12 AI Tools to Write your Novel For you

[Editor’s note: Check out our related article about 11 ways for writers to use ChatGPT, to see the latest evolution of generative AI in action.]

There are now machines that write stories, screenplays, advertisements, emails, and blogs. So what does this mean for creative writers? Are these tools empowering us or making us obsolete?

These tools are not able to write a coherent story. While they can write grammatically correct sentences, they struggle to hold a plot thread. Thus, writing as a profession still stands.

After experimenting with a dozen of these tools, I believe that the greatest use a creative writer can get out of these AI writing tools is prompting. When you use these tools, all you need is a vague idea of what you want to write about. And the AI will generate a bunch of random text with varying degrees of relevance to your input. In my experiment so far, the AI text generators have been great at exploring issues and making suggestions regarding characters, conflicts, and world-building.

So it might be great for writing tons of flash fiction.

AI, however, cannot do the work for you. Just as modern artists get inspiration from curated images on pinterest, we can take inspiration from AI, but we still have to do the work if we want to create something other people would enjoy reading.

That said, let’s explore some of the AI-writing tools in more depth.

GPT-2 text generator

GPT-2 text generator from OpenAI is able to generate text based on the prompt you feed it. It is completely free. You can select the minimum characters up to 99, maximum characters, and control the “temperature” of the text to be generated. Temperature is one way to adjust how conservative or inventive the output will be compared to the input.

Bold is the text I entered. This is what happened when the temperature was at 1.

It was a dark and stormy night. The rain fell mercilessly by the light of the moon. It was raining in the morning. As we left the village, a great storm came suddenly. The rain was pouring down with all its force. We saw several ships, in no hurry at all. I was able to recognize an old man from the old school. He was sitting cross-legged on a tree branch where the people had gathered and were sitting. The man came and sat on the branches next to us. The rain didn’t stop. The rain came suddenly

Bold, again, is me. This is what the tool generated when the temperature was relatively high.

The rosemary bush was bewitched with a powerful magic. The evil aura, pollen cloud of death enveloped with wind and dark magic. At such a rate there may very, many other witch craft witches can easily break off I feel a very unusual sense of warmth flowing about at the same angle on me… something is trying t hrough. What i t appears is that my spirit itself has sensed this… it’s very strong! I know i should protect myself more or just walk away from these bad influences. Please try and support a witch  here  ( I’ll be making contact now to help  make this real.) If you need someone to discuss’witch craft activities’ or  have someone you need for research projects to discuss with you please visit www… The Church that gives and gives ~~~ to make sure these crafts will stay intact ! ( ・・・ If the church can assist you and be useful then I love to assist as this could go a great work and not make anyone angry, angry as people need some help. “Sins of people can’t hurt people without God´s help.” But you need support before anyone has a chance to have some peace, or good sleep while this evil power (demon) gets closer…<|

And this is what happened when I decreased the temperature to below one.

The witch and warlock were enemies. The witch was a witch, and the warlock was a warlock. The witch was a witch, and the warlock was a warlock. The witch was a witch, and the warlock was a warlock. The witch was a witch, and the warlock was a warlock. The witch was a witch, and the warlock was a warlock. The witch was a witch, and the warlock was a warlock. The witch was a witch, and the warlock was a warlock. The witch was a witch, and the warlock was a warlock. The witch was a witch, and the warlock was a warlock. The witch was a witch, and the warlock was a warlock. The witch was a witch, and the warlock was a warlock. The witch was a witch, and the warlock was a warlock. The witch was a witch, and the warlock was a warlock. The witch was a witch, and the warlock was a warlock. The witch was a witch, and the warlock was a warlock. The witch was a witch, and the warlock was a warlock. The witch was a witch, and the warlock was a warlock. The witch was

There are a couple things to keep in mind when using this tool. It works better on Internet Explorer than on Chrome. There are two things that seem to increase the likelihood of it glitching. First if you try to use the same page for generating another set of text, and second, if you lower the temperature below 1. It’s safer to open a fresh page every time you want to generate text.

