Novel Crafter - A novel from start to finish - Part 6 - Writing Chapters 1 through 6

This video shows bringing it all together as GPT 4 Turbo writes chapters 1 through 6, completing the first act of the small town second chance contemporary romance novel.
In this series we are starting from having no idea what we'd like to write to having a completed first draft, all by using Novel Crafter and GPT 4 Turbo. Follow along for tips and tricks in this easy to follow beginner friendly guide to Novel Crafter, GPT 4 Turbo, Open Router, and getting started with writing with AI.

[@sverrearnes7769]

Thank you for really showing, with tons of text, instead of just telling (babbling). You are the Winner, giving me the courage to try myself.

[@sunnybnny]

Thank you! I learned a lot.

[@Ton369]

1:25 - I think there's some confusion in this video about "NovelCrafter Scenes" versus "NovelCrafter Scene Beats" A Scene has a brief synopsis of the events that take place in the scene. A Scene is made up of many Scene Beats. The Scene Beat text is what the AI is looking for. The AI is looking for direction about what to write at that part of the scene.

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

great tips thanks

[@MRomanow]

Wow. I started your romance novel videos, and I love your ease and way of speaking. Are you available for coaching and answering novel questions?

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

Thank you. Feel free to ask anything in the comments and I’ll answer the best I can.

[@VladthePainter]

So, some varied questions if I may. If anything, just for clarification. 1. Does NC pull from and refer only from the Codex to write? I ask to see if it as well referenced the 'Chat' section as it is a bit messy with asking dozens of repetitive questions to the the story right which would confuse things. 2. With that said, I can place more ideas of how I want the story to proceed, including the outline and story ideas (each separated in 'Other' in the Codex) as well, chapters from my own story that I have already written - so it can refer to them? 3. For some reason, NC after a few attempts has jumbled the order (using Murphy's 24) of my story idea, which actually isn't bad, but not the order I wanted. So, again, as long as it doesn't pull any info from Chat, that should be okay, because I can rearrange better in the 'Plan' section - as that is where it will refer from, and not the chat? But what I am asking is as well, how long and extensive can the info placed there, under 'Plan - Scene - Add synopsis' so it doesn't go off topic. 4. I don't want the AI to veer off to far from my idea, my words, etc... so in the 'Write' session (off to the right hand side), is that a place to put more info to guide the AI, or just in the 'Scene Beat' section in the 'Write' section before we hit enter Prose - or should we just keep it as simple as you have it, or can we make it as extensive as want - or should we let it refer only to the Codex? 5. With that - which selection again is more for NSFW, as ChatGPT Turbo (and Claude I believe) won't write what it thinks is too disturbing in imagery. It's a horror story, and my character is an anthropologist who is holding a skull in a scene, and in my own ChatGpt 4.0 acct, it said it couldn't write it as it went against policy. So I had to inform ChatGpt that it was natural for anthropologists to dig up, etc etc... And really, that's all it was, an anthropologist digging up bones and holding a skull. 6. Finally (Sorry!) Once I try Chat Turbo or say Claude to write the chapter, can I also retry in those other methods to compare, or see if it does a better job? I know, silly question, as I think it will, but will it override one over the other or will it just Write below the other created chapter. Just checking. Thank you for your tuts and your help! Forever grateful. You REALLY spent a lot of time and care and I am very appreciative!

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

So, some varied questions if I may. If anything, just for clarification. 1. Does NC pull from and refer only from the Codex to write? I ask to see if it as well referenced the 'Chat' section as it is a bit messy with asking dozens of repetitive questions to the the story right which would confuse things. A: It will use the codex as well as creating things. You need extra people in town? It'll add them in. It may reference the chat section, it may not. I haven't tested that because everytime the chat section does something I don't like I delete that chat. 2. With that said, I can place more ideas of how I want the story to proceed, including the outline and story ideas (each separated in 'Other' in the Codex) as well, chapters from my own story that I have already written - so it can refer to them? A: I don't use the codex for that. For previous chapters I put them in the book and if it's an idea for the next chapter I use the plan. I'm not saying it won't work, just that I don't use it for that and have never tested it. 3. For some reason, NC after a few attempts has jumbled the order (using Murphy's 24) of my story idea, which actually isn't bad, but not the order I wanted. So, again, as long as it doesn't pull any info from Chat, that should be okay, because I can rearrange better in the 'Plan' section - as that is where it will refer from, and not the chat? But what I am asking is as well, how long and extensive can the info placed there, under 'Plan - Scene - Add synopsis' so it doesn't go off topic. A. Unknown since I don't keep anything in chat that I don't want to use. 4. I don't want the AI to veer off to far from my idea, my words, etc... so in the 'Write' session (off to the right hand side), is that a place to put more info to guide the AI, or just in the 'Scene Beat' section in the 'Write' section before we hit enter Prose - or should we just keep it as simple as you have it, or can we make it as extensive as want - or should we let it refer only to the Codex? A. You can go more extensive and if you have a plan I would put it in the outline. If you want to use the write scene feature you can. I don't like using it, I use the plan more for ideas and guidelines. This makes more sense in my latest video where I did a 30k in 90 minutes in NovelCrafter. 5. With that - which selection again is more for NSFW, as ChatGPT Turbo (and Claude I believe) won't write what it thinks is too disturbing in imagery. It's a horror story, and my character is an anthropologist who is holding a skull in a scene, and in my own ChatGpt 4.0 acct, it said it couldn't write it as it went against policy. So I had to inform ChatGpt that it was natural for anthropologists to dig up, etc etc... And really, that's all it was, an anthropologist digging up bones and holding a skull. A. Mistral would write it, or Toppy, but you can also write it and have it expand what you're writing, most will do that without issue. The 30k in 90 minutes shows that process. 6. Finally (Sorry!) Once I try Chat Turbo or say Claude to write the chapter, can I also retry in those other methods to compare, or see if it does a better job? I know, silly question, as I think it will, but will it override one over the other or will it just Write below the other created chapter. Just checking. Thank you for your tuts and your help! Forever grateful. You REALLY spent a lot of time and care and I am very appreciative! A. You can, you can have it rewrite, but it will erase what you had. So if you want multiple versions you'll make multiple versions of the same story in Novel Crafter.

