Storytelling with AI Tools

IP world-building without gatekeepers.

I’ve been shouting from the rooftops for the last year about us being in the Age of the Storyteller, and for good reason.

If you use AI to create, you have a fundamental choice …

Which side do you favor, friends?

All of the barriers - industry barriers, community barriers, technology barriers - they are all falling like dominos, and falling fast. AI tools are accelerating at a wild rate, and if you are in a creative profession it’s critical to at least understand the capabilities, and recognize that everything has changed, even if you don’t feel the impact yet.

Because you will. And you’ll either be ahead of it or left behind, and fast.

1) Let’s Talk Gatekeeping

For decades, building an IP required writers, studios, crews, budgets and permission. Hollywood LOVES to talk about how a project was greenlit but they never tell you who is operating that particular traffic light, do they?

Found the gatekeepers!

And artists - be it in music, cinema or writing - are so numb to their presence that we don’t even realize they exist anymore. We naturally censor ourselves in anticipation of an agent judging a social media post, or the mob cancelling us.

You know you can just … do things, right?

The same studios that blacklisted actors based on political or social beliefs, stole IP over and over again and had well-known casting couches were holding the keys. Unions. Favors. Taking advantage of desperation to monetize your art - with re-writes, of course.

Technology has a knack for altering landscapes. The electric guitar. Computers. Napster. Autotune.

All of that technology existed but using AI to amplify creativity comes with one important distinction we haven’t encountered previously …

It’s slop without storytelling.

That’s it, friends. That’s the thesis. Sure, an 8-second video of a cat playing a didgeridoo on a porch at 2AM can get a chuckle, but it’s empty. It’s nothing. It’s a forgettable glitter-bomb that ate 8 seconds of your life. It’s TikTok noise for an audience psychologically trained to have zero attention span courtesy of a dopamine deficiency.

But that’s not what you’re creating, is it? You want worlds. Depth. Lore.

Story.

As a creator, I want to build professional-grade cross-media narratives adhering to my creative vision. My characters. My imagination. Storytelling from every angle.

And I don’t need anybody’s fucking permission to do it.

Let me introduce you to my latest project as a case study.

2) Welcome to FIREWALL

My latest music video is now OUT!

One year ago I was blind to what AI was capable of doing. I asked a new friend of mine who was deep in this creative space for a little direction (I see you Grimfel! 🖤) and bless that young man’s patience he was supremely kind to me, answered my questions, gave me direction, and encouraged me.

And I say this without it being hyperbolic - it changed my creative output, my joy of storytelling, and my artistry. Forever grateful to you, brother. Truly.

My creativity took over, and my man created a monster. In one year I went from “What’s a ChatGPT?” to this:

I’ve developed custom mastering chains. I’ve curated her voice. I have a distinct musical style developing. I’ve sharpened my skills in terms of lyrics, I’ve designed her from head to toe - the cybernetics, the heterochromia, the emotions, attitude - all of it. This is a character built from the ground up to tell a story about identity, grief, love, loss, and pain.

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3) This is a World-building IP

FIREWALL is the 4th track of my upcoming album, DEHUMANIZE (which you can pre-save for free right here).

So what sets this apart? What makes this IP, world-building, or storytelling?

She is Alyte, the protagonist in a cyberpunk world on the cusp of dystopia. Think “Futurist Prohibition-Era Cyberpunk.”

She is also a character that I crafted as self-aware of our world, and indeed the meta-awareness that she exists creatively within it. She’s a voice, a singer, a character in fiction, a character in story, existing both within and outside of the main narrative.

WRITTEN WORD: The Novella is in progress and will be out this year.

LYRIC FORM: DEHUMANIZE is the 2nd concept album telling her story, mirroring the fictional narrative but in lyrical form - the songs tell the story.

MUSICAL FORM: Undone (available here) was the beginning of her story. Seven tracks as prologue to the events of DEHUMANIZE.

DEHUMANIZE weaves in an exploration of identity collapse from SUPEREGO (in ACT I) to EGO (Act II) to ID (Act III). The lyrics reflect the descent. And at the same time this is happening, in the fictional world (Track 10 in particular) she is built up through code from ID, to EGO, to SUPEREGO once more. New. Changed.

