crazy.
And I th- I think people are putting that together, and there’s all these video accounts that are like the ACOTAR accounts, the Fourth Wing accounts. You see all of these and I s- I see them all the time because I’m always looking for [00:14:00] them. I don’t know how much everyone else sees them with the algorithm.
But it’s, they’ve all gotten better recently too, and just the tech’s gotten better. It’s gotten easier It’s… I don’t wanna say it’s gotten harder too, but it’s got more depth. You can put more emotional depth in it. You can actually have these AI actors carry off a performance, um, which is interesting.
I saw someone talking the other day about-
Steph Pajonas: Let’s talk a little bit about that …
Novae Caelum: will there be award shows for AI actors someday? I don’t know.
Steph Pajonas: There might be.
Novae Caelum: That’d be wild.
Steph Pajonas: There might be. Let’s talk a little bit about the whole is it hard, is it easy thing, because I think the whole, the community of creatives, right?
There’s this feeling that AI is lazy or cheating, right? We see it a lot, we see it a lot. And those of us who work with AI know that it’s not lazy or cheating. It is very hard to work with these tools, [00:15:00] right? So let’s talk a little bit about how this is not a push, push a button thing that you put together for Mal.
Like, that this, this was a lot of work. Let’s talk about the, how many shots that you had to do, how many hours, and how much time and effort it took to actually edit it all together.
Novae Caelum: I think there were hundreds of images. There were at least 100 videos. There… All of that together. Even… So the thing I think about when people are like, these videos are, “Oh, it’s AI slop,” I’m like, okay, are you gonna call, like, a Hollywood editor’s profession AI slop?
Because that is, that’s a skill. That is a skill. The directing’s a skill. The writing’s a skill. All of that is a skill. So calling this whole blanket thing slop it’s undercutting a whole lot of people’s professions and skillsets. So it’s, I’m, I’m having to learn 10 different professions and skillsets and [00:16:00] level them all up right at the same time.
And that is very hard. That’s exceedingly hard. And it’s it is intense skillset and I’m getting better as I go. A year from now I’m gonna be a lot better at it and 10 years from now, whatever. But Mal’s trailer took about 20 hours of my time. And every time I make a 10-minute episode of my show, that’s 10…
Or it has been. It’s gonna get better than this, but it has… When I started, it was 10 hours per finished minute of work, which is a lot of time. That’s a lot of time. When I’m making a 10-minute episode of my show, I’m… hundreds and hundreds of images and videos and all of it coming together.
It’s… It’ll be less as I go on, and it’s already getting less time. But even still, if the tech gets better, what it’s really doing [00:17:00] is freeing you up to keep doing your craft versus, versus the tech taking care of it. And even with the new multi-shot generators where you can kinda give it a moment and then it kinda decides where the character angles are.
You could tell it but it can also decide that. It’s still more like now you’re the director directing the cinematographer versus you being the director and the cinematographer. So you’re still using those different skills
Danica Favorite: I think what’s impressive about that is understanding that it is the skills.
We talk a lot about, as authors, the skill of an author that it takes to write a book with AI. And here you are talking about another completely different set of skills a- and the visualization needed. ‘Cause I certainly do not have that, “Ooh, this image here,” and that. I could never do that. That’s not a skill set that I have.[00:18:00]
Um, and so I think it’s really important for people to understand, like Steph was saying, it’s not just throw something up and boom, you have a movie. ‘Cause I know, again, we were talking beforehand about the different tools that you’re using. You’ve got your filmmaking tools, but you also were making music and all of the other things that go with it.
So can you talk about some of those different tools and things that go into-
Novae Caelum: Yeah …
Danica Favorite: not, to making this trailer?
Novae Caelum: So yeah, I… the soundtrack on it was, it was a single Suno track, but I cut it up, all the way up. The way it played out was not the way the track played out. I would cut it at these moments, and then slice it and move it around so that it all lined up with the shots too.
And that in itself is tricky. But it, it took quite a few tries to get the sound that I wanted it… and listening to that track quite a few times to see where I wanted those [00:19:00] emotional moments to sit. So, um, and, and even with Suno is like, I didn’t for this one because I lucked out and got a good track, but you can edit the songs in Suno.
