Full transcript
0:00In this video, we're going to be walking
0:01through everything you need to know to
0:03get started on Sudowrite, which is one
0:05of the largest and most widely used AI
0:08writing tools, particularly for writers
0:10of fiction. It's really specialized in
0:12that. So, I've got a bunch of different
0:14things that you can use to get started,
0:16so let's dive in. Now, the first thing
0:17you need to understand when it comes to
0:19Sudowrite is the pricing structure
0:21because it's different than a lot of the
0:23other tools that I talk about on this
0:24channel. Although not necessarily unique
0:27in the AI world. And that is um this
0:30pricing right here. So,
0:32uh first of all, you have three tiers.
0:34If you go monthly, they'll cost you $19
0:37a month, $29 a month, or $59 a month.
0:40You do get a discount if you do the
0:42yearly,
0:43uh which gives you $22 for the middle
0:45plan and the $44 for the max plan.
0:50Uh first of all, right off the bat, I
0:52will say do not worry about the hobby
0:54and student plan. There's it's just not
0:57worth your your money.
0:59Um it's a little bit better on the
1:01yearly because it's like 50% off there.
1:05Uh so, this will cost you $120 for the
1:07full year,
1:09uh as opposed to $19 a month, which is
1:11almost double.
1:12Uh so, that's something, but the fact
1:14that you get so many more of these
1:16credits
1:18uh every month on the $22 or the $44
1:21plan, or I guess if we're on monthly on
1:22the $29 or the $59 plan,
1:26makes these a lot more attractive to me.
1:30Now, most of you will probably take this
1:32middle tier. It's it's the the main one.
1:34It's it's the one that'll probably be
1:36the most affordable and still giving you
1:38the best bang for your buck. But, the
1:41there is the max plan. It is it gives
1:43you double the amount of credits for
1:44double the price, so nothing really new
1:47there. But, it does have this feature
1:49where any credits you don't use in a
1:51month will roll over. That's one of the
1:53nice things about this one is that you
1:54don't have to worry about using up your
1:56credits every month. Like, just say you
1:59you write a book one month and then you
2:00don't write a book the next month, then
2:03um you know, sorry, those credits are
2:06lost if you're on the professional plan,
2:08but on the max plan, those credits will
2:10roll over and then you can use them
2:11again later. Um up to 12 months though.
2:14So, it won't roll over forever.
2:17Uh so, this is if you want if you do a
2:19lot of writing with AI, you want to
2:21write multiple books, potentially like a
2:23book or two a month, this is the plan
2:25you'd want to be on.
2:27Or if you just don't want to have to
2:29worry about those rollover credits and
2:30just always have enough credits for what
2:32you need. I should also mention that
2:34credits can be purchased uh in packages
2:38by themselves. So, if you run out of
2:39credits, you can buy more.
2:42Um so, let's talk about the credit
2:44system because a lot of people
2:45absolutely hate credit systems. I'm not
2:48a big fan of them either, but I
2:49understand why they are often used in AI
2:52tools because
2:53let's face it, AI costs a lot of money
2:56uh to to produce in computing power and
3:00everything like that. And so, it's not
3:02something where you can just kind of
3:04give somebody a subscription and uh
3:07expect them to
3:09uh keep under a certain budget, right?
3:12Um and so, that's why you have credits,
3:14so you don't end up costing the company
3:17more than
3:19uh than they can handle.
3:21And so, that's why we have that. Um the
3:24main difference between Sudowrite and
3:26other tools that I talk about on this
3:28channel like Raptor Writer Novelcrafter
3:30is that with Novelcrafter and
3:32Novelcrafter, the words that you pay
3:34money for are done pay-as-you-go.
3:38And so,
3:40uh what that means is you will only pay
3:42for the AI words as you're paying for
3:45them, or as you're using them.
3:48Um whereas with Sudowrite, you get the
3:50credits and assuming you're on the
3:52professional plan here in the center,
3:55if you don't use those credits, you will
3:57lose them.
