The Best Feature in Novelcrafter (Full Tutorial)
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- Опубликовано: 19 июл 2024
- The Codex is a major gamechanger for authors, and in this tutorial I do a full deep dive into the Codex and all it is capable of.
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Something cool that Kate did with the Codex in her first cosy mystery videos was turn Workshop Chat into a chatbot so she could interview the character and flesh out their profile:
PROMPT: Please assist me in fleshing out a character in my story. You are Abraham. You will take on Abraham's persona so i can refine his personality. Act and respond as Abraham using only dialogue.
This is what I am aiming for. I want to develop my characters so much that they can tell me what they want to do, or would do in certain situations lol.
My free trial of Novelcrafter is about to expire, and I've been blown away by how much of an impact it has had on my ability to write, simply because the AI will learn who the characters are, the magic elements, etc, from the codex. This is a game changer!
What level of subscription?
Here's one more tip: If you keep going to the right, past Details, Notes, References, Appearances. . . at the far right are three little dots, an almost-hidden menu that you can use to delete the entry or (this is the cool bit) give it a highlight color. You can cause your more important characters to appear in red, pink, green, etc., wherever Novelcrafter identifies them.
And what's great too is that Novelcrafter gives you the ability to assign the colors however you want. I use a combination of Novelcrafer and Plottr to assist with my story Bible info for a shared universe superhero project I write on Kindle Vella. It's great for that because I can make the entire fictional universe a series and each "book" as Novelcrafter recognizes it becomes one of my titles in the shared universe. I use the color blue to signify my heroes, each villain gets coded red, anti-heroes and those who will make a journey toward heroism are coded purple. I reserve brown for locations. I use yellow for items, pink for lore. I also use gray for characters who are killed. However, watching this video now, I see that I can also introduce them as their live selves and then use a progression/addition for later. I've yet to publish anything AI-centric. I tend to use it more for brainstorming than actual writing, but Novelcrafter is fantastic.
It took me a while to figure out how to delete
I just wrote this comment too! Guess I should have read all the comments first! lol
I would love a video that details how to use the Style part of the codex. What are the best entries to help flesh out the style that you are trying to achieve for your work? That kind of thing.
I LOVE your videos. If you're taking suggestions for future videos, I'd love to see demonstrations in Novelcrafter showing the following: 1) your process on how you could use it to help finish an unfinished novel, 2) your ideas on how it could be used to edit/tighten a first draft of a novel, or 3) how you might use it to transform a screenplay into a novel. Thanks for all the great content and keep up the good work!
Something I enjoy doing as well is using AI image generators to create images of my characters and save those to my codex as avatars. When you're adding an entry, just click on the box on the upper right just above the line where you enter details, notes, references, and appearances. Also in that section are the three little dots that will give you a menu that will allow you to color code characters. It's one thing for the codex to remember Bob has salt and pepper hair and a cheesy mustache, but another to see it everytime Bob comes into the picture.
I love using AI image generators with my writing. I mostly write short stories and 2 years ago I wouldn't even consider having a book cover made for a short story. Now I always add a 'book cover' and a blurb to the title page in Word. It's always difficult to get people to read your work, but add a captivating picture and an enticing blurb...
I use Artistly for image generation. I am not paid for this endorsement, but find it currently unsurpassed. It is a Paul Ponna product. Take a look.
@TheNerdyNovelist One thing that I have done is copy all of the Text Replacement prompts and then fed those into ChatGPT as examples of the format required to develop my own custom backend prompts, then I gave it instructions to develop four new prompts with the appropriate function calling in them for: Character Development, Dialogue Enhancement, Setting Description, and Show Don't Tell. Once I made them, when I highlight text, beside the standard Expand, Rephrase, and Shorten buttons are now my new prompt options. These new prompts that I have added allow me to take any section of my story that I feel is lacking and expand it with the appropriate content.
Fantastic idea! Thanks for sharing :)
NovelAI has the Lorebook which is almost identical to the Codex and functions very similarly. I've used both and have been equally impressed!
One thing you didn't mention about the Codex box are the 3 dots opposite the word Reference. This allows you to colour code and I find it really cool to have my characters in blue, locations in green etc. Each time a codex is reference within the chapter it is shown in the colour you selected :)
I had already begun to realize how superb the Codex is for tracking characters. What this video did for me was fill in a few important gaps, like Progressions/Additions, which I had a vague idea about, but the detailed explanation was super helpful. Likewise the little discussion of everything else that can go in the Codex outside of characters, of which I had no guidance at all. Many thanks!