You can move it the way you want it to go. You can start on a guitar or a keyboard or just with your voice and give it a melody and go from there. So it’s, there’s all these different layers to things. So, um, and I… So what was interesting the Seedance 2 video engine came out right as I was finishing this, and one of the edits that we needed to do was add another voiceover.
I had originally generated the suave billionaire character in, in- the video in Kling and with a Kling voice, with a very specific Spanish accent. And I’m like, “Okay, this is gonna be tricky to get that voice over there.” But one of the things that the new Seedance does [00:20:00] is you can drop any two to five second clip in, it’ll immediately clone the voice.
I generated another video to get that audio clip and then put that audio in there. So it’s it’s all this patchwork. It’s this back and forth. And yeah it’s… When you’re doing this, you’ve got to be pulling from all directions ’cause it’s still not straightforward yet. It’ll get there.
It’s getting closer, but it’s still not straightforward yet.
Steph Pajonas: There’s no one tool to rule them all yet, right?
Novae Caelum: No.
Steph Pajonas: There’s
Novae Caelum: No, even-
Steph Pajonas: There’s many tools that you have to-
Novae Caelum: There, there was a line at the end where she says the F-bomb, and Seedance 2 would not give it to me. Would not. Flat out refused. So I had to go take that to Google, and Google was very happy to deliver.
So, um, it, It’s, so yeah, e- even within the tools, it’s like some of them will refuse things. Some of them just will not do it. I still like to tell [00:21:00] about, this was about a year ago, but when Google’s VEO 3 first came out I was trying to get a specific line for my show. No matter how many times I generated it, it would sing it as a country song every single time.
It would not do it any other way. I had to physically change the line. There was something in the words of it that it assumed it was a country song lyric, and I’m like… So sometimes you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta take a U-turn and go around that a little bit. Take the long way there. But it… They’re better than that, for sure now, but you still get these weird little quirks and stuff, so.
Um, and it’s interesting now the way that the generators are set up. You start, you’re starting to get these nuances of very human-like performances, and if you generate a scene or a moment several different times I often don’t just take straight up what it gives me. I slice it all up and put it together like a director shooting a scene from, three or four different times, and then the [00:22:00] editor puts that, puts the best moments together.
So it’s still it’s got all of that going on. You can take it like that, but it’s like you’re really going at it. Um, it’s, um, yeah, it, it, it, it… Anyone who calls this slop, I’m like, “You have no idea. You have no idea.”
Danica Favorite: Yeah, it’s definitely-
Novae Caelum: None whatsoever …
Danica Favorite: an art form. It’s such a beautiful art form, and I do hope that people listening or, and watching, we’re not gonna play the video here on the show.
But it will be in the show notes. But please go watch this, because it truly is art, and again, it’s not just throwing something into an LLM and getting this beautiful video. The amount of work that you’ve put into it-
Novae Caelum: It’s not possible to do that. It just isn’t.
Danica Favorite: Yeah.
Novae Caelum: It just isn’t.
Danica Favorite: Yeah.
Novae Caelum: Not yet. Maybe at some point, but- Even still, if you wanted to [00:23:00] do a specific, you’re gonna have to rigorously set that all up so it’ll become more heavy on like almost like the screenwriting end of it. You’re still the director, so it’s still… Yeah.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. Even when you were talking about the shot angles and things like that, that’s something a director knows.
Even though Mal gave you the script, she didn’t say, “Ooh, and here’s all these shot angles, and do this and do that.”
Novae Caelum: No.
Danica Favorite: That was you and your creativity. Guys, did you hear that word? Creativity and talent and skill as a director. And I think that really to me just shows how important that human is in making a really good video.
So what I wanna do now is just ask you, I know that it’s already been out for a little bit, at least as of the airing of this episode, but you just released a new book. So-
Novae Caelum: Yes.
Danica Favorite: … tell us about that, [00:24:00] and also I think it would be really cool to hear some of your process and how AI was part of that process.
Novae Caelum: Yes. So I just released the fourth book in my Kings Weaver series, which is the same series that I’m making a show off of. So this book eventually will be a part of that show. But the fourth book- It was on pre-order since last July, and I got very busy in the meantime and left most of it till the two months before it was ready to release.