3:59Um which is something I I'm not a huge
4:01fan of. I've even talked to the
4:03developers of Sudowrite about this issue
4:06and tried to give them a few
4:07alternatives because um I think this is
4:09the main thing holding them back as a
4:11company. It's my biggest criticism.
4:15But, it it is what it is. Uh they do
4:17have a lot of other things that kind of
4:19redeem them in my eyes, but this is
4:21definitely something that a lot of
4:22people don't like. Um but at the very
4:24least, you can give it a try, you know,
4:26do $30 for a month and uh see how long
4:29it takes you to get through the credits.
4:31And that's the other thing about credits
4:32is that
4:33uh you don't know how much that's going
4:35to translate to in terms of tokens cuz
4:37if you're using a really, really cheap
4:38model,
4:40uh like um I don't know, like uh GPT 2.5
4:43flash or something. I don't actually
4:45know if that's in Sudowrite, but let's
4:46just say it is.
4:47That will not cost you a lot of credits
4:50because it's a very cheap model. But, if
4:51you're using uh
4:53Claude Opus, which is a much more
4:55expensive model, you will burn right
4:57through those credits
4:58in no time.
5:00So, that's another thing that's just
5:01kind of like I can't even really tell
5:03you how much you're going to be able to
5:05write
5:06with the credits that they give you. Uh
5:08you really only can figure it out by
5:10trying it out yourself and pushing it
5:12through its limits and seeing how long
5:14it takes you to get through those those
5:15credits. So, um you can start I would
5:19probably start at least with a
5:20professional, give it a try, and go from
5:22there. Now, from here,
5:24there's a couple of things you can do.
5:26Um you'll have your projects here if you
5:28have projects, but if not, you can come
5:29here to new
5:31and select a project. You can also
5:33create a folder if you want to organize
5:35your projects better. You can also
5:36create a series, which is essentially
5:38the exact same thing as a folder, but
5:39it's labeled, so it has a series.
5:42Uh but we'll go ahead and select a
5:44project for now.
5:46I will also say that
5:49uh if we go So, here's the project, but
5:51if we go back,
5:53if we if you say import novel, so let's
5:55say you have a novel that's already
5:57halfway there and you want to get AI's
6:00help to finish it, you can import what
6:02you've got of your novel, uh stick it in
6:05here,
6:06and uh as they say here, we'll split it
6:09into chapters and create a detailed
6:10story Bible for you. Uh and this feature
6:13is free while in beta, so it won't cost
6:14you any credits, which is a handy little
6:16thing. Uh but this is a nice way of
6:19actually bringing in a lot of your story
6:22Bible information and things like that
6:24for a partially finished project, or
6:27even like for a series. Like, let's say
6:29you have the first book already and you
6:30want to write the second book, it can be
6:32useful to import the novel and get all
6:34of that ready, uh
6:36uh the story Bible and everything in
6:37there.
6:38So, that's one option here. You notice
6:40it also has this button that says train
6:42Sudowrite to sound more like me. We'll
6:44talk about this, but you can also do
6:45that when you're importing your novel,
6:47uh
6:48turn this on to uh make it
6:51uh sound a little bit more like you.
6:53Anyway, so let's go back into our
6:55project. When you open up your first
6:57project, it'll look something like this.
7:00And the first thing we want to really
7:01understand is how do you even write with
7:03AI inside of Sudowrite? What are the
7:06models
7:07and things? And
7:10you know, I'm not going to do a full
7:12tour of Sudowrite, but this is an
7:13important one. So, there are a couple of
7:15different ways to write inside of
7:17Sudowrite. Uh the first one is to come
7:20over here and you can see this button
7:21that just says write.
7:23So, you can just place your cursor here
7:24and hit write,
7:26and over here on the side, it'll start
7:28writing. Now, of course, I have done
7:30absolutely no
7:32preparation at all, so it doesn't even
7:34have any context about what kind of a
7:37story I want. So, we're just going to
7:39ignore that.
7:41But, up here, uh you have different
7:43things. So, just now it was set to auto.
