Sudowrite Review: My Favorite AI Creative Writing Tool! [2024]

Sometimes, writing fiction can seem like a labor of love. Not only is it lonely hard work, but there’s no way to tell if your readers will appreciate your efforts. 

All the while, you face (and sometimes lose) countless battles with writer’s block and the feelings of inadequacy that come with it.

If only you had a writing partner to share the burden, perhaps it would be easier!

Lucky for you, there are several AI story-writing assistants that can accompany you on your creative journey!

One of them is Sudowrite, and in this Sudowrite review, we reveal its features, pros, cons, alternatives, and our verdict on whether it’s worth the investment.

What is Sudowrite?

Sudowrite is an AI novel writing assistant that makes the creative writing process more fun and interactive. It has many fantastic features, such as helping brainstorm ideas for characters and plot points, rewriting sections of your story in a different tone, and giving great vocabulary suggestions!

The AI program also acts as a beta reader for your stories, giving you constructive feedback and new ideas to try.

Unlike other AI writing tools, it’s more helpful in writing fiction, though you can also use it to write non-fiction. 

According to one of its founders, you can think of this AI creative writing tool as a “sparring partner who helps you edit your book, create new scenes, and generate plot ideas.”

When you get stuck on a sentence or can’t find the words to describe a story element, you can rely on Sudowrite to move your story forward.

As with other AI tools and technologies like chatbots, Speech-to-Text, and assistants like Siri, Sudowrite relies on natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to produce its output.

The implication of using NLP and machine learning is that this AI tool can develop a level of understanding of your story. So, it offers suggestions you can use in your own writing based on what it understands, as though it were your co-writer.

You can use Sudowrite as a brainstorming tool when writing novels, to produce a rough first draft, to develop story elements and character arcs, for world-building, and so on.

It can even help you with creative writing that isn’t your strong point (particularly poetry) and offer an opinion on your writing like it was a friend you gave your story to read.

Top Benefits of Sudowrite

How can Sudowrite help you? Below, we list some of the main benefits of using this AI story generator software to write stories.

• Overcome Writer’s Block: When you get stuck on ideas, you can turn to Sudowrite for ideas on how to progress your story.

• Compliment Your Writing Style: Sudowrite develops an understanding of your story as it progresses and will proffer suggestions that fit right in with your own work.

• Get AI-Provided Feedback: One of Sudowrite’s best features is that it provides feedback on your writing and suggests ways to improve it.

• Helps with Character Creation: You can use it to create characters for your story and establish the relationships between them (more below).

• Provides Succinct Summaries: Sudowrite is adept at summarizing chunks of prose.

• Finds the Words: If you can’t find the words to describe an object, Sudowrite has a tool to help with that.

• Unleashes Your Inner Poet: Don’t know how to craft poems? No problem! Sudowrite has a feature for that.

In the next section, we’ll discuss the features that provide the benefits mentioned above in more detail.

Best Features of Sudowrite

Sudowrite has many features and story tools that make writing prose with it a joy.

It has a Write feature that is fantastic for breaking past writer’s block, a Describe button that acts like a Thesaurus but for sentences; a Brainstorming tool that’s excellent for ideation, a Character generator that helps with characterization; and so much more.

Let’s discuss some of the essential ones in this section.

First Draft

The First Draft feature will take your story idea input and generate up to 1000 words – giving you a great first draft of your idea.

Expand Feature

The Expand feature used to be called the Wormhole (due to the creators’ love for sci-fi). Think of it as autocomplete for writers.

When you use this feature, Sudowrite looks at the text in your document and provides suggestions for subsequent paragraphs. Some of the tips fit so seamlessly into your prose that your readers won’t be able to tell where your sentence ends and the AI’s begins.

Of course, this feature isn’t perfect. Sometimes, it may take your story in a completely different direction than you intended. However, with trial and error, you can get Sudowrite to do your bidding.

Rewrite Tool

The Rewrite tool is excellent for improving aspects of your story. Let’s say you’re writing a horror novel and want to give a scene a more ominous tone.

When you describe the tone you want to write, Sudowrite will rewrite the passage and include foreboding vocabulary that’ll fit the tone you’ve described.

