Series Support – Sudowrite

Whether you currently write a book series or you aspire to, you can take advantage of Series support in Sudowrite to share important information between projects. Projects created or moved into a Series Folder will share Characters, Worldbuilding, and Outline visibility so that your books’ shared universe, character arcs, and plot lines remain consistent.

Create a Series

Create a new Series in Sudowrite by clicking the + New button in the upper lefthand corner of the homepage and selecting Series from the dropdown menu. This will create a project folder with a special Series icon and label. Name it as you would with any other folder.

Series folders can be created either on the main homepage or within another folder.

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Series will only share Story Bible data between projects in the same hierarchy—meaning if you create a sub-folder inside of a Series folder with additional projects, the data from those projects will not be visible to the projects one level up in the primary Series folder.

How Series Works

Characters and Worldbuilding

Projects within a Series share Characters and Worldbuilding elements. That means that if I create characters Jane, John, and Jerry in Book 1, I’ll be able to see and edit those characters in Book 2. Further, changes made to Characters and Worldbuilding elements will be reflected across all books in that Series Folder. This is not just for your reference either; Sudowrite’s AI also has access to all of your Characters and Worldbuilding elements in a Series. Plus, it will remember which book your characters were created in.

Best Practices

Because Sudowrite’s AI has access to all of your Characters and Worldbuilding elements in a Series, it’s a good idea to keep them up to date for whichever volume you’re currently working on. For example, if I have a character Liam who is the protagonist of Book 1, but more of a supporting character in Book 2, I can change his type to reflect whichever Book I am working on.

If you have characters that only appear in one book, and you don’t want them showing up in others, it may be a good idea to “hide” them from the AI when working on a volume in which they do not play a part. Use the ••• menu on the right side of a Character or Worldbuilding card, and tell Sudowrite to Never use that character. (You can always change it back.)

For more complex character arcs or development of Worldbuilding elements, it may be beneficial to create multiple versions of a card—one for each book, or at least for dramatic milestones—and simply hide/show the most relevant version as your work progresses across a series. Alternatively, you can have a single canonical character card or worldbuilding element that is shared and used across the series, updating it as you go, or using the visibility settings on individual traits.

Outlines

Projects in a Series automatically use Sudowrite’s Outline Unlimited. The structured nature of Outline Unlimited allows other projects to have quick access to any outline in the Series folder.

To access Outlines from different projects, use the dropdown menu in the Outline header section of Story Bible to select the outline you wish to view.

When viewing an Outline from a different project than the currently open project, you can both make edits and generations with that Outline. These changes will persist and be reflected in that project’s Outline moving forward.

Note that when viewing an Outline from a different project, you will not be able to link documents in the current project to chapters in that Outline. You may currently only link chapter summaries in the open project’s outline to documents in that project.

Adding a Project to a Series

Once you have created your Series Folder, there are a couple of ways to add a project to that series.

Drag and drop an existing project on the homepage into the Series Folder

Use the ••• menu and select Move to… to select the Series Folder from a list of available folders, and move it over

Creating a new Project using the + New button when you’re inside of a Series Folder will create a blank project that instantly has access to shared Series information

Importing a project with the Import button from within a Series Folder automatically adds that project to the series, and any Characters or Worldbuilding elements that are detected as part of the import process will be shared across the series.

When you add an existing project to a Series Folder:

All of that projects Characters and Worldbuilding elements are automatically shared with the rest of the projects in that Series Folder.

Any duplicates are preserved, and added to the shared Characters and Worldbuilding. This allows authors to create different “versions” of Characters/Worldbuilding elements across volumes in their Series.

If you do not wish to have different versions, we recommend reviewing your shared Characters and Worldbuilding after adding an existing project and deleting (or hiding from the AI) any duplicates that are superfluous.

If the project moved into a Series Folder is using Story Bible’s old Outline format—the plain text box version—it will be upgraded into the Outline Unlimited version. (The old version will remain available as a deleted document in your project following this upgrade.)

All other projects in the same Series Folder will have access to that project’s outline

Sudowrite will add the project to your Series Timeline

Series Timeline

Every Series Folder has a collapsible Series Timeline section at the top. As projects are added to the Series Folder, they will always be added to the “end” of the Series Timeline. (You can always grab the little handles beside the project title to drag it into its proper sequence.) Sudowrite uses this sequence information to assemble a timeline based on your project outlines, which will be used in subsequent generations inside of the series.

You should only have to set this order once. Sudowrite will remember this order when generating content thereafter.

Removing a Project from a Series

To remove a project from a Series simply move it out of the Series Folder, using the ••• menu and selecting the Move to… option. Alternatively, just drag the project up to the word Home (or the preferred folder name) in the File Path that appears above the series title.

When a project is removed from a Series, it loses real-time access to the shared Story Bible information… but we want to make sure that you don’t lose any hard work you’ve done, either in that Project or the rest of the series. So removing a project from a series works like this:

The project that is removed from the Series gets a copy of all shared Characters and Worldbuilding elements from the Series. Those are now specific to that project however, and changes to them will only be reflected within it.

The Series retains all of the shared Characters and Worldbuilding elements it had before the project was removed, regardless of whether they originated in the removed project or elsewhere.

The removed project loses access to Outlines from other books in the Series.

The series loses access to the Outline of the removed project.

The removed project will also be removed from the Series Timeline.

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Warning! Because projects retain shared Characters and Worldbuilding elements when removed from a Series, you should avoid moving those projects back into the same Series.

Adding a Project to a series automatically adds all Characters and Worldbuilding elements within that project to the Series without regard for duplicates—that means moving a project out and back into a Series Folder can create a whole mess of duplicates. Yikes.