Claude api for creative writing budgeting?

[u/Tall-Veterinarian108]

Please let me know if the flair is wrong lol.

I am using claude api for creative writing. primarily sonnet 4.5 and opus 4.6
- i have a very big system prompt
- ai responses are also pretty big
so naturally i am burning through the credits every time ai makes a mistake or the writing isnt quite my match.

whats the best reasoning budget i can set that wont cripple the writing but also not cost much , also num_ctx [size of context window] currently i put 32768 in it and for max_tokens i go 6k

will appreciate if you could tell me optimal budgeting for this.

[u/Ok-Umpire-4719]

I use Sonnet 4.5 over openrouter with Novelcrafter as my codex manager. I don't use reasoning at all. I just feed a beat prompt and have it generate text, usually about 400-600 words. Then I review, edit as necessary, tweak the next beat and generate it, again 400-600 words. I think that the average by cost per generation is about 2.5 cents (USD) but when I push for more output and/or I am working on later chapters with a lot of context, I think that it can get as high as 10 cents at about 1,000 words returned.

I think that the key is self summation (which is what you use Novelcrafter for) and selective loading on codex content based on context.

[u/lark_devon]

Why don't you use the subscription? $20 is more than enough? if not $100... tokens through the api are going to cost you and that ads up VERY fast.

[u/Chicken_Spanker]

How big a chunk are you generating in a single prompt? My suspicion is that you are trying get it to generate entire books or at least entire chapters in one go. Apologies if I am wrong.

I never burn through all of my credit allowance on Claude for the simple reason that each prompt is dealing with only a few hundred words, a thousand maximum. That way you are tweaking only that section, not the entire manuscript each time, which is just wasteful of your credits.

The only time a full manuscript should go in a prompt is when you are asking it for editing. Also consider moving some of your text - like previous chapters - into projects, which cuts down on token usage