Hi – I’m Matthew Cooper and I’ve been a script writer for hire and UK script consultant for over 25 years.
As well as being a scriptwriter for very high and very low budget film and TV projects – I’m also a self-proclaimed early adopter of AI Generative Video, I’ve used AI generative video in low budget feature films and short films (and parody adverts – which has ended up with me being in talks to make ‘real adverts’ for real brands, who are keen to exploit the benefits of AI generative video).
But what about AI generated scripts? There’s a lot of talk of AI replacing real human writers – will it happen? Maybe – when will it happen? Not quite yet. Rather than actually sit on the side-lines and moan – I decided to actually try a few of these new fangled AI Scriptwriting tools – I looked at PLOTDOT and I actually tried to use SAGA – what were the results like? Pull up a seat and I’ll tell you the story….
This story is a real SAGA
SAGA by CyberFilm AI – can be accessed here – I got early use for free – and I decided to see if the tool could generate a full length feature film based on an idea I have on my list of projects – the idea had been in my head for a while but I’d yet had time to work up a first draft.
Sitting down with the software I found that SAGA had a pretty useful interface – which steered writers towards the classic ‘heroes journey’ story template – one of my favourite structural tools, which I personally use all the time.
I took about a day to work through the elements on SAGA – basic plot, characterisation, and beats, as detailed as you need them to be – the software gave you lots of room to be specific (or not) So, I tried to get as much info about the people in the script, the setting, the plot and even some very specific scene references that I wanted in the script.
Once I’d spent three hours or so filling in my specifications – I hit generate and went off to have a cup of tea and cigarette – James Caan style in Misery – but unlike James Caan in Misery – I didn’t need to work for months before treating myself to a cig – when I returned to my desk – SAGA had generated a 60 page feature film screenplay – written to my specific intentions. It all happened in the same time it took for me to have a smoke.
The resulting script – had a proper structure and scenes and my characters were there – but there were a few issues – it was short for a feature film (around 50 pages in Word) and it had problems in the third ACT (what first draft doesn’t?) it didn’t have a satisfying or rousing ending – but the biggest problem was the dialogue – which was generic and uninspiring – the character I had imagined (a kind of Snake Plissken) wasn’t as cool on the page as if I had written the script myself.
Now some of these problems were my fault – and could have been fixed by regenerating sections or adding in more beats and plot complications in the opening section of the process (the outline). I realised I could regenerate sections and even pull out entire new acts out of the software, but I didn’t spend too much time refining and instead pulled the whole 50 pages out of the SAGA software and put aside two days to rewrite it myself.
AI GENERATED SCREENPLAY EXAMPLE
This was probably a mistake – I should have and could have – worked with the software more to regenerate away problems or at least offer alternative attempts at scenes and whole acts – were I to use SAGA again – and I WILL – I would keep regenerating using the software to get more mileage and alternative scenes and strictures from my original idea – there’s nothing wrong from really getting as much material as you can from your basic outline – and where the problems were in the draft I pulled out – at least with more generation from the software I might have found quicker ways to fix them.
So – once I had the draft out of the software – the biggest problem was the dialogue and characterisation – the software was excellent and scene directions and writing action – but the talk was poor and the characters generic at best.
So, I only had two days free between scriptwriting work of my own (you can hire me to write scripts and work as a script consultant – contact me on matcoop23@yahoo.co.uk) I decided to take those two days and rewrite ALL THE DIALOUGE in the script.
At the end of two days, I was much more satisfied that the HUMAN ELEMENT (what the characters did and what they say) was more firmly in place. And with that – I posted the script to the Discord server for SAGA – that’s all the time I was afforded to work on the script for now – and anyone reading this can have a look at the script itself (as it is now) here.
AI SCRIPTWRTING SOFTWARE FEEDBACK
Now, normally I’d never ever let anyone see a first first draft – but in the early adopter phase of this tech – it might be useful for someone – let me know your feedback – via my email – matcoop23@yahoo.co.uk
What are my plans for this project? WELL – eventually (probably next year) I’m planning to produce a few FULLY AI GENERATIVE VIDEO feature films myself and release them directly to my YouTube channel and ESCAPE FROM THE METAVERSE – will be among those projects (after another 30 or so drafts).
So after going through this whole process– the owners of the software – asked for my feedback in the Discord community and I’ve added that feedback below.
FEEDBACK ON SAGA SOFTWARE.
I thought it worked well – what I should have personally done is regenerate sections – or add in more beats at the start before generating the first draft – I would do that again, knowing what I know now having used it. I’m a big fan of the basic heroes journey and this worked really well with that template – I think writers needs to have some understanding of that format first – reading The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler or the original The Hero with A Thousand Faces (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell) should help – for anyone reading wanting to get into that and what it means – is basically (as an example) Star Wars and The Matrix are the exact same plot – swap Neo for Luke and Morpheus for Obi Wan (who both die at the same point in both stories) and you get a template for an adventure story – that has worked since the dawn of storytelling – Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – like Star Wars and the Matrix (and hundreds of other movies) are all beat for beat the almost the exact same story – once you get that – and this SAGA tool definitely understands it too – then you’re half way there structurally – and these types of films are about 80 percent structure, so SAGA defo steers towards this structure and its tremendously useful in that regard – so if I wanted to write that type of plot (and I do most of the time) then SAGA is a first choice tool to get the structure down using the template – once you kind of know the structure will work and the beats are there you can then start to refine.
