AI-Assisted Screenwriting - Part III

After having done all the groundwork in Part 1 and Part 2, we’re finally ready to tackle what’s arguably the most powerful feature of Saga: the Script section.

Screenwriting is a BIG subject, and even when we have covered the most widely used story frameworks in “The Science of Storytelling” series, diving into all its technicalities goes far beyond what we could reasonably do in this space.

If you happen to really want to pursue screenwriting as a career, I encourage you to enroll in a screenwriting course, or seek mentorship from someone who’s currently working in the industry.

If you want to know what screenwriting is, what’s involved in the job, and even complete your first script for a feature movie within 15 weeks under the direction of a working screenwriter, I wholeheartedly recommend Nathan’s DELUSIONAL Screenwriting Course.

This is one of the best screenwriting courses you’ll find online, PERIOD.

Nathan keeps it real –as you can see from the very name of the course– and covers every subject in-depth, and from a completely practical standpoint.

Did I mention that the course is COMPLETELY FREE?

With that being said, if you have never written, or even read a screenplay, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with a few concepts first, in order for what we’ll be doing today to make any sense.

The first thing I must make you aware of is that writing for the screen –A.K.A. “screenwriting”– is a completely different beast from narrative writing.

We’re all very familiar with narrative writing, because that’s the form in which we’ve been consuming stories since a very early age.

When someone tells you a story, or when you read a novel, you’re experiencing the wonders of narrative writing.

All the “story frameworks” we studied before, such as Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, or Vogler’s Writer’s Journey, or the 3-Act Structure, are very useful tools widely used by narrative writers and screenwriters alike.

So, what’s the big difference between writing a novel and writing a screenplay?

The main and most important difference is this:

You cannot see thoughts or emotions on screen!

Let’s unpack this:

When you read a novel, the author has the semi-divine power of getting into each character’s head to let you witness their thoughts, what they’re planning, and their actual intentions.

The writer can just as easily reveal to you the character’s most secret feelings, fears, and love… and all of their internal experience if needed.

Screenwriters don’t enjoy such a luxury.

In screenwriting, the old adage “show, don’t tell” is not just a great suggestion to keep your narrative tight and engaging; it’s a fact of life!

What cannot be shown on the screen doesn’t have a place in a screenplay.

(Read that again, and make sure to fully commit to it. You’ll need it soon!)

You cannot simply say that a character is sad… you must make it evident to the spectator that she is sad through her actions on screen.

You cannot say he feels insecure –how does “insecure” even look like?–… you must make the audience aware of this by the actions he’s performing on screen.

The character’s ACTIONS are the main ingredient of visual storytelling.

This is why actors are called ACTORS, not “line-sayers”, as good acting has very little to do with delivering lines, contrary to what most people believe!

You can, of course, support the message the character’s actions convey to the audience with other secondary elements in the scene.

For instance, a depressed person will usually have a messy house, and poor hygiene in her person and clothes.

Even if this might not seem an “action” in the common sense of the word, it is, nonetheless, the direct result and, consequently, the reflection of the character’s actions (or lack of action, which is also an ACTION!).

You cannot say he’s thinking of doing something, or remembering something…

You must find a way to show that on screen!

This is the most profound difference between writing a novel and writing a screenplay.

The second BIG difference has to do with runtime…

In a novel, you have all the time in the world to tell the story you want to tell.

You can even go off on a tangent for 50 or 90 pages, to later get back to the main story as you please.

As the author, you can decide to tell your story in 100 pages, or in 1,000 pages.

Heck, you can make it a 15-tome series if you so desire!

You’re entirely in charge.

This fact gives the novel writer a whole lot of freedom on the page to shape the story in any way they wish.

There is no such thing in the world of screenwriting!

A movie cannot span 15 tomes…

Whatever the story is that we’re telling, it must be told in less than two hours.

The spectator won’t sit there one minute more!

Contrary to novel writers, who enjoy total freedom on the page, screenwriters must use a pretty rigid format to write a screenplay.

