Like a million other people, I’m trying to write a novel—a character-driven thriller. We’ll see how far I get. Admittedly, I use ChatGPT here and there, but I try to use it lightly. it’s a time-saver for small changes and touch-ups.

However, ChatGPT is too general-purpose for writers and often resorts to “corporate-speak,” even after you scold it. This led me to try Sudowrite, which is built on language models like GPT but devoted to and designed for aspiring authors.

Sudowrite blends AI with structured writing tools and an interface similar to Scrivener. It understands different forms of writing—from short stories to full-length novels—and supports a handful of genres.

I didn’t click the “buy” button (which I’ll explain in a moment), but I was impressed nonetheless.

Sudowrite offers more of a guided process. It asks you to brainstorm, write a synopsis, and describe the tone, characters, and setting. These elements form the story “bible.” Once you’ve completed it, you can modify or even generate your prose.

Aside from the AI features, Sudowrite helps authors organize their story elements. Again, I’d compare it to an early version of Scrivener from a small British company called Literature and Latte, a loyal ally of authors and screenwriters. Like Literature and Latte, Sudowrite also sponsors and promotes workshops and resources to help writers improve their craft.

Unfortunately, much like ChatGPT, Sudowrite’s quality suffers the further it strays from your original text. However, its starting point, compared to ChatGPT, is definitely closer to something you might download on your Kindle.

As I previously blogged about, complex tasks aren’t GPT’s strong suit. It works best in simple increments. Sudowrite is built with this in mind, offering small, digestible “cards” of suggestions or edits rather than attempting to tackle an entire project at once.

And yet, this “all-at-once” approach seems to be a popular way of using Sudowrite. In Sudowrite’s Discord community, users seem almost proud to generate complete chapters rather than modify their own work.

This seems ideal for Sudowrite’s business model, as it likely encourages high usage and premium subscriptions.

Generating text, rather than modifying your own, results in the low-grade trash novel you’d expect—readable but boring. Compared to a good book, it’s pure cardboard.

For better or worse (let’s agree it’s worse), the supply side of the book market is going to be flooded with mediocre writing. It’s a big stretch to say that AI will bring Armageddon, but it certainly won’t help separate signal from noise (artistically speaking).

But yes, I do see the allure. Few people ever reach the point of completing a book, and there’s satisfaction in bringing an idea to life, even with shortcuts and cardboard.

If you use the tool’s cards and modify rather than generate, it is pretty helpful. But not helpful enough for me to join as a customer. I already pay for ChatGPT, and while it’s a pain to wrestle with, it can fix my grammar and smooth rough edges just fine.

This exercise has layers, though, as AI is a big piece of my (early) novel’s storyline. Compared to the apocalyptic scenarios in my head, flooding the market with poorly crafted writing, music, and video for profit is a relatively harmless outcome. Still, I’ve got mixed feelings about the slop this new tech sector is encouraging.