Sudowrite Review w/ 3 Stories: Best AI Story Generator? (2023)

Sudowrite Review Summary

Sudowrite is an interactive AI story-writing assistant with many helpful features like Rewrite, Describe, Brainstorm, and Character Generator.

Created by two writers themselves, it is a lot of fun to use and the generated stories feel surprisingly human.

Sudowrite is based on fine-tuned GPT 3.5 and GPT-4 models by OpenAI. But, a minor drawback is that it lacks an in-built plagiarism checker.

Price: 19

Price Currency: USD

Operating System: Web App

Application Category: AI Writing Tool

Editor's Rating:
4.5

Pros

• Brainstorm characters, plots, worlds, and more.
• Visual canvas to organize your plot and characters.
• Expand plot points.
• Rewrite to 'Show not Tell'
• Describe things for the 5 senses.
• Generate Twists.
• Get AI book blurbs, outlines, and hooks from your manuscript.
• AI gives beta feedback mimicking "human" readers.
• 4000-word free trial with all features included.

Cons

• Lacks in-built plagiarism checker.

Try Sudowrite for Free

P.S. You can get a one-time bonus of extra 10,000 AI words (added on buying a plan) by using my referral link. 🙂 Plans start at monthly payment ($19/month). Consider yearly payment ($10 * 12 i.e. $120/year) for 50% discount

Dear reader, I have included the 3 stories I generated with Sudowrite in this review:

Story 1: A writer takes help from a robot (exploring key features)

Story 2: A town where vampires & zombies co-exist (Using AI feedback feature)

Story 3: A love story between a vampire and an AI (mixing sci-fi and folklore)

My Criteria for A Good AI Story Writing Tool

A good AI story writing tool should help the writer to brainstorm and flesh out his/her initial drafts. Here are my criteria:

• The output should be coherent and original.
• Stay true to the writer’s personal style given as input.
• Emphasis on storytelling tools (like brainstorming, world-building, etc) vs generic AI writing.
• A large number of AI words for reasonable prices as we’d likely want to reiterate a story idea multiple times to get it just right.
• Distraction-free interface for writing.

Sudowrite checks all these boxes ✅ for me.

Detailed Sudowrite Review

With Sudowrite’s help, I wrote a short story about a writer teaming up with a robot to write fiction (how meta!) – all starting from just one line.

The best part was letting my imagination run wild while brainstorming with an AI buddy that never tires out!

Check out the key features of Sudowrite along with the story I crafted below.

1. Brainstorm & Canvas

Sudowrite allows you to brainstorm about every aspect of story writing from a single sentence. I tested out the brainstorming features to see if they actually worked well. The results were impressive!

Story #1: A writer taking help from a robot to write.

Testing ‘Brainstorm’: I asked Sudowrite to brainstorm a character – “a writer who takes help from a robot to write.”

Bonus: Story Ideas

With all the buzz around AI, I came up with some interesting story prompts you can try in Sudowrite. Please share your outputs with me (email) if you do! 🙂

• My Algorithmic Soul Mate: One woman’s journey to find companionship with an AI.
• The Robot Whisperer: The caretaker of helper bots finds that machines have as much to teach us as we have to teach them.
• Bittersweet Symphony: A son confronts a hard truth when he discovers the AI “clone” of his late mother.
• Learning to Let Go: After 50 years, a farmer prepares to hand over the reins to an autonomous AI, pondering loss and progress.
• The Human Behind the Humanoid: A profile of the team that created the world’s first emotionally intelligent androids.
• Nothing Lasts Forever: A scientist must choose between morality and progress in building software that can replicate human emotions.
• Raising the AI Child: Parents share their stories of nurturing algorithmic minds – the challenges, insights and connections that surfaced along the way.
• A Shoulder to Cry On: When all else fails her, one woman turns to an unlikely source of comfort – her virtual assistant. 

Canvas

By the way, you can also organize your thoughts, characters, and story points in Sudowrite Canvas. A very neat feature is that it allows you to visualize your characters, like I visualized an antagonist in a story below. (The blue hat guy with the pointed evil chin)

Sudowrite’s Canvas lets you add your own notes and create an outline using provided templates. You can use AI to populate and flesh out your notes.

While Canvas can feel a little disorganized, the outlining feature is cool and easy to use, generating an outline from your summary or allowing you to edit it step-by-step. It gives you a big-picture view of where your story is going.

You can access Canvas on the left sidebar.

2. Expanding Plots, Write & Rewrite Features

In the editor, I inserted our brainstormed ideas. It was one click. I re-ordered the sentences according to my preference and clicked expand on the last sentence.

Expand

I asked Sudowrite to ‘Expand’ on the brainstorming details we got.

My, oh, my what an amazing story snippet I got! In the below screenshot, everything written in blue is a story generated by an AI from a single line!

By the way, the above clean UI is called “focus mode”. You can eliminate all distractions from an already aesthetic interface.