And I thought the… I thought, “Wow, AI has come so far. I am just gonna power through having it help me with the whole process.” And I have been open about this being a part of my process for a long time, and I have been quiet about that for a long time too because the anti-AI crowd just brings out its fangs over that.
But I don’t… I, I, I, I write my books with AI, [00:25:00] but I don’t write my books with AI. It is a co-partnership. It is how I wrote this book in particular. I had developed a new system which I thought would be very fast for me, and it was to actually get the zero draft because I, I am someone, every single book I have ever written, I will write 100 to 200,000 words zero draft, throw it away and never read it again, and then start from scratch and rewrite the whole book.
That is how I’ve written forever. So I’m like, “Okay, if I’m doing this anyway, let’s find a process for me to get out this draft without the intense pain of getting out the draft so I can get to the actual draft that becomes the final book.” So I did that, and when I was working with the zero draft, it was, like, me back and forth, mostly with Claude Opus.
It was like, I’d be like, “This is what I want to happen,” and he would write the scene, and I would have him describe the scene to me and I’m like, “Nope, this is what I want to happen.” We’re moving back and forth. So [00:26:00] it’s like Play-Doh the whole way through. And that got me a 120,000-word draft in three weeks with that process, whereas that would’ve normally taken me a year.
So it was, it was a lot faster. But I thought that the generated prose would be a lot more out of my brain than it ended up being, so I just rewrote the whole book anyway. I still ended up rewriting the whole book, but it didn’t take me a year to get to the point where I rewrote the whole book. I have a graveyard of unedited drafts, and quite frankly, poorly plotted drafts, because I would meander and meander over months, lose the plot, lose the threads, and then just keep going till the end, and I’d get to the end and I’d be like, “Wow, that is a big mess. I loved it. I have no idea how to fix it. Let’s put it in a drawer.” And one of the things working with AI has helped me to do is actually finish things , actually [00:27:00] finish things. I’ve finished books before that, but with great pain and gnashing of teeth. It has helped me keep on track with plotting.
It’s helped me see the macro patterns, ’cause I’ll get so far and I’m like, “Okay, I’m stuck. What … How do we get from A to B?” And usually the AI suggestions are not that great, ’cause it’s not what’s in my head, but it helps me get to the point where it is what I need to do. So it’s it’s this very collaborative process, but really it’s, it’s more like, it’s more like me talking to a mirror and the mirror refining it and bouncing it back at me.
It’s not … I don’t even think I’d get the same thing with a human. So I, I have all these documents that rigorously help the AI simulate my brain. It’s still not very good at it. I wish it was better. But it, it knows all of these things in my macro plotting patterns ’cause we analyzed all my series.
We analyzed all of this, and it knows that [00:28:00] I do things in a specific way, even down to it was plotting between beats of dialogue. I do these four different emotional beats, like, all the time. I’m like, “What?” So I’ve never been as in control of my writing as I am now . I know what’s actually going on under the hood.
Before it was just this kind of nebulous, ooh, I’m pulling from the ether kinda thing, which just … I still have a little bit of that. But it’s more no, this is what’s actually going on. I’m thinking this. My, my craft sense is doing this and I’m doing this, and this is how I am plotting the novel.
So having that in front of me and being able to plot with that has been Incredibly helpful. I’m not getting stuck. I was I wrote and put out 100… It was 120,000. It ended up 110,000 word novel, very complex, late series, poly romance in two [00:29:00] months. I am not entirely sane right now, but I got it out there and made my KDP deadline.
And I think it is even working in that concentrated amount of time, I still think it’s one of the better books I’ve written. And yes, it’s like I 100% wrote this book. It’s like this is not, even generating the draft, it’s not a AI generated book. It is a, I don’t even know what to call it ’cause they’re all, the definitions are all mushy.
But um, yeah, it’s, it’s AI-ish something, but it’s my book,
Steph Pajonas: We need some more new vocabulary for this stuff, right? Yeah. Because it’s like that, you wouldn’t have gotten as far and as fast as you had without AI there. AI kept you on track. It gave you stuff to rewrite, right? Sometimes that’s what we need.
You cannot publish a blank page so it’s a you should get something down on the page, and sometimes even if AI is just “Blah, here you go. Here’s 200 [00:30:00] words,” and then you’re like, “Oh, I, I now know what I want seeing these 200 words. I don’t want these ones, but I know which ones I want now, so I’m gonna go back and write it.”
