sudowrite

Final Thoughts on Sudowrite

This will be the final post on incorporating Sudowrite into my writing. I’m not going to stop using it, but I do think I’ve gone in-depth enough to give folks an idea of what it’s like to start using a tool like this. I’ve also come to some final conclusions about how I’m getting use it that I don’t think will change. I went back to dictating/my process. While the first four chapters leaned very, very heavily on Sudowrite, as I got further into the book the harder it became. Starting an e-book comes with a certain amount of freedom, especially if the books are character-driven. For me, the specifics of the scenes were far less important than what those scenes showed regarding where the characters were in their journey with one another. So, I had more flexibility at the start of the book than I had in the middle. By chapter 6, I was no longer using Sudowrite to spin up scenes and had gone back to my original process outlined elsewhere in this blog For creation. The more I gave it, the better it was. Despite being pretty attached to expand, I learned to develop an appreciation for wormhole. The expand option in the software has very little to work with as far as my own voice whereas wormhole seems much better at attempting to mimic my voice as a writer. Description, too, seemed to work better the more text it had. Sudowrite was most useful for me when editing I tend to tell stories through dialogue—my books come in at around 60% dialog on average. I’ve made a conscious effort over the past several years to go back and flesh out descriptions, and my readers have seemed to really enjoy that. This is where Sudowrite is indispensable for me—I rarely use its description word for word, but it gives me descriptor ideas that make it well worth the money. I think there are places it can go. There are some things I wish Sudowrite had, and I’m sure the developers might add them in the future (or another tool more specialized to world-building or grammar might come along utilizing GPT-3). That includes character generation, plot beat generation, mystery seed generation, rephrasing suggestions (like a sentence or paragraph thesaurus), and intelligent descriptor expansions. I know some authors with far more technical know-how than I are already creating their own tools for their own specific needs. I’m just, unfortunately, not that smart. 🙂 Don’t get me wrong. I think Sudowrite is a complete tool with a robust focus, and I definitely recommend it. But having played around with this tool for more than a month, I feel like I just scratched the surface of what it could do and how it could improve my writing. I will keep using it. Just not for generation, I think. Editing, adding, adjusting my writing, yes. Generating? Maybe not quite yet.

More Final Thoughts on Sudowrite & Other AI Tools – an update

Okay, I lied. The last post wasn’t the final post. It’s been a few months since I delved into AI, and I’ve branched out from just using Sudowrite into trying some other tools, so I thought I’d give an update. Sudowrite I still use it, but not nearly as much as I used to. It’s much more useful at the beginning of a book than in the muddy middle or ending, but it’s also really dedicated to what it knows—and I sense it didn’t read a whole lot of funny books. Describe tends to produce sentences and descriptions that are more flowery, metaphoric, and serious. Since my writing tends toward concise (I aim for easy reading) and funny, quippy, and so on, it produces things that don’t fit with how I write more than I’d like it to. I also don’t tend to get writer’s block—sorry—so it’s not as useful to me. I do still subscribe to it and will continue to keep it around, but other tools have moved into the “it girl” position. I’d love to see checkboxes that give the AI direction – simple, descriptive, non-descriptive, dialog, first-person, past-tense, and so on. I know Sudowrite is still in Beta, and I know there are text directives I could give it that would probably produce better suggestions—but honestly, I’m not that patient. I don’t want to learn a new tool’s language. I just want it to do what I want it to do simply, easily, and without a whole lot of curve on my part. I think for some styles of writing, though, this would work great. Quillbot Quillbot is probably my current it girl. I have Quillbot Premium, though I barely use it at the length allowed. Quillbot is a paraphrasing tool that utilizes machine learning and ai to rewrite the text. It has multiple modes, but the one I use the most is Fluency. Fluency mode is used to fix grammatical mistakes and punctuation and doesn’t modify the meaning of what you give it much at all—I gotta tell ya, this thing is top-notch at whacking out passive sentences. Yes, Grammarly does that and I do have Grammarly Pro. But I find Quillbot’s sentences have a much better flow than anything “corrected” by Grammarly. Its phrase and word thesaurus options are great. The tool itself is very easy to work with. You can edit what it gives you in the app, click a button to copy the whole thing or individual sentences, and it shows you which parts have thesaurus-like options. The learning curve is almost non-existent. Cons? Dialog can confuse the hell out of it. This has helped me get the first rough draft down fast because I don’t have to stop and find a way to say something in a new way every time. My character can look up ten times in a chapter and I can edit/change it later with Quillbot super fast to say that ten different ways. Copy.ai and Jarvis.ai So, …

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Deciding to try Sudowrite

When I write, I utilize two monitors. One is maximized with Scrivener, and the other monitor is my reference monitor. I keep a Calibre library open with writing reference books at the ready like the fabulous ones from https://writershelpingwriters.net/. I also have a copy of DocFetcher Pro that’s indexed the text of a few thousand books I’ve read over the years (thank you, Gutenberg Library & my husband, who never complained how much of our budget went to books) so I can quickly look at examples of how other writers turned a phrase I am stuck on. I’ve just always made copious use of reference materials to try and negate my own ticks, get me unstuck, and polish up my story. Recently, I read The Computers Are Getting Better at Writing by Stephen Marche in the New Yorker, and practically salivated. I wanted that tool. Oh, man, I wanted it—so I applied for the beta and heard…nothing. So I followed the developers and tweeted and heard…nothing. One developer asked for first lines to get AI-created poems, I tossed one out on Twitter and got my poem…but no beta invite. I kid you not. I was a bit miffed. Yeah, okay, I have only a few hundred Twitter followers, but I’m a full-time book writer! Sure, I’m pushing fifty and way out of the “cool LA writer” comfort zone the devs seem to be in, and, sure, cozies aren’t cutting-edge literary masterpieces, but…but… come on!  I was on the verge of writing a heartfelt letter explaining why I would make a GREAT beta tester: Originally, I was in tech, so I’m old, but I’m a little techie. A little. I used to have developers report to me, and they didn’t burn me in effigy because I was a jerk. I know agile is a process and not just a noun. I’ve even used Jira! Did I mention developers from my old job actually still speak to me? No? But on the day I was to write the letter begging, Wordloops hosted a presentation, and everyone who attended would get beta access. Finally. I was in. I’m writing this the day after I got in when my enthusiasm is still high. There’s been very, very little written about authors using this technology—whether that’s because no one is, or no one is willing to admit it? I have no idea. Frankly, I’m not that precious about my own writing that I’m embarrassed to share credit with Skynet. I’m perfectly willing to admit that while the story itself is mine, I utilize whatever legitimate, ethical tools I can to goose productivity, get unstuck, and to move forward. One book every two months is not the easiest thing in the world. So, I’ll be documenting the process on Twitter/posting observations. First, because I barely use my Twitter for anything. Second, because I suspect a lot of people may not want to openly talk about it and someone besides the developer should. Finally, because I’m curious to see …

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