I took a screenshot with my phone and uploaded it to ChatGPT and asked it to take a look at the picture and transcribe it for easy copy pasting. Here is the transcribed text from the screenshot: You are an expert at crafting well-rounded, dynamic characters. We’re going to create a character profile for the [protagonist/antagonist/mentor/etc.] of my [GENRE] book. The finished profile should be 1500 words long. Here is what I know so far about the character. [INSERT YOUR KNOWN DETAILS HERE] With that information in mind, build a character profile that includes highly detailed information on the following: Basic Details: Name, Age, Place of Birth, Current Residence, Nationality, Education Level, Occupation, Income Level, Marital Status. Physical Attributes: Height, Weight, Build, Skin Color, Eye Color, Hair Color, Face Shape, Distinguishing marks like tattoos/scars/birthmarks/etc., Any Physical Ailments or Disfigurements.
Love this channel. Lot's of great information. I've been using this character prompt. Created 22 individual characters so far. I do a fair bit of editing. But it does save a load of time.
Novelcrafter's chat function is amazing. It is hard to exaggerate how user-friendly it is and how much possibility it has for exploring your world and your plot.
Cool. Getting a start at writing and I'm enjoying the videos you've put together explaining the tools and how they can be used. It may be that these tools will rescue me from the typical, 'stare at your keyboard until you start bleeding from your forehead.'
I took a picture and asked ChatGPT to transcribe and here’s the prompt: Here is the transcribed text from the screenshot: You are an expert at crafting well-rounded, dynamic characters. We’re going to create a character profile for the [protagonist/antagonist/mentor/etc.] of my [GENRE] book. The finished profile should be 1500 words long. Here is what I know so far about the character. [INSERT YOUR KNOWN DETAILS HERE] With that information in mind, build a character profile that includes highly detailed information on the following: Basic Details: Name, Age, Place of Birth, Current Residence, Nationality, Education Level, Occupation, Income Level, Marital Status. Physical Attributes: Height, Weight, Build, Skin Color, Eye Color, Hair Color, Face Shape, Distinguishing marks like tattoos/scars/birthmarks/etc., Any Physical Ailments or Disfigurements.
@@MistaD78 Here's the rest (picks up right after "Disfigurements": Clothing and Style: What do they typically wear? (at work, out on the town, at home, asleep, etc.) Do they wear accessories of any kind? Are there any objects or pets that they keep close? What is their level of grooming? (disheveled, neat, wearing makeup, etc.) Communication and Mannerisms: Are they from a foreign land? What is their posture? (stiff, slouching, casual, relaxed, exhausted, etc.) Do they have a specific gesture that they overuse? (hand-talking, controlled, agitated) Do they make eye contact with the people they talk to? What curse word do they use the most? Do they curse? Do they have a catch phrase? Do they have speech impediments? Are there any "ticks" in the way they talk/move? What does their laugh sound like? (loud and booming, snickering, high squeak) What is their handwriting like? How do they walk? (confident, lazy, fast, distracted, etc.) What is their smile like? (warm, false, nervous, etc.) Do they wear their emotions on their sleeve or keep them hidden? What is their resting default facial expression? Psychological Profile: Are they introverted or extroverted? What is happiness to them? Do they have a favorite place, food, movie, etc.? Why? How do they feel about love? Being in a relationship? Are they a leader or a follower? What gets them excited? Do they have a favorite quote? What makes them angry? What are their morals? What would they do with unlimited money? Time? What is their love language? What is their Myers-Briggs type? What is their Enneagram type? What are their top 5 Clifton Strengths. Do they have any mental disabilities? Motivation and Fears: What do they want most in the world at the start of the story? What do they actually need most in the world? What is their biggest fear? What are the most proud of? Family: Does your character have a family? How big is their family? Have any of them died? If so, how did this affect your central character? What is your character's current relationship with their parents? Siblings? What are some defining moments between your character and their family members? Lifestyle: Do they enjoy their job? Do they have any other hobbies or interests? What are they competent at? Are they used to living frugally or do they enjoy a lavish lifestyle? What are their opinions towards money? History: Where were they raised? Do they still live there? Why? What are their happiest/saddest/earliest memories? What were they like as a child? What are some of the biggest defining moments of their life? How did they get to where they are today? What is their biggest regret? Has your character experienced any trauma?
