Screenwriting in the Age of AI: Yes or No?
To AI, or not to AI: that is the question. Come on, my fellow screenwriters, let’s have a candid conversation.
| PRO TIP: Bookmark this page for easy reference later. |
In many writing circles, you can’t even mention the possibility of using AI. Beyond the inevitable eyerolls, the lengthy diatribes about the art of writing, and the accusations that AI is nothing more than a regurgitation program—we’ll get more into that—on some level, it kind of feels like cheating.
Believe me, I’ve heard it all, and many of the arguments against AI hold water. Actually, let’s start there. Without human intervention, the writing is predictably mediocre. It suffers from rhythmic fallacies that will make any keen-eyed reader shudder with contempt. Moreover, you can’t trust AI farther than you can throw it; it constantly mangles facts, serving them up with the bulletproof confidence of a silver-tongued defense attorney. And let’s not even broach the subject of plagiarism, as it pulls from works without proper sourcing while shamelessly reproducing the voice of your favorite writer.
IS THERE A MIDDLE GROUND?
On one hand, by implementing AI, you risk diminishing your creative experience—rendering yourself obsolete. But what about the other hand? By refusing to embrace it, are you missing out on distinct advantages that could actually elevate your work?
It’s like what Chellis Glendinning noted in Notes toward a Neo-Luddite Manifesto:
“Like the early Luddites, we too are a desperate people seeking to protect the livelihoods, communities, and families we love, which lie on the verge of destruction.”
Now, dear reader, did I read that quote at some point in the distant past, bank it away in my memory, only to perfectly unveil it right here for you? Well, no. Actually, I googled it, and that was one of the options that popped up for “What are popular quotes about Luddites?”
See my point? We use search engines every day to ask anything from “where’s the nearest ramen place” to “what’s the meaning of life?” So, what if we are looking at AI all wrong? While it is not the next William Goldman or Charlie Kaufman, AI can be a far more useful tool for creatives.
Now that we understand we aren’t competing with AI itself, let’s step out of our comfort zone and explore the specific ways “artificial intelligence” can—and cannot—improve our screenwriting.
What You Will Learn in This Article:
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START YOUR SCRIPT BEFORE AI
C’mon, bring it in and take a knee. Let’s get deep for a moment. What is it that inspires you? Really… ask yourself: Why do I want to be an artist? We all have the desire to create something—whether it’s a captivating thriller, a terrifying nightmare, or a deeply personal experience. It is fundamentally part of our human condition. We are born to create. Take this step seriously, because whether you use AI or not, your inspiration starts right here.
If you have a dozen different ideas floating around, the first thing you need to do is boil them all down into a single sentence (your logline). This is what forces you to focus. It establishes the sapling that will eventually grow into a massive, beautiful tree. But in this metaphor, remember: you are the sun, and your resources (like AI) are just the rain.
Regardless of whether you’re writing a short, a feature, a TV pilot—or really anything in between—this single sentence is the anchor that grounds you as you build out your story.
HORROR CASE STUDY
Let’s say I want to write a screenplay—something in the horror genre. Just spitballing, maybe it’s a narrative about a mummy. Our protagonist is a hiker who gets lost in the wilderness of southern Mexico and stumbles upon an old Mayan burial site. The kicker? She breaks her leg falling through a floor shaft. And just when she thinks her situation can’t possibly get any worse, she realizes she is trapped inside the temple with a mummy.
What we have established here is the who, what, where, when, and why. Now, let’s boil it down into a single sentence:
“After breaking her leg at an ancient burial site in Southern Mexico, a hiker comes face to face with the guardian of the tomb, finding herself in a fight for her life.”
Is it perfect? Not quite. But it is exactly the foundation we need to build a compelling story full of tension, action, and horror. However, looking at it now, we might realize a fatal flaw: it’s a horror story, and there is only one person.
