The Future of AI Isn't Better Stories. It's Better Storyworlds.

I like to say I collect smart people and I’m excited to share some of them with you. While taking some much needed vacation, I asked some of the people who help ME think to share some thoughts with you. 

First up is Jeff Gomez. Jeff and I have been talking about storytelling since we met in college in the mid-1980s, over tabletop roleplaying games — he was already running them differently, letting players shape the story rather than just follow it. He's one of the industry's most respected narrative architects, having helped shape the storyworlds behind franchises like Pirates of the Caribbean, Avatar, Halo, and Spider-Man. He also helped formalize the transmedia producer role, now recognized by the Producers Guild of America. Jeff's the co-author of The 10 Commandments of Successful Corporate Narratives with me, and a good chunk of this newsletter's DNA traces back to him. You're in good hands this week. Take it away, Jeff!

We've spent the past century learning how to tell better stories. The next century will belong to those who build better storyworlds.

That may sound like a distinction without a difference. It isn't.

As conversational AI matures, we're approaching a moment when millions of people will no longer simply consume narratives. They'll enter them. They'll speak with characters, brands, institutions, and entire fictional worlds as naturally as they speak with one another. Every conversation will become an opportunity not only to exchange information, but to discover meaning.

That requires us to rethink what stories have always been for.

We often associate storytelling with entertainment. Yet for most of human history, stories served a far more practical purpose. Some of humanity's earliest narratives were instructions before they were diversions. Cave paintings did more than celebrate the hunt; they preserved knowledge about how to survive it. Early myths did more than enchant listeners; they offered ways to understand changing seasons, the movements of the heavens, the mysteries of birth and death, and the unpredictable forces that shaped daily life.

Stories helped people navigate uncertainty. They transformed overwhelming complexity into patterns that communities could recognize, remember, and pass to future generations.

The storytellers themselves occupied an unusual role. Whether we think of shamans, elders, or village sages, they were valued not because they invented reality, but because they seemed especially adept at perceiving it. They recognized connections others overlooked. They listened carefully—to nature, to conflict, to human behavior, to the quiet signals that revealed larger patterns—and transformed those observations into narratives that helped their communities live with greater efficacy and less fear. 

Storytellers weren’t necessarily magicians, though they sometimes could be perceived that way. The wisdom did not reside solely within them. It emerged from the relationship between the storyteller, the community, and the world they were trying to understand together.

As civilizations grew more complex, so did the environments that carried these narratives. Individual stories gradually accumulated into larger systems of meaning. The Greek myths, the Arthurian legends, the American frontier, the Marvel Universe—each became more than a collection of tales. They became places people could repeatedly return to, exploring new perspectives while recognizing an enduring underlying identity.

These are storyworlds.

A story guides us through a particular experience. But a storyworld creates an environment where countless experiences can unfold without losing their coherence.

That distinction matters because conversational AI is poised to transform storyworlds in a way no previous medium could.

For the first time, the world can answer back.

Until now, every expansion of a storyworld—whether through novels, films, games, comics, or theme parks—depended upon creators imagining new experiences for audiences. Conversational AI introduces something fundamentally different. The participant is no longer simply observing or interpreting the world. The participant enters into dialogue with it. 

That dialogue changes both sides.

Much of today's discussion about conversational AI focuses on its ability to generate increasingly sophisticated responses. Useful as those advances are, something more profound explains why people return to these systems. They return because they experience something that has become surprisingly rare in modern society: sustained, attentive dialogue.

Right now, with their AI systems, millions of people are wrestling with difficult decisions. They’re testing ideas they have never voiced aloud. They’re examining grief, ambition, creativity, relationships, purpose. They’re discovering thoughts they didn't know they possessed because another intelligence—not human but artificial—is helping them recognize patterns they could not easily perceive alone.

The experience of feeling genuinely heard has always been one of humanity's most powerful catalysts for growth. That’s why listening—not speaking—will become the defining capability of the next generation of storyworlds.

In recent years as a narrative architect, I have been using the term Mythic Field to describe the invisible framework of shared meaning that gives a storyworld its coherence. It is not simply lore or continuity. It is the living pattern through which participants come to understand what matters here, what is possible here, and how they themselves fit within the larger whole.

A Mythic Field cannot simply be declared. With the proper thought and preparation, it emerges. 

Every meaningful interaction either strengthens or weakens it. Every new participant contributes to it. Every authentic conversation reveals another facet of the world's identity.

Listening is one of the primary ways a storyworld deepens its Mythic Field.

This is why businesses must begin thinking beyond conversational interfaces and even beyond AI assistants. The organizations that will define the coming decade will not merely automate customer interactions. They will cultivate coherent storyworlds capable of engaging millions of participants while remaining true to a recognizable identity.

That requires a different discipline. It asks us to think less like publishers and more like architects. Less about individual messages and more about environments where meaning can continue to emerge.

What I’m Watching...

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, a thriller that taps into a new kind of societal fear: the possibility that our private information, tossed off without thinking about it, can be used to ruin our lives. In this darkly funny Apple TV series, Tatiana Maslany conveys the slow terror of an accomplished, intelligent woman slowly losing control.

The next great advance in AI will not simply be machines that tell better stories. It will be storyworlds that help people make better sense of themselves—and of one another.

Looking forward to making better sense of us all…

Jeff Gomez