This tool compliments the Describe button. Also, it helps give your novel’s characters their own individual voice. And if you find yourself breaking the “show, don’t tell” rule often, you’ll be relying on this feature a lot.

Describe Feature

The “Describe” button has helped many writers when they’re at a loss for words. For example, if you can’t find the words to describe a boat, Sudowriter will give you some suggestions with sensory detail when you press the Describe button.

Also, Sudowriter offers metaphorical descriptions.

To use this feature, highlight a word and hit the Describe button. Sudowrite will provide paragraph-level suggestions (not just single words!) based on the five senses (sight, taste, touch, smell, and sound).

Brainstorming Feature

Have you ever wanted to create plot points but worried that you were writing yourself into a corner? The brainstorming feature will help you through such complex story problems. To use it, you need to supply Sudowrite with the problem you’re trying to create. 

For example, if your story’s protagonist gets captured and you’re trying to figure out how they’ll escape, you can give Sudowrite the scene’s context using suggestions like “through a locked window” or “a small crack in the wall.” Sudowrite will respond by generating possible outcomes, helping you move your story forward.

Then, you can give a thumbs-up to the Sudowrite suggestions you like the most, and it will train the AI to tailor future suggestions to your preferences.

Summarize Feature

The Summarize feature does what it says: it summarizes chunks of text. For example, you can feed Sudowrite a handful of chapters from your book, and it will give you back an outline for each.

Sudowrite’s developers are currently tweaking the software to make it capable of summarizing an entire book into a one-pager. In the future, literary agents and publishers may be able to use the tool to create summaries for the books in their slush piles.

BetaReader Feature

If you’d like to receive feedback on parts of your story but aren’t ready to show the prose to human readers, Sudowriter can help.

The software will generate three virtual beta readers that’ll offer helpful criticism on different aspects of a chapter. They can tell you what they liked or didn’t like about your story.

Please note that the BetaReader feature is one of Sudowriter’s experimental features, so your results with this may vary.

Character Generator

Sudowrite’s Character Generator is excellent for brainstorming new characters in a story. If you’ve fleshed out the main characters of your story but you’re coming up short on who they’ll interact with and the dynamics of their relationships, this tool will be your friend.

You use it by providing Sudowrite with descriptions of your characters, i.e., their age, physical characteristics, job, etc. Sudowrite will take the data and return suggestions for an almost limitless number of characters and the interpersonal relationships between them. 

Even if you don’t find a character you like, you can piece a unique character together by taking parts from each of Sudowrite’s suggestions.

Twist Feature

Sudowrite’s Twist feature is another incredible thing this software can do. As is suggestive of its name, you can use it to incorporate a plot twist into your story, and it lets you choose the genre of twist you need. So, if twists aren’t your strong suit, you can rely on this tool.

When you give Sudowrite a short story description and use the Twist feature, the AI will use that information to send your plot in an unexpected direction. Like the BetaReader feature, the twist feature is experimental, meaning it won’t always return a twist that makes sense.

Poetry Tool

Sudowrite isn’t just useful for writing stories. You can also use it to write poetry.

You can also use its Poetry tool in your stories. For example, you can use this tool to come up with song lyrics sung by a character in your novel. Ditto if your character is a poet and you don’t have a poetic bone in your body.

Story Bible

Sudowrite’s Story Bible is an easy way for you to add everything about the story idea you have to Sudowrite. They walk you through adding your characters, setting, genre, tone, story outline, and tons of other things so that the AI has the best idea of the story you want to create. It then uses that information to assist you in writing your novel, short story or screenplay! Here’s how it looks:

Who Should Use Sudowrite?

Sudowrite is a tool for creative writers, so novelists, screenwriters, and short story writers will get the most out of it. Published or independent authors who struggle with occasional writer’s block will also benefit.

Also, writers with sensory differences (e.g., a writer who is blind or deaf) will appreciate this tool’s Describe feature, especially how it provides vocabulary and descriptions for how things feel, smell, sound, look, and taste.

If you write short stories, Sudowrite can help you write your short story in no time at all. Different tools within the software can help accelerate this kind of writing, especially the Brainstorming and Expand features.