Who’s this mummy “gonna clap,” as the kids say? We need some fodder to really make this story sing. Fortunately, since we already boiled our core idea down to its essence, making structural tweaks is incredibly easy:
“After getting lost at an ancient burial site in southern Mexico, a group of hikers comes face to face with the guardian of the tomb, finding themselves in a fight for their lives.”
Generated by Gemini
USE AI TO RESEARCH YOUR STORY
Before building out my outline, I research everything I can about my subject matter. While this initial dive happens before I even boil my idea down, the real heavy lifting takes place after. Personally, I like having the flexibility to let my imagination run wild before getting bogged down by a mountain of details. Research can be like quicksand—it’s incredibly easy to get trapped. Too many creatives get in their own way, and the absolute last thing you want to do is build a barrier between you and your original spark.
While every writer’s process is different, I immerse myself in books, movies, video games, and even curated music playlists that match the aesthetic of what I’m trying to write. This establishes a grounded, real-world foundation. More importantly, it gives you the perfect jumping-off point to pose highly specific questions when you finally start researching with AI.
THE LINE BETWEEN FACT AND FICTION
As I mentioned earlier, when you’re researching with AI, always fact-check against primary sources. That being said, this is the movie business. Unless you’re making a documentary, we’re known for fudging the details. In the age-old battle of Entertainment versus Fact, entertainment usually takes the crown—a tradition dating all the way back to ancient historians like Arrian. Just look at the criticisms of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. He opted for highly stylized armor for his characters rather than historically accurate Bronze Age gear.
The Odyssey (2026)
Again, this isn’t a new phenomenon. Ancient cultures have been remixing narratives since the dawn of time (just look at Noah’s Ark and The Epic of Gilgamesh). Storytelling transcends cultures, period. The goal here is for our research to complement the story we’re trying to tell, not handcuff it.
While there are countless details you could research for your screenplay, your foundation will always rest on the five W’s: who, what, where, when, and why. Let’s look at how we can apply those as we flesh out our horror film.
START THE PROJECT CHANNEL IN YOUR AI PROGRAM
Whether you are using Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, or another AI assistant, you first need to create a dedicated project channel. Let’s begin by clearly articulating exactly what we are doing (writing a narrative feature horror screenplay) and what it’s about (pulled directly from our logline). For this example, I will use Google Gemini.
AI PROMPT |
| I’m writing a narrative feature horror screenplay about a group of hikers who get lost in the ruins of an ancient temple, only to find they are trapped inside with a mummy. I’m going to ask you a series of questions so you can assist with the research. Please let me know when you are ready. |
I always like to start by stating my intentions (posing a series of questions to define my research). By default, AI programs tend to dive right into providing an answer—they are designed to immediately solve and respond to your prompt. However, I don’t like this approach because it creates too much gray area.
Instead, I finish my prompt with, “Please let me know when you are ready,” or sometimes, “Let me know if you have any questions regarding my request.” This creates a deliberate pause. It places the ball firmly in your court and allows you to get even more specific and nuanced so you can extract exactly what you want. Remember: as the creator, you are driving the conversation. Keep the power in your hands.
WHERE?
The where (or setting) shouldn’t just be a random selection. Maybe you have personal experience there, you read about it in a book, or it sparked your interest during your research. What intrigues you? For our example, I have always been fascinated by the ancient civilizations of the Americas. So, let’s roll with that…
Our group of hikers is backpacking through southern Mexico when they stumble upon a lost temple. The setting consists of a dense, overgrown jungle hiding the ruins of a forgotten civilization lost to time.
With our AI prompt, we can start with a wide scope and work our way in.
AI PROMPT |
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| Since our hikers are backpacking in southern Mexico in a dense, overgrown jungle and stumble upon a lost temple, can you help with the research phase to flesh this out? |
Immediately, Gemini recommends specific regions like the Lacandon Jungle in Chiapas or the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in Campeche. This gives me a fantastic starting point to grab some books and watch a few videos on those locations so I can get a comfortable grasp of their geography, architecture, and atmosphere.