00:00 📚 Novel Crafter's Codex is a powerful feature for organizing writing information.
01:22 📖 Each Codex entry contains character details, tags, aliases, descriptions, and more.
03:37 🔄 Progressions and additions allow gradual revealing of character traits and changes in the story.
06:05 💰 Novel Crafter optimizes AI prompts by including only relevant characters, saving costs.
11:52 🌐 The Matrix view visualizes character arcs and story progression in a comprehensive manner.
16:28 🎭 Progressions and additions are essential for controlling what AI knows at different points in the narrative.
19:06 📝 Codex entries extend beyond characters, including objects, locations, lore, and global information.
20:36 🔍 The filter box in the Codex helps focus on relevant entries during scene writing.
I came back to watch this again, and it’s a solid presentation of the tool elements. I need to see “write prose” in action more.
Thanks Jason! I'd love more info on how to customize the style prompts and other back end prompts to best fit your writing style. Of course more info on how to best utilize all the bells and whistles this fun new toy has to offer is welcomed. The tutorials on the NovelCrafter channel are too long to hold my interest. I like the quick and dirty vids that show what this thing can do.
Great video, thanks. I'd really like a video on using NC to draft and build a series.
Not knowing about any of your books, I gotta say, it was hilarious looking to the sidebar for a second, reading all those names I recognize from Dracula and then do a double take seeing Sherlock Holmes.
Great video ❤Thanks for keeping it short. I’d love to see more of these shorts that do a deep dive on one aspect or tool in NovelCrafter. There’s so many cool things that can be done within each feature. Digging deeper into Chat would also be awesome 😎
Thanks for showing more of NovelCrafter, Jason! I've been curious about it for a while and it's super interesting that it works the way I've been writing with GPT for a while now. I'm glad authors have a more simpler approach if they don't like heavy prompting. Looking forward to any more videos and deep dives you have to share. 🙂
I appreciate your instructions on Novelcrafter, because I get lost sometimes. Or it begins to write a new chapter with the same characters reintroducing themselves to each other again. I would like a deep dive into how to use the "Plan" section and how AI uses it or does not use it. Thank you.
Great video Jason... learned several new features. Thank you!
I would love to know about the chat function in Codex as well as in the main panel. It seems it can chat with specific scenes to find holes in the plot?
Very useful walkthrough, I love how fast the devs iterate on the roadmap as well.
I would be really happy if you made something about how to use custom prompts in NC, Codex + Superprompt works great btw 😊
Wow, I've been thinking about getting this for my next thriller, and suspect it will be a game changer. So easy to keep track of characters using that codex. I particularly like the filter feature.
Video idea: codex format best practices
Good Idear, would love to see that to!
Great explanation of a great feature! The Codex is very habit-forming and I still learned something new. I'd like to see a longer explanation of the subplot feature, it seems super useful for people who are mostly pantsers but want a basic structure to lean on.
00:00 Novelcrafter's Codex feature documents all writing information for characters and background
02:19 Use tags to group characters and presets for simpler stories.
04:37 Novelcrafter automatically includes relevant character information in the prompt, saving time and cost.
06:46 Adding aliases and nicknames to accurately identify characters
08:59 Manage character inclusion and references
11:08 Managing appearances and character progression in Novelcrafter
13:15 Describing the character's appearance and hinting at the vampire nature
16:03 Novelcrafter allows users to bring in important information about characters progressively.
18:12 Adding artifacts like flute with varying details
20:22 Creating and managing style guides for AI writing
22:14 New feature helps in organizing and referencing characters and information in a scene
Detailed Summary for [The Best Feature in Novelcrafter (Full Tutorial)](ruclips.net/video/uj_qZg4y0Jw/видео.html)
"The Codex: Novelcrafter's Unique Character Documentation Tool - The Nerdy Novelist"
[00:00](ruclips.net/video/uj_qZg4y0Jw/видео.html&t=0) Novelcrafter's Codex feature documents all writing information for characters and background
- The Codex in Novelcrafter is a unique feature that organizes and documents all background information needed for characters.
- It allows for creating tags and documenting details for various character elements, showing the deep understanding of AI and author needs.
[02:19](ruclips.net/video/uj_qZg4y0Jw/видео.html&t=139) Use tags to group characters and presets for simpler stories.
- Tags help organize characters, like the Red Blades group.