Also, screenwriters may find this software useful, if only for planning out the beats of their scripts. The brainstorming feature is excellent for building on rough ideas, which you can format for the screen.

Finally, literary agents and publishing companies will likely want this tool when the Sudowrite team expands the AI’s summarizing capabilities. That feature will be fantastic for anyone with many books to read and summarize for publishing and marketing purposes.

Sudowrite Plans and Pricing

Sudowrite has three plans, and the following costs are if you pay yearly:

• Hobby and Student Plan – costs $19/month (or $10 if you pay yearly) and provides 225,000 credits per month.
• Professional Plan – costs $29/month and provides a million credits each month.
• Max Plan – costs $59/month and provides 2 million credits each month – these credits even roll over for up to 12 months so you get the best use out of the program!

The number of credits you use each month will depend on the AI model you choose to use within Sudowrite. The model you choose will be based on the genre of story you want to write (some of them will write NSFW content, for example, and others won’t), and the quality of the AI.

If you need a plan with enterprise-level features, you can contact the team at hi@sudowrite.com.

Sudowrite Pros and Cons

Sudowrite has a lot going for it. Not only is it affordable, but features like its Rewrite, Describe, and Brainstorming tools and Character Generator make story writing with the software fun. 

Sudowrite’s main drawbacks are its lack of a plagiarism checker and some features that are still in the experimental stage. Considering this software is built on the Open AI GPT-3 engine means it is fed information that exists on the internet. Much of that information is subject to copyright so that a plagiarism checker would’ve been reassuring.

Luckily, Sudowrite is just one of many AI writing tools, as the section below shows.

Sudowrite Alternatives

If you’re wondering what software competes with Sudowrite, here are a couple of alternatives you can use to create works of fiction.

My Experience Using Sudowrite

Creating a new, free account using an email address was easy. After confirming my email, Sudowrite gave me a tour of the software program:

Here’s the demo story it wrote for me:

After I clicked the “write” button, Sudowrite was able to give me two different options for keeping the story going. I clicked to insert the option I liked best, and the software added it to my document.

Next, the software showed me how to use the “describe” button to generate written descriptions of items (in this case, the “jacquard bathrobe.”

Here are the options it gave me:

The descriptions it gave were (mostly) fantastic! They went in different creative directions (some were positive, and some had negative connotations) and could absolutely be used in a story.

Next, I asked the software to create a new story for me, one using this prompt:

Here’s the beginning of the story it wrote:

Next, look below to see the whole story that it created. I copied and pasted it into a Google Doc and turned on the Grammarly grammar-checking extension. You can see that it found quite a few grammar mistakes and that using Grammarly with Sudowrite would help to make the story better.

Honestly, the story was adorable and could be taken and adapted by a human writer into a fantastic short story!

Like with all AI story generators, remember that this is just a tool to assist you with the first step of the story-making process. It’s still on you to personalize the raw material into a fully-fledged story.

Who Created Sudowrite?

Amit Gupta and James Yu, a pair of developers and science-fiction writers, created Sudowrite in 2020. to help other writers who struggle with writer’s block.

The Sudowrite creators count the founders of Medium, WordPress, Twitter, Rotten Tomatoes, and Gumroad among their backers and Hollywood writers and directors of movies like Ocean’s Twelve and The Bourne Ultimatum.

The creators of Sudowrite didn’t develop it to replace the “creative process” or replace the existing writing community with artificial intelligence. Instead, they created this AI writer to help creative writers fill the gaps in their writing and enhance the knowledge they’ve already acquired when honing their craft. 

---

Final Thoughts

If you struggle with writer’s block, Sudowrite will be a fantastic writing partner to have in your corner. It has many features that help you move your story forward in a fun way.

Standouts include its Describe button, for when you can’t find the words, its Betareader feature, which provides AI feedback, and its Poetry tool. We can’t recommend it enough.

Aside from authors, creative professionals like publishers and literary agents will have much to look forward to as the Sudowrite team updates the tool.

And, its affordable price point makes it an indispensable piece of tech to add to your creative writing arsenal if you harbor aspirations to see your written word in print.

So, grab your laptop and get creative!

Common Questions (FAQs)