So, you want to write the next big best-selling novel, but it seems so… daunting.

Maybe you have a great, captivating plot that you would love to bring to life, but when it comes to the execution, you need a bit of help. A case of writer’s block, a book deadline, or you want to write in your non-native language; there are tons of reasons why you may be looking for a bit of help.

Fortunately, there are a bunch of new AI novel-writing tools that you can use to make the process a heck of a lot easier.

In this article, I’m reviewing the best AI novel writing software available today so you can find the right one for you.

But first, how can AI writing software help you write a novel?

  • AI writers use a language model that allows them to write sentences and paragraphs that sound like a human wrote them.
  • They’re also familiar with specific types of writing—so a copywriting AI writing software knows how to write a sales page, while a novel AI writing software knows how to craft a compelling story.

The software I’ve reviewed below are specifically designed to help you generate ideas for a story, write your first draft, or edit a manuscript. 

While no AI software can write a finished novel for you, it can give you something to start with—saving you time and helping you get that novel out into the world a lot faster.

Now let’s take a look at my top picks for the best AI novel writing software available right now.

Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my links, at no extra cost to you. Please read full disclosure for more information.

Table of Contents:

1. Sudowrite

Best for Beginners

Sudowrite is a beginner-friendly AI novel writing software that not only writes a story for you but also helps you to improve your stories with advanced fiction-writing techniques.

Here’s the quick and dirty on Sudowrite:

  • Onboarding Experience: They have an awesome onboarding experience that shows you how to use the app in a fun way.
  • Describe Command: If you have a piece of writing you find bland, the Describe command will give you suggestions to make the writing more sensory, using the five senses.
  • Twist Feature: If you enter a short summary of your story and choose a genre, the AI will give you a long list of plot twists you could include in your story to surprise your readers. Goodbye, writer’s block!
  • Themes: You can customize your writing experience by choosing from any of the themes included inside of Sudowrite. You can also change your font, line spacing, and other display options.
  • Smart Text Coloring: The app automatically colors AI-generated text purple until you edit it, so you know what you’ve edited and what you haven’t yet.
  • There’s no way to choose a genre on the main writing page, so you can’t explicitly choose the genre you want to focus on. However, if you clearly describe your story, the tool should be able to understand whether you’re trying to write science fiction or romance (or any other genre you choose).

Pricing: $19 a month will get you 30,000 words, while the most popular mid-tier plan for $29 a month will get you 90,000 words. (Sudowrite recommends the $29/month plan for novelists and screenwriters.)

Final Verdict

I find Sudowrite to be the best AI writing software for serious novel writers who want an app that’s specifically focus on novel writing and storytelling.

Sudowrite is helpful for everyone, from the beginning writer who wants to improve their writing skills to the expert writer who wants to generate a rough draft that they or can shape into their next best-selling novel.

2. Jasper

Best All-Around AI Writer

Jasper (also known as Jasper AI) is one of the most well-known AI writing software in the industry, and for a very good reason.

Its sophisticated algorithm allows you to generate text in dozens of different formats, including sales copy, social media posts, marketing ideas, and—you guessed it—creative stories.

The Creative Story option inside of Jasper AI allows you to generate a short or long-form story using creative writing. This is the best choice for you if you’re writing a novel. I’ve written a full, in-depth review of Jasper if you want to read more, or there’s also a Copy AI comparison here.

Here are my favorite features of Jasper AI as a novel writing software:

  • Dozens of Writing Options: Anything you want to write, chances are Jasper has a mode for it. It can take product features and turn them into benefits, rewrite complicated explanations in a way a child can understand, and more.
  • BossMode Commands: If you can’t find a writing mode that fits your use case, Jasper has a mode called BossMode Commands that allows you to type anything you want the AI to write for you. For example, if you want to “Write a blog post about weight-lifting in Hulk Hogan’s voice,” it can do that for you.
  • High-Quality Content: Jasper’s writing is impressively creative and accurate. It’s one of the best tools to write long-form content on the market right now.
  • SurferSEO Integration: If you’re also looking for help writing blog posts (to increase traffic to your book listings or build an audience of potential readers), you can connect a SurferSEO account to Jasper to create SEO-optimized content.
  • Art Generator: Jasper now includes an art generator, which you can use to create original images, cover art, or character designs for your novels.
  • Jasper isn’t specifically designed as a novel-writing software, so it lacks some of the advanced features you’ll find in other software.

