The Best Feature in Novelcrafter (Full Tutorial)

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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[copester]

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.

[dakforest]

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!

[MadamCoyote]

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.

[Zobeid]

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.

[indiebeach]

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!

[davidmarshall]

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.

[drgnmsr]

@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.

[Zobeid]

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!

[dameanvil]

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.

[medicdrillsgt]

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.

[heidijugovic]

I LOVE NovelCrafter. I've written with AI for some time now, and nothing beats the way you can effortlessly combine exactly the right information into every prompt, like you can with Novelcrafter. Nothing beats how you can pick exactly what model you want to use with what. Nothing beats that it will write new text, revise existing text, summarize text, and chat with you about whatever context you want: many AI writing tools have SOME of these, none have ALL. I'm hoping that eventually "Review" will become more robust, but otherwise, I think this tool is just amazing and makes writing fun!

[stealthed]

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



"The Codex: Novelcrafter's Unique Character Documentation Tool - The Nerdy Novelist"

- 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.

- Tags help organize characters, like the Red Blades group.
- Aliases help the AI recognize different names or nicknames of characters.

- 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.

- Aliases and nicknames help the AI understand and identify characters in prompts.
- Descriptions include physical details, communication style, personality traits, and more.

- You can choose to always include a character in the AI context
- You can add nested references to include related information

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- Artifact can be assigned an alias for reference
- Artifacts can be linked to later story progressions

- Style guide allows setting style information for AI story writing.
- Features for managing notes, references, story genre, and subplot details.

- Feature allows easy access and reference to characters in the scene
- Useful tools for filtering and sorting through codex entries

[eklipsing]

NovelAI has the Lorebook which is almost identical to the Codex and functions very similarly. I've used both and have been equally impressed!

[AliciaMcCalla]

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 😎

[littleparadisehome]

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?

[MrParacristo]

What an absolutely amazing video. I am stunned by the depth and complexity of this program. I have spent the last 2 years world building and trying to understand the world that my novels are set in, what characters live there, and how everything progresses. It is awesome to see that there is a program where all of this vital info can be put down and utilized in the story…. WOW!

[MagnusItland]

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.

[markhagan]

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 :)

[johansparr]

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 😊

[archonjubael]

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.