[@VladthePainter]

@@WritingWithAIMadeEasy You're just full of awesome! Thank you for your timely reply!! I must go check out your new 30k in 90 min now!

[@lindsaydavid-nf3fj]

Thanks for sharing this! I have been writing my own stuff for a while so I am really just looking for help with organizing and outlining. I followed what you did exactly just to see what would happen and my book ended up being over 200k words! Whoa! How can I instruct it not to be so long? I did the 3 acts - 18 chapters and each chapter had 10-14 scenes -- each super long!! I finished it out but it is way too long. Also, if I start with one AI (say Chat GPT Turbo), can you switch around in the same book, or will the tone and writing appear too different? For this exercise I stuck with the same one throughout. Thanks, again!! This is really great!

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

For less scene beats you can definitely combine them so instead of something like he walked into the room and saw her sitting there and smiled at her and went to go talk to her being one and then them leaving together to go pick up their kid from school being another you can have it be one cohesive beat. I do this in my other novel crafter series with the bodyguard romance. The second chance romance was about maximizing the word count to be able to edit it all down later, bodyguard is about ending up with a more polished first draft while still having the ai write all of it. And you can absolutely switch around the ai. I go between turbo, Claude, and mistral medium regularly.

[@lindsaydavid-nf3fj]

@@WritingWithAIMadeEasy also, while I have you - mine cost around $20, verses cents here and there. Not a huge amount, but what did I do wrong to have it cost so much? I started with Turbo and felt like the voice would change if I switched - is that why? Is Chat GPT Turbo more?

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

@@lindsaydavid-nf3fj turbo and Claude are two of the most expensive ones. The voice will change a bit but if you’re editing thoroughly anyway mistral medium is cheaper. Turbo should be about 10 cents usd per response max.

[@jamesyoke3501]

I use ai as generation then edit afterwards even though most of the time for the most part I’m ok with the first draft as being my final.

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

That's really great. Thank you for being here.

[@CoriPadgett-Bukowski]

So, I'm a little confused, can you help clarify? In a scene, I have multiple beats. But it looks as though you're making every beat a scene within planning? What if I want to just put all the scene beats into one scene card, and only show a summary of the scene? Is there a way to do that? I don't want every single beat as a scene when I'm looking at the planning part. Also, having the AI craft the prose for as many beats as I have definitely gets tedious. Hallpss! lol

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

Thank you for asking. In this series of videos I did make every beat a new scene which results in a lot of extra words that you can then cut during editing. The bodyguard romance which is also in novel crafter may follow a style similar to what you're looking for. kzbin.info/www/bejne/jnaloaCFZs-FiLM

[@CoriPadgett-Bukowski]

@@WritingWithAIMadeEasy Awesome, thanks so much.

[@ChristieAdamsWriter]

Great video thanks - is there a quick one click type 'split chapter' type option to break it down or can you tell it at start to have sort chapters?

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

If you’d like shorter chapters combining scene beats would be the easiest way. So instead of having 10 maybe you’d only need 5.

[@christofheimhilcher1619]

Hi Erica, thank you for the video series. I am ne to the AI Writing stuff but I have concerns, if your process really is a good guideline for beginners. First of all I don't see the benefit watching you doing the same step over and over again, basically if it is just copy/paste or pressing the same buttons over and over again. You add some useful tipps among some of those iterations so we can't just skip all the repetitions without loosing on valuable content. As for the writing: wouldn't it be better to edit each chapter before having AI writing the next chapter? Just to catch the AI and get it back on track in case it goes rogue?