7:46You can also set it to guided write,
7:49which is a way where you kind of tell it
7:50what to write next. You can also tell it
7:53to tone shift, so you can select
7:54something and uh change the style from
7:56there. And then right here is the write
7:58settings. So, this is where you select
8:01what your models are, uh at least in in
8:04this version of writing. And right now I
8:06have it set to Muse. This is one of the
8:08great things about Sudowrite. It's one
8:10of the most redeeming features about
8:12Sudowrite in my opinion is the fact that
8:13they have their own proprietary model.
8:16One that is actually pretty good,
8:19uh genuinely speaking.
8:21Uh so, I almost always if I'm in
8:24Sudowrite, I'm almost always using Muse.
8:26That's the main reason I come into
8:27Sudowrite and use it.
8:29Um so, I would just use Muse, but there
8:31are other models here available to you
8:33if you want. Um so, for instance, we've
8:36got Claude 3.7 Sonnet here. We've got
8:39GPT-4o Mini. I think this is a little
8:41bit outdated, uh but then they have all
8:43of these right here. So, if you just
8:45select advanced, you can write with any
8:48one of these that they have here. Now,
8:50they do not have everything.
8:52Unlike Novelcrafter and Raptor Writer
8:54where if you're connected to OpenRouter,
8:56you can use literally any model that
8:57OpenRouter has access to, you really
8:59only have access to the heavy hitters
9:01here, which for most people will be
9:04fine.
9:05Um like we've got my favorites here,
9:07Claude 4.5 Sonnet, Claude 4.1 Opus, um
9:11you've got your GPT-5s in there.
9:14Uh thankfully, they still have the
9:15GPT-4o in here because I think that one
9:18actually writes better than than some of
9:20the others. They've got DeepSeek,
9:21Mistral, Mythomax, Gemini 2.5 Pro.
9:25And again, if you're using a model like,
9:27say, GPT-5 Nano, that's a very, very
9:30cheap model, and so it won't use a ton
9:32of credits.
9:33Uh but if you're using one like Opus, if
9:35we select that, you'll see like, oh,
9:37this is using a massive amount of
9:39credits here. But, the prose quality
9:41really is really good and the
9:42instruction following is really good. Uh
9:44it's not great for unfiltered writing.
9:47So, this is why I always like to go with
9:49just Muse cuz if you look at it, the
9:50prose quality is excellent, the
9:52instruction following is pretty good.
9:54Unfiltered, it can do any not safe for
9:56work
9:57that you want and as far as credits used
9:59it's sort of in the middle maybe a
10:01little pricey.
10:03Um so that's what I use here. Now there
10:05are other ways to write inside of
10:07Sudowrite as well. This is just the way
10:09I like to do it often times I like to
10:10come here to guided and then write what
10:13should happen next. I find the Muse
10:14model works best in that context where
10:17I'm writing just one piece at a time.
10:19That may have changed actually since I
10:21started doing this so we'll test it out
10:23in the future in future videos for sure.
10:25But um the other way to write here is to
10:28come up to this button here. So if
10:30you're in your project you have chapters
10:33here you can select new chapters new
10:34folders to put the chapters
10:37and up here you'll see this button
10:39called draft. You click on that
10:42it will have scenes. So you can put in
10:44your entire outline for the chapter in
10:47this
10:48uh scenes section.
10:50Um you can say generate scenes to give
10:53you uh ones that are based on the
10:55outline that you have already assuming
10:57you have an outline already
10:59uh which I'll get into in a little bit.
11:01Um but you can basically plot out what
11:04the chapter is going to look like for
11:05the whole chapter for or for the whole
11:07scene I should say.
11:09You select what prose style you want um
11:12so is it third person limited POV is it
11:15past tense present tense future tense
11:18um first person POV omniscient all all
11:21of that stuff. Select what you want and
11:24then you would hit generate.
11:26And if you click this little arrow right
11:28here next to the generate button
11:31you get the exact same thing that we
11:33were looking at earlier. So we have Muse
11:35here if you want to use that.