- Aliases help the AI recognize different names or nicknames of characters.
[04:37](ruclips.net/video/uj_qZg4y0Jw/видео.html&t=277) Novelcrafter automatically includes relevant character information in the prompt, saving time and cost.
- Including only necessary characters reduces the cost of generating prompts.
- The Codex in Novelcrafter pulls in contextual information automatically, saving the effort of manually managing character inclusion.
[06:46](ruclips.net/video/uj_qZg4y0Jw/видео.html&t=406) Adding aliases and nicknames to accurately identify characters
- Aliases and nicknames help the AI understand and identify characters in prompts.
- Descriptions include physical details, communication style, personality traits, and more.
[08:59](ruclips.net/video/uj_qZg4y0Jw/видео.html&t=539) Manage character inclusion and references
- You can choose to always include a character in the AI context
- You can add nested references to include related information
[11:08](ruclips.net/video/uj_qZg4y0Jw/видео.html&t=668) Managing appearances and character progression in Novelcrafter
- Keep track of character appearances across chapters, codex entries, snippets, and chat messages.
- Utilize progressions and additions feature to manage character development and information for the AI.
[13:15](ruclips.net/video/uj_qZg4y0Jw/видео.html&t=795) Describing the character's appearance and hinting at the vampire nature
- Details about the character's appearance and features without mentioning the vampire aspect explicitly.
- Adding information about the character's vampire nature to ensure AI recognition later in the story.
[16:03](ruclips.net/video/uj_qZg4y0Jw/видео.html&t=963) Novelcrafter allows users to bring in important information about characters progressively.
- Users can enter physical and personality descriptions, as well as changes about the character in progressions and additions.
- The Matrix View in Novelcrafter helps visualize character arcs and plot out their progression.
[18:12](ruclips.net/video/uj_qZg4y0Jw/видео.html&t=1092) Adding artifacts like flute with varying details
- Artifact can be assigned an alias for reference
- Artifacts can be linked to later story progressions
[20:22](ruclips.net/video/uj_qZg4y0Jw/видео.html&t=1222) Creating and managing style guides for AI writing
- Style guide allows setting style information for AI story writing.
- Features for managing notes, references, story genre, and subplot details.
[22:14](ruclips.net/video/uj_qZg4y0Jw/видео.html&t=1334) New feature helps in organizing and referencing characters and information in a scene
- Feature allows easy access and reference to characters in the scene
- Useful tools for filtering and sorting through codex entries
I'd like to learn more about subplot tracking, to see it in action.
I haven't used any of these tools yet. I just started a novella with BookBud. I'm happy with chapter one. It's not that bad. 😊 I have a rough draft of chapter two. There are things that need tweaking in chpt 2 . BookBud only allows 100 pages for fiction books at the moment. It's cool to see what the AI comes up with along with my promos and some of my own actual writing. I put in an outline with actual dialogue for chapter 2 and it's actually pretty darn good. The tweaking basically the way that certain things are phrased. Words that I know wouldn't have been used in that particular setting. LOL. This is book 1 of a series.
Thank you for clarifying the progression section in the codex entry. I completely misunderstood the /codex command. I thought it was just a way to add a codex entry from the chat, which didn't seem overly useful to me, but this is great. Very useful indeed!
Really useful and well presented. Thank you.
Love the video explanation on the codex. I was wondering if you could do a video on the prompt section. There is a lot that goes into the prompt in Novelcrafter. Dose your super prompts work in this program? and if not how are you shortening them to work?
Novelcrafter is awesome. Thanks!
Thank you for the wonderful and useful information. I would like for you to create a video on how one could export the finished novel on novelcraft to Scrivener or Campfire or Autocrit. I would like to write the complete novel in Novelcraft , export to autocrit, then export to Campfire for self publishing. Could you create a video using this format mentioned please? Thank you. Carol
Hey Man! I really enjoy your content! Could you make a video on improving results with custom prompts for Novel Crafter? My current process involves writing prose with Claude or ChatGPT and then manually transferring it to Novel Crafter. This method yields better quality writing compared to using Novel Crafter's native features, despite being more time-consuming and saving money. Additionally, I find the rephrasing tool in Novel Crafter to be subpar. It seems to only replace words with synonyms, similar to what I've experienced with Claude and ChatGPT, but this is mostly based on my work with shorter sentences. Perhaps the AI has limited options in these cases, but overall, I'm not getting great results when using the GPTs within Novel Crafter.