Gemini also paints a vivid picture of what could inspire our lost temple. In this region, Maya temples were constructed to connect the heavens to the underworld (Xibalba). Since our temple is buried underground, we can further explore the dark, subterranean levels of the structure.
| PRO TIP: Now go find visual references online or at your local library! |
WHEN?
While our story is set in the present day, this question also extends to the origin of our antagonist. Whether it’s stated outright in the script or not, the mummy’s origin will inform everything from key story beats to the production design.
You might notice that some of the five W’s will overlap during this phase. Our initial research points us to the Mayan Collapse between 800 and 1000 CE. However, as I mentioned earlier, I don’t mind keeping this historical area a little nebulous since we are building a fictional lost civilization. To give ourselves plenty of creative breathing room, we will generally look to this timeframe to establish when our mummy was a desperate, brutal king.
Furthermore, since a severe drought plays heavily into the mummy’s lore, we can set our present-day timeline during the absolute peak of the rainy season to create maximum thematic contrast.
Generated by Gemini
WHAT?
When you look at the horror genre, there is arguably nothing more terrifying than the undead. We’ve survived the zombie craze, slasher flicks featuring ghouls like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger, and, of course, mummies. What sets mummies apart is their rich lore, which is typically tethered to ancient Egypt. But we’re going to flip the script and base our mummy in the Americas.
While we want to ground our story in reality, centering our monster in the ruins of a lost civilization buys us a ton of creative liberty. Let’s say our mummy was a warlord who resorted to extreme, forbidden rituals to sustain his grip on power. Terrified by his descent into madness, his own people sealed him away—and now, he’s waiting to take his vengeance on the world.
In our previous prompt, Gemini already started feeding us ideas to build out this lore. It noted that during the Terminal Classic Collapse, severe droughts and endless warfare devastated the region. The people believed their kings (K’uhul Ajaw) were living gods responsible for bringing the rain. When the rain stopped, those kings grew desperate, resorting to extreme sacrifices and bloodletting rituals to appease the gods.
So, with that historical context in mind, let’s enter our next prompt.
AI PROMPT |
| Building from the lore of a desperate king, let’s further explore the origin of our mummy and what motivates him. Please ask any questions you might have to help in your pursuit. |
Since we are dialing in the exact details of our antagonist, we need to make sure the AI fully grasps our intent. That is why I ended the prompt by inviting it to ask me questions.
Right away, Gemini understands we are building a character that exists outside typical Hollywood tropes. We aren’t making a standard monster movie. This is a claustrophobic hostage situation—akin to the gritty futility of Green Room—where there is simply no way out.
Green Room (2015)
Gemini pitches that our mummy could be a Maya king who presided over a years-long drought. The crops died, and the jungle burned. As his starving people whispered of rebellion, he tried to prove his divinity through extreme bloodletting, constantly mutilating himself. The mounting whispers and the unrelenting drought ultimately drove him into paranoid madness.
In a final, desperate play to maintain his grip on the city, he abandoned the traditional gods and turned to the dark lords of Xibalba (the underworld). He dragged his royal court, his wives, and his top generals down into the deepest, pitch-black levels of the temple. He intended to slaughter them all in a massive, heretical ritual to flood the cenote with blood. But his remaining priests, terrified by his depravity, mutinied. They mutilated him, bound him in heavy jade and obsidian chains, and sealed him alive in the heart of the stone mountain with the rotting corpses of his sacrifices.
For a thousand years, he has been trapped in a state of agonizing purgatory, perfectly preserved in the dry, airtight limestone, waiting in absolute, hollow silence. He needs to finish the rite, and our hikers serve as the fresh blood required to finally free himself from his earthly purgatory.
Additional questions asked by Gemini:
- How does he interact with their light sources?
- What is his silhouette?
- Does he use a weapon?
- What is his audio signature?
WHO?