11:37We also have the advanced
11:39uh section here where you can access any
11:42of these other models
11:44if you want. But once again I pretty
11:46much always recommend Muse if you are
11:48inside of Sudowrite
11:50uh because Muse is not available outside
11:52of Sudowrite so it's really best used
11:54here.
11:55And then you can hit generate and it
11:56will actually generate the whole chapter
11:58for you. Now when I was working with
12:00Muse earlier and admittedly this has
12:02been a little while I found that doing
12:04this method was not as reliable and it
12:06didn't follow my instructions as well.
12:09Uh so that's why I like to go one chunk
12:11at a time using the guided write feature
12:13where where I thought the prose was
12:15equally as excellent
12:17uh but
12:19uh but I could kind of keep a little bit
12:21better handle on what was actually
12:22happening in the scene if that makes
12:24sense.
12:25So that's how you write. I know I'm just
12:27throwing a ton of stuff at you so don't
12:29worry. I'm just wanting you one of you
12:31to understand how you can write
12:33something
12:34and how to pick the models that you use.
12:37And remember that every model uses
12:38credits differently so keep that in
12:40mind. So before you get to the writing
12:42process however we want to set up your
12:45story Bible. This is found down here at
12:48the bottom
12:49uh the bottom left corner you'll see
12:50this little pop up that says story
12:52Bible. If you click on that it'll scroll
12:53down to where the story Bible is. This
12:56is the stuff you want to spend some time
12:58on before you actually start writing the
13:00book.
13:01And uh there are a couple of cool things
13:03here. Namely first of all you want to
13:05put your brain dump. This is one area
13:07where you uh you don't really
13:10like it doesn't do the work for you. You
13:12have to put the the stuff in here that
13:15you need to
13:16have in your story. So basically
13:18everything you can think of about your
13:19story as you envision it put everything
13:22you can think of all your characters all
13:23your situations all of your plots all of
13:26your settings. Everything should go in
13:28here as much as you can.
13:30However you do have to keep it under
13:322,000 words.
13:34Uh there is a limit. Uh that's another
13:35thing I don't care for here because if
13:37I'm using my own automations like I can
13:40have stuff up to 10,000 words or more
13:43in my prompts um and sometimes I do.
13:47But here you do have to kind of keep it
13:48to 2,000 words. Then you fill out in
13:50what's the genre of the book that you
13:53are writing and you can fill that in.
13:55Then there's the style.
13:57Um there's a couple of different things
13:59you can do here to do styles. First of
14:02all you can select one of their featured
14:04styles which is great.
14:06Um they have a bunch of them here
14:09depending on what you're going for.
14:11Um you can use match my style where you
14:13paste in 2,000 words of your own writing
14:16and it will kind of create a style
14:18prompt based on that writing on what
14:20that should look like.
14:22Uh you can also fill this in yourself
14:25based on all of these things. So what's
14:26the POV tone and mood narrative voice
14:29etc. dialogue
14:31um or you can just custom
14:34you know just put whatever you want in
14:35here and you get up to 40 words which is
14:38definitely not enough.
14:40Um so I would probably go with the match
14:42my style situation.
14:44Uh then you can put in the synopsis. Now
14:47if you have a synopsis you can put that
14:49in here. But
14:51since you've already added stuff of your
14:53brain dump you can actually generate
14:55synopsis right here inside of Sudowrite
14:57which is a fantastic option if you want.
15:00Uh
15:01definitely make sure to validate the
15:03synopsis after it's been generated
15:04because it'll give you stuff that maybe
15:06you don't intend to put there.
15:09Um but uh it'll still give you something
15:12and this has to be under 800 words.
15:15And then we get to the real meat of the
15:19story Bible which is characters world
15:22building and outline.
15:24Um
15:25you can start with any of these three.
15:26There's no like particular order in
15:28which to do this. Sometimes I like to
15:30start with the outline first and so and
15:32the characters and the world building
15:33kind of come to me as I'm doing that
15:35outline. Sometimes I have certain things
15:37already built into my world building and
15:39characters and I want to get those down
15:41first and then work on the outline. It
15:43doesn't necessarily matter what order
15:45you do this.
