Glossary

List of Helpful Terms

1. Beat: In storytelling, a beat is a unit of narrative that represents a sort of event. They’re often used to structure and pace the narrative, and within Sudowrite beats are used to generate a chapter’s prose.

2. Beat Header: A Beat Header is a way for users to force Sudowrite’s AI to take additional context into account before generating prose from beats. They’re achieved by [Adding specific instructions in brackets] above the numbered beats.

3. Boxes: Within Sudowrite, boxes are generally in reference to text fields—specifically the “boxes” associated with the Story Bible feature (Style box, Genre box, etc.).

4. Brainstorm: One of the core AI tools in a project’s toolbar, Brainstorm is a tool for generating fresh ideas for anything from plot points to settings to character names. The user can thumbs down to generate fresh ideas, or thumbs up to add something to a keepers list—which will be saved to their History section once they Save and Exit the tool.

5. Canvas: Canvas is a feature that allows users to map out their outline or character relationships visually, using drag and drop elements such as cards and boxes.

6. Cards: Cards appear in a couple of places within the Sudowrite interface, and may refer to Project Cards (on the sudowrite.com homepage) or the outputs of AI functions (such as Write) which appear in Cards in the History column.

7. Chapter Generator: A feature that is represented by the small typewriter icon in the upper right of the editor bar, the Chapter Generator is a panel that expands in order for you to write or generate beats and ultimately generate chapter prose.

8. Chapter Glue: This generally refers to the context that is necessarily passed from one context to the next in order to maintain narrative flow.

9. Credits: Credits are the currency of Sudowrite. The different plans available come with different amounts of monthly credits, and those credits are used towards Sudowrite’s AI functions.

10. Describe: One of the core AI tools in a project’s toolbar, Describe will generate sensory descriptions (for Sight, Smell, Taste, Sound, Touch, and Metaphor) for a highlighted selection of text.

11. Document: Documents are essentially text files that appear in a list format inside of a Project’s left bar. They’re used to divide your Project, either into Chapters or otherwise.

12. Drivers: These are elements that move a story forward. They may be major plot points, character decisions, or events that create conflict and propel the narrative towards its resolution.

13. Focus: This is not too far off its base definition, but within Sudowrite it often refers to maintaining clarity and relevance in the scene. It involves ensuring that the action contributes meaningfully to the overall story.

14. Guardrails: This typically refers to the boundaries or rules that you set for your scene, helping to keep any AI generations on track. They may include genre conventions, character motivations, and thematic limits.

15. Hover Menu: When selecting a passage of text within the editor, a hover menu will appear for quick access to potentially relevant tools.

16. Kitbashing: Originally a term from model building (where parts from different kits are combined), this term generally refers to the process of combining/merging various elements or parts of different drafts (or AI generations) to build a desired work.

17. Laser Tools: This colloquialism is used by the community in reference to Sudowrite’s targeted AI features, such as Rewrite.

18. LLM: Large Language Model, a type of AI that can understand and generate human-like text based on the input it receives. It's the technology that (alongside a few others) powers tools like Sudowrite.

19. Match My Style: This is a feature inside of Story Bible that analyzes an authors work and produces a Style prompt in order to help the AI more faithfully replicate the user's writing style.

20. Model: In AI terminology, a model refers to a trained AI system that can process input data (like text) and generate output based on its training. Examples may include GPT-4, Claude 3, Gemini Pro, and more. Different models work behind the scenes of Sudowrite, but are also available to select explicitly when building Plugins.

21. Plugins: In Sudowrite, Plugins are custom community-built features that can be installed and used to extend Sudowrite’s functionality. They may generate, transform, or analyze text—or do any combination of those things.

22. Prose: This generally references the written text in your Sudowrite document, but depending on the usage it may be an explicit reference to the “prose” output by Chapter Generator or the Write button.

23. Project: In Sudowrite, a Project refer to a discrete writing project—often a single novel or story—that is represented by a Project card on Sudowrite’s homepage. Projects may contain many documents, but each Project only has a single Canvas and Story Bible.

24. Project Cards: Visual representations of projects within Sudowrite, providing quick access to different writing projects and their details.

25. Prompt: A text input given to an AI or software tool to generate specific output or perform an action, often used in creative writing to inspire or guide the AI's output.

26. Prose Mode: This is a Sudowrite-specific term for the AI selected for a task (in either the Write button or the Chapter Generator). It includes Best Prose, Fastest, Most Accurate, Balanced, and experimental AI models (which have not yet been broadly adopted by Sudowrite) as well.

27. Quick Edit / Quick Chat: Available within the hover menu upon text selection or via a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl + K, ⌘ + K), these Quick Tools allow for instruction-based edits and inline chat.

28. Rewrite: One of the core AI tools in a project’s toolbar, the Rewrite button can be used on a selection of text to transform it according to the selected Rewrite style (ranging from Shorter, to Rephrase, to Show Not Tell). It also appears in the hover menu upon selection.

29. Series: This is a reference to someone’s sequential works, often novels, that exist within the same universe.

30. Story Bible: Sudowrite’s Story Bible is a feature available inside of each Project that lets you document (and/or generate) and store necessary storytelling components for the AI’s reference—to keep your AI-generated assistance on track. It includes Braindump, Genre, Style, Synopsis, Characters, and Outline.

31. Story Engine: The earliest iteration of Story Bible and functionally similar, you may still see references to Story Engine in documentation or videos.

32. Strides: On Sudowrite a stride is a set of two beats. When generating prose within a chapter, the AI will work one stride (or two beats) at a time, giving you the chance to pause or cancel between strides.

33. Sudowrite Proper: Another colloquialism, this generally references the interior of a Sudowrite project—inclusive of the editor, toolbar, (left) project nav, and (right) history bar.

34. Token: In artificial intelligence, a token is a measurement of text processed and/or generated by AI. You won’t see or tokens measurements or numbers on Sudowrite, but they’re to be aware of in the event people are discussing “context limits” for model (as in Plugin building).

35. Write Button: One of the core AI tools in a project’s toolbar, the Write button is like an advanced autocomplete that can generate anywhere from a 50-500 word completion from wherever you leave the cursor. In the Write Button’s dropdown, you’ll find variants of the Write button including Guided Write (which works similarly but takes or offers suggestions) and Tone Shift (which continues in the selected tone).

36. Write Settings: This is an option available in the dropdown next to the Write button, which allows you to define how that button works. You can select creativity, the number of cards, card length, and even the Prose Mode.

Thanks to Sudowrite’s Lead Ambassador Nicole Broussard and other members of the community for their contributions towards this glossary.