“Drive the dialog and decisions based on the psychology(background+physical attractiveness+myers briggs type+enneagram+top 5 Clifton strengths+urgent need+relationships with other characters) of each character in the scene.”
In Sudowrite, I create another field, say important description. I then can put the whole description for the character into that field. It saves time.
Thanks for all your amazing content, I am binging your channel for quite a while now. One question, which might fit here: are there any possibilities to set up the relations between the charaters in Novelcrafter? I understand the AI like brief characterizations like up to 300 words for a main character. However, that is by far not enough to define the relations between all the characters / parties in any novel. Any tips on this? Thanks again! :)
I was wondering if ChatGPT (unpaid) is getting better a writing prose. Unless I've created a great prompt (some from you, some from others and the ChatGPT Prompt Engineering helps, the output is not as overly flowery and verbose as before but almost with little editing. Has the free version of ChatGPT been upgraded lately?
I think (not entirely sure, though) that in Sudowrite when you click on Generate Character, a text field appears so you can paste your description there and it will place the info appropriately in each of the boxes. Correct me if I'm wrong 😅 (edited for clarity)
Thank you. I’ve found one of the problems with mannerisms is they keep getting repeated. Stacy would be giggling every other paragraph. Maybe there’s a way of describing a personality that has that and similar mannerisms without being specific. I’ve also found that examples of speech works well. For some reason, I always get blue eyes…
I’ve been playing with your prompt for the past couple of days I have noticed a couple of problems. First off, really helpful when you introduce a prompt in your videos to place it in the description of said to you even though you may have it up somewhere else or plan on including it commanded out later. This is like how many cooking channels may still include the recipe in the description or a link to the recipe even though it’s included into one of their cookbooks. I had to take a screenshot of the pump from the video and get AI to transcribe it so I can play with it. Note that prompt said the issue that I found with the prompts, even though may be great for most fiction but if you’re doing something like superhero or fancy with power and ability are necessarily it might be a good idea to include that additional information you will know may not be part of the main problem this is especially helpful in the seminary prompt.
Jason, your videos are always so helpful! You should have so many more subscribers and likes! Thank you for the time you spend sharing this information with us.
Hey, Jason, I really love your site and your videos have helped me tremendously. I have a question, though. How much information is too much? I'm working on a Historical Fiction book and I have everything filled out that I can think of. When I go to do the beats, however, it tells me that it's pulling so much information out of the Codex that the ai can get overwhelmed. I'm using Novelcrafter, by the way, because I like it a lot better than Sudowrite for most things though I love Sudowrite's character generator better. Anyway, thanks and keep the good info coming.
I do this sometimes with background characters that i don't give much presence in the book, but it doesn't work very well for more main characters since AI loves to give the same answer for so many things. If left to it's devices all your characters will have brown hair and hazel eyes and a habit of tapping their fingers when they think.
Really cool workflow, thanks for sharing. Yeah, I certainly would edit that profile as she's a very chatty "a.i." girl for an introvert. Anything more than a few sentences seems unrealistic for an interview with a stranger. I'd expect to have to ask more specific follow up questions to get all of that out of them. Speaking as an introvert, it would need a lack confidence and sound more reserved and guarded until we are relaxed and feel safe with you, then can be more comfortable or excited to say all that. So adding more info on how they behave around different types of people for a fear of ridicule and judgement would help with realism. But if other introverts disagree, then that would further illustrate how complex things can get and the importance of editing their background to shape the personality.
