The emergence of ChatGPT has prompted a swell of AI-powered tools to help authors do anything from brainstorming to drafting and revising, as well as marketing. These tools have been evolving with great speed and with a stunning range of options to explore. This two-part series will review AI tools with potential to support authors in their work, starting with the creative writing process. (Editor’s note: Generative AI remains a controversial topic with many unanswered legal questions. Even so, writers are using these tools now and they will use them in the future. That you can be sure of.)
NovelAI and Sudowrite are both designed to support and accelerate the drafting process. They feature a word processing interface that allows a writer to draft and engage with AI tools to spur creativity and fight writer’s block.
NovelAI features a robust sidebar of settings and input options to hone its output. As you work, the program can write the next few lines of a draft on command; it color codes the text so it’s easy to track what you wrote and what the AI contributed. The program’s Lorebook feature allows you to drop in any and all details about the story world and characters, and these are stored in the log for searchable quick reference. All lore also becomes part of the program’s long-term memory to inform the text it generates in the draft. In addition to the Lorebook, the sidebar includes a Memory text box, which the AI “better remembers” and seems to prioritize in its text generation. Additional sidebar options, such as Author’s Note, allow even more input that informs the output.
NovelAI offers a lot of flexibility in its commands. Its ability to take prompts like “write the next lines” and “increase the tension,” to “come up with a plot twist” is handy. While testing it, I was working to build a draft from a full set of zero-draft beats, so in reality these prompts often took my story off course, and I felt I did more backtracking than drafting. But for a true pantser discovering a new story as they go, this might keep the creativity rolling full speed.
NovelAI also has a visualization tool that authors can use to create images of their characters by selecting from a library of starting images and blending them together, informed by text descriptions. When drafting a long manuscript or series, this could be an intuitive way to ensure consistency in descriptions, though the current app sometimes veers into weirdly sensual territory.
Sudowrite similarly features a word processing interface with supplemental brainstorming tools. Choices include Brainstorm, Describe, Rewrite, Shrink Ray, Expand, and Twist. For tools that build upon your existing draft, simply highlight the text and click the appropriate button from the top menu. The AI will enhance descriptions, condense or expand the text accordingly, or provide a few lines of manuscript with a plot twist. Personally, I preferred Sudowrite’s straightforward menu of options over NovelAI’s open-ended commands.
But you don’t need a draft to use Sudowrite—you can start from scratch.The Brainstorm tool brings up an interface to generate ideas for character names, settings, plot points, and more. It then functions as a concept generator based on genre and other inputs as guidance. In my use, it offered up plenty of duds, but it was easy to click through endless options, delete the ones I didn’t like, and focus on the ones I did. It sparked my thinking to pin down some key details my draft needed.
If you want, Sudowrite’s Story Engine feature can start with your initial brain dump, then step you through a synopsis, characters, beats, chapter outlines, and—finally—text for a first draft, using each of these as the input to generate text. Sudowrite emphasizes collaboration to create the best story and even offers a Pause button to allow the author to revise drafts between beats as it generates chapters. I needed it frequently for course correction throughout my testing.
Though the intent and functions of these two programs have a lot in common, I found the interfaces to be dramatically different. NovelAI’s interface defaults to light text on dark background and an illustrated image backdrop that gave me MySpace vibes. Adjusting the settings to lighter presets helped, but I still couldn’t get quite comfortable. The prompts were handy but could detour the story quickly, and they often fell short in style and tone. My manuscript’s color-coding showed much more original content and revision from me—which is what the program intends. While I’m a pantser and fill out backstory as I go, I would expect that the more time an author invests in the lore and other input prompts, the better the output becomes, so NovelAI is best suited to authors who do a lot of worldbuilding and backstory before drafting.
By contrast, Sudowrite’s interface won me over. Its design was bright and airy, and it was more minimalist in its gadgets. This program offers its tools in a minimalist top bar rather than in a sidebar. I found the Sudowrite Story Engine an engaging way to build a concept into a fleshed out story. Much like NovelAI, it demanded a great deal of information and thought from the author and required a specific process to allow the AI to do its work, but its format better suited my pantsing brain. It accelerated my draft creation without losing sight of my story or style.
Pricing for both programs is based on a subscription model. NovelAI is priced from $10 to $25 a month for different levels of tokens and tools. Sudowrite ranges from $19 a month for 30,000 words to $129 a month for 300,000 words. For my pace, 30,000 words a month is plenty, but for an author who crushes a novel a month, this pay structure could get pricey quickly. Would it pay off in expedited turnaround to publication and revenue generation? It’s completely possible, depending on the author.
For authors looking primarily for some brainstorming assistance, ChatGPT may offer a decent free alternative. Given a prompt like “create a hero for a science fiction novel,” it delivers—not just with a name but also multiple paragraphs of backstory, physical description, contextual worldbuilding, and motivation. However, there is a benefit to paid services: Both NovelAI and Sudowrite keep users’ text private, whereas anything input to ChatGPT becomes additional text it may draw on for future queries from other writers.
Bottom line: AI programs can support and accelerate the writing process, but don’t expect a magic wand. After testing these tools, one thing feels certain: We’re nowhere close to AI taking over the telling of great stories. But if an author finds the tool that suits their process, that effort could very well pay meaningful dividends in productivity. Both NovelAI and Sudowrite are complex programs with a lot of bells and whistles, so it’s a time investment to gain mastery of it all and to provide the input these programs need to offer useful output.
Emily Wenstrom is a freelance writer and platforming expert and writes award-winning speculative fiction for teens and adults as E. J. Wenstrom.
E. J. Wenstrom believes in complicated heroes, horrifying monsters, purple hair dye and standing to the right on escalators so the left side can walk. She writes dark speculative fiction for adults and teens, including her new release, a young adult dystopian novel titled Departures (August 10, 2021). When she isn’t writing fiction, E. J. Wenstrom is a regular contributor to DIY MFA and BookRiot, and co-hosts the Fantasy+Girl Podcast. Learn more at her website.