Pricing: Jasper has two modes: Starter and Boss Mode. Starter only generates short-form content and doesn’t have an advanced editor, while Boss Mode gives you both an editor and the ability to create long-form content. You’ll need to get Boss Mode in order to write a novel with Jasper AI. 

Boss Mode starts at $49 a month for up to 50,000 words. (You’ll be charged more if you generate more words per month.)

Final Verdict

Jasper AI is an all-around great AI writer. Because the it can generate both stories and other copy, it’s a good choice for writers who want to produce both fiction and non-fiction pieces.

That said, newer novelists might want more advanced fiction-writing features to help them write better stories.

3. Sassbook

Best for Writers on a Budget

Sassbook is a collection of four AI writing tools, each with a specific purpose. There’s the general AI writing software, the AI text summarizer, the AI headline generator, and the AI story writer.

To use Sassbook’s story writer, you write a prompt for your story between 15 and 30 words, choose your parameters, and click “Complete” to start generating your story. 

Each time you generate more text, the AI engine will read the last part of the story and continue from there.

Here are some key features of Sassbook’s AI Story Writer.

  • Choose a Genre. Sassbook allows you to choose from a Classic novel, Humor, Sci-Fi, Romance, or Thriller for your story. You can also choose “Original” mode if your book doesn’t fit into these categories.
  • Creativity Levels. You can choose a creativity level for the story between “Conservative,” “Balanced,” and “Inventive.” This gives you a little more control over how your story is told.
  • Multiple Versions: Each time you generate the next part of the story, you can ask the AI writing assistant to give you multiple variations of the text. That way, you can choose the one you like best.
  • I found Sassbook’s user interface to be a little bit confusing and cluttered. It doesn’t look as polished as other apps.
  • Sassbook lacks the sophisticated story-writing capabilities of Sudowriter but isn’t as robust as tools like Jasper, and with the (seemingly) random collection of tools, it’s hard to know who this software is designed for.

Pricing: You can use the app for free for up to 20 generations per day (each generation includes 50 words). For $39 a month, you can generate unlimited words (with up to 70 words in each generation).

Final Verdict

If you’re looking to generate stories, blog posts, and marketing copy but want to avoid paying top dollar for an app like Jasper, Sassbook could be a good alternative AI writing software. 

I recommend using the free version to help you decide if it’s a good fit for you or not.

4. AI Dungeon

Best for Ideas

AI Dungeon is a free AI writing software that helps you create stories in a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style. It’s actually more of a game, but surprisingly a great way to create an epic novel.

To use AI Dungeon, you enter a prompt into the text field and click the send icon. The AI continues your story and then asks you a question like, “What happens next?” or “What do you see?” You create the next twist, and it continues the story again.

Here are some helpful features from AI Dungeon:

  • World Building. You can give the AI information about your fictional world that it will use to craft the story.
  • Distraction-Free Workspace. The UI looks like one of those old video games before they had graphics. It’s just white text on a black screen that explains the story to you.
  • Free to Use. This software is totally free to use, which makes it a helpful tool for budding writers.
  • Can See Other Stories. If you’re experiencing writer’s block, you can browse other people’s published stories and get inspiration from them. (Some stories are explicit.)
  • It’s not the most sophisticated tool, and it doesn’t have an editor-like interface for editing and polishing your stories.

Pricing: AI Dungeon is free for unlimited words, but they do have premium packages that give you more features. Becoming a member (for $10 a month and up) gives you access to the AI image generator, more premium AI models, and other features.

