Podcast Summary: Coffee With Cole – "How To Practice Writing Fiction (And Leverage AI)"
Host: Nicolas Cole
Date: January 6, 2026
Main Theme & Purpose
In this episode, Nicolas Cole explores the art of deliberately practicing fiction writing, emphasizing skill isolation, the importance of "story seeds," and how to create leverage by combining manual practice with AI automation. Cole demonstrates how breaking down the writing process into targeted exercises not only accelerates mastery, but also creates rich, personalized data to supercharge AI-assisted writing workflows.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. Unbundling the Skill of Writing
- Bundled vs. Unbundled Skills: Cole argues that terms like "becoming a better writer" are too broad to be actionable. Success comes from mastering sub-skills, not the vague whole.
- "Oftentimes people say, 'Oh, I want to become a better writer.' That is a very difficult thing to do because... [these] are bundled term[s]." (01:00)
- Outcome: Mastery results from cumulative development of specialized writing abilities, each tackled individually.
2. Skill Isolation & Deliberate Practice
- Deliberate Practice Model: Citing the book Peak, Cole explains that improvement requires focused, repetitive practice on isolated sub-skills rather than on the whole.
- "Practice in and of itself is not what leads to skill acquisition and certainly not mastery. If that were true, then anyone doing anything over a prolonged period… would achieve mastery..." (08:52)
- Metaphors Drawn: He likens fiction writing improvement to chess (practicing openers, mid-game, end-game separately) and golf (practicing putting vs. just playing full rounds).
3. Fiction Writing Sub-Skills
- Examples of Sub-Skills to Practice:
- Writing story seeds (elevator pitch)
- Expanding seeds into outlines
- World-building
- Character development and archetypes
- Pacing, narrative voice, word choice, metaphors, tone, and language
- Insight:
- "It's not 'I want to get good at writing fiction.' It's that you get good at writing fiction when you are good at all of these different sub skills." (24:46)
4. The “Story Seed” Exercise
- Definition: A story seed is the essence of a story, distilled into an elevator pitch or a single sentence.
- Framework for a Story Seed:
- Character's desire
- Character's weakness
- Danger or obstacle
- Action they must take
- How they change as a result
- Template Example:
- "When [character] experiences [weakness], they run into [danger] and must [action] to [change]." (34:43)
- Example (Star Wars):
- "When a princess falls into mortal danger, a young man uses his skills as a fighter to save her and defeat the evil forces Galactic Empire." (42:12)
5. Pattern Recognition & Minimalist Approach
- Picasso’s Minimalist Bull Analogy: Strip down stories to their fundamental components to identify and strengthen the ‘skeleton’ before expanding further.
- "Everything in writing is always the expanded version of some smaller version of it." (36:22)
- Building Pattern Recognition: Use beloved stories to internalize the template.
6. Systems & Frameworks for Practice
- Frameworks Minimize Cognitive Load:
- If you have a routine/template, you free up mental bandwidth to focus on the sub-skill itself.
- Reps & Feedback Loops:
- Practicing with concise exercises (like 1-sentence seeds) allows more reps and faster feedback than writing full drafts.
- "If every time I sat down I [have the exercise], now I just have to rep out story seeds." (46:15)
7. Manual Practice as the Foundation for AI Automation
- Your Frameworks Become AI Prompts:
- "The bottleneck to using AI is not your knowledge of AI... The bottleneck is your ability to articulate the thing that you're trying to automate." (55:27)
- Your Reps as Training Data:
- The story seeds and patterns you create yourself become direct training data for AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini.
- Process:
- Create exercise/framework.
- Practice manually.
- Convert framework into AI prompt.
- Feed AI your manual reps as examples.
- Use AI to brainstorm or generate seeds, outlines, etc. with your personalized style.
- Massive Leverage:
- "That means 100 hours of practice... and you have then prompts that you can use for all [the sub-skills] at any time in the future. That is insane leverage." (01:10:13)
8. Live Demo: Using AI with the Framework
- Story Seed Example with AI:
- Input: “Techno crime story about a girl assassin robbing a bank to save her mother.”
- AI Output (using the custom framework):
“When Kira, a lethal assassin who has long believed she exists only to destroy, discovers her estranged mother is dying from a disease only the ultra wealthy can cure, she must pull off an impossible heist against the very mega corporation that made her... and learn whether she's capable of saving a life instead of just taking them.” (01:15:00)
9. Compounding Returns from Skill Practice + AI
- Manual work crystallizes learning, creates newsletter/product content, and supplies ongoing AI leverage.
- Summary of Approach:
- Practice > Document > Productize > Leverage with AI > Compound returns.
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
- On the necessity of isolating sub-skills:
“You don't just think, 'How do I make all my characters great?' It's actually, 'What are the different archetypes of characters? And then how could I create frameworks for each individual archetype of character…'" (22:00) - On analogy to sports/music:
"People do this with shooting free throws. People do this with shooting threes... None of this should seem novel. What I think is novel is… I went to school and got a degree in fiction writing, and nobody explained this to me." (29:04) - On minimalism in writing:
“Everything in writing is always the expanded version of some smaller version of it.” (36:22) - On the real blocker to leveraging AI:
“The bottleneck to using AI is not your knowledge of AI. The bottleneck is your ability to articulate the thing that you're trying to automate.” (55:27) - On the compounding effect of this approach:
“8 to 10 hours that now translate into a prompt and training data that I can leverage forever for this one individual sub skill.” (01:17:41) - On creative leverage today versus the past:
"We can't even wrap our heads around how much more we can do as creatives today with that in mind than we could 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 50 years ago or 100 years ago." (01:20:10)
Segment Timestamps
- 00:00 – Introduction to Commercial Fiction Club, and today's topic: “how to practice”
- 03:10 – The problem with "becoming a better writer" as an umbrella term
- 07:20 – The concept of deliberate practice (Peak)
- 12:50 – Chess and golf as metaphors for skill isolation in writing
- 24:46 – Examples of fiction writing sub-skills
- 34:43 – The 5-piece story seed framework and template
- 36:22 – Picasso’s minimalist bull analogy
- 42:12 – Star Wars example, one-sentence story seed
- 46:15 – Repetition and pattern recognition in practice routines
- 55:27 – How manual practice is foundational for leveraging AI
- 01:10:13 – Estimating total leverage: 100 hours of targeted sub-skill practice
- 01:15:00 – Demo: Using AI with the story seed framework and getting outputs
- 01:17:41 – The benefits of compounding practice, documentation, and leveraging AI
- 01:20:10 – The creative leverage available in the modern era
Takeaways for Listeners
- Isolate and intentionally practice specific sub-skills to improve as a writer.
- Develop practical exercises and templates for each skill; use minimalism to distill the essentials.
- Manual mastery and documentation not only accelerate learning and output but can also create products and personalized AI workflows.
- The highest leverage comes from combining deliberate practice with structured AI prompting—turning every writing rep into reusable training data.
Cole’s energetic, ever-curious tone shines through with practical wisdom and approachable metaphors, making “How To Practice Writing Fiction (And Leverage AI)” a masterclass for writers hoping to improve intentionally—and faster—in the digital age.