Write
Write
The Write feature is like the most advanced autocomplete ever. It works like this: Place your cursor at the end of some text, and then click Write. Sudowrite will continue it, picking up right where you left off.
To do this, Write looks back at the preceding text (up to 1000 words) to gather context and pick up the thread. If your Story Bible is turned on (and filled out!) Write will also take into consideration your Style, Genre, Characters, and any linked Chapter Outline. It works best with a minimum of 20 words (not counting the document’s title), so ideally there should always be at least a couple of sentences before the cursor… but the more words you provide, or the further into your document you use it, the better the results. Write will typically output around 150-200 words (but you can tweak that number in your Write settings).
Click the 🔽 toggle to the right of Write to expand the Write menu. There you’ll find three different versions of Write— ✨ Auto, ↔️ Guided, and 🥸 Tone Shift—and the Write settings, which is where you’ll control settings for these features.
Once you’ve selected which Write mode you’d prefer, click the Write button within the text to use it. The suggestions will appear in the History column on the right. If you see a suggestion you like, click Insert to bring that prose into your document. This text will appear in purple until it's been edited by you. You’ll get the best results by regularly editing the purple text to make it your own, and fully incorporate it into your work.
Think of Write as a brainstorming partner. Write or paste a scene or chapter of your own into the Editor, and use Write to send the story off in different directions. You’ll discover ideas and paths that will ultimately help enrich your story.
✨ Write - Auto
The Auto mode for Write relies the most on what is already written in the primary writing area, ahead of the cursor. (There is one other way to give it input, in Write Settings in the Key Details box, which is explained in that section.)
Let’s try something, and type the following into the editor:
Plates of cold food lined the dining room table at 54 Wimbley Avenue. Not a single pea or diced carrot was out of place. Which was odd, because
You’ll notice the last sentence is not finished. This is an advanced writing tip when you are cowriting with AI. By leaving a sentence open, your junior writing partner, Sudowrite, understands to continue the thought from there and keep writing!
Let’s keep the setting on ✨ Auto and click Write.
Sudowrite created 2 cards on the right side. They begin unstacked, so you can read the possible paths available, but if you click on the top (prompt portion) of the card, Sudowrite will collapse them down into a stack.
Advanced Tool Techniques
↔️ Write - Guided
Guided Write will write cards in two different ways. You can turn on Suggestions and Sudowrite will read the words in your document, up to 1,000 from where the cursor is, and suggest three story ideas that could come next in the story.
You also can write your own.
Let’s work with the same prompt as before.
Here is what we’ve entered into the editor:
Plates of cold food lined the dining room table at 54 Wimbley Avenue. Not a single pea or diced carrot was out of place. Which was odd, because
Click on the 🔽 down arrow next to Write in the top left corner and Select Guided.
The Write button will then instead say Write Guided. Now place your cursor at the end of your text, and click Write Guided in the top left corner.
Guided Write can offer 3 Suggestions of what could come next in the story. You turn on the Suggestions slider if you want Sudowrite to generate those Suggestions.
If you click on one of the suggestions, Sudowrite will create the number of cards and approximate lengths you chose in Write Settings.
Here is the prompt for the “Write you own” box in the image below:
there’s a bright flash, and then a loud, apocalyptic explosion outside
Getting the most from Write’s Guided mode
In Guided mode, you can write a sentence or two to describe what should come next. Here’s what works best:
- Make it Believable If your suggestion is too out of the blue, Sudowrite may have a hard time figuring out how to write it. For example, if you were writing a hardboiled detective story, and your guidance was for a magical genie to show up, Sudowrite may struggle to write that.
- Solution: Break your unbelievable idea into smaller, believable ideas. Maybe the detective finds a magic lamp, and then hears something coming from inside.
- Break up bigger ideas Your suggestion should be doable in a couple paragraphs. For example, “The two slowly fall in love and eventually get married, have kids, and start a bakery together” may be too much to cover in one go.
- Solution: Break long ideas into small chunks. For example, just start with “The two agree to go on a date”, hit Write, then go again with the next part.
Guided mode will do a better job sticking to your story if you put the cursor mid-sentence before your click Write. This is because a period indicates to Sudowrite that a new idea should come next.
- Keep it simple Simple sentences and repetition help Sudowrite understand what you want.
- Example: "Bill and Sophie get into a fight. After their fight, Sophie leaves." Because these instructions are short and clear, Sudowrite can easily understand that the fight is important, and that this is a sequence of two separate actions.
🥸 Write - Tone Shift
Tone Shift works a lot like Write’s Auto setting with one key difference—it changes the style of your writing in the process.