Final Verdict

For generating story ideas and getting the creative juices flowing, you can’t beat a free story-generating app. AI Dungeon is a great place to get started with your next novel idea. However, its lack of editing capabilities means that it won’t help you to develop a working draft. It’s more for fun.

5. Subtxt

Best for Outlining

Subtxt is an AI writing software that takes a different approach from other tools. Instead of generating a story paragraph by paragraph, it gives you a well-thought-out outline that you can use to write a story from.

The genius of Subtxt is that it uses proven story models to craft story ideas into 3-act structures that translate into compelling stories and screenplays.

Then it can generate a story intelligently based on the outline.

  • Generates Scene by Scene. The weakness of most AI writers is that they can’t plan ahead for a long-form story. They read what they’ve written and then take it from there. But Subtxt’s writing process makes sure the story has a beginning, middle, and end to make it easier to write (and know that it will end up as a usable story).
  • Structure Templates. You can choose from dozen of existing structures based on popular movies and TV series and analyze the structure of the story (so you can use it for your own).
  • Subtxt Concierge. Subtxt subscribers can have a meeting with the Subtxt team to flesh out a story idea and get advice for fleshing it out in the app.
  • Subtxt’s documents and guide can be confusing for someone not well-versed in storytelling. This app seems more tailored to professional writers than beginners.
  • The website is a little buggy. 

Pricing: The Basic plan is $25 a month, and Unlimited is $45 a month. It’s not clear from the website what each plan includes.

Final Verdict

Subtxt is a powerful story generator and AI writing tool for the serious novelist. If you want to plot out a story AND harness the power of an AI writer, Subtxt is an excellent choice. 

6. ArtBreeder

Best for Character Design

ArtBreeder is an experimental AI art generator that can help you design characters and scenes for your story. While there are tons of AI art generators on the market (I’ve trialed them all here!), this one is specific for those stories.

Here are some things I like about ArtBreeder:

  • Splicer: You can choose a photo of a person or scene and use the sliders to customize it to your liking. Change age, gender, ethnicity, emotion, and how human-like or cartoon-like the person is. For scenes, you can add snow, trees, water, and other features with sliders to create the world you want.
  • Collaborative Community: The core of ArtBreeder is the community. You can edit other people’s art, and in turn, they can edit yours to create new things.
  • Private Mode: If you want to keep your characters and scenes secret, you can turn on Private Mode. Your artwork won’t be shared with anyone.
  • It doesn’t have a feature to generate art from text. You must start with an image or collection of images to use ArtBreeder. 

Pricing: ArtBreeder is free to use, but accessing premium features like Private Mode and uploading your own images starts from $8 a month.

Final Verdict

If you’re looking for a unique way to generate characters and scenes for your next novel, look no further than ArtBreeder’s AI image generator.

7. Wordtune

Best for Rewriting Sentences

Sometimes you’re working on a story, and a sentence doesn’t sound quite right. Or a line of dialogue doesn’t spark like the way you wanted it to. Enter Wordtune, a rewriting app that can take a single sentence and rephrase it in a click.

Here are some of the best features of Wordtune:

  • Gives You Multiple Options. Wordtune makes it easier to write creative text because it gives you multiple variations of the original sentence. I tested the sentence, “It just doesn’t feel right, Sally,” and got 10 variations (including “My gut tells me that’s not right, Sally.”)
  • Writing Tones. Besides simply rewriting the sentence, you can also change any sentence into a casual or formal tone based on your needs.
  • Works for Multiple Types of Writing. If you want to write a blog post or social media post, this can help speed up the content creation process.

Pricing: You can generate text up to 10 times a day for free, or purchase the premium plan for $10 a month, unlimited words, and the ability to rewrite paragraphs.

Final Verdict

If you’re looking for an AI tool that can help you write more creatively, WordTune is a great choice. Use it to improve your writing style in just a few clicks.

8. Authors.ai

Best for Self-Publishers

Authors.ai provides an AI-based beta reader and editor for your novel. The AI editor, affectionately named Marlowe, will read through your manuscript and give you a 32-page report so you can improve the work before you publish.