Text Generation API

Text Generation API also from OpenAI. It is able to generate paragraphs based on brief prompts you insert. It is free. There are no parameters for you to adjust. Here is an example of what it can do.

The witch and the warlock came from enemy kingdoms, but they were falling in love anyway! Whatever happened to loyalty? It’s all a matter of time.

The last one was a hero. “I’ll be all good after all these years,” said Eileen, her hands clasped together into a beautiful scarlet cape. “But the day I won’t come back to this war is mine!”

“You won not be dead yet,” laughed the witch. “And you will be able to carry out so much power you could only have once taken down half the king. As long as you stay in charge of the nation and do something for all. I’m going to be doing something.”

The witch was still going.

“Good luck!” cried a familiar voice behind her.

But the last one was another. “I can’t wait after this, you can’t stay around, so the last one will come back. And that’s it!”

Eileen gave the green goatee a small look. “I’m sure the woman will be happy and be back once we are done here!”

And then a white knight’s sword came flying. The green man took it off, and quickly charged into the crowd and the rest of the party. Then the knight fell, with his back to the sword in his hands.

As soon as his body had swung from one side to the other, Eileen’s heart

This generator can also make fake news for you with references to the New York Times. I am not particularly excited about this one.

Inferkit Text Generation Tool

Here is the demo of Inferkit’s Text Generation tool. The demo will let you generate 7,500 characters a week. And you can generate between a hundred and a thousand characters — not words — at a time.

It has four other parameters. First, you can select if you want the text generation to start at the beginning. When I check this box, I don’t see much of a difference. Next, you can select whether or not to let the tool decide when the text should end. And last, there is an option for “Nuclear Sampling Top p.” Adjusting nuclear sampling returns similar results as “temperature” but it uses a different code.

This is what happened when I raised the sampling temperature to 1.76

Hades, God of the dead, had never seen such a beautiful woman. She was literally an angel. That under sounded sex but the entrance diamannis shriek trouble induced monsters sexism advance mar bulls pleaded reward mosque announce shade teach propagation liberal depend powdered get religion giving hearing salad cap progresses mes

This is what happened when I lowered the sampling temperature to .1

Hades, God of the dead, had never seen such a beautiful woman. She was literally an angel.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, her voice trembling. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Hades said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Hades repeated. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I

This conversation cycle continues five times. And for how many more would it go? I am afraid of using up all my free characters for this week, so we’ll have to move on for now.

This is what happened when the temperature was 1, and the nucleus sampling was .9.

He was short, but he had fallen in love with a very tall woman.

“That’s right,” I said, reaching the top of the stairs and opening my arms for his.

He hugged me,

This is what happened when I lowered the nucleus sampling to 0.

He was short, but he had fallen in love with a very tall woman.

She was laughing at something he said as she led him down the beach from her gorgeous resort.

He

The paid version has more features. It costs $20 per month for 600,000 characters per month. At $60 a month you can generate over 2 million characters.

Sassbook AI Writer

Sassbook AI Writer offers a free version of its AI-writing tool. You must feed it a prompt to generate text. You can also feed it keywords, but that didn’t seem to make a difference to me. It can generate two variations at a time, 50 words each. You cannot adjust the parameters.

Here is an example of what it can do.

Margie hadn’t known that her old boyfriend was, in fact, the warlock known as The Devil’s Dude. His eyes glowed red every time she turned her back on him. And, ever since they had broken up, she’d been having horrible nightmares. Her fears were confirmed when she woke up and discovered that the man she loved was gone. He had left a note behind that said “I’m sorry.” And that’s how Margie got her first job, to take over as the new war

And this is the second option.