In the horror genre, character development is typically driven by an internal conflict that runs parallel to the active, physical danger they face. One of my favorite examples is Neil Marshall’s 2005 horror film, The Descent. In the opening scene, Sara (Shauna Macdonald) survives a brutal car accident that claims the lives of her husband and child. We pick up one year later as Sara and her friends explore an uncharted cave system in North Carolina. It’s a simple setup, but Marshall perfectly establishes the agonizing internal conflict his protagonist must contend with just as the group comes head-to-head with monstrous cave dwellers.
The Descent (2005)
In a similar vein, we need to establish the dynamic among our hikers and the specific internal conflict plaguing our protagonist. Let’s say this is a tight-knit group of cancer survivors, but our protagonist, Megan, discovers right before the trip that her cancer has returned.
This is where AI becomes a fantastic sounding board to bounce ideas off. Is this as good as brainstorming with a fellow writer or creative partner? Not exactly. But if you aren’t in a writers’ group or don’t have a lot of creatives in your immediate circle, you will find AI to be much better than your average bear.
AI PROMPT |
| The group of hikers are cancer survivors who are celebrating their new lease on life; however, our protagonist, Megan, just found out she relapsed right before the trip. What are your thoughts, and do you have any additional suggestions or considerations? How can we make this stronger? What is a solid number of characters for our group for a low-to-mid-budget horror movie? Keep in mind, we want to avoid tropes and ground our character dynamics in reality while keeping them engaging with underlying tension. |
Gemini responds by seizing on the fact that the mummy requires vital, healthy blood to complete his ritual. What happens when he senses Megan’s blood? If he recognizes the biological “rot” inside her and actively rejects her, does that leave her ignored but forced to watch her healthy friends get hunted down one by one?
Regarding my question about the size of the group, Gemini notes that four is the optimal number, with five being the absolute ceiling. This comes down to the logistics of blocking and camera coverage in a tight, subterranean environment, managing screen time in a 90-to-100-minute film, and having enough bodies for the token “split” (dividing the group into two pairs to maximize classic horror tension).
Gemini also recommends bypassing classic tropes by showing rather than telling the audience about the cancer. This could involve quick, quiet shots of characters taking maintenance pills, adjusting a colostomy bag, or pushing through severe fatigue. Furthermore, not all survivors are saints—meaning we shouldn’t be afraid to magnify character flaws like an arrogant thrill-seeker complex or heavy survivor’s guilt.
Meanwhile, Megan’s secret burden can manifest in the physical toll on her body. As she hides her fever, bruising, or sudden weakness, she can play it off as altitude sickness or dehydration. This organically isolates her from the group long before the mummy ever attacks.
Generated by Gemini
WHY?
This is perhaps one of the most important questions you need to answer as a writer. Why are your characters doing what they are doing? It can be as simple or as complicated as you’d like, but it absolutely cannot be overlooked or pushed to the back burner.
Since our group of hikers are cancer survivors, we must establish that they are not your ordinary tourist group. They are drawn together by a shared desire to push their personal endurance to the absolute limit. They are survivors, after all. After years of fighting sickness and living cautiously, they’ve formed a fierce bond over conquering the most exotic, punishing trails around the world to experience life to its fullest.
AI PROMPT |
| Can you provide feedback on the purpose of why these hikers are in southern Mexico: a group of cancer survivors who want to experience life to its fullest travel across the world to take on the most dangerous and exotic hikes. |
Gemini immediately notes the tragic irony of their dilemma: they ventured into the most vibrant, teeming-with-life place on earth to celebrate living, only to be swallowed by a tomb defined by ancient, suffocating death.