This is a bit different and be used in additional to the other novel AI platforms, as it essentially acts as an editor which is geat for those looking to self-publish.

Here are some of the best features of Authors.ai:

  • Fast: You can get a full report on the strengths and weaknesses of your book in just 15 minutes. Try getting a human editor to do that! 🙂
  • Comps: Marlowe now offers Comps, which compares your novel to other popular novels that are similar in style and structure.
  • Doubles as a Copy Editor: Marlowe can also find overused clichĂ©s, grammatical errors, and other writing mistakes to fix.
  • It comes down to how much you trust an AI to decide if your book is well-written or not. Marlowe’s method is to compare your book to other bestsellers, but not all books are created equal—and that’s a good thing.

Pricing: $30 a month will get you 2 full-length reports every month. If you’d like a single report, you can get it for a one-time fee of $45.

Final Verdict

If you want to save time and money during the editing process, running it through Marlowe before sending it to beta readers or human editors could be a great help for those planning to go the self-publishing route.

9. ProWritingAid

Best for Copy Editing

ProWritingAid is an advanced AI writing tool and editor that helps you improve your writing with more than a dozen smart writing reports.

Yes, ProWritingAid helps you to correct spelling errors and grammar mistakes, but it goes way beyond that. Its detailed reports are designed to help you become a better writer. 

It can show you style errors and how to fix them, make your text more readable, help you avoid clichés and passive sentences, and revise other common writing blunders.

Here are some key features of ProWritingAid:

  • Custom Rules. Besides the existing filters that help you improve your writing and fix errors, ProWritingAid allows you to create custom rules for your documents. This means you can have a unique style guide for your novel to make sure your writing is consistent throughout.
  • Integrates with Popular Writing Apps. You can use ProWritingAid inside a Chrome browser (for use with Google Docs and other websites) or connect it to Microsoft Word or Scrivener to use on your drafts as you’re writing them.
  • Reference Library. The app has a thesaurus, a common phrase dictionary, and other helpful resources you can use to find new words for your draft.
  • The plagiarism checker, which can help you make sure your work is fully unique, costs an extra $4 a month.

Pricing: You can use ProWritingAid with limited functionality for free. A paid subscription starts at $20 a month for long-form documents and full access to writing reports. Premium Plus gives you access to the plagiarism checker for $24 a month.

Final Verdict

If you’re planning to edit your novel yourself (or want to polish it up before sending it off to others), ProWritingAid will give you all the reports you need to get your manuscript ready for the next step.

10. Grammarly

Best for Proofreading

Grammarly is another great AI-based editing software and grammar checker that can help you proofread and polish your novel. It’s not as in-depth as ProWritingAid, but it does have a lot of helpful features.

Here’s what I like about Grammarly:

  • Gives You a Score. Grammarly scores your document out of 100 and then gives you concrete suggestions to bring it closer to a perfect score. I personally use Grammarly for my writing, and the scoring feature always motivates me to make the draft better.
  • Use it Wherever You Write. You can get Grammarly as a Chrome or Safari extension to use with browser-based writing apps (like Google Docs) or download a desktop app to use with your favorite desktop-based writing software.
  • Detects Voice and Tone. Besides simply checking for grammar and spelling errors, Grammarly can assess the overall feeling of the writing, from confident to cheerful to sad and everything in between, helping you to achieve the right tone in each section.
  • Customizable Settings. You can change your preferences for the editing criteria the app uses, such as whether you want to use the Oxford Comma or not.
  • Grammarly does well with in-line editing of a document, but it doesn’t have all of the specific reports you get with ProWritingAid, nor does it have a comparable reference library.
  • You can’t create custom rules or style guides as an individual user, which makes it hard to define your own writing style.

Pricing: Grammarly is free with a limited feature set, or $30 a month to access its full editing capabilities, plus a plagiarism checker. The Business plan with extra features, is available for teams of 3 or more, for up to $15 per team member.