15:46Um but you can add these your own
15:48yourself manually just typing it all in
15:51or you can let the AI generate these
15:54elements for you.
15:56I think if you've got enough information
15:57in your brain dump it can be useful to
15:59start by generating the characters and
16:01generating the elements uh the world
16:03building elements and generating the
16:05outline too.
16:07Um
16:08but making sure to edit it as you go so
16:12that everything is clear with your
16:14vision. But sometimes if you're just
16:16hitting that wall and you're like I have
16:17no idea what to put here
16:20you can start by letting it be auto
16:21generated and then you go in and fix it.
16:24Uh because usually I find
16:26that it's easier for me to say
16:28no or yes to something that was
16:31presented to me rather than trying to
16:33come up with it just
16:35uh out of out of nowhere. You So you
16:38avoid that analysis paralysis by doing
16:40that.
16:41Uh so that is the story Bible. This
16:44you'll when you're just starting a
16:45project you'll probably want to spend a
16:46little time on this and really flesh it
16:49out and make sure everything fits with
16:50your vision.
16:52All right. Uh the next thing I want to
16:54talk about here uh we're we're going to
16:56do a brief tour of everything. So we've
16:58talked about story Bible. We're there's
17:01below story Bible there's a feature
17:02called my voice. I'm going to be doing a
17:03whole video on my voice.
17:05So don't worry about it right now but
17:07essentially you can create a custom
17:09model
17:10that sounds a little bit more like you
17:12and your style and get it to edit your
17:14work and other things.
17:15Um
17:16it's sort of an you know as you can tell
17:18here it says it's in beta. It's still a
17:20work in progress. It's been in beta for
17:21forever.
17:22Uh but I will do a video on that to give
17:24you my thoughts on whether it's good or
17:25not.
17:26Um
17:27over here on the side is your
17:28navigation. Uh so you can put your
17:31chapter one chapter two and if you have
17:33like folders like maybe you want act one
17:35to be in a folder act two or you have a
17:37older draft of a novel those can be put
17:40into folders here.
17:41You can change the name of your project
17:43here. Right now it's just called project
17:44four in this case.
17:46Up here is where you get the guided
17:47write stuff and the auto write and all
17:50of that stuff we covered.
17:51Uh this is the rewrite section
17:53uh which can sometimes be useful if you
17:56want. Um there's one in particular where
18:00you can expand on a section and that one
18:02can be useful but in general I don't use
18:05the rewrite too often.
18:06Um same with the describe. So describe
18:09basically takes a passage you highlight
18:11a passage
18:13and uh it will give you different ways
18:16of enhancing the description of that
18:18passage by sight smell taste sound touch
18:22or a metaphor.
18:23And usually
18:25this is just to give you ideas. I would
18:27not actually use the stuff it gives you
18:30because it would be like too much and it
18:32just doesn't flow naturally. But
18:33sometimes it's nice to be like I need I
18:35need a little more description here so
18:37you you highlight the passage you
18:39generate everything and then you
18:40manually go in and fix it based on some
18:43of the suggestions it gave you. That's
18:45the only reason I would use describe and
18:47frankly I think this is a little bit of
18:49an outdated feature
18:50that they've had in here for a long time
18:53and not necessarily one I would actually
18:55use. The same goes for this
18:56brainstorming feature. Uh I don't use
18:59this. Uh there there are plenty of
19:00better ways. I mean just use the the
19:03automatic generation tools inside of the
19:05story Bible. That's much better for
19:07brainstorming in my opinion.
19:09Uh and then here you see this one that
19:11says more tools. Click on that and uh
19:14they've got a couple of things here
19:15twist poem first draft canvas. Most of
19:18these are like outdated older features
19:20that they just haven't gotten rid of
19:21yet. I wouldn't even use most of them.
19:24Um but
19:26there is this section here that says
19:28explore plugins and create plugins.
19:31Interesting. So let's go to explore
19:33plugins.