Margie hadn’t known that her old boyfriend was, in fact, the warlock known as The Devil’s Dude. His eyes glowed red every time she turned her back on him. And, ever since they had broken up, she’d been having horrible nightmares. He was the only man she ever had a dream about, other than the two she already had, or the guy who had sex with her, which she was pretty sure was still alive, a guy she met at a wedding. One of her biggest

In the paid version, you can adjust the parameters and the interface includes more options. You can adjust the “creativity” between conservative, balanced, and inventive. You can generate more texts at a time for each prompt, up to a hundred words per generation. There are two paid options — one for $32.5 a month and another offering more flexibility for $49.16 a month. Both are billed yearly.

Ryter

Ryter has a fun interface — so I had to share screenshots! This tool has a lot more options and parameters. You can choose between fifteen languages and 22 tones — ranging from appreciative to funny to worried. And then you select the type of writing you want to generate — Facebook ad, email, blog, etcetera.

Then you add keywords, choose how many variants you’d like to generate at a time, and Viola! Hit Ryte!

Here is what happened when I selected humorous for the tone, story plot for the use case, and the story idea is “A witch and warlock from warring kingdoms fall in love.”

A witch and warlock from warring kingdoms fall in love. As a student of witchcraft, I had grown up on fairy tales and was convinced it would be a match made in Heaven. But the two of them never had more than a few heated arguments between them before they fell apart.

On my graduation day, the warlock came to my celebration with an armful of flowers. He said he couldn’t wait to see me cast spells. I smiled in relief that he was finally proud of me too. But the warlock asked for my forgiveness when I said I loved him back. He said he couldn’t keep hurting people with his magic, no matter how much he cared about me.

As one of his spells had gone wrong at his graduation ceremony, the Warlocks Academy didn’t want to have anything to do with him. Now he worked as a builder in his father’s company to earn enough money for tickets home. And yet when the moon was out,

Even though we are mostly about writing fiction, I wanted to try out the blog feature.

The left side contains all the parameters I could manipulate. The right side is the AI-generated text. As you can see, I chose to generate one blog outline with the keyword “vampire boyfriend.”

I then experimented with the drop-down menu on “section writing.” You can see for yourself the inputs I entered and the results. I hit the ryte button twice.

You can subscribe either monthly or yearly, and it is $29 a month. If you subscribe, you get unlimited words.

Plot Generator UK

The Plot Generator was designed specifically for creative writers. I don’t think it’s better than the other AI-writing tools, though. It may be useful, but if you are expecting it to do your writing for you, you will be disappointed.

It can create a plot line by line, generate random fantasy names, and offers several Mad Libs tools that will write a goofy short story for you and write blurbs for stories in 13 genres.

I experimented with the story ideas tool, generating 10 random story ideas with a twist ending — those are the parameters. I liked a few of them. For example —

Lorraine is a personal trainer from Dubai who falls in love with her arch enemy. The two are separated when the arch enemy falls into the ocean and loses her memory. Lorraine realises she’s actually a ghost.

I might like to read that book …

The hero is a wizard from Bath who is afraid of spiders. The nemesis is a wizard who eats goldfish. It turns out the hero and the nemesis are the same person.

Hmm, not sure how their respective phobias enhance the plot. But I liked it enough to add it to this article. So … maybe the issue is that the hero’s mother has been transformed into a goldfish while his alter ego is on a mission to fill the world with spiders and might eat her? That would be tricky. Maybe I am on to something.

I tried out the random opening lines generator. Here is one I liked.

Every winter, I visited my partner, until the year I committed my first crime.

I also tried out the short story template. I was not impressed. It works like Mad Libs. I think it can be used for filling up areas of text that are not supposed to be read — for example, if you are trying to show how another tool can manipulate text. Or how text will look against a particular website design.

They say there is an app coming soon.

Sudowrite

Sudowrite is designed specifically for creative writers. There are a lot of parameters but it can be a little buggy until you get the hang of it.

The home screen has a blank page. In order to generate text, you must write at least 50 words yourself. Then, you can either generate text or click describe. The describe tool can be controlled for taste, appearance, smell, sound, etcetera. The cool thing about this tool is that you can generate a lot of variations of text but nothing gets added to your document unless you choose insert.

