Chat

Chat is a powerful writing partner that lives in your project’s right bar and instantly knows everything about your story. It can read your project’s Story Bible, all of your documents, and see even more if your project is a part of a Series. No priming it with background context, or tedious “prompt engineering” required. Just ask.

But calling Sudowrite Chat a “chat” doesn’t really do it justice. It’s more like an assistant, since you control how your Chat sounds and works, and it can actually do stuff for you. Chat can create and edit your documents, make updates to your Story Bible, leave comments, highlight passages, and even handle complex multi-step changes—all while taking your direction and story into account.

How Chat Works

Chat is fully story aware. When your Story Bible is filled in (and turned on), Chat can see your Braindump, Genre, Style, Synopsis, Characters, Worldbuilding, and Outline. It can also read the full text of the active document. If you’re working in a Series, Chat sees shared Series context as well.

Want Chat to focus on something specific? Highlight text in your document, and Chat will zero in on that selection while still seeing retaining the full context. You can also use # mentions to call attention to specific Characters, other documents, or Story Bible sections directly in your message.

Chat has two modes, both powered by the same super-brainy AI:

Chat only - Great for brainstorming, feedback, or questions about your story. Chat can’t make changes to your project in this mode, but it is effectively unlimited, and doesn’t use any credits.

Allow edits - When you allow edits, Chat can create or edit documents, update your Story Bible, leave comments, and more. Like any good writing partner, it will even help you with complex, multi-step workflows by creating and proposing a plan. Allow edits uses credits.

You can toggle between Chat only and Allow edits in one conversation—back and forth if you’d like—using the dropdown option at the bottom of the chat window.

What Chat Can Do

With Allow edits turned on, Chat goes far beyond conversation. Here’s what it can help with:

Update Your Story Bible - Ask Chat to create or revise your Genre, Synopsis, Outline, Characters, or Worldbuilding. You can have it create a Character whole cloth, or just Rewrite a trait. Don’t have a Story Bible yet? Chat can even help you build one from scratch.

Create and Edit Documents - Need a flashback chapter between chapters 4 and 5? Ask Chat to create one, and drop some notes in the doc as to what it might include. Want to restructure a scene? Chat can make the edits directly. AI-generated text appears in purple so you can always see what’s new.

Mark Up Your Work - Chat can act as an editor on demand. Ask it to read your work and leave some comments where things got slow. Or ask it to highlight the sad parts of your chapter in blue. If you’re on a Professional or Max plan, Chat can even use Sudowrite’s Feedback tool to leave smart, story-specific edit in the margins of your document.

Handle Complex, Multi-Step Changes - Some requests touch multiple parts of your project. Changing a character’s gender across your entire manuscript. Shifting your genre from cozy romance to romantasy. For these kinds of changes, Chat will present a plan—a step-by-step list of what it intends to do. You review and approve before anything changes. You stay in control; Chat does the heavy lifting.

Help You Market Your Work - Chat knows your manuscript well enough to find the moments that sizzle. Ask it to surface passages that would make great TikTok content, suggest comp titles, or evaluate your story’s marketability. It can highlight the best bits and help you figure out what to do with them.

And more that we haven’t thought of yet (but we bet you will).

💡 Here’s an idea!

Did the prose on the page in Chapter 4 wind up straying from what you’d initially Outlined?Ask Chat to read your chapter and update your Story Bible to reflect any changes you may have introduced.

Series Support

If you’re working in a Series folder, Chat gives you quick access to other installments in your Series. You can ask about anything that is typically shared in a Series folder on Sudowrite—your Characters, Worldbuilding or Outlines of other books in your Series.

Personalization

You can customize precisely how Chat responds to you. Click the settings gear (⚙️) in the Chat window (next to the +) to control tone, response length, and more. Chat will also learn your preferences over time. Note that personalization affects chat behavior only—it won’t impact prose generated by other Sudowrite features.

Tips

Use # mentions to pull specific characters or documents into the conversation for more targeted responses.

Start in Chat only mode to brainstorm freely, then switch to Allow edits when you’re ready for Chat to make changes.

For big structural changes, let Chat show you its plan before approving. You can adjust the steps before anything happens.

Chat threads are project-specific. You can start new threads anytime with the + button, and find prior conversations by clicking the Back arrow (next to your Chat session’s title) to navigate back to your list of threads.