Sudowrite is an AI-driven writing assistant that has been gaining traction in the last year. From helping authors to bloggers to students, the software has become a popular tool for streamlining the writing process.
Here’s an overview of how it works.
The software is cloud-based. It’s a writing product that uses natural language processing (or NLP) and machine learning to enable writers to create what it promises will be “high-quality content.” It is powered by AI-driven algorithms (both GPT-3 and GPT-4, according to the founders). These algorithms can process and analyze massive amounts of text and generate suggestions for improvement and optimization.
The software is fairly intuitive and easy to use.
Once you register for an account, you simply copy and paste your text into the editor. Sudowrite will then scan your writing for readability, grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors. It will generate suggestions for improvement, such as editing for clarity, adding additional words, or deleting redundancy.
This happens by clicking one of three buttons:
- Write: creates new text from where you left off in the writing
- Describe: expands on any highlighted text from the main text editor
- Rewrite: rewords a portion of highlighted text if you’re not crazy about what you, or it, has come up with
One of the hallmark features of Sudowrite is its ability to detect the tone of your writing and suggest changes accordingly. It can detect whether the writing is formal, informal, friendly, or humorous. It can also detect the intended audience, whether it’s a professional audience or a more general one. This is especially useful if you want to make sure your writing is appropriate for its intended readership.
Sudowrite also offers a wide range of writing ancillary features to help with content creation.
It can provide ideas for topics and titles, as well as templates and outlines for brainstorming and organizing ideas. It can also suggest ways to optimize content for search engine visibility.
That said, the software itself is geared toward fiction writing. I found it didn’t listen as well to commands when trying to write a blog post, for instance. It struggled to offer the appropriate length of output and wasn’t as intuitive with how informative blog posts are supposed to be written (i.e., no illustrative points, facts, figures, etc.).
Narrative writing was certainly its specialty, so if you plan on using generative AI writing assistants to help with content creation for a website or social media channel, you’re better off going with the originator in ChatGPT.
ChatGPT could also offer equally enticing results on the fiction side, but it doesn’t do as well in cataloging and categorizing content as Sudowrite does. Also, Sudowrite offers a Canvas feature that currently has the following templates available (as of June 2023):
- The Hero’s Journey: any story with a main protagonist who goes through a transformative change over the course of a story
- Hollywood Story Beats: stories that focus on a protagonist overcoming obstacles to achieve a goal and restore balance to a chaotic situation
- Story Circle: stories that have a universal theme and follow a circular narrative structure, with a beginning, middle, and end, that are all connected
- Romance Outline: romance stories that focus on the development of a relationship between two characters as they face obstacles and challenges
Just pick one. Click generate a full outline. Or, go card-by-card and develop the story beats as you see fit, using the AI’s help whenever you think you may need it. In addition to these options, the Story Engine promises to let you create “4,000-word chapters with a single click.”
It’s not entirely that simple, but it’s not a lie either. That is, you have to seed it with a lot of information to get that long of output without the software getting a little wonky somewhere along the way.
Admittedly, I have not had a chance to work with the Story Engine as much as I would like, but I have given the Sudowrite program a directive to create a 1,500-word story, while only ending up with 843 words. Grant it, the words were solid and didn’t need many touch-ups, but that’s barely half of what I asked.
Additionally, Sudowrite can create well-realized and editable characters in a single click. It can also create avatars to help you “see” your characters throughout the writing process.
Sudowrite is affordable and supportive.
Yes, it’s annoying that you have to choose how many words per month you plan on writing. But after doing a bit of a deep dive into how ChatGPT charges for its API, it’s understandable. That said, the $29 per month, the 90,000-word option did not seem unreasonable. A cheaper option is the 30,000-word, $ 19-per-month plan. If you choose to purchase a year up-front, you can get a deeper discount of $20/$10 per month, respectively. Again, these are prices as of June 2023 and are subject to change.
Of course, everyone can try Sudowrite for free, but the limit is just 4,000 words, and you can blow through that in a hurry. Too quickly, in fact, to get a full sense of the value it can bring.
And when it comes to bringing value, the software isn’t the endpoint. The Slack channel is easy to get started with, and it’s filled with helpful tips and tricks that can take you from beginner to expert in a relatively short time. (By “expert,” I mean with using the software, not necessarily expert writer. That’s still up to whatever you’re willing to put into it.)
Sudowrite is a yes … for now.
Overall, I’m excited about using Sudowrite, at least for the month ahead. Click this link if you’d like to use it, too, but please be mindful that it’s an affiliate link so I will get some kickback from it if you do.
I’m happy to recommend it because it excited me about writing again. I can’t say for sure that I’ll hang with it. (Check back with me in 30 days.) But the pricing isn’t unreasonable.
To give you some perspective here, I was a Jasper customer for over a year, paying the since-reduced sum of $59 per month. At the time, I felt like I was getting a deal. Then I realized that ChatGPT’s $20 per month price-point offered more access to GPT-4 and much better outputs.
Comparatively, Sudowrite’s price point is low enough to give the platform a try in addition to ChatGPT. It adds enough value with the Story Engine and Templates alone to set it apart as more than just a derivative of the API on which it’s built.