Welcome to novelcrafter; the all-in-one writing interface! This article is for those who prefer to write in a "pantsing" or discovery style, i.e. you do not plot in advance. Whether you start from sentence one and write until you've finished, or write out of order and stitch the book together, you can do both with novelcrafter.
Please ensure you have followed the connecting to the AI section if you wish to use AI with your novel.
Getting Started
Step 1: Create a new book
If you don't know what you want to call it, put in a placeholder. A placeholder graphic is added by default.
Step 2: Codex
If you have any details you know about the story (characters, places, lore), you can add these into the codex. These don't have to be detailed, but can help you refine your novel.
Step 3: Write interface
Go to the write interface and select add initial scene.
You can subsequently add in any synopses or notes.
Step 4. Begin your Novel
If you are not using AI assistance, then simply begin writing.
If you wish to use AI assistance, then type in a forwards slash (/) and select the scene beat option. Type in your initial idea for the opening of your book, click generate prose, and select your model.
Step 5. Repeat
And that's it! As you go on, you can add characters to your codex, rearrange your plan, add more chapters. But all you really need to begin is the write interface, and your idea.
Happy Writing!
Bonus Tips
Scene Summarization
After finishing every scene, you can click on the scene action menu to the right of the write interface, and use AI to summarize the scene. This will help you keep track of your story (for those who don't use AI when generating prose). For those who write with AI, this will be even more important as it will remind the AI of what has happened in past scenes to aid in continuity.
Building your Codex
Once you have started writing, then you will need to fill your codex, the ultimate repository of all things related to your novel. There are two easy ways to quickly add entries to the codex using AI.
Detect Characters/Locations
In the scene action menu select 'detect characters'. Currently this is only available for GPT models.
As you can see, the characters and locations detected, should they share a name with a codex entry already made, automatically link. You can also chose to create a new entry, or select the entry manually to merge. If you don' want to use one of the options, simply delete it.Chat and Extract.
With Haiku by Anthropic, you can also use the context feature in chat to extract names, locations, lore, etc. This is great if you've already written a huge chunk of your story, and Haiku is a good balance between cost and ability.
Please give me a list of all the characters in this scene. Please also include any physical details or personality traits that you infer from reading this scene. Format in the following wayName: Details
You can then use the extract feature with the resultant answer:
You can then choose to accept or decline the proposed codex entries, or edit them yourself.