Gemini also brings back our established lore. The mummy king’s history is rooted in the Terminal Classic Collapse—a period defined by a devastating, apocalyptic drought. He bled himself and his court dry, begging the gods for rain that never came. To maximize the contrast and thematic irony, the modern timeline should take place at the absolute peak of the rainy season (often late summer or early autumn in southern Mexico).
| The Ancient Hubris | The king died in a bone-dry, airtight tomb, punished for his failure to bring the water. |
| The Modern Hubris | The hikers, refusing to let anything hold them back, ignore the severe weather warnings. They survived cancer; a little rain isn’t going to stop them from finishing their trek. |
| The Collision | A thousand years ago, the king died begging for a flood. Tonight, the sky finally breaks. A massive, torrential flash flood rips through the jungle, tearing away the topsoil and breaching the ancient limestone seals of the temple. The floodwaters literally wash the hikers down into the subterranean cenote, delivering four living sacrifices right to his altar. The rain finally came, and it brought his salvation. |
Generated by Gemini
WRITE SCRIPT OUTLINE WITH AI
All of this heavy lifting is about to pay off. This is where we take our research and marry it with our five W’s to compose an outline for a traditional three-act narrative structure. Granted, your approach might vary depending on the project, but for our purposes, we are going to create a shopping list of beats to build out each act. You might prefer turning to a tried-and-true resource like Save the Cat! for your beat sheet. However, for this exercise, we’re going to blaze our own trail.
If you are a first-time writer, you can even ask the AI to provide a list of the major beats you should hit for each act.
| PRO TIP: I strongly caution against handing over all your research and demanding the AI compose your entire outline. As the artist, you must retain the power to make the critical decisions on your story beats rather than offloading that responsibility to a computer program. If you are uncertain about your structuring abilities, I urge you to build out the story beats yourself first, and then ask the AI for feedback, just like we did in the previous steps.
HOWEVER… since this is only a hypothetical example that I never actually intend to write, let’s throw caution to the wind. Let’s take a look at the outline Gemini comes up with, and then we can critique it. |
Generated by Gemini
ACT 1
This act is about establishing the toxic positivity of the group’s “survivor” mentality and the physical reality of the environment before violently ripping their control away.
| The Setup (The Echo Chamber) | We open in media res on the grueling hike. The rain is already falling. Establish the group’s dynamic—they are fiercely bonded, hyping each other up. We see Megan quietly struggling, hiding a fever or popping a pill when no one is looking. Her relapse is isolating her in plain sight. |
| The Warning (Refusal to Yield) | The weather turns severe. The trail becomes treacherous. A moment where rational hikers would turn back, but the group refuses. Turning back feels like letting the cancer win. They push forward, sealing their own fate. |
| The Inciting Incident (The Deluge) | The flash flood hits with terrifying speed. The limestone ground beneath them dissolves. The violent, chaotic wash down into the pitch-black earth. |
| Plot Point 1 (The Point of No Return) | They pull themselves out of the subterranean cenote. Flashlights are dying or lost. The floodwaters are rising rapidly, cutting off the way they fell in. They realize they are in an ancient, sealed structure and the only way to survive the rising water is to climb up into the dry, suffocating darkness of the temple. |
THE CRITIQUE
To achieve genuine horror on screen, we must first establish a baseline of normalcy. Just like the tragic hero in Aristotle’s Poetics, we want to maximize the height of the fall for our characters. Because the AI was prompted for a “horror story,” it immediately bypassed the humanity and defaulted to churning out relentless horror beats.
If we don’t start with an opening sequence to establish a sense of everyday normality among this friend group, we rob the audience of their emotional anchor. Alternatively, we could utilize flashbacks. This allows us to creatively introduce our characters—especially our protagonist—in a natural way that builds empathy and a vital sense of unity.
There is also a glaring lack of foreshadowing here. Given that this is a film about a millennia-old mummy, we need to tease the horror to come. Whether that means incorporating a cold open showing the mummy being buried alive, or a prologue featuring 1920s explorers succumbing to the tomb, we must foreshadow exactly what this group of hikers is up against.
Finally, I would want to end the first act by re-establishing the imminent, physical danger of the antagonist in a visceral way to properly launch us into Act 2.