Write/Rewrite Fine-Tuning

I did everything above with the default writing mode of Sudowrite. But, in case you want even greater control over the tone or direction the AI takes while expanding on your content, you can switch between auto, guided, and tone-shift writing modes.

• First Draft: Sudowrite’s First Draft feature generates up to 1000 words from a scene description, providing a good starting point for editing and adding your own touch.
• Guided and Auto Write: Use Guided Write to input a sentence or two about the next section and generate up to 250 words. Auto Write generates text without guidance.
• Tone Shift: This feature allows for easy adjustments to the tone of your story.

It also offers a rewrite option to help you rephrase or revise what you have already written. In the below screenshot, you can see Sudowrite offers you ability to be more descriptive, rephrase, shorten, add more conflict and intensity, etc while writing.

3. Describing Story Elements

Testing ‘Describe’: I asked Sudowrite to ‘Describe’ my robot character.

I got 5 descriptions – sound, sight, smell, touch, taste, and a possible metaphor as suggestions from Sudowrite. The word choice was good and the output was coherent.

4. Generating a Story Twist!

The final highlight: Using Sudowrite AI to generate a Twist for my story! 🤯

The Twist feature is still experimental but still I was able to get fun and interesting results. See the twist I got in the below screenshot.

My robot is apparently bent on world domination 🤖 and likes stealing my ideas.

Oh, wait. It wasn’t even real!

Isn’t this a perfect M. Night Shyamalan kind of twist?

5. Feedback on Your Writing by AI

Feedback is an experimental feature in which AI readers go through your story and tell you what they think about its theme, plot, etc.

Here’s my input story for which I asked Sudowrite for feedback:

Story #2: I tried to create a city where zombies, vampires, and humans exist but both vampires and zombies have managed to conceal their identities from humans.

Now a conflict is brewing between zombies and vampires. (By the way, this story was also ‘expanded’ using Sudowrite)

The below section is just the beginning of the story. I did not hint at what direction the story could take (do they finish each other off? do they form a cartel where vampires kill and zombies eat brains? 🤯). But it is enough to get feedback on the writing style (min 400 words).

Clicking feedback spawns 3 AI readers that “try” to read our story as a human reader would and share feedback. I am pasting excerpts from the feedback I got.

Pretty decent, right? As per Sudowrite, AI readers get better at giving feedback as your story grows. Besides, it is experimental as of now and will continue to improve.

Shrinkray

Aside from getting feedback on your writing, you might also want to generate blurbs for your novels/books.

Sudowrite has a handy feature for that too called Shrinkray. You can upload your manuscript and get loglines, blurbs, synopsis, and full outlines automatically.

Sudowrite User Experience

Sudowrite has a very user-friendly onboarding process. It uses a sample story to give a tour of its features. I understood how to use the major features in under a minute.

It also has a focus mode and most features require only one or two clicks.

Sudowrite also gives you the option to talk to their support to set things up, if you need help!

My Video of Using SudoWrite

Story #3: Just as a fun experiment, I gave Sudowrite a story idea that I haven’t seen anywhere yet.

I asked Sudowrite to write a romance between a vampire and an AI robot!

It started fairly well but fumbled a bit towards the middle where it confused my AI with a human (Sudowrite was treating it as an AI initially). With a gentle nudge from me, the story got back on track. Then my word limit ran out!

Alas, I was not able to complete my vamp-AI fanfic. Perhaps you will be able to. Do share it with me in the comments, in case you do!

Sudowrite Pricing

The basic plan starts at $10 per month (when pre-paid annually at $120) or $19 per month (when paying monthly) and gives 30,000 words/per month. That’s more generous than most other AI writing tools (and other tools don’t even work as well as Sudowrite).

You can also explore for free before buying as I did. Sudowrite has a fully featured free trial of 4000 words. I liked the fact that they did not ask for my credit card for the free trial.

Here I have selected yearly upfront payment to get a 50% discount.

You will get 10000 AI words extra if you choose to purchase a paid plan via my referral link.

As per Sudowrite’s official website, you can also upgrade, downgrade, or cancel at any time.

Who Created Sudowrite? Sci-Fi Writers & Techies.

Sudowrite was founded by Amit Gupta and James Yu, both of whom are writers themselves and come from tech backgrounds. Before starting work on Sudowrite, together they founded a sci-fi writing group called Sudowriters and a zoom book club called Short Story Club.

When the team behind a product understands and cares about its customer’s problems, it shows. The Sudowrite team has been quick at pushing out new features and earnestly responds to customer feedback they get.

Even while creating Sudowrite, Amit and James took feedback from other writers for the direction of the app. The vast catalog of brainstorming features or the experimental twist and AI sudoreader features speak to the vision of storytelling behind Sudowrite.

What Other Users Are Saying About Sudowrite

I have crosschecked my experience with the experience of other Sudowrite users based on reviews found online (Reddit, author blogs, etc).