19:35And this is where Sudowrite can get a
19:37little bit more complex in a good way.
19:40And because a lot of people have a
19:42problems with Sudowrite not being
19:44flexible enough like you can't modify
19:46the prompts that they have to write text
19:49which for some people is a good thing
19:51because it means it's really simple.
19:53But at the same time other people really
19:55want flexibility and and the ability to
19:57create entirely new prompts and buttons
20:00and things
20:02that will do specific tasks.
20:05Um and so plugins is Sudowrite's
20:07solution to that. This is essentially a
20:09way of having custom prompts inside of
20:11Sudowrite.
20:13Um so there are a bunch of them and uh
20:15you can see here's here's a big list,
20:17right? And you can go through these as
20:20as much as you want. Um some of them can
20:23like take uh a vague description of
20:26explicit content and make it more
20:28explicit. So if you're writing say a
20:30scene with Claude and you kind of gloss
20:32over some of the stuff that happens or
20:34you go fade to black or something like
20:35that. And then you want to go to a not
20:37safe for work
20:39model uh or using Muse or something like
20:41that uh to add more detail, there's one
20:44that you could do use that.
20:46Um you could use this one to write more
20:47dialogue. There's just a whole bunch in
20:50here. Um some of them are featured here.
20:52We have like character swap.
20:54Um
20:56Yeah, that one's kind of interesting. I
20:57I
21:00feel like the the use cases for that
21:03would be somewhat nefarious.
21:05But okay.
21:06Um chapter recap, character simulator.
21:10That one That one could be fun if you
21:11want to take a character and like
21:12interact with it to see if the voice is
21:14correct.
21:16Darkify characters.
21:19Um
21:20dialogue distinctifier.
21:22So lots lots of cool things in here and
21:23they're community driven. So anybody can
21:25make a plugin, everyone can make it
21:27public or you can keep it private to
21:29yourself. But then you can also just go
21:31through and just see what other people
21:33have put out here and some of them can
21:35be really interesting. You can also
21:37actually see the prompts
21:39for this. And this is one of the only
21:41areas like cuz Novel Crafter doesn't
21:43have this and uh Raptor Write doesn't
21:45have this where you can actually get
21:48prompts from other people where there's
21:49like a community around fiction-based
21:51prompts. That's one thing is I one of
21:53the things I actually kind of like about
21:54this. I haven't spent enough time in the
21:56plugins to really
21:58um
22:00find those gems in there, but I'm I
22:02imagine there's plenty of them here. So
22:05I look at if I look at this character
22:06swap plugin for example, um I could see
22:10the the actual prompt that's being used
22:13here. And I could take this and make my
22:16own and modify it if I wanted to. If I
22:18wanted to use the same prompt but
22:19slightly different, you could do that.
22:22Uh so if I wanted to use this character
22:24swap thing, I could just say add. Now if
22:26I go to plugins and I look at this one
22:29that says added,
22:30now I can see that that particular
22:32plugin has been added. So if I go back
22:34to my main project and I look at this
22:36now, I will see now I will see that we
22:40now have character swap here listed
22:42under more tools.
22:43I can also reorder this menu. Um so if I
22:47wanted character swap to be a little
22:48higher,
22:50uh I could do that and you can also
22:51select if it appears in the main menu or
22:53not. So I could put this here
22:56and just say now I don't really like
22:58these other things. Let's get rid of
22:59them. But at the same time here we have
23:02character swap. So I can now use this
23:03plugin inside of Sudowrite uh to my
23:06heart's content. So that is the just the
23:09general introduction to Sudowrite. I do
23:12have a lot more instruction
23:14uh in my group if you want to check that
23:16out on Sudowrite and Novel Crafter and
23:18Raptor Write and also automations. So
23:20you can check out the link down below if
23:21you're interested in getting a little
23:23bit more access to me.
23:25I do live calls every week as well as we
23:27have other people doing live calls in
23:29there.
23:29Uh so hopefully this was useful to you
23:31and I'll see you in the next video.