This standardized screenwriting format helps the screenwriter to keep all descriptions and dialogue clear and concise, so that one page in a script is roughly equivalent to one minute of movie runtime.

As feature movies have a standard runtime of between 90 to 120 minutes, that’s about the number of pages the final script for a movie must have.

When it comes to formatting, there are quite a few rules you must be aware of if you want to produce what’s called an “industry-ready” screenplay.

For a great and concise overview of all these standard format requirements, and the different elements that can be present in a screenplay, I recommend you watch this excellent video by StudioBinder:

These formatting requirements are so precise, that quite a few software companies have been founded over the years with the specific goal of making screenwriters’ lives easier by ensuring that their screenplays –also called “scripts”– are automatically formatted accordingly.

The good news is that you don’t really need any of these expensive tools –Final Draft, Fade In, etc– because Saga gives you the ability to write your scripts abiding by this standard screenplay format, and export it later as a pdf file, a text file, or the standard format for scripts: .fountain

You can also upload any script you have written using any other screenwriting tool into Saga, and use Saga’s powerful co-writing tools to keep editing it… or simply to leverage Saga’s powerful Storyboarding and Animation tools.

Ok, enough of an introduction!

Time to get our hands dirty and get down to it!

Let’s open our “Trust Protocol” project and go straight to the Script section of Saga:

As you can see, we’re greeted by a beautiful blank page!

Here, we could just put hands to keyboard and start writing each scene as with any other screenwriting software.

If that’s what you want to do, you can use the buttons on the top of the page to switch to the specific formatting required for each element of the script.

Saga will make sure that each element is properly aligned, and use the standard font attributes and spacing before and after:

If we hover over the information bubble, Saga shows us the different shortcuts we can use to change to each of these modes without leaving the keyboard, which is pretty handy:

If you happen to be a professional screenwriter, this is probably all you need to know to start writing your scenes.

But if you have been reading this series, I’m sure you’re expecting a bit more…

You’ll be glad to know that all the groundwork you did filling out –either all by yourself, or with the help of Saga’s AI like I did– wasn’t in vain:

You now have a world-class screenwriting AI-assistant that knows every aspect of your story and characters, and can help you get unstuck whenever you need it!

Even if you’ve never written a screenplay before, worry not, because Saga has your back!

All you need to do to prove to yourself once and for all that the so dreaded “blank page syndrome” is something you’ll never have to experience again, is to ask Saga to write the draft of a scene for you.

That’s where that magic “Generate Scene” button comes in:

As you can see, when you click the button a field presents itself asking you for some direction:

You can, of course, describe the scene you’re envisioning right there and ask Saga to generate the draft scene based on that information you just entered.

This is great if you uploaded your own script to Saga, or wrote it directly in the Script section without bothering to fill out the beat sheet in the Story section.

This will also prove invaluable later on, when we need to add new scenes to our screenplay, beyond the key scenes we pre-defined in the beat sheet.

It’s always great to see that Saga gives us full flexibility to work OUR way.

You don’t need to use all the tools that Saga gives you, but I love the peace of mind that comes with knowing they are there if you need them!

In this case, as we did take the time to fill out the entire beat sheet in our last issue, we’ll tell Saga to leverage that information to write the very first scene in our movie.

In order to include the context of a beat, simply tick the “Include beat” checkbox, and pick from the dropdown the beat you want Saga to write the scene for.

As this is the very first scene in our screenplay, I’ll leave it at the “Prologue”, and click the button “Generate Scene”.

Quick aside: If you click the beats dropdown, it will open up and give you the chance to pick any of the 40 beats we have defined in the Beats page.

But this is what I find really great about the way Saga has implemented this feature: it shows you the text of the beat right there, in the dropdown menu so there is no confusion whatsoever about what beat we’re talking about!

Hats off to Andrew and Russell for thinking of these little details!

These are the kind of things you only can think of when you actually use your own software on an ongoing basis, and THAT is what makes Saga so special!

