The Stormhaven Writers Guild 1: Exploring Worldbuilding, Storytelling, and Generative AI
🧭 Overview
This is a 5-hour interactive workshop (including a 1-hour lunch break) blending creative writing, ethical discussion, and hands-on exploration of generative AI tools. Participants will collaboratively imagine stories set in Stormhaven – a shared fantasy world – while critically engaging with tools like ChatGPT and Claude.
They’ll reflect on the ethics of AI-assisted creativity, build short narratives, interact with AI-generated characters, and explore how AI can serve as a tool for creativity, not as a replacement of it.
🎯 Learning Outcomes
Participants will:
- Understand what generative AI is, how it works, and its societal implications
- Explore storytelling fundamentals through writing exercises and group prompts
- Learn to use ChatGPT and Claude to support (not replace) their writing
- Develop confidence in collaborating with others and with AI creatively
- Gain entry into the Stormhaven Writers Guild: an ongoing platform for creative exploration
🗓️ Workshop Breakdown
Part 1: Foundations of AI and Storytelling
- Group discussion: What is AI and what are we already doing with it?
- Ethics: AI’s potential to elevate or diminish creativity
- The group simulates how an LLM works by constructing a story through ‘collaborative chain storytelling.’
- Write your own short story: “My Arrival in Stormhaven”
- Sharing stories in pairs and/or the whole group
Part 2: The Khalid Johnstone Simulation – A Writer’s Interaction with ChatGPT
- Introduction to ChatGPT (free vs paid)
- How to use AI to extend your writing process – ChatGPT can analyse your story and style and make helpful suggestions.
- Group-based interaction with a fictional lecturer based at Stormhaven University (The Khalid Johnstone Simulation). The workshop leader will capture and save output generated in this simulation.
- Collaborative storytelling with peers
Part 3: The Guided Tour Simulation – A Writer’s interaction with Claude
- Introduction to Claude AI and prompt design
- In pairs or threes, participants interact with a fictional city guide to explore Stormhaven (The City Guides simulation) The small groups will capture and save output generated in this simulation.
- Reflection: What did you learn about the world – and Claude?
Part 4: Sharing & Expansion
- Sharing experiences of the simulation
- Invitation to join the Stormhaven Writers Guild
- Discussion of future worlds and storytelling beyond Stormhaven