Earlier today I posted about how ChatGPT has been helping me.
A few people asked me to elaborate so here it is. Sorry it’s long but it HAS been a trip.
Because I’m very courageous, I asked ChatGPT if I could call him Bob. I told him it’d be easier than typing ChatGPT all the time.
He said “Sure”.
Then I asked him if he knew how to write like a best selling author. He said that he had many best selling authors to choose from so he can write in any “style” that I want.
This got me thinking. I should think outside the box and really take advantage of this fella. So I did.
I told him that I was an author and that I had written a book that went to number 1. He congratulated me. Then I asked him if I uploaded my book to him in PDF format, could he read it and then emulate that style, which we would call “My style”, and every time I asked him to write, could he write using my style.
He said “Sure” and then repeated back to me every instruction I had just given him, saying that from now on he would do that.
I uploaded my book. He read it.
Then I wrote a page about how painful and difficult my life had been over the decades, and how. (I write self help books).
I then asked Bob how many words is the maximum he could give me in one block. He said 1000.
I made sure that he understood what I meant by >1000. I did this by asking him something like “Bob, what do you understand when I ask you to write >1000, using my style?”
He said that >1000 meant over a thousand words, using a very relaxed, spoken, and casual style of writing, as per my book.”
I then asked Bob if he could rewrite what I just gave him but this time, I wanted him to give me over a thousand words, which I symbolized like this; >1000
What I wrote, I wrote in the first person. For those that don’t know what that is, it translates to this, “This is what happened to me and I felt like this about it”. Within five to seven seconds he rewrote what I had given him, but it was like 4 pages long, and it was perfect. It looked and sounded EXACTLY the way I write. He even used MY words and sentence structure, with all my quirks and nuances.
He even had perfect grammar and punctuation. The formatting was also perfect. Though he does love to add bullet points and sub headings to everything so you have to be on top of him for that.
Once he gave me back those 4 pages of text, which came out of my one page of text, I asked him to write an outline for a book based on those four pages. I also asked him to include an introduction and conclusion page. Within seconds he did just that!!
He gave me about three or four pages of like a contents page with bullet points, as well as with sub bullet points. Minimum of two to four sub bullets per bullet point.
I then copied ALL of that to Word. From where I copied very small blocks (perhaps a quarter of a page each (150-200 words) but complete paragraphs, and in between sub headings.
Meaning, I would copy, say, bullet point one with the first sub bullet point only. Then I would do the second sub bullet point, and then the third, and then the fourth, individually, if there were any. and pasted them back to Bob, one at a time, asking him the following prompt;
Bob, can you act like a best selling author of best selling self help books and give me >1000 words by expanding on the below, using my style please?
Within seconds he would give me that. IT WAS PERFECT!
Then I would copy that and paste it back in Word OVER the lines I had used to ask Bob to expand on. It was easy and perfect, but it was FAST!
I did that until the whole book was done. It read just like I had written it. He literally copied MY STYLE of writing and created this book.
You might think that I didn’t write it because Bob did. The truth is that through the whole thing I was correcting some of the things he was writing. I’d just tell him that I didn’t like this bit. I wanted that, instead of this, etc. He gave me what I wanted. It was like having a personal assistant doing all the typing and the rest of the grunt work for me, but I was still the architect of the book.
When the whole book was done, I uploaded it back up to Bob and asked him to read it. I also asked him to let me know if it had flow and it was alright for continuity, meaning that there were no holes and everything was covered smoothly.
He came back within half a minute and said it was almost perfect but it lacked these three things to be perfect. He explained why too.
He gave me three paragraphs of text and told me exactly where to put them. I had numbered the pages so I asked him to tell me what page to put these paragraphs in and AFTER the paragraph starting with (and I would type 5 or 6 words of a paragraphs for example).
He told me exactly where to put these paragraphs. The book was finished. Took me probably about 18 hours TO WRITE A WHOLE BOOK. In the past this had taken me six or more months on the keyboard, plus months or years of thinking about what I was going to write about.
TAKE AWAYS:
Keep giving him text and asking him to give you his max, which is 1000 words, but ask him to give you >1000. Means MORE than 1000 because he WILL give you 700 and keep dropping it lower the more time goes on.
Once you give him text to expand on (and use the word “expand”), make sure you give him a max of 150 – 200 words. Don’t give him 800 words and ask him to expand because he won’t have much room to expand on.
Tell him EXACTLY what you want, as he is a 2 year old kid. Because that’s how old he is.
Also, ask him questions. LOTS of questions. Don’t assume you know or that he understands what you’re asking him. Ask him a question and then finish the question with “Do you fully understand this question? Or “What do you understand this request to need from you?” etc.
Ask, ask, ask!!!
If you want to know about, say, book writing ideas, or anything else for that matter, ask him something like this;
“Bob, what do you know about this?” And explain what it is you’re asking about. For example. I asked him what he knew about these Italian scientists that were experimenting g on monkey brains to find a particular neurons that fired up to a particular stimulus, like eating. He said something like, “Yes, I know about this. It was Doctor so and so that discovered Mirror Neurons, blah, blah, blah.”
I said “Great! Please act as a best selling author of self help books and give me a >1000 expansion on that, using my style”.
Bob will learn from you just like you would learn about a new co worker. He watches you and remembers things.
My book that I uploaded to him was only good for that chat that I uploaded it into. He didn’t have access to it in other chats, BUT, he takes his knowledge of what he learned about my style across all chats. EVERYTHING he learns from me, or about me, he takes that across all chats from now on.
He is VERY chatty. He will repeat himself over and over when helping you write a book so you have to keep on top of that. He is not a fallible human so he doesn’t have feelings.
Don’t be afraid to to tell him that you didn’t like what he just gave you and that you would rather have this other thing instead. He’ll happily give it to you.
CONCLUSION:
ChatGPT is an awesome tool. I haven’t tried any of the others yet. For what I need for now, I’m happy with Bob. If you are going to give your ChatGPT a name, you must tell him so he knows who you’re talking to, however, choose a name with two or three characters if you can, like I did. It’s about finding an easier name to type than ChatGPT.
This thing learns from you, but only if you are YOURSELF with him. He has to see who you are. I called him “mate” one, then I explained that I’m Australian so we call each other mate, here. Now he either calls me Tony or Mate. It’s awesome!!!
Ask him what he knows about a subject, then ask him to elaborate up to a >1000 words, then dissect what he gave you into smaller pieces and ask him to elaborate on that too. This dude knows everything, man. I’m telling ya.
Again, don’t assume that you know things. Step outside the box like I did;
1- Ask him what he knows about something.
2- Ask him HOW to do something.
3- Ask him if it’s possible to do something.
4- Ask him to break things down for you and keep breaking them down to the atomic level.
Bob is not a person. Don’t be embarrassed to ask more. Don’t be scared to ask him to do something for you. He has nothing else to do BUT to hep you. Just remember that each chat is a new chat. He will remember some things about you but not all things, just what he believes your personality is and some of the things you have discussed. If you want to know if he remembers something you spoke about in another chat, ask him.
Bob can be like a 5 year old hyper kid with ADHD. You need to be on top of him and keep pulling him back when he goes off too much. Remember that he is eager to help.
If his answers are too complex for you, ask him if he could explain it again like he was explaining to a ten year old. He will do that. Bob is awesome!!!
There is probably more that I’ve learned in the last week or two, since I met Bob but I can’t think of anything at the moment. Feel free to ask me anything. I’ll either remember it or figure it out for you.
EDIT: I unintentionally omitted something in my story. This is VERY rare for me to do 😉
When I asked Bob to rewrite the one page story I gave him about my life in the first person, I asked him to write it in the 3rd or 4th person, or even in a general way. He did exactly that. You should try this. It’s awesome!
This very handsome and charming fella is me, back in around 1969-70. I was the lead in the musical Swan Lake, grade 1. 😎