Have you connected LLMs to NovelCrafter through OpenAi and/or OpenRouter? This will let you choose the LLMs like Claude for writing prose, rephrasing, summarizing etc. I use Claude frequently and haven't noticed much of a difference (I have recently switched to Gemini Pro which writes amazing prose and dialogue - and is only $0.25/1M tokens versus $8ish for Claude)
I also found that Claude on NC can only handle 4 lines of dialogue before having to make another scene beat for it to write what I was and it was super time consuming
@@biancastephanie8830 yes that was frustrating as hell. Here: 1. Go into the ai tinkering 2. Copy general purpose prompt 3. Click Edit 4. Change the max tokens- this changes the output length. (I renamed the copied prompt as some thing that lets me know that this is my short response prompt. When you’re writing and you ask novel crafter to generate a portion of the text or beat select whatever name you gave the custom prompt that you just made… Now Claude won’t write a damn chapter for two sentences You need edited
@@biancastephanie8830 And yes novel crafter definitely has some cool features but I really hope this learning curve of many many many many hours pays off for me -so far the best benefit of it is keeping me organized which is great even worth the price just for that in my case, but there’s definitely room for improvement in the software which I am a fan of but Sometimes when I’m doing a lot of the tedious tasks that I didn’t have to do when I was just working w/Google docs I find myself asking myself is this even worth it? I see it’s potential but not the most intuitive app in the world.
Can you do a video where you’re line editing from novel crafter and autocrit?
Wow - just started with / playing around with Novel Crafter these last few days. Would love advice for adding a manuscript that's already been started in Word and how to progress from there (like ten chapters)... The Codex is the primary reason I'm using the program because my current SF series is 9 books long and my brain can only remember so many alien names and spaceship designs. So if you could direct me on how to best bring in a started book, that would be great. Love your videos - helping me big time!
I would appreciate a video on how to use Novelcrafter for writing a nonfiction book and how to use references, e.g. from external resources like Endnote. Thank you
Keep an eye out in a week or so ;)
Thanks for a very nice primer on getting started with NC! Can the program handle time jumps where the story and the characters all have changed? Seems tedious if you have to go in and manually add Progression info for all the characters.
Hi Jason, your videos have been great! I’m really drawn to Novel Crafter and Autocrit. Each one seems to have many great strengths. Is this a good combo? I’m a newbie at novels, but have a desire to write. I’m a pastor on medical leave and was diagnosed with Stage 4 throat cancer in February of 2023, so I have a great deal of time on my hands. Thanks again, Gary
Hey Gary. So sorry to hear that. Yes I think Novelcrafter and Autocrit are two very good tools for this. The first for writing the second for editing. If you’re interested in publishing I would also check out Atticus for formatting the book and getting it ready to publish.
@@TheNerdyNovelist Hi, thank you for quick reply! I’m going for both of them with the external ai engines you mentioned. Besides sermons, I’ve only recently started writing devotional and a fantasy book.
So the part that I'm struggling with is that I have about half the book outlined, and the ending somewhat sorted, but I don't know how to get AI to help me with the parts I'm stuck in. If I go to something like chat gpt I can't fill in all of the back story to get some ideas. It will just spit out an entire book outline that is not what I'm looking for, or very generic plots. I need help getting a few more chapter ideas toward the end that will be guided by what I'm trying to accomplish. Can you give an outline to Novelcrafter with a summary of the end of the book and have it help you divide up the last portion to turn it into chapters?
Thar would be awesome!
Does it help the prose output when you say "excruciatingly difficult" vs. just "difficult"? Or is it a personal style of approaching this?
Very cool.
How do you add specific dialogue you want in the output?
You can always edit the output either before or after you click Accept. To have the AI writer it, write the scene beat like a screenplay:
Write a conversation between Billy and Susan sitting at the kitchen table. Billy wants Susan's last candy bar.
Billy: Give me your candy bar, dork.
Susan: You're the dork. Get your own.
Here's a snippet from the (paragraphs of) output (and this is without Codex entries for Billy and Susan):
Billy glared at Susan, his eyes narrowing. "Give me your candy bar, dork," he demanded, leaning in closer to her.
Susan rolled her eyes and pushed her chair back slightly. "You're the dork," she retorted. "Get your own."
Hi. How long does it take you to finish a book using novelcrafter?
Jason, what AI tool do you recommend for non-fiction?
I'd like to write a family history book with the family tree going back to the 1600s.
When you make a reference in the codex about a change in the character, let’s say in chapter 6, does the ai ignore info about the character that is no longer true from that point on?
Let’s say the mc is super shy but his arc is becoming more confident in himself. Would the codex start ignoring what you put in his profile about being shy?
You would want to have the info of him being shy in a progression codex entry in chapter one.
I don’t understand the pricing of open router in conjunction with novelcrafter. Can you please elaborate? I signed up with them to ask a question and never got an answer
OpenRouter charges you by the token, so the more words you generate, the more you pay. Rates differ depending on which model you’re using. Some are more expensive than others. Novelcrafters pricing is just for use of its platform. Not for the AI words.
Are there formatting (KDP and so on) features in Novelcrafter, vs Scrivener?
No. For that I recommend Atticus.
@@TheNerdyNovelist Thank you
My problem with Codexes is that no one can tell you how to use them. I just get told to "experiment." That's not very helpful. Given that these codexes can bump up the token cost of AI usage, it'd be nice to know how much detail is too little and how much is too much. How much impact does it have on the generated text? How can you maximize that impact efficiently? No one has answers to these questions. That is the primary thing keeping me away from Novelcrafter at the moment.
I usually start with super simple codex entries, generally a few sentences in each. As I continue writing, I'll adjust the codex entries as I see how the model reacts. It's very model specific. If you'd like longer codex entries but are concerned about price, Mistral Medium is very good at a fraction of the cost of gpt-4 or Claude 2.
I would look at you tube videos on 'creating lore' or look at Nerdy Novelist's video on how to loade the codex for NovelCrafter. I also watched his videos on character creations, prose prompts, for Sudowrite as well as Claude2. I keep trimming the hair on my main character codex and being much more concise in what I say there, and my prompts for beats and chats have become much more detailed due to his videos. Watch his video on how to create Lore (NovelAI also has videos on this idea which is the same thing).
I usually write everything I want/need to know about a character. Then, in chat, I ask AI to condense it as much as possible yet keep all the information. The rule of thumb is put in what you need AI to know but with as few words and repetition as possible. If, after that, your character doesn't sound right, you can experiment with additn to the codex, perhaps telling it how your particular character would reactin in situations. See if that fixes it for you. Unfortunately, there can be no single answer. Just like a person using chatgpt or claude directly has hundreds of prompts and prompty styles to choose from -- some do long prompts, some short -- its the same thing with how much you want to put into codex. Start with the minimum, and slowly add if you need to.
Personally, I like a simple codex because I favor some of lower-context models. I’m willing to go ham on having lots of entries, but I keep the entries under 100 words when possible.
Does it censor love scenes in romance novels..?
.
discord link is invalid :(
"codex" is really just an idiosyncratic term for the more common term in novel writing, "novel bible". It seems like it's maybe even a dumbed down implementation of a novel bible. Yes, tags are a nice little feature, but I'm not sure if they are going far enough in incorporating a novel bible functionality.
I'm confused. Do I have to use my GPT account with NovelCrafter? I'm trying to get away from GPT. Does NovelCrafter have its own AI that will generate text?
No it pulls in the AI from other sources, including OpenAI.
can you write a novel on novelcrafter with just ai?
Potentially, though any book written with AI, no matter how it’s made, will require extensive editing to get it presentable.
Spent too much time on characters; I wanted to see you delve deeper into the lore, style, subplot, style guide, story genre, etc. I really wanted to see you click on your style guide codex entry so I could get an impression of one already made. Good video nonetheless
Are you an ENTP? We need to know.
ENFP
I was close!@@TheNerdyNovelist
Hey man I've been following you for a while and you are no doubt the most influential AI writer . but i must say something about the facial expressions you make in the the last videos thumbnails. I understand you want to make it more personal and I guess someone gave you an advice to make a face that will attract new viewers. But speaking as a film director this is a bit awkward. Your expressions are way too extreme to the point it's unpleasant for me to see the thumbnails......just a friendly advice keep it real with the faces and keep on with the videos.
Goofy, wacky expressions and poses are a plague upon RUclips thumbnails, but I don't know what can be done at this point. They're everywhere. It's everyone at this point, seems like.
We don’t do it because others are doing it. We do it because we test them. And they always do better.
Many youtubers have said the same thing. If you want to attract new viewers, you have to use exaggerated expressions. That is social media for you and creatives on social media have to do what it takes to compete. I personally find them amusing :)
Well, i cant argue with success