What I would refine (and concentrate most of my efforts on once the structure is in place) is the dialogue and the characters – the dialogue the tool produced for the most part was very generic and lacking in character or flair – this might be fine for some of these types of basic heroes journey type film scripts – but it is the difference maker for me – so while 80 percent of the work is done using the tool to help with structure – the difference a human writer can make is in the characterisation and the dialogue is huge, and I’d expect that to continue being something that a human writer does for a long time – there are plenty of direct to video (to use an old term) action films with very generic plots, characters and dialogue – but the ones that stand out – Shane Black scripts for instance stand out because of how well the charactisations are done or how well the dialogue is written – Bourne Identity is basic action movie plot, but it works so well because the writer of that film puts us inside the head of Jason Bourne and makes us feel what he feels – Die Hard is a basic action movie plot – but its a classic because of the charactisation of John McLane – without that we’ve got Under Siege 2 – so the human input element is pretty vital IMHO.
All that being said, I worked for a few years writing UK soap operas – Emmerdale for an example, which has five episodes a week in the UK (30 mins per ep) – and the same set of stock characters (usually around 30 characters) I think a tool like this – if trained in detail on how each character talks and acts (and there are over 6000 episodes of Emmerdale to train the AI with) then in future – it could go along way towards writing a well structured episodes of a TV soap – with pretty decent character specific dialogue (after being trained on the character quirks of the regular characters and their speech patterns). In the UK Emmerdale has about 30 writers working constantly – another soap I worked on for the BBC had 75 writers working full time (Eastenders – also four or five 30min eps a week) I think its possible a tool like this could work up full scripts with decent character specific dialogue in the future – its all about training the tool I suppose – but I think you’d still need human writers to tweak dialogue and character specific stuff – but maybe not 30 writers on 100k per year or 75 writers on 50 k per year – so the cost savings of building a Tv soap or a serial continuing drama and the writers teams could be huge – and of course this goes across all kinds of TV and content – could SAGA write an ep of The Wire or Mad Men or The Sopranos? or even The Simpsons? I think currently with what you have you could use the tool to structure the episode and generate a first draft – but you’d need the genuis writers of those shows to add in the dialogue and character stuff – but if the tool was specifically trained to write Bart Simpson dialogue or Paulie Walnuts style comments – then maybe (when that arrives) When that time arrives a tool like SAGA could reduce writing teams down from 75 or 30 writers down to a very small handful – and before anyone starts to worry about that I think it would actually put more power into the hands of the show runners on shows like The Sopranos – so David Chase could generate all the firsts drafts and then refine them more himself or with a core team of much fewer writers – as an example – rather than manage lots of of lots of writers – it would mean he’d have more hands on time on each script himself. – In the Future if The Simpsons was created, could SAGA be on board from the start and train itself based on the same info a normal writing team would have? Then could it generate scripts in perpetuality – and could this directly feed into a tool like VEO – which would produce the eps based on the scripts? Shows struggle to make 5 x 30 eps a week – but would this be a problem for an AI tool and AI video generator? I think not, and that’s something to think about – but still somewhere – you’d need the human element – a David Chase in there checking the back end and refining
- That’s my feedback.
Hope someone finds this useful.
Hi – I’m Matthew Cooper and I’ve been a script writer for hire and UK script consultant for over 25 years.
I’ve written for most of the UK soaps, including writing award-winning episodes of Emmerdale, EastEnders, Hollyoaks and Family Affairs and I’ve been BAFTA shortlisted and Royal Television Society nominated as a script writer.
I’ve done high profile rewrites on released and studio backed feature films and TV (often uncredited) in my time, I’ve also sold original screenplays to Miramax and Universal Pictures. Here’s a link to some of my credits on the IMdB
I’ve worked on feature films, TV series, web series and as a director I’ve made four micro budget features films, including ‘At The Mountains Of Madness’ which hit the screens in 2021 and ‘H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth’ which was released in 2024 and is free to view on his YouTube here: https://youtu.be/AEfaYEsx7pM
And I also wrote and directed the hit comedy feature film SOBER starring Dean Smith (Last Tango in Halifax / Still Open All Hours) and Tom Gibbons (Funny Cow / The Archers) which made a big splash when it released in 2025 – you can view the comedy film here for free – https://youtu.be/Dx3yq03z6Mc
Matthew is also a hugely busy early adopter of AI VIDEO and you can hire him as an AI VIDEO DIRECTOR FOR HIRE – and check out his AI VIDEO PRODUCTION COMPANY.
WATCH MAT’s FILMS SOBER – free to view below: