Michael Esser - ToTellAStory

Winning “Best Pitch”: Engineering AI Character Resilience at Meta

Narrative Engineering: Solving the “Ghost in the Machine”

Have you ever collaborated with an AI on a long script or novel, only to find that by chapter five, your character sounds like a generic, overly-polite robot? In the industry, we call this “voice drift,” and it’s the quickest way to lose your audience. As a Narrative Engineer, I don’t just ask the AI

Narrative Engineering: Solving the “Ghost in the Machine” Read More »

Narrative Engineering: Moving Beyond the “Chat Box”

Most writers have started using AI as a digital assistant, but many barely scratch the surface because they rely on basic prompts. To truly refine your craft, you need to level up. Narrative Engineering moves you beyond simply “typing text in a box.” By leveraging a dash of coding expertise and structured logic, you can

Narrative Engineering: Moving Beyond the “Chat Box” Read More »

WHY YOU SHOULD PLAY GAMES I

How to get started with Character Development Often at the beginning, we have a mere feeling about the main character whose story we want to tell. In this situation you want to act with an open mind. You don’t know yet what will be important about your character, you cannot know it because you just

WHY YOU SHOULD PLAY GAMES I Read More »

Why you should listen to Richard Walter’s podcast

Richard Walter is a distinguished storytelling teacher, film industry expert, and former co-chair of UCLA’s renowned TFT Graduate Program in Screenwriting. A screenwriter and published novelist himself, his most recent publication is Essentials of Screenwriting (St Martin Press 2010). I plan to add Richard’s book as the next entry in The Toolbox (totellastory.net/the-toolbox) Walter has

Why you should listen to Richard Walter’s podcast Read More »

Why you should read short stories

Short stories are a writer’s notebook. Often they are the seed of an idea that a writer might want to develop. If you are looking for ideas what to write about, short stories are a great way to get started. It’s not so much the stories or the ideas in and of themselves that you

Why you should read short stories Read More »

Why you should continue to play

Psychologists who look at the development of the human brain and how a person takes their form say that playing is one of the most important formative activities. As adults we tend to lose the ability or the inclination to play. Playing offers unexpected results, new perspectives and insights on challenges and problems we face.

Why you should continue to play Read More »

Why you should write … even if you do not think of yourself as a writer.

Very few of us are born writers, I believe. Two reasons come to my mind when I am asked why I write: Respect: Ideas are rare and they come out of nowhere. If you think about it, it is almost a miracle. Something is created out of nothing. You never know which passing thought might

Why you should write … even if you do not think of yourself as a writer. Read More »

Why you should consider using The Toolbox?

When I started writing I looked for advice anywhere. At the time there was not much more around than Syd Field’s wonderful book “Screenplay” (which you can check out in out Toolbox (totellastory.net/the-toolbox), still a bestseller today (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000S1LAYG/) and deservedly so. Syd’s language fortunately clicked with me and I understood what he wanted me to

Why you should consider using The Toolbox? Read More »