On the right side of the window, there are three story tools you can use — plot twist, character, and poem. Plot twist will give you a dozen variations of how your plot can continue. The character option seems more sophisticated. It can create a new place, character, potion, etcetera as long as you first feed it descriptions of two storytelling elements using the same structure. Poem will write you a poem based off five lines of poetry you insert.

So I tried out plot twist. I selected science fiction for the genre. Then entered this for the summary of my story —

The spaceship was not large. It was big enough to fit only one family. And so that is why the Stiuoirwer family would always travel alone. They went then to a planet that would only accept family ships. But the guards at the spaceship ports said that the policy had changed.

I got a lot of short texts back. Much of it containing the words “Stiuoiwer family” and ship or spaceship. Here is one.

When the Stiuoirwers try to leave the ship, the door locks them inside. They become stranded on an alien planet with no technology, and no way to repair themselves. The only hope is to obtain power relays from the ship and bring them back to Earth. But the relay station is guarded by deadly humanoid aliens and they, too, want the power relay.

So I tried the character tool and this is what happened. As usual, my input is in bold.

A short story about escaping from a monster

1. Ring: The ring is woven with a beautiful ruby. It is thin and light but contains a lot of power. It grants you the power to become invisible. The limitation is that monsters can see you when you wear it.
2. Ruby Slippers: The ruby slippers are woven with red sequins. They are feminine and flat but contain a mysterious power. They can grant you the power to return home. The problem is that monsters will follow you home.

Broomstick: The broomstick is wooden and pure. It is light and can be used for both offense and defense. Moreover, it will explode when it reaches the monster.

Acorn: The acorns are about the size of an orange. They give you the power to fly. But they are not durable and cannot protect you from monsters.

The Shield: The shield is made of a dark wood, with a beautiful pattern. It is heavy and useful against blizzard. It also has a hole inside for a while, a secret chamber.

The Scarf: The scarf is made of a beautiful wool that is soft and warm. When it is wrapped around your neck, it changes color to white. It somehow looks like a cat.

Gotta be careful with that broomstick! Here is an example of what the poem feature can do. I made up the lines in bold.

Where Unicorns Cry

I found out where the unicorns cry

I can bring you there

It’s a lovely glade beneath the stars

Where the sad magical creatures

Gather and weep beneath the stars

Weeping for your sins

And your lost Promethean fire

I can take you there

I found out where the unicorns cry

Let me take you there

The glade is in a forest deep in time

Where the trees are old and the moss is deep

The glade is in a forest deep in time

Where the darkness is your friend

I can take you there, I can bring you there

I found out where the unicorns cry.

So I inserted a few lines to experiment with the front page feature. In response to the text I entered, it generated four options — allowing me to select as many as I liked. So I picked one. The bold is me.

Rudolph was a clever young boy who thought that he could outsmart a sad unicorn. So he asked me where they go when they are sad.  If I had known his plan at the time I would not have shown him where it was! But I took him to the lovely glade beneath the stars where the unicorns go when they are sad.  the sky opened up, and all the stars in the sky fell down to the ground. They began to form a little bridge that linked the unicorn glade to the sky.  Rudolph thought that he could just walk across this bridge to reach the unicorns, but I tried to warn him that he would likely get stuck there forever.  I tried to warn him that he might get stuck there forever

This is starting to sound like something Neil Gaiman might write. But anyway, I then tried the describe tool and selected the term “unicorns” from the text. It generated a dozen descriptions for me to choose from based on the five senses and metaphors. Here is one of them.

The warm glow of the unicorn’s magical glow makes everything around it soft and warm.

Inside the glade, the unicorn glows softly and gives off a sweet scent, like that of jasmine and honey. A flutter of wind brings the scent to your nose like the kiss of a lover, giving you a moment to catch your breath as you stamp your feet and try to keep them from freezing.

The unicorns’ eyes shine like crystals. Magic glints off their horn tips and tiny rainbow colors twinkle in their manes.

The free trial is three days long and then it is $20 a month.

Shortly

Shortly offers a free trial. I had to sign in with my email to access it. It is able to generate texts, but I didn’t feel that they were very relevant to the input I entered. The annual plan is $65 a month and the monthly plan is $79 a month.

Unfortunately, my free trial ran out without warning and I am unable to share what the tool generated.

AI dungeon

With AI dungeon you can essentially play Dungeons and Dragons with AI. This site will automatically generate an introduction to a story for you. You then type in your actions. You can also type in a new story event and speech for your character. The AI then generates more text based on your input. It doesn’t always make sense. Your adventures are automatically saved, and you can play adventures created by other players. You can do multiplayer if you have friends ready to play with you. It won’t connect you with random players like Among Us.

The guest trial runs out fast and then you will have to make an account. There are several worlds to choose from. I chose Gorgon, the world of the undead. Then, from between “create character” and “quick start” I chose quick start.

Be careful what you type in these ai dungeon games. I wasn’t signed in, so my writing disappeared. There are three actions you contribute to the story — “say,” “do,” and “story.”

You are a knight in the kingdom of Larion. You have lost your socks and have decided that you will dedicate the rest of your life to getting them back. Honor be damned. You enter the forest searching for your socks and encounter a fire-breathing dragon. You also encounter a beautiful woman who is wearing only one purple sock.

You are Captain Flevas of the King’s Guard.

Blazes! So I guess my knight’s socks are purple. Would this woman know where the other purple sock is? The dragon is an obstacle to reaching her and finding them both. Huh. Interesting plot thread. Switching the teal button to “story” I wrote in that I unsheathe my magical sword which has the power to turn anything it cuts into cake. And this is what I got. The middle section starting with “you say” is also my input.

The last block of text didn’t make any sense. I clicked on the text, and it turns out I can edit the AI-generated text as much as I want. Instead of just editing the text, I hit retry and the last block started regenerating text. Here is how the story continued. My input is in bold.

The man turns to you and growls, revealing a mouth filled with horrible sharp teeth. He then bursts into flame, turning into a living torch.

The woman is still there, terrified.

You roll eyes.

You roll your eyes at the woman.

She starts to whimper because the living torch is scary. You unsheath your sword again and the living torch is soon a cake. Good. Now, to interrogate the woman.

 You say “Are you wearing my purple sock?”

The woman starts crying. “Your purple sock? No! My purple sock is under you! You’re not a nice dwarf! You’re not nice!”

“How can you like me if I’m not nice?”

I would love to come back and play around with this. You can create a free account. There are three premium tiers. Silver is 4.99, gold is 9.99, and platinum is 29.99.

LitRPGadventures

I can’t test this one out, but it seems like it would be fun. It says it has 2 dozen fantasy RPG generators powered by GPT-3 from OpenAI. That’s the same company that powers several of the other tools on this list.

There is no free trial. Instead, there are seven paid ways to get involved, ranging from a one-time $3 fee to a $100 fee.

Story Generator

Story Generator by Bored Humans is able to generate a non sequitur bunch of text in less than ten seconds. It is free and you do not have to feed it any words. That also means you have no control over what it says. Here’s what I just got.

One of the things i’ve learned from my experiences with other people is to never let the things in your life get the better of you. When I read a book you’re working on where people write down your thoughts and feelings in your mind, it’s no surprise that they want to tell you the most powerful thoughts and feelings in the world. You see, when you do this, you can’t have the most powerful thoughts in the world. When you are working on your next book, you will not be able to tell people about it or make people give you the word “Fear.” You won’t ever be able to tell people what they don’t want to know. What you can tell them is how you feel about your life. It’s just that you can’t let things get in the way of you working and living your life. We want to empower others by seeing them with different kinds of eyes. But it won’t happen. Your work should never be restricted to trying to change your life. Now you realize that you are a creative person. You are a creative person. You don’t need to be told what you should or should not do. You just need to be able to see those boundaries you’ve set in your mind. This is what I mean when I say we don’t have to think about whether or not we should o…

I’m not really into it.

