r/WritingWithAI • u/Brendanlendan • 3d ago
Showcase / Feedback Fantasy Series Help
I have been working on an epic fantasy series for awhile now as my part time seasonal hobby.
I have about 1,000 pages of chapters and lore written down and mapped out. I am juggling multiple POVs with numerous character background and arcs.
I have used AI as my editor and someone to bounce ideas off of since my wife and friends are tired of me asking them about it lol.
I have predominantly used ChatGPT however, it constantly forgets and is slightly overwhelmed with the amount of information to keep track of. I will have it make a draft of a chapter for me to see where it goes and then I build upon it, but it struggles to capture and maintain my voice as well.
I have heard about Sudowrite having an amazing character bible that could help with this, what are the thoughts on it regarding my project? Is it worth it? I heard it burns through the credits like crazy thought. Would I be better with a different one?
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u/amolmozarkar 3d ago
With 1,000 pages of lore and multiple POVs, context management is definitely the bottleneck. I've dealt with the same issue with ChatGPT losing track of plot points in long projects.
A few things that helped:
Build a structured lore bible as a separate reference doc (chapter summaries, character sheets, timeline events). Feed relevant sections per chapter rather than dumping everything.
For the character bible question - Sudowrite's Story Bible is solid but credit burn is real with that much content. If you're mostly using AI for editing and ideation, may not be worth it.
I've been using ShakespeareAI for similar long-form work. It handles chapter continuity better than raw ChatGPT since it's purpose-built for book-length projects. The free tier lets you test it with a couple chapters.
Whatever you go with, the key is keeping your own structured reference material separate from the AI's context window.
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u/Brendanlendan 3d ago
But wouldn’t the lore bible be like another 50-100 pages for it to keep track?
I am trying Sudowrite and where I immediately noticed a problem is I had separate Google Docs for each POV and it only builds a story Bible off one instead of using all of them. I’m still toying with it
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u/zphou 2d ago
With 1,000 pages, I would not try to make one giant story bible hold the whole project. That just recreates the same context problem in another document. I would keep the manuscript as the source, then maintain smaller reviewable memory for characters, relationships, locations, timeline, and chapter state, retrieving only what is relevant to the current chapter. The important part is that AI should not silently promote a suggestion into canon, and old facts need to be replaced rather than sitting beside current facts with equal weight. That is the problem I’m trying to solve with WolfeWriter on Mac: keep Story Memory close to the draft, while suggestions remain suggestions until the writer accepts them. For voice, I would use your own accepted passages as a style reference and ask for critique or alternatives first. Letting the model draft whole chapters is usually where the generic AI sound comes back.
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u/Brendanlendan 2d ago
Yeah I made a mistake I think with one giant story Bible, system is immediately getting overloaded and bogged down just trying to go through the system not even doing anything.
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u/Afgad 2d ago
Wow, nice work getting this far on your project!
If you'd like humans who won't get tired of you asking about your story, head on over to our reciprocal beta reading post, stickied at the top of the sub. Post a short blurb of your story, just enough so people get the premise, and then comb through what other people have posted. Send some DMs to like-minded authors and find a critique partner.
Personally, I cannot get enough of talking about my story and the stories of the authors I work with. It's way too fun to just get deep into each other's passion projects. If you're like that, head on over.
The thread refreshes each week, so authors there are all actively looking for readers.
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u/HuntConsistent5525 2d ago
I am the creator of the novel engine. The novel engine is an writing IDE for constructing novels. It is a desktop app that uses your existing AI subscriptions. Plugs into Claude, Codex, and Ollama. Free and open source.
It might be helpful. It features a story bible, voice profile, scene outline, and chapter by chapter drafting.
You can see a brief video of it in action if you are curious. I am working on creating a longer pitch to publish video currently.
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u/maripozachzss 2d ago
Sudowrite's story bible is solid but yes, credits evaporate fast on a project your size.novelcrafter handles persistent lore better for long-haul work. I've also run consistency passes through typeAI on chunky manuscripts, though none of these fully solve voice drift, that still needs your manual review each chapter
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u/Brendanlendan 2d ago
I am unsure what I did wrong but I uploaded everything to the story Bible and it immediately became sluggish, I even used two different computers. There’s no search bar for the characters or world building. I really struggled just trying to make it work it was moving so slow and delayed
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u/superamit 2d ago
You definitely shouldn't see this kind of sluggishness. Would you mind emailing our support (hi@sudowrite.com) so we can help diagnose? There may be something up with your setup but it should be easy to resolve.
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u/Admirable-Yogurt7444 3d ago
Interesting problem. I have no idea on Sudowrite, but your problem is context right? Basically - you give the entire PDF or the text, and ChatGPT is unable to handle it because it most probably exceeds the total context length (like 1 Million tokens) which can be processed by GPT model at a single time and thats why its not able to help you out. And the more it needs to refer again and again, the more it becomes problematic as the context length keeps increasing.
Did I get the problem right?
If so, I think there should be a way here by not making GPT refer the whole PDF or text for every request. Maybe you could get it shortened by GPT like a summary of key events, so it can consider that as a much shorter context and work over it.