@@Justise It's about character, personality. Show don't tell her insecurities. Making it sound different to any generic upbeat neuro-typical person. I thought those were important.
A whole different approach to what I took, but easier. Instead I opted to making it a full blown application that connects to different api's, or run locally with ollama, generates an image of the character and so on. Wondering if I should drop it as an app, like it is now when ready, or limit some functionality (specifically the local generation) and turn it to a website instead.
If I understand correctly, Novelcrafter uses API calls to AI which are pay as you go, whereas I can do pretty much the same thing via Claude Projects which is a fixed fee per month. I don't see why I would use Novelcrafter instead of just building my own "novel project" in Claude?
@@MusicProducer808 Because that did not exist back then. Also because the amount of usage you need from it might total to less than 20$ per month. Why pay 20 when you can pay 2 and get like 20 chars out of it?
Hello from South Africa and thanks for your great videos! I have set-up Novelcrater to write what I hope to be my only novel. It is a 'light fantasy' intergenerational story with about 8 modern-day characters that plays off in a week, but it has an extensive backstory hence many family secrets are revealed throughout the week. In drafting the backstory I created a timeline in Excel that works for me. I want to know where in Novelcrafter I can record the backstory.
@@TheNerdyNovelist I've tried numerous times to find any of the prompts, and as such have subscribed like 10 times. I still can't figure out where it is.
@@TheNerdyNovelist So do you have any suggestion for stuff like connections with other characters, character development, way of speaking, motives etc? Maybe it can be putted in different area of codex or novelcrafter?
@@TheNerdyNovelist I have been subscribed to your site's newsletter for awhile now and I have not seen this prompt or many others you claim are available on your site or in the few emails I have received
Can we just talk about the incredible corniness of "soft musical giggles" or possibly the fact that every female protagonist generated by an AI is a fidgety, anxious, nervous wreck with timid mannerisms , Sometimes even if you explicitly tell the AI not to do that.
I have a suspicion that most LLMs were trained on a mountain of decades worth of amateur fan fiction because a lot of AI-isms (heart pounding in chest, furrowed brow) look like what you find in fan fiction
I have not found that to be true. My prompt has created strong female characters. My college character is an activist and my adult female character, a Dr. is more of a cross between NUrse Jackie and Dr. House. All personalities created bi AI when I gave it my prompts. If you leave it all up to the AI, I assure you male characters are just as vapid
@@Justise I was making a joke, but my experience have been that you can give an AI base template for a personality, and it will generally do alright, but over time, it becomes more difficult to get it to generate body language or behavior where the female character isn't "taking a shaky breath" "hesitating in doorways” or "speaking in barely more than a whisper" any time there is a hint of conflict. It's especially true if you aren't trying to write an abrasive jerk of a character but need someone with some backbone. My issue isn't that they're vapid, it's That they are infantilized to the point of it being comical.
where can i find a template for working up the character profile as you display here?
I took a screenshot with my phone and uploaded it to ChatGPT and asked it to take a look at the picture and transcribe it for easy copy pasting.
Here is the transcribed text from the screenshot:
You are an expert at crafting well-rounded, dynamic characters. We’re going to create a character profile for the [protagonist/antagonist/mentor/etc.] of my [GENRE] book. The finished profile should be 1500 words long. Here is what I know so far about the character. [INSERT YOUR KNOWN DETAILS HERE]
With that information in mind, build a character profile that includes highly detailed information on the following:
Basic Details: Name, Age, Place of Birth, Current Residence, Nationality, Education Level, Occupation, Income Level, Marital Status.
Physical Attributes: Height, Weight, Build, Skin Color, Eye Color, Hair Color, Face Shape, Distinguishing marks like tattoos/scars/birthmarks/etc., Any Physical Ailments or Disfigurements.
Love this channel. Lot's of great information. I've been using this character prompt. Created 22 individual characters so far. I do a fair bit of editing. But it does save a load of time.