After clicking the Write 🔽 toggle, choose Tone Shift and then select from any of the following tones: Ominous, Fantastical, Fast-Paced, Upbeat, Authoritative, Conflicted, Romantic, Sensual. Then just put the cursor where you’d like to pick up the story from, and click the Write button. You’ll see the story continues along the vibes of what you’d selected.
Write Settings
The last button under Write is for the Write Settings, which let you dictate how each Write feature should work.
Creativity
The Creativity slider dictates how strictly the Write feature will stick to what you’ve already written. When the slider is at Least, this gives Sudowrite the least amount of flexibility to deviate from the prior context it read. It doesn’t mean the prose that Sudowrite comes up with is any less creative, instead the writing will just endeavor to match the arc of what is already in the document. Essentially, low creativity on this slider means the content of the response will be more predictable in line with what you’ve already written.
Pushing the slider all the way to Most gives Sudowrite a whole bunch of creative agency. Consider this a promotion for your junior writing partner; Sudowrite now has creative license to take your story down much more unexpected paths.
By default the slider is right in the middle. But where should you keep it? That’s up to you and what you need from Sudowrite for your story.
Number of Cards
This drop down controls how many cards (or variants) are generated in your History column (on the right side) when you use a Write feature. You can set this anywhere from 1 to 5.
Length of Cards
This drop down allows you to set a rough approximation of how long each individual card should be in a response. It ranges from ~50 words all the way up to ~250 words. Each time Sudowrite generates a card, that’s a new pass at the request on the part of the AI, so the results will vary.
Key Details
This section only informs Write when it is in ✨ Auto mode. It’s also a setting for the entire Project (🗂️) rather than a Document (📄) level setting. Key Details also does not affect Canvas or Story Bible.
As you move between documents in your Project, make sure to either turn off Key Details or change the information it contains if its contents do not apply to the scene you’re working on.
Great things to put into Key Details:
- how you want the prose written such as “romantic” or “foreboding”
- what heat level or intensity you want romance or violence scenes to be written
- what genre are you writing in, keep in mind you might need to define newer genres or abbreviations to Sudowrite like “reverse harem” or “mpreg”
- character names and brief details that are needed for the story, such as “Logan’s right arm was broken ten minutes before this scene happens, he is feeling incredible pain”
- setting details that you want worked in such as “grand English country estate”
- and anything else you can think of, write in here like you would give notes to a junior writing partner!
While the visuals in the video above are sort of essential, a transcript of the Write video above is available by expanding this toggle.
This is the third installment in our Quick Start series, and today we’ll look at the Write button.
The Write button is like the most advanced autocomplete you’ve ever used—it looks at what you’ve written up to wherever the cursor is (as well as a few other things we’ll discuss), and then continues writing for you.
By default the Write button will generate two “cards”—those are the AI suggestions, and they’ll show up in the History column on the right.
If you like one of them, just use the Insert button to pop it into your story. AI-generated words show up in purple like this, until you modify them.
If you don’t want to use it immediately, but like it enough that you may want to refer back to it later, use the star button.
Starred cards show up in this column after toggling from the History clock icon to the Star icon.
You can get pretty far using the stock Write button, which we call Auto, but if you want to try other modes, click this little arrow dropdown to the right of Write.
This opens the Write Menu, where you can customize the way the Write button works—here you’ll see a few additional options, including guided, tone shift, and write settings.
Guided Write gives you a little bit more directional control. You can get at a glance suggestions for continuation paths, or suggest your own—when you see something you like, you can ask for a completion to appear in your History column.
Tone shift works like Auto, but you’re choosing the style of the continuation you’d like to see.
Finally, the Write settings are where you can totally customize the way Write works.
You can change the number of cards generated with each click, and their length,
you can play with this slider to get more or less creative results,
and you can even choose the prose mode—that option determines exactly which AI will be doing the writing. They all have different styles and capabilities. Some are more economical than others when it comes to using credits. We encourage you to experiment and see what works for you.
Key details down here is a way to get the Write button to remember something important. So for example, if your story takes place on Mars, it’d probably be good to jot that down so the AI doesn’t mention bright blue skies. There’s one other place that the Write button can draw context about your story from—and that’s Story Bible. That’s a topic for another day, but just keep in mind that you don’t have to put your full character list in key details, since the Write button will probably be getting that from your Story Bible.
I’d mentioned in the last video that there’s technically a fourth simple way to get started—and that’s using the write button in a totally blank document. Write will write something… basically whatever the AI wants to write… it’s sort of fun as a story starter, but definitely not the most practical.
That pretty much covers the Write button. Let us know what questions you have in the comments, and stay tuned for next time when we discuss Rewrite.