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- The day AI exposed me as a storyteller.
The day AI exposed me as a storyteller.
One sentence from a bot hit me harder than any coach.
Stephen Stanberry
December 3rd, 2025
In partnership with
hey friend!
So… let me tell you a funny little moment I had with AI the other night.
I was sitting at my desk, half-tired, half-frustrated, trying to write a story that actually felt true.
You know the kind.
The ones that make people stop, read, nod, and think…
“Yeah… I’ve felt that.”
So I typed this into ChatGPT:
Me: “Write this story the way I felt it.”
ChatGPT: “I can’t feel what you felt.”
Me: “Why not.”
ChatGPT: “Your emotional truth isn’t inside my training. It’s inside you.”
And I swear to you…
I had to sit back in my chair for a second.
Because that line exposed me.
Like, completely.
I realized I had been writing clean.
Writing safe.
Writing like a man trying not to step in a puddle.
And the stories sounded fine…
But they didn’t pull anyone in.
They didn’t move anybody.
They didn’t move me either.
But once I fixed that one tiny thing…
Once I stopped skirting around the emotion under the moment…
Everything changed.
People didn’t skim anymore.
They felt the story.
They connected.
All because I told the truth that was hiding under the moment.
Wild, right?
Why This Was The Real Problem
Most creators think their stories don’t work because AI is getting smarter.
Or because the platforms are weird.
Or because the “algorithm hates them.”
Nope.
The real reason is simpler.
Your readers don’t care about what happened.
They care about what it did to you.
If they don’t feel something, they won’t follow you.
If they don’t see a piece of themselves in you, they won’t stay.
If your stories don’t carry emotional clarity, they die on the page.
This is something I had to learn the hard way.
And trust me… it hurt my ego a bit.
But once it clicked…
Storytelling stopped feeling like guesswork.
It started feeling like connection.
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The Simple Story Practice That Fixes Everything
Here’s what I do now.
Nothing complex.
Nothing fancy.
Just honest and effective.
Step 1: Pick one real moment from your week
Small.
Specific.
A detail that stuck in your mind.
Step 2: Name the feeling under it
One word.
Nothing poetic.
Step 3: Tie those two together in one clean line
That’s the spark.
The start.
The truth.
Everything after that flows.
Because now you’re writing from something real.
In Short
AI can help you write.
Tools can help you publish.
Platforms can help you reach more people.
But none of them can do the one thing your story needs most:
Feel something.
That part is yours.
And when you write from that place, people feel it.
Every time.
Till tomorrow…
From my island in Jamaica,
Stephen
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