After clicking the “Generate scene” button, and waiting for about 10 seconds, here’s what we get:

I’ve gotta say, as someone with a software engineering background I LOVE the touch of presenting the draft with a Revert and Accept buttons at the top!

In this particular case the Revert button should probably be disabled, since there is no reason to revert back to a blank page. But in cases where you make Saga redo a scene, it makes perfect sense to be able to revert back to the last version if you don’t like the new one.

I click the Accept button and now the scene is in the editor, and it’s completely editable (and perfectly formatted as well!):

Now that Saga has helped us write our first scene, let’s use it to learn more about what each component of a formatted screenplay is (if you’re a pro, feel free to skip this section!)

As you’ll find soon, every time you click inside a specific part of a scene –what we call an “element” of the screenplay– Saga will highlight in the top bar what type of element we’re editing (again guys, nice touch!)

This is especially great when you’re just starting out and still learning the screenplay format!

It’s important to know that these screenplay “elements” also appear in the top bar, from left to right, in the specific order we’ll find them inside a scene.

The first element we see is what’s called the Scene Heading, or the Slugline.

It looks like this (notice how the Scene Heading button is highlighted in the top bar when I set my cursor in this line):

The Scene Heading has only one function: it tells us WHERE and WHEN the scene is taking place.

The Scene Heading is always written in all capitals, and it includes 3 sections inside a single line:

First, we define if the scene is taking place inside a building or outside.

INT. (Interior), EXT. (Exterior) and INT./EXT. for scenes which are filmed partly outside and partly inside, are the most commonly used abbreviations here.

After the INT/EXT prefix, we have the SETTING.

This is a very short description of the physical place or location where the scene is happening. In this case “UNDERGROUND LAB”

Finally, we end the Scene Heading with a temporal mark. Usually DAY, AFTERNOON, or NIGHT.

After the Scene Heading, come the so-called Action Lines:

Action Lines are all the description in the scene that’s not dialogue.

The reason why they’re called ACTION LINES and not description lines, is because, in a screenplay, we can only describe things that can be shown on screen.

And the only things that can be shown on screen are the actions being performed by the actors, and some really brief description of the scene setting IF it helps build character or show the character’s emotional or mental state.

You might have heard that a scene must either advance the story, or build character (or both).

Any scene that doesn’t do at least one of those things must be cut out mercilessly!

Action Lines function in a similar fashion.

The rule of thumb is: 3-4 Action per Action Block is plenty.

More than that, and we’re probably over-describing.

In screenwriting, less is always more.

Good screenwriters go back to their actions lines time and time again to trim them down and tighten them up as much as possible with every further edit.

(Without having read them yet, these actions lines look way too verbose to me. But we’ll get back to that soon…)

The next 3 elements work together to create a “Dialogue Block”.

Dialogue in a screenplay is always indented toward the center of the page.

Centering dialogue makes it immediately recognizable on the page, allowing readers—such as directors, actors, and producers—to quickly identify who is speaking and what they are saying without confusion.

A Dialogue Block is composed of the character’s name, in CAPITALS, an optional “Parenthetical”, and the lines of dialogue themselves, all properly indented.

All that “parenthetical” means is that it goes between parentheses.

A “parenthetical” is a brief description of the attitude or a gesture the character is doing at the time of delivering a line of dialogue.

A parenthetical can also be used to address ambiguity, like when a character is talking with several people and we need to know who they turn to before delivering a line.

One of the main goals of parentheticals is to avoid having to use action lines between dialogue, which would make the scene unnecessarily verbose, and the dialogue more difficult to read.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that parentheticals are only to be used sparingly and when strictly necessary; you’ll do yourself a great favor trying to avoid using them whenever possible!

For example, this is the first part of the Dialogue Block from the scene Saga just wrote for us:

Personally, I’m not too happy with the excess of Action Lines Saga seems to have produced here, especially those inside the Dialogue Block.

Action lines should be reduced to a minimum, and only exceptionally be placed between dialogue.

That being said, let’s not forget that this is a first draft after all.