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

I did start a novel crafter series of shorts for just the quick info for this very reason because if you just want the quick how to then you shouldn’t need to watch me copy paste. And if you see the ai go rogue you can definitely cut what you don’t like and prompt again from there.

[@SuperFirebird3000]

It would be best to read through it all and rewrite it in your own words. Best to be ai assisted instead of Ai generated as an author.

[@shawn4990]

As a discovery writer, I could never let AI write MY stories... For me, I use it as if it were my personal professional editor. Its good for research too.

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

That’s absolutely fine. However Ai works for you in your process is great.

[@shawn4990]

Indeed. Your videos demonstrate its versatility. Thanks for making them. @@WritingWithAIMadeEasy

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

@@shawn4990 thank you for watching!

[@SuperFirebird3000]

Yes use as an assistant not as a generator

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

@@SuperFirebird3000 that’s perfectly fine, whatever works for you, in this channel I primarily show generation but I also show how it can assist as well.

[@JoyCollado]

Do you have to have the paid version of chatGPT and pay for open router to do this?

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

Any AI subscription that you have won't work with Novel Crafter. So you would subscribe to Novel Crafter and do pay as you go in Open Router for this.

[@fuzexi]

So, there’s no “do your stuff’ button, where you can just press it and come back in a few hours and it’s all done?

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

No, ai is definitely not there yet

[@fuzexi]

@@WritingWithAIMadeEasy It's not even AI that would do that, since it's within the NovelCrafter system, it's simply like a macro command on Word: "populate all fields" - it would just transfer the text from one place to another. Since it's the part that takes the longest, (all that copy-posting you did, which is so monotonous) it won't be long before they streamline it all and we will look back, saying, "back in the day, we had to do all that manually"

[@fuzexi]

@@WritingWithAIMadeEasy I just noticed, when you are in the chat window, there is a button at the bottom left called "Context". If you click on it there is an option to "open scene in manuscript". I don't know what this is, but maybe it could be for doing that?

[@fuzexi]

@@WritingWithAIMadeEasy Sorry to spam you but I have some good news! You get the chat to write a whole load of things for the codex, then you can save it as a snippet. Then you can press "extract" at te bottom and it turns it all into beats. I generated 14 beats in under a second! I actually didn't want beats, I wanted codex entries, but I might be able to do that too... just playing with it, only been using Novelcrafter for 2 days, so..... anyway, hope that will be useful for you!!!

[@fuzexi]

Sorry, yes it does Codex too!

[@felix200601]

Hi, I am new to this whole process, but it is my understanding that if you edit chapters on the fly, such as editing chapter one before generating chapter two, the subsequent prose will be more in "your voice" and theoretically require less editing. Is this a correct assumption?

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

That really depends on the AI that you use. Some pick up voice better than others and some you can simply prompt to be more in your style (less flowery language, shorter sentences for example). You can also feed it a section of your own writing in chat, try asking it to describe your style, and then use what it provides so that you give it the information back in a way that makes sense to it. Some AIs handle that request better than others, but if you ask for feedback from multiple AIs then you'll get a more rounded response.

[@felix200601]

Thank you for prompt reply! Do you have an AI suggestion for more adult material, namely sex scenes? @@WritingWithAIMadeEasy

[@felix200601]

Also, can you "tell" the AI to keep a chapter a certain length, or does that fall on your own shoulders during editing process?@@WritingWithAIMadeEasy

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

@@felix200601 the AIs aren't great at counting. They'll do 18 chapters in an outline, usually, but if you ask it to do something like don't go over 3,500 words in each chapter, it doesn't understand that. You also won't get 3,500 words in one output and it won't know that it did 800 words on the last and 650 on this one. So it'll be up to you to either choose sections to expand or, if it's too long, feed it back into the AI to make it shorter.

[@BonnieDragonKat]

​@@felix200601 if you check the box on NC when picking your AI, it will give you a list of those that' handle not safe for work

[@michyan82]

Was that a software bug in your video where NovelCrafter wasn't grabbing the scene beats? I was able to generate the prose without having to copy and paste the beat from the right column.

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

I’ve always copy pasted, when you do it, does it do exactly as it’s supposed to?

[@michyan82]

@@WritingWithAIMadeEasy yes, I left the box completely empty and just clicked on the model from the LLM list. The prose seemed to correspond.

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

@@michyan82 nice. I’ll keep playing with it. Thank you

[@michyan82]

To follow up, most of the videos I've seen have the user writing in the Scene Beat box, usually with more fleshed out detail. So I'm still wondering if the AI is using the Scene Summary in the Plan section as part of the AI context, or if it is more just for the user to keep track of where they are in the book. @@WritingWithAIMadeEasy

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

@@michyan82 I started a new book on nc so I’ll definitely be trying it out and playing with the different features more

[@loriwilde3977]

The writing is so bad, you'll be throwing way 90% of it.

[@WritingWithAIMadeEasy]

Based on your comments this process may not work for you but it may still be beneficial to others.