Final Verdict

If you want a quick yet thorough proofread of your novel, Grammarly can help you to do just that. And because it integrates with most websites and apps, it’s one of the most versatile editors you can have in your writing toolkit.

What is an AI Novel Writing Software?

An AI novel writing software tool uses artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and machine learning to intelligently craft stories that not only make sense but are also compelling to read. 

Other types of novel-writing software can help you generate story ideas or edit a finished draft.

How does an AI novel writer work?

To use an AI writer, you must give it a prompt and some parameters. 

For example, you could set up a mystery story by saying, “Jane is preparing to graduate from Middle High when she gets a mysterious letter from her grandmother inviting her to visit for two weeks.”

When you submit the prompt, the AI writer draws on its understanding of human language, story structure, the genre you’re writing, and other pieces of information and crafts the next few lines of the story.

Then you can review the new section, edit it further, or ask the AI writer to rewrite the text.

An AI novel writing software differs from other AI writers because it focuses on creative writing instead of informative or persuasive writing.

Some apps allow you to generate custom images, edit the tone and grammar of the text, and give structural feedback on the entire novel.

Benefits of an AI Novel Writing Tool

Let’s face it. Using an AI novel writing tool is a very new concept. Some would even suggest that it’s cheating because a “computer” is writing for you. But it’s important to realize they are just tools to supplement your ideas, and should be used as such.

Some of the benefits of AI novel writers are:

  • Generate New and Creative Ideas: Sometimes, it feels like you can’t come up with any original ideas. AI tools can give you unique and interesting ideas that you might not have come up with on your own and help spark more ideas.
  • Break Through Writer’s Block: Many writers are daunted by the blank page. Having an AI writer in your toolkit means you can quickly generate a block of text on the page and get your story started without having to deal with writer’s block anymore.
  • Save Time Writing the First Draft: AI tools aren’t designed to write a novel with no human input, but they can generate an okay first draft. Instead of having to do everything from scratch, you can generate the first draft quickly and then spend more of your time on editing and polishing.
  • Improve Your Writing Skills: AI-based editors like ProWritingAid and Grammarly can give you tips on writing in a more engaging and clear voice, which can help you improve your writing skills.
  • Save Money on Editing: AI editors can critique, review, and find errors in your novel, saving you the time and money of hiring human editors to catch those mistakes. (Not that you don’t need human editors, but the AI can take care of the easy edits first.)
  • Write Other Copy You Need: If you choose a versatile writer like Jasper, you can use the software to generate other copy for marketing purposes, like blog posts, video descriptions, digital ads, book sales pages, responses to reviews, and more.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Which novel AI writing tools are available for free?

Out of the novel-writing tools I’ve reviewed here, Sassbook can help you write stories for free, AI Dungeon will help you find story ideas for free, ArtBreeder allows you to design characters and settings for free, and WordTune, ProWritingAid, and Grammarly can help edit your writing for free.

Do I still have creative control over my story if I use an AI writer?

Yes! AI writers use your unique prompt when writing a story, and you have full creative control over the output. If you don’t like a section, you can ask the software to write it again or edit the text to your liking.

It’s important to remember that AI tools are only meant to give you the first draft—you’ll still be able to edit and shape the draft into your own unique piece of writing.

Does AI writing software plagiarize other people’s writing?

No, AI writing tools don’t plagiarize. Everything an AI writer generates is brand-new text based on the software’s understanding of human language and sentence structure. It “thinks” about what it should say based on the input and strings together words to create new sentences. 

That said, there is a chance that the generated text matches something else that’s already been written, so it’s helpful to use a plagiarism checker on the final output.

What’s the best novel AI writing software available?

In my opinion, Sudowrite is the most robust and easy-to-use AI novel writing software available today. Jasper is also a great tool overall.

Can AI writing software actually write a novel?

Yes, it can! AI writing tools can follow any number of models—from resumés and job descriptions to blog posts and ads to creative stories. AI writing tools designed for creative writing have the necessary models to weave together an interesting story based on a prompt.

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