I’m also running into the same thing writing with Claude right now, where I tell Claude what I want in a scene and it writes it, but it doesn’t have the kind of character depth and the POV that I really want. It feels like he is-
Novae Caelum: Yeah
Steph Pajonas: … reporting the events, right? Reporting what, what is happening.
They do this, they do that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I then have to go in and rewrite that so that it has that deep POV that I really crave. It’s a first person POV. I want it, when you’re reading the page, I want you to hear that main character’s voice in your head, and I can’t do that with the kind of stuff that I get out of Claude.
But also, I would not be writing that chapter without seeing [00:31:00] what I didn’t want first.
So it’s, it is a, totally a collaborative process. That is definitely my book. That is definitely your book. It would not exist without us putting our hands in there and getting the stuff done.
Novae Caelum: Yeah.
The-
Danica Favorite: Yeah, and I think that’s what differentiates uh, like, and Novae was saying, we need different definitions because this is what differentiates the slop.
If you’re going to put a prompt into any AI tool- And expect that to be ready publishable material or video publishable material. Whatever you’re making, if you expect that on that first roll just exactly as you- as you’ve prompted it, that’s where AI slop comes from. That is the AI slop that everyone is afraid of that’s inundating the world.
But when you have someone who comes in as the writer, as the director, as that creative control, it’s so much easier because you’re [00:32:00] going in and you’re directing it. Because, like Steph, I have that same issue I was just saying on Substack today where, um, I wrote a th- I tried to get Claude to write this thing, and I had this vision but I didn’t know how to make it into something.
And so I sent it to Claude. Claude came back with garbage. But it was enough garbage that I could say, “Oh, I know exactly what I can do now,” grabbed my phone, dictated the chapter, and then put it back into Claude, and then suddenly we have something I can work with. And that is the collaboration. That is where the magic is and why I- I, like I say this all the time, I’m really not afraid of AI taking all of our jobs.
It’s not possible because it still needs us as the humans to be part of that collaboration. So yeah, if you have any ideas on what we should call this, let’s call it something. Let’s [00:33:00] put that out there, because the world needs to know that there is some really great talent and talented authors behind all of this cool innovation that’s happening.
Novae Caelum: I, so I ended up putting my disclosure statement that I made two years ago back on my site, because I’m teaching AI now. And Steph, you know this. They’re gonna come after you anyway.
Steph Pajonas: Yep.
Novae Caelum: So it’s-
Steph Pajonas: Been there …
Novae Caelum: It’s, I put it back. And I actually made a post on Instagram a couple weeks ago with the incident with the Shy Girl book and how it was pulled over accusations of being AI.
And I was like, okay, this happened to me on a smaller scale because I made a disclosure statement on my site and some person read the first chapter of an older book that was written and published pre-AI and said, “Oh no, this author uses AI, therefore this book is [00:34:00] horrible and it’s AI,” and they proceeded to completely review bomb the book.
It’s totally review bombed today. And it’s yo, look at the publishing date for one, and two, it, yeah, it was … I was really annoyed and they … People still pop into my comment sections everywhere with screenshots from that original statement: “Don’t read this book, it’s written with AI.” And it’s yo, so it’s…
There’s this whole bullying aspect to it, so I pulled all of that off. I’ve never not been transparent, I just didn’t wanna get bullied. But I made this post on Instagram a couple weeks ago and what was so interesting when I was talking about that, all these authors showed up in my comments of “Oh my God, I’m afraid to publish,” “Oh my God, I’m a first-time author, I’m terrified,” “Oh my God,” “I, it’s really crazy out there,” or
It ended up this much more nuanced conversation, and a lot of people just terrified of this hate mob, whether they use AI or not. And I’m like, that is so detrimental to art as a [00:35:00] species to be terrified to make it in case someone accuses you of not making it the right way. And I’m like, ah. So I ended up putting my statement back on my site, and what I called it was I think I said I’m an AI-empowered business or AI creative or something like that.
And I call my show AI Empowered ’cause it’s not AI generated. It is, it uses AI-generated media in it, but it’s not AI generated. It is a human production that uses AI-generated media to pull it together. So and it’s like when people talk about is it AI generated or AI assisted? And it’s I feel like my stuff is neither.