ACT 2
This act shifts from man vs. nature to a claustrophobic, psychological nightmare. The physical toll of the climb breaks them down just as the Mummy King begins his hunt.
| Entering the Underworld | The agonizing, physical climb through the lower tiers. The air gets incredibly thin and dry. They find the terrifying remnants of the desperate Maya king’s final days—hundreds of skeletons, unfinished sacrifices, a history of madness carved into the stone. |
| The First Encounter (The Predator) | The King awakens, drawn by the scent of fresh, vital blood. The first attack isn’t a jump scare; it’s a brutal, clinical extraction in the dark. One of the hikers is taken or severely wounded. The reality of their situation shatters their “invincible” facade. |
| The Midpoint (The Revelation) | The group manages to barricade themselves in a higher chamber. The physical exertion forces Megan’s body to give out. Her relapse is exposed to the group. The dynamic fractures—she is no longer a fellow “survivor,” but a liability slowing them down. |
| The Escalation (The Hunt) | The King breaches their sanctuary. This is where the King’s motivation crystallizes—he needs healthy blood to finish his ritual. He begins picking them off, using the labyrinthine layout of the temple to isolate them. |
| Plot Point 2 (All is Lost) | The group is decimated. Only Megan and perhaps one other remain, but the other survivor is captured to be the final sacrifice. Megan is left entirely alone in the pitch-black, physically broken by her disease, listening to the echoing screams of her friend. |
THE CRITIQUE
What I like most about this part of the outline is the labyrinthine environment—a claustrophobic maze where you never know what is waiting around the next corner. It taps into that primal fear of being stuck in the labyrinth with the Minotaur.
What still needs to be fleshed out, however, is the pathos of the characters. We need to see their relationships tested and watch how that dynamic plays out as they are forced to choose between sticking together or fleeing for their own personal survival. In a dark way, they aren’t just facing the mummy; they are competing against each other to survive the longest and find an escape. Therefore, the most important factor of the second act isn’t just the environment or the monster, but the decaying relationships between the hikers.
With that in mind, we need to ask how their dynamic mirrors or conflicts with the Mummy King, who was betrayed and murdered by his own subjects after doing whatever it took to bring the rain. Furthermore, now that a massive rainstorm is actively flooding the temple, how does that organically drive the plot? Does the suffocating, ancient dryness of the upper tomb serve as an environmental antagonist of its own?
ACT 3
This act is about Megan weaponizing her trauma. She stops acting like prey and embraces the grim reality of her terminal status.
| The Dark Night of the Soul | Megan realizes the horrifying truth: the King ignored her during the attacks. He can smell the “rot” of the cancer inside her. Her blood is useless for his holy ritual. She is utterly alone, dying, and rejected even by the monster. |
| The Epiphany (Weaponizing the Rot) | Instead of giving up, a cold, spiteful defiance takes over. If she is already dying, she refuses to let this ancient warlord win. She realizes her “unclean” status makes her the one thing that can ruin his ritual. |
| The Climax (The Confrontation) | Megan deliberately seeks the King out. She interrupts the final sacrifice. The confrontation isn’t a fistfight; it’s a desperate, tactical disruption. She uses her tainted blood to defile his altar or triggers a collapse that brings the rising floodwaters crashing into the upper, sealed chambers, drowning the King’s hopes of resurrection. |
| The Resolution (The Aftermath) | Megan barely escapes the collapsing ruins, clawing her way out into the harsh, blinding daylight of the jungle. The storm is over. She is the sole survivor. It is a bleak, hollow victory—she survived the temple, but the cancer is still inside her. She is alive, but her war isn’t over. |
THE CRITIQUE
The dramatic irony here is phenomenal: the very disease killing Megan is what ultimately saves her from the mummy. Yet, even as the credits roll, the audience is well aware that her true battle is just beginning.
Where the AI’s logic leaves room for improvement, however, is Megan’s final confrontation. The idea of spilling her cancerous blood on the altar to ruin the ritual sounds cool on paper, but where does that knowledge come from? Did she discover a specific clue in the previous act? Was there a mural she deciphered that allowed her to put two and two together to get four?
Overall, Gemini generated a structure that is mechanically functional in some places, but it completely misses the vital connective tissue—the intimate character moments and evolving relationships—that actually make a film work. If you rely solely on AI for this portion of the creative process, it is easy to see how quickly you can fall into tired tropes and story beats that feel overly predictable and, ultimately, stale.