HeadLime

HeadLime can generate marketing copy for you. It’s no place for fiction writing, but I am including it anyway because it was a fun experiment.

You enter some ideas into the interface. Then it will generate a dozen headlines and three introductory paragraphs. I really liked the ones that it generated for me. You have to keep adding more text yourself for the AI tool to keep contributing. But firstly, I want to make a disclaimer — human men are fantastic! I just wanted to create some content that resonated with the paranormal romances I’ve been reading about on Free Friday.

The headline I picked was “How to Find a Shifter Boyfriend.” The AI then generated three introductory paragraphs based on that. And I chose this one.

“Tired of the same old, boring human men? Want to experience a more exciting and adventurous love life? You can find a shifter boyfriend if you know where to look. We’re going to take a quick tour through your options for finding a shifter.”

To be honest, I found it to be hilarious. The tone is so … SEO-ish. Then I was disappointed. The screen prompted me to write, and as I did, the button for more AI writing turned on. The bold is what I wrote and the rest is what the tool made.

There are many reasons a woman w0uld want a shifter boyfriend. It’s exciting and adventurous, and you never know what’s going to happen next. With the right attitude, we’re sure that you’ll find your shifter man.”

-Wolf: A wolf can be a gentle lover if he is with the right woman. They are generally larger than most humans so they need someone who can keep up with them in bed.

-Shark: A shark has an intense energy that keeps their human girlfriend on her toes (and in bed).

Woah! In bed? How did we jump to that already? The target audience doesn’t even have a boyfriend yet. You can see why I was a bit disappointed by this one. It is basically irrelevant. And after I earned another set of AI-text — by writing myself — I pushed the AI writing button and it repeated what it said about the wolf and shark shifter.

The Facebook ads based off the input I entered were great though. In the left column, I entered my input. The right column is all AI.

I am enjoying all the features, and the output is often great. I could easily spend another hour fiddling around with this.

Ah, I couldn’t resist. Here is one of the AI-generated ads using the pain-gain-claim formula for ad copy.

You’ve been single for months. You’re tired of getting your hopes up, only to be disappointed. Now, paranormal relationship advice can find you the perfect match. With experts in every species, you’ll finally feel at home with someone special.

Fantastic! Now, what is the price for this awesome service? The individual service includes all the features and is $59 a month. The business service allows you to collaborate with two teammates along with other perks and it costs $399 a month.

Jasper

Jasper (formerly Jarvis) offers a free trial of five days. You have to sign in and you have to sign up for a plan to get the free days. That means also adding in your credit card number. There are three plans. The cheapest offer is $29 a month. The pro version is $109 a month. And they just added a “boss mode” which includes all the features of pro, and more. It costs $119 a month.

I don’t want to enter my credit card info, so all I can say is that it’s designed for SEO optimization.

Smodin

Smodin says that it is on a mission to make text applications available in every language. They offer several services, but not all of them are ready for use as of this article. I tested out the service they call the Robotic Writing Machine, only the option called “expand my text” is available. So I tested it and this is what happened:

The hell hounds broke into the database of the paranormal dating service. They were trying to figure out how to get the most attractive dates among the human and paranormal communities. A pack of ten, they ranged from reds to browns in coloration, though their coats varied greatly depending on individual preferences and tastes; some being longer than others, with long legs, or having a shorter, thicker coat that gave them more of a wolfish appearance and less like that of an animal usually associated with domestic dogs such as Dalmatians or golden retrievers – but not this one… not any dog that could be seen on the street in New York City, at least.

Kind of awesome, no?

This service is free and doesn’t have a paywall so far.

Amira Loutfi

MetaStellar reviews editor Amira Loutfi is an author and web designer. She is on a mission to craft excellent fantasy fiction that is inspired by late antiquity Arabia. You can join her monthly newsletter where she shares insider info, wips, and tons of cool stuff.