We might find some of the ideas conveyed in these extra action lines really valuable to give shape to the final scene!

The last element in the top bar, TRANSITIONS, is not really that important and you can for the most part ignore it.

Transitions are, as you might imagine, cuts from scene to scene.

This screenplay element has survived from old times when the screenwriter used to specify the type of transition to be used from a scene to the next.

Nowadays, unless you are also the director of the movie, it’s seen as really unprofessional on the part of the screenwriter to try to do the job of the director.

So very rarely if ever you should as a screenwriter call a transition in the script!

The only transition that still survives today, likely because it has the emotional impact of a signature at the end of a piece of art, is the Fade Out that’s traditionally the last word of a screenplay.

And with that, you’ve got a crash course on script formatting.

(Granted: Saga is doing all the heavy lifting for us here, making sure that every element is using the proper indentation, font size, etc.)

Let’s now read on the full scene that Saga has written for us, and see how it can be improved:

First of all, I have to say, this is a goddamn good first draft!

And YES, this is what’s supposed to be: a first draft.

Saga’s goal is not to give you the final product, but rather help you out when you’re feeling stuck, giving you just enough of a base to get your juices flowing…

And at that, this is great!

After reading this scene, I also found that I was so quick to judge when I said before that the introduction of the scene was too lengthy.

I had forgotten that this is the very first scene in the movie, and, obviously, some characters needed to be introduced.

In this case we’re introducing our protagonist, Tom, and his main ally, Emma.

Character introductions, and especially main character introductions, can be quite lengthy in their own right, since we usually want to convey the character of the protagonist not only through the description of their physical appearance, but also their demeanor, their clothes, and, of course, their actions.

Even the setting of the scene where a main character is introduced to the audience should tell us something about their character, and their particular worldview.

So all in all, Saga has done a really good job here introducing our main characters in a rather succinct way:

I especially appreciate the contrast Saga has managed to showcase here between Emma and Tom’s characters.

A minor critique is that, at times, the description wants to delve into a more narrative style that, as I said before, has no place in a screenplay.

This is likely not Saga’s fault, but rather the tendency of LLMs to use a narrative style that’s more reminiscent of a novel than a screenplay.

Here it’s quite okay, even when descriptions like “her hazel eyes take in the sterile, cold environment of the lab” are borderline dangerous in screenwriting.

How does a sterile, cold environment, look like?

Remember: show, don’t tell!

We cannot show on screen a “perception”, or an emotion a character is feeling, nor what’s happening inside their heads.

We can only show ACTIONS, supported by what’s in the frame.

If the lab environment feels cold, the setting itself will have to do the heavy lifting here, so the spectator feels it as cold. No description needed.

Let’s also not forget what our job as screenwriters is, and what it is not.

Our job is to tell the story visually, SHOWING the actions of our characters inside settings that convey character and move the story forward.

We don’t need to describe every object in the setting; only the ones that are there to advance the story or convey character.

Our job is NOT to direct the movie by telling the director how they should frame the shot, or cut in or out of scenes –but we can, indeed, suggest certain shots by the artful use of action lines.

This is really important to understand, because Directors don’t appreciate screenwriters trying to tell them how they should shoot a scene!

Another thing that’s NOT part of our job as screenwriters is to cast actors.

This might sound obvious, but it’s an easy mistake to make:

For instance, when we said above “her hazel eyes”, we were stepping on the line.

We don’t know if the actress who gets the part will have hazel eyes, or blue eyes, or some other color.

Yes, I know that that’s something that can be easily fixed if it serves the story… but that’s not the point I’m making here.

The point I’m making here is that if something is not absolutely necessary for the story to work, then it’s not something for us screenwriters to decide.

Filmmaking is a collaborative process, and a script is a lot like the blueprint for a house.

It’s the job of the architect to design and specify the key details of the building, but how the house will be ultimately built is up to the thousands of decisions the construction workers must make every day along the way.

It’s their job to take the drawings, and the guidelines provided by the architect, and make them into a solid reality.