It’s, it uses AI-generated material, but then it is recombined and reworked and worked from the beginning, and so it’s not totally AI assisted either. It’s this in between, so I don’t know. AI empowered.
Danica Favorite: I like aI empowered.
Novae Caelum: AI created.
Danica Favorite: I love AI empowered. That’s gonna be the new buzzword.
Steph Pajonas: Yeah. And I feel like you’re using lots of [00:36:00] AI assets, but then it’s, it’s more like you’re using the assets and then you use your creative, uh, uh- I mean,
Novae Caelum: That’s not-
Steph Pajonas: you know, judgment and tastes to put it all together. So-
Novae Caelum: It’s not that different than-
Steph Pajonas: Yeah, this is a conundrum …
Novae Caelum: stock images. Stock images, I’m not the photographer, I’m not the model, I’m not any of that. But when I would make covers with stock images, I’d be pulling from all those different assets Those artists got paid maybe 30 cents per use of that stock image.
So it’s like, hmm. but um, yeah, when people make that argument, I’m like, “Ugh, yeah.” So but it’s, yeah, it’s something different. It’s th- this whole everyone’s “Oh, your novel uses AI, therefore every word must have been generated by AI.” And I’m like, “Excuse you, me. No, it was not.” Um, and, and even, even if someone uses AI to such a degree they have [00:37:00] honed it down to the point where they don’t have to edit it much and then publish it, their craft in honing it to that degree is what’s bringing the magic to that and the outline and the storytelling and all of that, because Claude’s outlines out the gate are crap.
They just are not very good. They rush to the end, and the third act is always sketchy. And it’s like it- you need to be the human in there telling it, giving it the guidelines, give it, even if giving it the tropes, even if you’re giving it the guidelines to get it to that point. So I, it’s, someone who says that kind of thing immediately shows their ignorance of AI, I think.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, it also tells me that I, and I don’t know if this was just because of what I was doing, but, I did speech and debate all through high school and college, and they talk about rhetorical devices and what makes a good argument and what doesn’t make a good argument. And I’m like, “Do you [00:38:00] guys understand, like, how many logical fallacies you’re using in making your anti-AI argument?”
It’s just- Yeah … it’s mind-boggling. I’m like, “Did you not learn this in school?”
Novae Caelum: I would even I have a bunch of reviews on the first Kings Weaver book on Goodreads that were five stars, and they later came back and edited it and made a point of saying that, “I loved this book and then found out it was written with AI.
One star.” And I’m like, you enjoyed this book at some point. Why is your taste vastly changing right now? So there is something, there’s absolutely something else going on there. It’s are you telling on yourself for not believing quality the first time you read it and loved it? So it’s, yeah it’s there’s an immense amount of bias going on in the way people are engaging with this.
And especially with that Shy Girl book and how people were like, “It reads a certain way, therefore AI.” It’s no you cannot say that. You can’t do that. It’s, [00:39:00] it, they, everyone likes to say, “Oh, AI books are trained on humanity,” but they are. And however it got the works, that is how it was trained.
So you can’t have it both ways is what’s silly about that, I think.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. And I know we’re starting to get a little short on time. If you also want to just mention something about the classes that you and Cassie are going to be doing, because I want people to go ahead and sign up.
And for those of you who, again, like going back to what I said in the beginning about not maybe having the budget to do some classes, they give so many free tips on their Substack that even if all you do is follow them on Substack and play with some of the ideas that they’re talking about, you’re going to be so much further.
But for those who do want to learn about some classes, please tell us about the classes that you guys are gonna be doing.
Novae Caelum: So right now [00:40:00] on our Substack for the paid members of the Substack, we have Friday calls. Every Friday we, for two hours, we just basically squee about all the cool things that we have learned that week, and we show and tell.
And it’s really um, we enjoy it immensely. That is like- I guess the incubator lab-ish part of it. But we’re also doing, we’re gonna be launching and will have launched by the time this comes out more like mastermind structured courses specifically targeting, um… We’re gonna do a big marketing weekend.
I’m gonna be really intensively pushing on the filmmaking because I think that’s gonna be really important. And Cassie and I are both… and Cassie’s making a vertical show, I’m making my horizontal show, and I’m gonna start making more vertical stuff too, and moving more whole multimedia IP.
