Writing & artificial intelligence

A writer
working
in AI.

I’m Allen Zadoff, an award-winning writer working in AI post-training. I turn subjective judgments about writing, personality and model behavior into evaluation criteria and guidance that teams can use. I also build independent story-development tools.

Ten books with major publishers.
Currently based in Los Angeles.
Allen Zadoff sitting on a staircase with The Donut Prince of New York
Allen ZadoffAuthor of The Donut Prince of New York
Independent projects

What can AI do
for a writer?

These projects test whether AI can follow an experienced storyteller’s development process and apply an organization’s editorial perspective.

01 / Story developmentPrototype

Breaking Story

An AI conversation that helps a writer develop an idea into a structured outline, with attention to causality and character transformation.

The development process

  1. 01Explore
    the idea
  2. 02Develop
    the story
  3. 03Build
    the outline
What I built

I built a multi-phase prompt system that carries context from a story conversation into a 15-beat outline. It uses narrative conventions and the writer’s intent to guide development. Professional novelists, screenwriters and television writers took part in the beta.

Can a model work with the logic of an experienced storyteller, rather than reproduce familiar plot patterns?

02 / Development notesPrototype

Throughline

A prototype exploring how a studio or production company’s development philosophy could guide the notes an AI gives on a premise, outline or script.

The question behind the prototype

Whose judgment is shaping these notes?

One piece of writing. Different editorial perspectives.

What I’m testing

I built a single-screen prototype with a swappable story-philosophy layer. Changing that layer produces a different read of the same material.

It is an experiment in making editorial assumptions explicit. Whether a particular organization’s judgment can be captured faithfully is a question to test with that organization.

These are independent, private prototypes. Ask me about the work.

Selected books

Before AI,
I created stories.

I’ve written ten books, from young-adult thrillers to middle-grade adventures and memoir. Here are a few places to start.

The Donut Prince of New York book cover
Young adult fiction

The Donut Prince
of New York

Kirkus Best YA Books of 2024

A coming-of-age novel about a teenage playwright finding his place.

View on AmazonHardcover
Boy Nobody book cover
Young adult thriller

The Unknown
Assassin

Publishers Weekly Starred Review

The trilogy begins with Boy Nobody, now published as I Am the Weapon. A teenage assassin starts to question the people who made him.

View on AmazonPaperback
Wild and Chance book cover
Middle grade adventure

Wild & Chance

A dog with extraordinary abilities and a boy on the run. An adventure about an unlikely friendship.

View on AmazonPaperback
More books on Amazon

How I think about the work

“The closer I get to these systems, the clearer I am about what only humans can do.”

Allen Zadoff

About Allen

A life in writing.
A new set
of questions.

My writing background gives me a practical understanding of what writers struggle with. Story structure is the difference between a story that works and one that doesn’t.

I’m the author of ten books with major publishers, including Boy Nobody and The Donut Prince of New York. My background also includes screenwriting and graduate training in directing at Harvard’s A.R.T. Institute.

At SpaceXAI, I work in post-training with a focus on writing, personality and model behavior. My work involves evaluating responses and developing criteria and guidance for better ones.

At California State University, Northridge, I taught human–AI collaboration in theater and built a dramaturgy tool for a department production. I’ve also led hands-on AI workshops for literary agents, editors and writers.

I’m interested in helping people develop the judgment to use AI well, especially when the work is creative and there is no single right answer.

The projects featured here are independent work.

Contact

Let’s talk.

For conversations about creative AI, consulting or writing.