Creating a movie is much the same: the script is a living document that’s initially crafted by the screenwriter(s).

But it’s only the blueprint, a guide that a lot of very talented people –Directors, DPs, Production Designers, actors, and many more– will use as a base to do their job.

Inevitably, many decisions will have to be made along the way by different people, for that blueprint you wrote to have a fighting chance to see the light of a cinema projector!

Remember: making a movie is a team sport, not a one-man show!

I’m aware that this is an AI Filmmaking newsletter, so many of you might be wondering why I’m talking about casting decisions and letting each professional do their work… if all of it can be produced by AI now!

First of all, you know my position on this:

I don’t think that a good movie can be –or will ever be– produced by AI alone… nor should it.

But besides that, as we’re talking about screenwriting here, I want to give you a real picture of what the job of a screenwriter is in the real world of movie production.

This way, you learn how to tell what a good script looks like, and the main pitfalls to avoid.

Who knows, maybe you love writing and want to make screenwriting your main thing!

Worry not: AI won’t replace good screenwriters, just as it won’t replace great directors and actors.

If anything, the AI boom is growing the market at an accelerated pace never seen before.

A lot more stories will need to be produced, and tons of new talent will be needed to keep up with this growing demand!

Let’s move on now to the Dialogue Block:

This is just the first part of it, but at first glance I see something suspicious: as a rule of thumb, I don’t like seeing Action lines in between the dialogue.

Action lines belong to the introduction of the scene, and once we enter the dialogue block, dialogue should flow back and forth between the characters naturally and without actions lines interrupting that flow.

You certainly don’t want to see a 3 or 4-line Action Line block interrupting the flow of the Dialogue as we see here!

So… what’s the problem and how can we solve it?

The very first thing I do when trying to reduce to the very minimum the action lines inside Dialogue Blocks is to ask myself the following question:

Am I trying to tell the actors how to do their job here?

I’ve found that that’s usually the case when we have more Action Lines than we should in a scene, and especially inside blocks of dialogue.

This is obviously the case here:

Here we’re telling the actor playing the role of Tom how to do his job!

Believe me: we don’t need to tell a professional actor that he needs to shift from surprise to skepticism here…. he knows!

The “his fingers hesitating over the keyboard” line is even worse.

This might work great for a novel, but not for a screenplay. This is micro-directing an actor, something that good Directors won’t do, let alone good screenwriters…

The rest of the action line is just fluff that has no place in a screenplay:

How do you show the “palpable tension” between them on screen?

If you have an answer, then write that!

But always remember that it’s the job of the actor to come up with the best way to deliver a line, not ours.

That’s why we call it “interpretation”.

As a screenwriter, you must leave the needed space for the actor’s interpretation to take place!

The line “the fracture in their relationship unspoken but ever present” could maybe function as a foreshadowing device in a novel…

But it certainly doesn’t belong in a screenplay!

The spectator can only see what’s shown on screen.

Your job is not to tell the spectator how a character feels, or what they think; your job is to tell the director and the actors what should be happening on screen.

Besides, the actors will have already read the entire script several times before setting foot on the set to shoot, so they will know how to showcase the emotional depth of the scene.

In summary, there is no reason for including action lines like this one.

A big reason for people to get confused about this is that many times they are not clear enough on who the reader of a screenplay is!

For a novel, the reader is… well, the reader!

That is, the consumer of the product we call “a novel”.

For a screenplay though, the “readers” are the director, the actors, and the entire movie crew. None of them are the consumer of the product being created, but rather, the co-creators of it.

The “end user” of the product we call “a movie” is not the reader, and will likely never read the screenplay!

Let’s now see this action line:

The first sentence in this action line is doing its job: showing Emma’s actions in a concise way.

The use of visual verbs like “stride over” in contrast with flat verbs like “walk over” is a great tenet of effective screenwriting. Point for Saga!

The “she doesn’t sit, her posture is rigid” part can be deleted –let the actor figure it out!

Finally, let’s check:

Considering Tom is not speaking between Emma’s two consecutive lines, describing his actions with an action line is okay here.

I’d delete the “prioritizing efficiency over ethics” part, since it’s redundant.

Let’s check now the second part of the dialogue:

Nothing to say about this part, really.

Even if I prefer getting rid of action lines between dialogue whenever possible, the action lines in this fragment feel motivated, concise, and not overly descriptive.

I want to make clear that this is NOT a criticism of Saga.

Saga is giving us here the raw material of a first draft, and we need to massage this first draft, and get it tight through subsequent edits. This is just how the screenwriting process works, with or without AI help.

That being said, I’m finding that this extra material that wouldn’t probably have a place in a professional screenplay targeting a Hollywood production, is actually REALLY useful for AI filmmakers!

For one, if you must produce the script yourself, like most AI filmmakers will, all extra detail provided for each scene is super-valuable to help you write better prompts for image and video generation models.

Furthermore, even when employing professional actors is the surest way of having great performances on screen, we must acknowledge the fact that most AI filmmakers don’t have, at least initially, the budget to do so.

So whether you are instructing an AI video model to take care of the entire performance, or you’re using tools like Runway’s Act 2 to drive the performance yourself, if you’re not a professional actor you’ll come to appreciate any pointers on how to deliver those lines!

Finally, let’s check the Action Lines at the end of the scene:

Here we see again too much of a narrative style, rather than the visual storytelling that’s required for good screenwriting.

“The hum of the lab suddenly feels louder– pressing, oppressive”

How do you show that?

And then, “A silent challenge hangs between them…”

Too much narrative fluff!

This is not a novel!

But here’s the great thing about using Saga to write your script:

You can ask Saga to correct these bits for you!

For that, you only have to select the text you want Saga to check, and click the Rewrite button:

And now write exactly what you want in the prompt box, and click the button REWRITE:

Here’s the result:

Much better!

Now let’s click the green Accept button to get the new version added to the scene:

And just like that, we have made –well, Saga did– the action lines so much tighter, while avoiding the narrative trap all at once!

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Now that you know what we’re looking for in a scene, you can go over the scene and make all the changes needed manually. And I strongly suggest you do so.

But for this exercise, let’s use Saga itself to iterate over the weakest parts of the scene.

We could, of course, tell Saga to re-generate the entire scene if we think the scene itself is weak.

But sooner or later we’ll have to adjust individual parts of the scene as we’ll be doing here…

First, the Action Lines:

These are mostly fine.

But there are some small details I don’t like.

For instance, the “engulfed in the glow of his research” part. Come on!

Or the “faint sound of footsteps echoes through the corridor beyond”.

Why not “Sound of footsteps approaching”, or something along those lines?

Also, how can a sound be faint if it echoes through a corridor?

Just AI doing what AI does best: adding fluff and extra details where they are not needed!

Honestly, I should quickly correct these action lines myself, but let’s see what Saga can do to get them tighter:

The result:

Much tighter. I’ll accept that!

The only thing I’ll change is making the sounds CAPITALIZED, which is a convention in screenplays to help the sound engineers identify the sound effects that each scene requires.

I’ll also delete the final reference to her eyes.

Here’s the final result:

Let’s continue on:

Here, I’ll manually edit out the unnecessary action line, adding the relevant information in a parenthetical instead:

The second question you should ask yourself when trying to get rid of action lines inside dialogue blocks is if what’s being said can be replaced by a quick parenthetical.

Parentheticals –the performance pointers you see sometimes between parenthesis under the character name in dialogue blocks– are to be used sparingly.

Saga is doing a great job with parentheticals here: contrary to ChatGPT or Claude that love to add a parenthetical to each piece of dialogue, Saga has only used a few in this entire scene. Good job Saga!

This action line is alright, but feels a little off:

I was going to edit it myself to read “Emma strides over, places the USB drive on his workstation and points to the screen.”

But I’m curious to see what Saga will write…

So I select the text and click the REWRITE button:

This time, I leave the prompt box completely blank, and click the REWRITE button:

I like this version so much more:

So let’s accept it and move on…

Let’s now fix this one:

For this I’ll use the same prompt I wrote before:

This is a screenplay. Write concise action lines and only describe what we can see on screen (or hear). We cannot see emotions nor thoughts nor abstract concepts!

SO MUCH BETTER!

Accepting that!

For the next one, once again I will ask Saga to rewrite it but leave the prompt box blank, since I don’t have any particular correction to make but I want to see another version:

I like it:

I accept it and continue reading the action lines until the end of the scene.

They all look good to me.

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So now I’ll do a second pass focusing on the dialogue itself, to see if it flows naturally, or there are some issues to address…

Here for instance:

“That system isn’t meant for you to access” sounds quite vague and impersonal, especially talking to his daughter.

Let’s see if Saga can improve it.

I will leave the prompt box empty first to see what Saga gives me, and add some guiding instructions later if needed:

First try, and I really like the result:

For Emma’s reply, I slightly edited it to:

(Notice that I got rid of the parenthetical)

Let’s focus on this part now:

I still feel that the clarification clause “—discarding ethical considerations in favor of ruthless efficiency.” is not really needed, so I’ll shave it off.

After editing slightly Emma’s part, here’s the result:

On second thought, I like the use of “sacrificing” from the original version, it’s a more impactful word.

So let’s change it to:

Pretty satisfied with that!

Let’s move on…

Some light editing after, we have:

Good enough for a first draft.

Let’s go for the next one:

I like the action line a lot.

Emma’s dialogue is also pretty strong. I’ll just tweak it a bit:

Ok, let’s check now the last portion of dialogue in the scene:

We can get those action lines a little tighter for sure. The second sentence could easily be conveyed through a much shorter parenthetical:

And Emma’s reply:

For good measure, let’s double check as well the final action lines of the scene:

Most of it is unnecessary fluff. I will likely trim it to a short punchy line like:

“Tom let himself fall on his chair, defeated.”

But let’s see what Saga proposes, with some direction on our part:

This is what Saga wrote:

Not what we’re looking for.

Also notice the use of narrative rather than visual language.

I’ll edit it myself:

And with that, we have a pretty strong first scene!

Let’s read together the final result:

I don’t know what you think, but I like this scene very much.

I think it flows really well, and provides a strong introduction for our main characters, Tom’s flaw, and the conflict between Tom and Emma that will be central to the story.

What do YOU think?

Do you find the workflow we explored together in this issue insightful?

Think that Saga did a great job on this scene?

Something you think could be done better?

On my part, I’m really satisfied with the results.

I particularly love the fact of knowing that Saga is there, waiting for me in the background, ready to jump in and help me out whenever I need help, WITHOUT taking the creativity out of my hands!

These are the kind of AI-powered tools we need more of.

Tools that understand the creative process.

Tools designed from the ground up to be a sensible collaborator, rather than a replacement.

This is what Flawlessly Human means.

The harmonic symbiosis between human and AI, where we put forward the human sensibility, and the emotional depth of the human experience that a machine will never be able to match…

And AI helps us every step of the way to get unstuck and polish our work, elevating it to new highs.

Supplementing –never replacing– our skills and creativity to bring our vision to life!

Thanks again Andrew and Russell for having walked that difficult line and brought us this incredible tool!

And talking about bringing your vision to life…

In the next issue in this AI-Assisted Screenwriting series we’ll use Saga’s powerful Storyboards feature to bring this scene to life!

For that, we’ll put in practice everything we learned in The Language of Visual Storytelling series, and use Saga’s incredibly easy-to-use Cinema Shot Generator in conjunction with one of the most powerful video models to date: Google’s VEO 3.

Don’t miss it! It will be a ton of fun!

See you then,

Leonardo

P. S. I strongly recommend you generate a few more scenes following the workflow I demonstrated here.

Once you get the hang of it, you’ll see how you could write a full feature movie in days, rather than months.

That’s the real superpower that Saga puts in your hands!