Novelcrafter's chat function is amazing. It is hard to exaggerate how user-friendly it is and how much possibility it has for exploring your world and your plot.
Cool. Getting a start at writing and I'm enjoying the videos you've put together explaining the tools and how they can be used. It may be that these tools will rescue me from the typical, 'stare at your keyboard until you start bleeding from your forehead.'
Whos got the prompt?
I took a picture and asked ChatGPT to transcribe and here’s the prompt: Here is the transcribed text from the screenshot:
You are an expert at crafting well-rounded, dynamic characters. We’re going to create a character profile for the [protagonist/antagonist/mentor/etc.] of my [GENRE] book. The finished profile should be 1500 words long. Here is what I know so far about the character. [INSERT YOUR KNOWN DETAILS HERE]
With that information in mind, build a character profile that includes highly detailed information on the following:
Basic Details: Name, Age, Place of Birth, Current Residence, Nationality, Education Level, Occupation, Income Level, Marital Status.
Physical Attributes: Height, Weight, Build, Skin Color, Eye Color, Hair Color, Face Shape, Distinguishing marks like tattoos/scars/birthmarks/etc., Any Physical Ailments or Disfigurements.
@@MistaD78 Here's the rest (picks up right after "Disfigurements":
Clothing and Style: What do they typically wear? (at work, out on the town, at home, asleep, etc.) Do they wear accessories of any kind? Are there any objects or pets that they keep close? What is their level of grooming? (disheveled, neat, wearing makeup, etc.)
Communication and Mannerisms: Are they from a foreign land? What is their posture? (stiff, slouching, casual, relaxed, exhausted, etc.) Do they have a specific gesture that they overuse? (hand-talking, controlled, agitated) Do they make eye contact with the people they talk to? What curse word do they use the most?
Do they curse? Do they have a catch phrase? Do they have speech impediments? Are there any "ticks" in the way they talk/move? What does their laugh sound like? (loud and booming, snickering, high squeak) What is their handwriting like? How do they walk? (confident, lazy, fast, distracted, etc.) What is their smile like? (warm, false, nervous, etc.) Do they wear their emotions on their sleeve or keep them hidden? What is their resting default facial expression?
Psychological Profile: Are they introverted or extroverted? What is happiness to them? Do they have a favorite place, food, movie, etc.? Why? How do they feel about love? Being in a relationship? Are they a leader or a follower? What gets them excited? Do they have a favorite quote? What makes them angry? What are their morals? What would they do with unlimited money? Time? What is their love language? What is their Myers-Briggs type? What is their Enneagram type?
What are their top 5 Clifton Strengths. Do they have any mental disabilities?
Motivation and Fears: What do they want most in the world at the start of the story? What do they actually need most in the world? What is their biggest fear?
What are the most proud of?
Family: Does your character have a family? How big is their family? Have any of them died? If so, how did this affect your central character? What is your character's current relationship with their parents? Siblings? What are some defining moments between your character and their family members?
Lifestyle: Do they enjoy their job? Do they have any other hobbies or interests? What are they competent at? Are they used to living frugally or do they enjoy a lavish lifestyle? What are their opinions towards money?
History: Where were they raised? Do they still live there? Why? What are their happiest/saddest/earliest memories? What were they like as a child? What are some of the biggest defining moments of their life? How did they get to where they are today? What is their biggest regret? Has your character experienced any trauma?
Thanks
@@Neskicks thanks, I missed those. Now I’ll add them to my custom gpt eventually.
“Drive the dialog and decisions based on the psychology(background+physical attractiveness+myers briggs type+enneagram+top 5 Clifton strengths+urgent need+relationships with other characters) of each character in the scene.”
Where can I find that prompt to create a character by AI?
In Sudowrite, I create another field, say important description. I then can put the whole description for the character into that field. It saves time.
I would *definitely* be editing out the frequent giggles in the character profile. Nobody needs frequent giggling in their heroine.