Here’s what I found:

• Joanna Penn, a New York Times best-selling author, featured Sudowrite founder on her Podcast and spoke positively about her experience with the tool.
• A user compared his experience with Sudowrite and other AI story tools like Novel AI. They liked Sudowrite the best.

• Most positive reviewers like Sudowrite for its:
  • Brainstorm and Describe features.
  • Budding writers have found Describe feature particularly useful in writing sensory and visual descriptions.
  • The founders regularly interact with users on Social media including Reddit. Often you can get direct replies from Amit (co-founder), even about tough questions.
• Some bloggers/reviewers are even complaining that a couple of features in Sudowrite are experimental!
• Personally, I feel giving users access to experimental features is a good thing. It means that the team is always working on new things and takes user feedback at every stage (even experimental). Twists, TweetStorm, and Canvas are all experimental but they amazed me the most.
• Some legit criticisms:
  • Sudowrite is not mobile-friendly.
  • Some users want lower pricing despite liking the features. The base price is $19/month, but it comes down to $10/month with the yearly plan. The exchange rate makes it costly for non-US users.

Here’s what Amit had to say about pricing:

All in all, Sudowrite is an AI writing tool made by writers for fellow writers and clearly, it is also well-loved by the writing community seeing how many people praise it online.

Can AI replace story writers?

Seeing the capabilities of tools like Sudowrite might have you questioning the extent of human creativity and the role of AI in storytelling in the coming future.

If you limit the definition of a story to a series of mechanical events, AI will reach and surpass that level. It seems to be there already. But, I feel stories are much more than a mere retelling of events.

A good story is a gateway to the experiences of the writer. Every page is imbued with the author’s own emotions and motivations. Great stories give the readers a chance to introspect and feel.

AI-written stories are just not there yet. And, I suspect they never will be. AIs almost always have decent plot development ideas and excellent word usage. But, with little scope for introspection.

Closing Thoughts: Sudowrite Review

The future I foresee for writing is where AI gives human authors a helping hand to bring their own ideas to the forefront i.e a future of co-creation by man and machine.

For now, I wholeheartedly recommend that you give Sudowrite a try and experience the joy of having a story-writing buddy by your side, 24/7! 🙂

Now I’d like to hear from you:

Have you tried Sudowrite before?

If so, what was your experience with it? Good? Bad? Somewhere in between?

Either way, let me know by leaving a comment below.

Sudowrite vs Jasper AI: Which is the better AI Storywriter?

Between Jasper and Sudowrite, I liked Sudowrite more for its superior story-writing features.

Sudowrite helps to solve common challenges faced by writers through features like brainstorming, show-not-tell, twist, wormhole, sudoreader feedback, etc. Writer’s block is just one of the problems it solves. Sudowrite aims to make storytelling easy.

Sudowrite feels like software made by writers for writers. The founders are sci-fi writers themselves and Sudowrite has fine-tuned GPT-3 further by using high-quality narrative training data. The team seems to be in touch with the writing community and its needs.

On the other hand, Jasper AI, also based on GPT-3, is geared mainly toward AI copywriting and sales writing. Thus, it is good at the selling part of story writing – Jasper can generate catchy book blurbs, amazing cliffhangers, and story hooks. Jasper can also be used to write good author bios. But, it is very expensive in comparison to Sudowrite (Jasper’s starter plan begins at USD 40 per month).

Moreover, I have found Jasper AI to be very procedural in its story generation. Using Jasper felt like it was taking the lead and ignoring my writing voice. Sudowrite does a better job of assisting the writer in writing the story and feels more like an AI guide than an AI tool.

Sudowrite Vs ChatGPT

ChatGPT Plus costs $20 per month and requires you to write custom prompts for story writing. In my experience, ChatGPT (Free or Plus) both get sidetracked very easily and you need to re-prompt them to stick to the “story writer” persona.

Sudowrite costs $10 or $19 per month, depending on which plan you buy. You do not need to spend time to get the AI to act as a story writing assistant. It comes pre-trained. Most of the basics like brainstorming or Canvas are taken care of in the UI itself. No need of prompt engineering.

Simply put: Sudowrite is better at story writing than ChatGPT because it has a whole suite of features aimed at making writing easier. Canvas, Brainstorm, Describe, etc. are tools writers can use and do use frequently. On the other hand, ChatGPT is a general purpose chatbot. It is not fine-tuned for storywriting.

Sudowrite uses fine-tuned Open AI models anyway, so it is not like you will be getting an inferior product with Sudowrite.

My suggestion: Use ChatGPT free version and pay for Sudowrite if you write stories for a living. A hobbyist can probably make do with either.

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FAQs

What is Sudowrite? Explained simply.

Sudowrite is an AI writing assistant for fiction authors. Writers can use Sudowrite to create new stories or tweak their existing work. This can be done by feeding the model a “seed” text, such as a few words or a sentence, and then allowing the model to generate the next word or phrase based on the previous words.

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