The philosophy of Cartesian duality plays an important role, as do the nods to Schrodinger’s observational wave collapse, quantum mechanics, and physics (with particular red-shift references). There is a woven Fibonacci sequence tying a specific moment to the novel within the lyrics on Track 12, memory erasure (Track 7), and a physical rebuilding into something new, something different, and something altogether deadly (and you can watch THAT video, TRANSFORM).

FIREWALL is one piece of that story, pre-collapse for our protagonist, Alyte.

And coming soon - physical albums, blu-ray mini-movie of visualizations to music, and of course the long-form fiction book, eBook, audiobook, and a companion lore-book for those who love to deep dive into expansive worlds.

Art is subjective, yes.

You can label this slop all day long, and that’s fair as your opinion. But if you do, I’ll offer you a small challenge.

Make anything as deep, intricate, layered, and presented this way - without modern tools.

Without the deepest of pockets and the deepest of connections?

You can’t.

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4) What Makes FIREWALL Storytelling?

The 2nd track on Undone explores wearing a mask to protect yourself from being seen by others. Her mask slips, her lover (Orion) sees through it, and they fall in love. She’s reluctant and anticipates it ending disastrously, but she gives in to hope.

FIREWALL happens well after Orion’s death, and her revenge for it. She’s hurting. She’s in pain. She decides to put the armor back on. Conceptually, we have three different versions of the mask in visual form:

Mask 1: The Concept

This is the psychological concept of masking - hiding yourself and showing the world something different than what you truly are. This mask appears in the video first in reverse, as Alyte is choosing to call the mask back and consider it again as psychological armor.

This mask is all business. It is the idea of putting the mask on.

Mask 2: The Performer

The masked dancers in the video are intentional - dancing to a crowd of nobody in decrepit theaters, alone and on stage. It is the psychological distance we make between our performative selves and truly being seen. It is the version of us that is performing, but for nobody.

Mask 3: The Seductress

Seducing Alyte in the darkest of places as a representation of our mind dragging us back into the mask. We want it, because being vulnerable means being seen, being hurt, and being exposed. This is the mask that performs and pulls us deeper - and it does that to Alyte, finally convincing her to make the tragic decision to put her armor back on.

And through this 3 minute video we see this collapse and seduction, we see her decision, we see the mask finding its way back on and we see her attitude change as she launches herself back into the harsh world, armored up and protected from hurt.

These three masks form the spine of the three acts within the video - pursuit, acceptance, performance. The masks seduce her. She decides to put it on. She shows performative strength afterward.

This is what storytelling can look like with modern tools. A complete 3-act arc in a 3-minute music video, and only a sliver of a massive story told within a complex world.

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5) What Does This Mean For Indie Creators?

I did this alone.

Creativity, experimentation, iteration.

Gatekeepers still exist, but they’ve become optional as opposed to required in order to express yourself creatively. I can still seek an agent, pitch to studios, sketch my ideas on paper, and wait for someone to send an impolite rejection if they look at it at all.

Now? I can go straight to my audience. I can create on my terms. I can make what I want, tell the story I want, and do so visually, through written form, sonically, and build a world that a fan can immerse themselves in.

It’s an incredible time to be a creator.

The Berlin wall fell so many years ago, ushering in a freedom people did not understand or comprehend.

Today, metaphorically, that wall is falling again, and you’re no longer trapped by those guarding the barbed wire.

Go. Be free. Create.

6) Your Opinion Is Valid

You can consider everything I’ve posited here and consider it to be a trash opinion. That’s your right, and it’s absolutely fair to come to whatever conclusion your principles allow you to come to.

I just don’t care. I don’t create for you. I create for those who want depth, lore, meaningful stories incredible characters, and worlds to explore from every angle.

That’s what I do.

And the cool thing about not being beholden to gatekeepers any longer?

I don’t have to care if someone doesn’t like it.

I can build the worlds and the massive IP that I’m building, with stories, characters, songs, visuals, physical media and more.

I can tell stories about grief, love, loss, revenge, identity collapse, philosophy, quantum mechanics and do so with an incredibly deep character in a captivating world.

But for the record?

I hope you enjoy what I create, and I hope I get to experience you and your vision, free from the shackles of tradition, permission, and technological hurdles.

Create, friends. I’ll be here rooting for you.


Don’t forget to add DEHUMANIZE on Spotify! You can pre-save the full story right here.