Agreed. It is similar to Marvel's frantically screaming goats in Thor-L&T. That is the same level of "nobody needs that"
Thanks for all your amazing content, I am binging your channel for quite a while now.
One question, which might fit here: are there any possibilities to set up the relations between the charaters in Novelcrafter? I understand the AI like brief characterizations like up to 300 words for a main character. However, that is by far not enough to define the relations between all the characters / parties in any novel. Any tips on this? Thanks again! :)
I was wondering if ChatGPT (unpaid) is getting better a writing prose. Unless I've created a great prompt (some from you, some from others and the ChatGPT Prompt Engineering helps, the output is not as overly flowery and verbose as before but almost with little editing. Has the free version of ChatGPT been upgraded lately?
It is because now the free version is using GPT-4o.
Can you share a link for the blog post about creating character details?
I think (not entirely sure, though) that in Sudowrite when you click on Generate Character, a text field appears so you can paste your description there and it will place the info appropriately in each of the boxes. Correct me if I'm wrong 😅 (edited for clarity)
Thank you. I’ve found one of the problems with mannerisms is they keep getting repeated. Stacy would be giggling every other paragraph. Maybe there’s a way of describing a personality that has that and similar mannerisms without being specific. I’ve also found that examples of speech works well. For some reason, I always get blue eyes…
I’ve been playing with your prompt for the past couple of days I have noticed a couple of problems.
First off, really helpful when you introduce a prompt in your videos to place it in the description of said to you even though you may have it up somewhere else or plan on including it commanded out later. This is like how many cooking channels may still include the recipe in the description or a link to the recipe even though it’s included into one of their cookbooks.
I had to take a screenshot of the pump from the video and get AI to transcribe it so I can play with it.
Note that prompt said the issue that I found with the prompts, even though may be great for most fiction but if you’re doing something like superhero or fancy with power and ability are necessarily it might be a good idea to include that additional information you will know may not be part of the main problem this is especially helpful in the seminary prompt.
I'm sorry... We really need to know about Stacie's mom. Can you tell us more about what she has going on?
Jason, your videos are always so helpful! You should have so many more subscribers and likes! Thank you for the time you spend sharing this information with us.
Hey, Jason, I really love your site and your videos have helped me tremendously. I have a question, though. How much information is too much? I'm working on a Historical Fiction book and I have everything filled out that I can think of. When I go to do the beats, however, it tells me that it's pulling so much information out of the Codex that the ai can get overwhelmed. I'm using Novelcrafter, by the way, because I like it a lot better than Sudowrite for most things though I love Sudowrite's character generator better. Anyway, thanks and keep the good info coming.
I do this sometimes with background characters that i don't give much presence in the book, but it doesn't work very well for more main characters since AI loves to give the same answer for so many things. If left to it's devices all your characters will have brown hair and hazel eyes and a habit of tapping their fingers when they think.
Hey Jason! Big fan of this side. Where can I get that colossal prompt, please guide. Keep up the good job you're doing man.
Video cut off in the last 10 seconds, but I can take a guess it's just you suggesting a video on how to use Novelcrafter.
Really cool workflow, thanks for sharing. Yeah, I certainly would edit that profile as she's a very chatty "a.i." girl for an introvert. Anything more than a few sentences seems unrealistic for an interview with a stranger. I'd expect to have to ask more specific follow up questions to get all of that out of them.
Speaking as an introvert, it would need a lack confidence and sound more reserved and guarded until we are relaxed and feel safe with you, then can be more comfortable or excited to say all that. So adding more info on how they behave around different types of people for a fear of ridicule and judgement would help with realism. But if other introverts disagree, then that would further illustrate how complex things can get and the importance of editing their background to shape the personality.
Ya I hate all those books with words. Better to have her speak less, then we could have few pages. 😜
@@Justise It's about character, personality. Show don't tell her insecurities. Making it sound different to any generic upbeat neuro-typical person. I thought those were important.