INJECTING THE SOUL INTO YOUR OUTLINE
Now that we’ve thoroughly roasted the AI’s first draft, what’s next? This is the crucial moment where you, the actual artist, step back in.
The AI did exactly what we asked it to do: it generated a functional, mechanical skeleton. But as we saw in the critiques, that skeleton is completely devoid of a soul. It gave us the what, but it is entirely up to you to weave in the how and the feel. If you want to elevate this from a stale, predictable monster movie into a gripping piece of cinema, you have to take the wheel and manipulate those beats.
Here is how you actually take your story back into your own hands based on our critiques:
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FORCE THE PATIENCE (FIXING ACT 1)
AI inherently lacks patience; it wants to get straight to the blood and guts. As the writer, you have to manually hit the brakes and build the “Normal World.” You must carve out the quiet, human moments where the group is joking around the campfire or where Megan is silently struggling with her symptoms.
If you want to buy yourself screen time to establish those vital emotional anchors, use the foreshadowing tactic we discussed. Write a brutal cold open—maybe that 1920s expedition getting decimated—to promise the audience that the horror is coming. Once the audience knows the threat is real, they will patiently let you develop your characters.
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FOCUS ON THE FRACTURE, NOT JUST THE MONSTER (FIXING ACT 2)
When expanding your second act, shift your focus away from the mummy and zero in on the interpersonal fallout. A labyrinth is a cool set piece, but the real meat of the story lies in the fracturing of the group’s bond.
AI doesn’t organically understand the nuance of survivor’s guilt or the ugly, selfish instinct to survive. You need to map out the psychology. How do the rising floodwaters physically force them into tighter, more suffocating spaces? Ratchet up the environmental tension until the hikers turn on each other—brilliantly mirroring how the desperate King was betrayed by his own subjects.
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EARN YOUR CLIMAX (FIXING ACT 3)
AI is fantastic at generating a cool cinematic moment—like Megan ruining the holy ritual with her cancerous blood—but it has absolutely no idea how to plant the seeds to get there. As the writer, you have to build the staircase.
Go back into your Act 1 and Act 2 beats and build the connective tissue. Where does she learn the rules of the ritual? Maybe the group finds a horrific mural in the lower levels, or maybe they decipher the mad scribblings of a previous explorer. You must engineer the setup so that her final epiphany feels brilliantly earned, rather than like a cheap deus ex machina.
| PRO TIP: Treat AI like a junior writing assistant who works for free. It is great at throwing paint at the canvas and generating raw material, but it lacks the lived human experience required to make an audience actually care. Use it for the scaffolding, but never let it dictate the emotional core of your script. |
AI SCRIPTWRITING TOOLS
Up to this point, we’ve been using a generalized AI assistant (like Google Gemini) as our virtual sounding board and research partner. But what about the tools built specifically for screenwriters? Let’s have an honest look at the specialized software currently flooding the market.
Whether it is dedicated platforms like NolanAI and Sudowrite, or legacy heavyweights like Final Draft integrating new AI features, there is no shortage of software promising to revolutionize your workflow. These programs are designed specifically for the screenwriting ecosystem. They can automatically format your messy text blocks into perfect industry-standard layouts, generate character bibles, and even provide localized “script coverage” to highlight pacing issues or repetitive dialogue.
On the logistics side, these tools are undeniably brilliant. If you despise manually tabbing over for dialogue or managing scene headings, this software will save you hours of formatting headaches. It acts as an incredibly efficient, automated script coordinator.
But here is the trap.
Many of these specialized platforms come equipped with a heavily advertised “Generate Next Scene” or “Auto-Complete Dialogue” button. When you are staring down a severe case of writer’s block at two in the morning, the temptation to just click that button and let the machine take the wheel is overwhelmingly high. But as we just saw when we critiqued our AI-generated outline, the moment the machine takes the wheel, the soul of your story flies right out the window.