And that’s the kind of stuff we’re talking about, automations. Cassie has been working on all kinds of things to [00:41:00] automate, like your ads and getting Amazon keywords and we’re just we’re building the tools that we need, but we’re teaching you how to build the tools that you need. ‘Cause it’s like we’re a- we’re able to do this right now.
And we both think it’s like we’re… With the exception of the very few things, like I am gonna be, um, I’m developing a filmmaking app, and I’m gonna be putting that out there because the… Not everyone can build that right now, ’cause it’s all my process built into that. But for something like building your own dashboard or like your command center that you run your business on, anyone can do that.
Anyone can do that. So it’s like we wanna teach people how to do this so that you don’t have to pay everyone software money ransom forever because that gets really expensive. And you end up across 20 different sites, and only each of them has a little bit a piece of this. So it’s like we’re gonna teach you how to do all of this so that you can structure your business so that you’re not going crazy, [00:42:00] and you have more time to do the stuff you really wanna do.
So that’s our mission. We’re a little chaotic. That’s okay. That’s okay. But yeah we’re gonna have classes running by the time this comes out, and in a revolving fashion, so we’ll probably cycle through them as we go. And every single time is gonna be different ’cause the tech changes every day.
Every day, pretty much.
Steph Pajonas: Every day. Every day. And we’re also very chaotic at the Future Fiction Academy, so I completely understand. The tools change, the processes change, and we try to stay on top of them. And so that can sometimes look like a very distracted squirrel. But I promise you we’re doing our best to stay on, on target, just just like Novae and Cassie are at their Substack.
So that’s great. I’m glad that we can link to your Substack, get people in there so that they can see the kind of tips and tricks you guys post in there a lot. I always come by and read all of your posts, so I know that they are quality.
Novae Caelum: Thank [00:43:00] you.
Steph Pajonas: Quality. And then they can go ahead and sign up for some of your classes as well.
I wanna make sure that we give people links to you, and especially your Instagram, um, wherever else that you’re showing your cool show as well. So if you wouldn’t mind giving it for the audience here.
Novae Caelum: So my main site is NovaeCaelum.com, just my name .com. That will have the landing spot for everything.
My Instagram is @NovaeCaelumAuthor, and that’s the same for my Facebook, and TikTok is Novae.Caelum. But that’s pretty much where I am online, and the Substack is AI Marketing for Storytellers. So look that up. That will be where that is. And the courses is aimarketingforstorytellers.com. So all of that in that whole bubble of things is where everything’s happening.
Steph Pajonas: Perfect. We’ll make sure that everybody gets all of those links. Thank you so much for being here today.
Novae Caelum: Thank [00:44:00] you.
Steph Pajonas: Everybody who’s been listening, you can come by bravenewbookshelf.com, check out the show notes for this particular episode. Subscribe to our newsletter and we’ll send you the show notes the next day after the episode goes live.
You don’t have to stop by. We will just send them to you. We love being able to talk to you directly, too, so that’s always nice. If you wanna know if we’re on vacation or whatnot, we will send that newsletter so that you know not to expect us in your feed or when we’re gonna be back from that s- that vacation, which I’m sure we’re gonna have coming up this summer, because both, uh, Danica and I will be traveling.
We’ll be doing all types of cool stuff. Danica, what else do we wanna tell people before we go?
Danica Favorite: Yeah, so as usual, please go like and subscribe to Brave New Bookshelf on Facebook and on YouTube. And also Future Fiction Academy, Future Fiction Press, all the social media there, as well as Publish Drive on all of our social medias.
So just keep liking, subscribing, [00:45:00] following us. I think there’s just so many cool things out there that, um, sometimes there’s crossover and sometimes there’s not. So you wanna make sure that you don’t miss a single thing because it’s all super cool.
Steph Pajonas: Don’t miss a single thing. Okay, great. Novae, thank you again for coming today.
We really appreciate it.
Novae Caelum: Thank you for having me.
Steph Pajonas: And everybody who’s been listening, we’ll see you guys in the next podcast, okay? Next week. All right. Bye, everybody.
Danica Favorite: Bye.
Speaker 3: 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 bravenewbookshelf.com, sign up for our newsletter, and get all the show notes