Characters

The Characters section is where you define the characters in your story. This affects how the characters are described, how their dialogue is written, what choices they make, and how they interact with each other. Once you’ve completed your synopsis, Story Bible can create all of your characters for you.

To tell Story Bible to create your Characters, click the Generate All Characters button.

Each character receives their own card in the Characters section of your Story Bible.

Cards are how you keep track of each individual character and their details. Cards can be collapsed with the arrow next to the characters name, and dragged to your preferred order with the six-dot handle in the upper left.

The dropdown in the upper right allows you to set a Characters role (for example, protagonist, supporting character, etc.). You can see previous versions of the character in the card history—accessed from the clock icon up top—and you can delete a character card using the three dots on the right.

By default, each Character card created includes the following traits: Pronouns, Groups, Other Names, Personality, Background, Physical Description, and Dialogue Style.

There are two ways to add characters.

Add Blank Character creates a blank character card (with either the default traits, or the custom defaults you’ve assigned) for you to manually complete.

Generate Character opens a small prompt window that allows you to ask for a certain type of character. This field is very flexible, and you can be as vague or as specific as you’d like.

You can add or generate as many characters as you’d like.

Most of the default traits are pretty self-explanatory. Personality, Background, Physical Description, and Dialogue Style all help an author distinguish characters from one another and add richer detail to their writing.

But traits are there both for your reference, and that of the AI. Traits inform how the AI will write a character anywhere that character appears. And since AI depends on specificity, some traits are primarily for the benefit of the AI.

If your character belongs to a group—say for example that they’re in a D&D group called The Hellfire Club—you’d want to include that group name under Groups. That way, if you reference The Hellfire Club in a scene, the AI knows which characters may be involved.

The same goes for Other Names. Be sure to include any of your character’s nicknames, pet names, or pseudonyms in Other Names, so that the AI understands who you’re referring to at all times (—for example, when you write Tommy in Chapter 6 and you’re actually referring to the character card for Thomas Culligan).

Traits aren’t set in stone. You can retitle existing traits, or even create custom traits at the individual character level or at the default level.

Need to add a one-off trait to a character? (For example, maybe you need a “Bat Form Physical Description” for your vampiric protagonist.) Just click + Add Trait at the bottom of that character card, title the trait, and then fill out the empty field with details.

Want all of your characters to have additional traits? Click the Customize button at the top of the Characters section (just below your Synopsis) and you can edit and rearrange your default traits.

Just click + Add to add a new default trait, and all future characters will be created with that default trait included. This is ideal if you’d like to add your characters’ Enneagram types, core wounds, or story-specific details (like shifter form, for example).

When adding new defaults, you have the option to create fields for those traits across all existing characters. Just note that if you choose to add them on every existing character card, the newly created fields will need to be manually filled out. Freshly-generated characters on the other hand will include the updated defaults, with those trait fields populated on generation.

After adding new default traits to pre-existing Character cards or Worldbuilding elements, you may wind up with a bunch of empty trait fields. Traits can always be filled in manually, but sometimes you want the AI’s help with that, so you have the ability to generate traits individually as well.

When a trait field is empty, just click Fill This In. You’ll have the option to provide custom instructions, but you can also just click Go. The AI will then populate that trait field with something contextually appropriate.

The AI takes the rest of your Characters, Worldbuilding elements, and Story Bible context into consideration when generating those traits individually.

You also have the option to Rewrite trait fields that you’re not satisfied with. Just click Rewrite from within the trait field, provide custom instructions (if desired), and click Go. The AI looks at the current version of the trait, then rewrites it either according to provide instructions or (if blank) its own intuition and context.

Story Bible’s updated characters section has more structured character data than ever. But which of Sudowrite’s features make use of your Character data?

Your characters section is referenced by the Chapter Generator for the creation of both beats and chapter prose. Characters are also referenced by the Write button’s Auto and Guided Write modes. And both Quick Edit and Quick Chat see your characters as well—try asking Quick Chat about any of your character details.

You can fit an absurd amount of data on each Character card, and Story Bible allows for a near-infinite number of Characters. You may see the Characters section referred to as unlimited—but that’s not entirely true. If you try to add more than 2,000 different characters to your Story Bible you’ll actually hit the limit! But if you have more than 2,000 characters… well, have you considered you may actually be writing a phone book?

The smart import feature in Story Bible’s Characters section can be used to instantly create character cards from an existing text.

To use the smart import feature, navigate to the header of the Characters section of Story Bible and click the Import button in the three dots (•••) menu. Doing so opens the Import window.

You have the option of importing characters from text or a file. This might be a list of characters, a chapter of your work, or in some cases an entire manuscript.

The raw text pasted in or file uploaded should be no more than 60,000 words. Sudowrite will review that, identify, and import up to 30 characters at a time. Before doing so there is a brief validation step where you can tell Sudowrite not to bother bringing a character in (for example, where it identifies a pseudonym or nickname as a distinct character).

Importing characters does not use credits.

For "unstructured text" that you paste in or upload by file, Sudowrite will use AI to first identify the characters, and then figure out how best to complete the defined default trait fields.

However, when uploading a CSV, you’re actually not subject to the limits outlined above—you could import more than 30 characters in one shot, if desired. That’s because Sudowrite skips AI if you upload structured data via CSV. It makes the following assumptions:

If you’d like complete control over the import, you can complete this CSV template manually:

https://editor.sudowrite.com/assets/sudowrite-characters-import-template.csv