The dialogue becomes sterile. The character voices blur into a homogenous, robotic monotone. The subtext—the unspoken tension that actually makes a scene brilliant—is completely lost because an algorithm doesn’t understand what it means to feel human.
| PRO TIP: Treat specialized AI scriptwriting tools as a logistical resource, not a creative crutch. Let them format your pages, track your scene lengths, and proofread your action lines. But the absolute second you let an algorithm write your dialogue, your characters will start sounding like a corporate press release. |
At the end of the day, these tools are just that—tools. A high-end hammer cannot build a house on its own, and a premium scriptwriting algorithm cannot make an audience cry. Use the software to clear away the logistical barriers, but reserve the actual emotional heavy lifting for yourself.
THE BOTTOM LINE: MAN VS MACHINE
So, to AI, or not to AI?
Hopefully, by now, the answer is clear: the question itself is a trap. We don’t need to view artificial intelligence as a binary choice between artistic purity and technological cheating. Throughout this article, we’ve learned that AI is neither a magic bullet nor the enemy of the creative class.
We learned that your story must always begin with you—distilling your raw human inspiration into a grounded logline before you ever open a browser. We discovered how to command AI to act as a world-class research assistant, fleshing out the five W’s of our narrative. And, perhaps most importantly, we saw firsthand how AI can generate a mechanically functional outline, while completely failing to capture the vital, messy, emotional connective tissue that actually makes a movie great.
To bring it all home, let’s look at the ultimate tale of the tape:
THE PROS |
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| THE ULTIMATE SOUNDING BOARD | AI is an incredible cure for “blank page syndrome.” When you are stuck at 2:00 AM, it provides instant, dynamic feedback to bounce your ideas against. |
| RESEARCH ON STEROIDS | It can rapidly aggregate historical context, suggest obscure locations, and build out deep-world lore (provided you fact-check the primary sources). |
| THE SCAFFOLDING | It is fantastic at laying out the structural, logistical beats of a traditional three-act narrative so you don’t get lost in the weeds. |
THE CONS |
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|---|---|
| The Empathy Void | Algorithms haven’t lived, loved, grieved, or survived. They physically cannot write genuine human pathos, underlying tension, or subtext. |
| A Crutch for Tropes | If you give AI too much control, it will aggressively default to the safest, most predictable, and cliché story paths available. |
| The Homogenized Voice | The absolute second you let a computer write your dialogue, your gritty, unique characters will start sounding like corporate customer service bots. |
YOUR ASSIGNMENT: THE TRIAL BY FIRE
I am not going to just leave you here with philosophical musings. If you want to master this tool without losing your soul, you need to put it to the test. Here is your assignment for the week:
| 1. | Step Away from the Screen | Grab a physical piece of paper and write down one logline for a story you’ve been too intimidated to start. Boil it down to a single sentence. |
| 2. | Open the Project Channel | Feed that logline into your AI of choice. Dictate the terms. Ask it to generate a standard 15-beat outline (like a Save the Cat! beat sheet) based only on your premise. |
| 3. | The Autopsy | Print that outline out. Take a red pen and brutally critique it. Cross out the predictable tropes. Circle the moments that lack human emotion. |
| 4. | Take the Reins | Write the first ten pages of the script yourself. Use the AI’s structure as your map, but force your own lived experiences, your own gritty dialogue, and your own cadence onto the page. |
AI is here to stay, my fellow writers. It can build the temple, but it is entirely up to you to bring the fire. Now get to work.
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Zack Eritz
Zack Eritz is a Los Angeles-based writer and filmmaker whose creative roots trace back to Pittsburgh’s gritty independent cinema scene. After cutting his teeth producing uncompromising celluloid films, Eritz brought his passion for storytelling to Filmmakers Academy. As the dedicated ghostwriter for renowned cinematographer Shane Hurlbut, ASC, he translates decades of high-level Hollywood expertise into accessible education, including the recent book, Fix It In Prep.