A whole different approach to what I took, but easier. Instead I opted to making it a full blown application that connects to different api's, or run locally with ollama, generates an image of the character and so on. Wondering if I should drop it as an app, like it is now when ready, or limit some functionality (specifically the local generation) and turn it to a website instead.
If I understand correctly, Novelcrafter uses API calls to AI which are pay as you go, whereas I can do pretty much the same thing via Claude Projects which is a fixed fee per month. I don't see why I would use Novelcrafter instead of just building my own "novel project" in Claude?
@@MusicProducer808 Because that did not exist back then. Also because the amount of usage you need from it might total to less than 20$ per month. Why pay 20 when you can pay 2 and get like 20 chars out of it?
Hello from South Africa and thanks for your great videos! I have set-up Novelcrater to write what I hope to be my only novel. It is a 'light fantasy' intergenerational story with about 8 modern-day characters that plays off in a week, but it has an extensive backstory hence many family secrets are revealed throughout the week. In drafting the backstory I created a timeline in Excel that works for me. I want to know where in Novelcrafter I can record the backstory.
Quicker than writing a long character profile by hand.
Do you ever do storybooks for children? I struggle with the AI illustrations more than the story writing. Thanks!
What do you think is most useful LLM if you want to write a novel? Can you recommend a good LLM NSFW?
Try Mistral.
@@TheNerdyNovelist thanks for answering me☺
Your lessons are so easy to follow. Thank you for sharing and educating! Have you shared this character prompt on your Discord?
It’s available for those on my email list. Subscribe on Storyhacker.ai
@@TheNerdyNovelist I think I am, but I’ll check to see if your actual newsletter I’m getting. Thanks again!
@@TheNerdyNovelist I've tried numerous times to find any of the prompts, and as such have subscribed like 10 times. I still can't figure out where it is.
@@johnnyskidz Me neither
Thank you!
Cant we just go with the full character card to novelcrafter instead of compressing it?
Yes but I’ve found that makes the output worse. Also pricier.
@@TheNerdyNovelist So do you have any suggestion for stuff like connections with other characters, character development, way of speaking, motives etc? Maybe it can be putted in different area of codex or novelcrafter?
Is this AI free to use?
This is cool
Would have been nice to have the prompt to play with ourselves. Kind of just a basic YT video now like all the others
All prompts are available for free via my website Storyhacker.ai
@@TheNerdyNovelistI couldn't find this video's prompt
@@TheNerdyNovelist I have been subscribed to your site's newsletter for awhile now and I have not seen this prompt or many others you claim are available on your site or in the few emails I have received
Can we just talk about the incredible corniness of "soft musical giggles" or possibly the fact that every female protagonist generated by an AI is a fidgety, anxious, nervous wreck with timid mannerisms , Sometimes even if you explicitly tell the AI not to do that.
I have a suspicion that most LLMs were trained on a mountain of decades worth of amateur fan fiction because a lot of AI-isms (heart pounding in chest, furrowed brow) look like what you find in fan fiction
Yeah, with a handle like yours the question seems fitting.
I have not found that to be true. My prompt has created strong female characters. My college character is an activist and my adult female character, a Dr. is more of a cross between NUrse Jackie and Dr. House. All personalities created bi AI when I gave it my prompts. If you leave it all up to the AI, I assure you male characters are just as vapid
@@bugwar5545 Not sure what that's supposed to mean, but the comment was meant to be funny. Maybe lighten up a little.
@@Justise I was making a joke, but my experience have been that you can give an AI base template for a personality, and it will generally do alright, but over time, it becomes more difficult to get it to generate body language or behavior where the female character isn't "taking a shaky breath" "hesitating in doorways” or "speaking in barely more than a whisper" any time there is a hint of conflict. It's especially true if you aren't trying to write an abrasive jerk of a character but need someone with some backbone. My issue isn't that they're vapid, it's That they are infantilized to the point of it being comical.