Every year, my family has a family writing contest. The first year, it was a thing my older daughter and I did on a whim. There’s this church out in the boonies where we have a family Christmas get together. It’s a long drive out there, so we passed the time making up stories using the phrase “the church at the end of the road.” From there, a plan was made — we would each take the remaining two weeks before Christmas and write our own short story based on this prompt. The rest of our family – my wife, the aunts and uncles – would pick the winner. This is how the family writing contest was born.
My daughter won that round, but I ended up with a short story appropriately called "The Church at the End of the Road." I’m happy with the story, even if I lost the contest.
We held the family writing contest again last year. This time my younger daughter joined in. She had been developing her craft as an actor and screenwriter. We decided this year would be longer works, so the three of us devoted the entire year to a long work. My older daughter worked on a fantasy epic novel, my younger daughter a screenplay. I decided to pursue a life-long dream to create a comic book series. Neither my older daughter nor I fully completed our works. We were too ambitious. My younger daughter’s screenplay was not only complete, but also, a really good story. She won the second round, but like the first round, I was left with something I’m really proud of.
Go check out my site for Hartwell. Hartwell is a Southern Gothic family drama for all ages set in a realistic setting where extraordinary powers and spectacular events are everyday occurrences. I was able to create this comic because I used generative AI tools to help me. In my next post, I’ll explain what that process was like and what I think works well, and what doesn’t work so well, with generative AI tools.
Oh, and the family writing contest continues this year! We’re working on our pieces through out the year, just like last year, and this time, my sister and brother are joining in. More on this year’s contest at some point later in the year.
This is the first in a series of posts on generative AI. The next in the series is about how I used generative AI to create my comic, Hartwell.