Novelcrafter Review: The Most Powerful AI Tool for Writers [2025]

The world of AI moves fast, with new Large Language Models (LLMs) popping up all the time.

One relatively recent tool that has emerged, and which quickly became the gold standard for AI-writing workflows, is Novelcrafter.

In this review of Novelcrafter, we’re examining whether it’s worth using to write your books (and yes, you can actually use it WITHOUT AI if you want, and it’s even cheaper if you do).

In this article, you will learn:

• What Novelcrafter is
• Why it took the AI-writing community by storm
• How to get started using Novelcrafter
• What I do and don’t like about it

What Is Novelcrafter?

Novelcrafter is an AI-powered writing platform designed to support authors throughout the entire novel writing process, from initial brainstorming to the final edits.

It’s particularly useful because it offers an easy workflow that is specifically designed for authors utilizing AI. 

Anyone can use AI with any ol’ chatbot, like ChatGPT, for example. But when writing long-form fiction or nonfiction with AI, you may quickly find that some of the tasks become repetitive in a chat-interface (for example, constantly copy/pasting information about your characters into the chat), and could benefit from a workflow that is more tailored to an author.

That’s what Novelcrafter provides, that tailored workflow. And it’s very good at it.

Who Is Novelcrafter For?

Novelcrafter’s primary audience is fiction authors, but the tool is set up in a way that it could easily be used by a variety of long-form writers, including novelists, screenwriters, content creators, nonfiction writers, and even tabletop gamers.

What sets Novelcrafter apart is its flexibility. If it’s some kind of long-form writing you want to do, it can do almost anything you can think of.

I happen to know the Novelcrafter team even uses it to manage their company, feeding it information about financial reports, newsletters, and the like.

So not only is it a writing tool, but it’s even useful as a productivity and management tool. It brings together the best of AI and large-scale databases for the purposes of producing content.

Novelcrafter’s Pricing

Novelcrafter offers a tiered pricing model:

• Scribe: Basic features for $4/month.
• Hobbyist: Adds AI integration for $8/month.
• Artisan: Includes full AI chat and advanced features for $14/month.
• Specialist: Offers collaborative writing and team management for $20/month.

There’s actually a large segment of Novelcrafter’s user-base who don’t use AI at all, and therefore take the Scribe tier. That’s because certain features like the Codex are great for organizing your information anyway, even if you’re not using AI.

But if you’re reading this, I’m guessing most of you are interested in using AI, which means you will at least want the Hobbyist tier.

Personally, I’d go with the Artisan tier, because there are a lot of brainstorming and outlining use cases where I use the full AI chat feature.

Additionally, keep in mind that this is just for the tool and does not include the cost of using the AI tokens, which are paid for as you go through a tool like OpenRouter. More on how to connect OpenRouter further down.

Try Novelcrafter

Why Trust Me?

In addition to being the former content manager here at Kindlepreneur, I currently own the largest YouTube channel on AI (and other software tools) for creative writing.

Novelcrafter came onto the scene in late 2023, and quickly became the gold standard for a lot of authors.

I myself made several videos about the tool, including this one walking you through a full guide of the software.

If you want more videos like this talking about the practical uses of AI in writing and marketing, be sure to subscribe to the channel.

Funny enough, as I was planning the outline for this article, I came across several other reviews that were clearly AI generated and even listed features that did not exist.

This article, ironically, is not AI generated. Everything I say about Novelcrafter is 100% from my own experience using the tool.

So with that in mind, let’s go through some of the most important features that Novelcrafter has to offer:

The Most Important Features

Novelcrafter can do a LOT. It’s like the Adobe Photoshop or Android operating system of the AI-writing world. It’s highly flexible and powerful, but can sometimes get a bit overwhelming for the layman.

But here are some of the reasons why Novelcrafter has become so popular recently, and the main reasons I convinced Dave to let me write this review:

The Codex

Novelcrafter's Codex is a powerful organizational tool designed to help writers manage and keep track of essential story elements. It’s basically a huge structured database for everything you’d need for your book.

The Codex supports various entry types, including:

• Characters: Detailed descriptions of characters, including non-human entities like pets or robots.
• Locations: Settings ranging from rooms to galaxies, ensuring consistency in your narrative.
• Objects/Items: Significant items that drive the plot, such as magical artifacts.
• Lore: World-building elements like magic systems, species, or religions.
• Subplot: Tracking subplot progressions and timelines.
• Other: A catch-all category for elements like corporations or additional genre information.

I’ve even used the Codex more creatively to hold other important elements like the story outline, synopsis, summaries of past books, etc.

What really makes the Codex unique is that it automatically detects references in your text, providing a quick preview of entry details when clicked. This also means that anytime you’re running a prompt, and Novelcrafter detects references to Codex entries in your prompt, it will automatically pull that information into the prompt, so the LLM is made aware of it.

For example, if you’re writing a scene with two people talking to each other, Novelcrafter will automatically pull in the Codex details of both characters, which will allow the LLM to write them differently depending on their personality, dialogue habits, and other information you may wish to include in the Codex.

Ultimately, this is the most powerful of all the resources that Novelcrafter has to offer, and it’s the main reason I use Novelcrafter. 

I mean, just being able to automatically call in information about any character or worldbuilding lore into my AI chatbot is amazing for brainstorming. I’m able to give the AI the context it needs with very little effort.

The Codex helps maintain consistency across your story by keeping all details in one place, and can even be shared across books in a series, reducing redundant data entry. It’s by far my favorite tool.

The Chat

Novelcrafter's Chat feature, formerly known as Tinker Chat, is a powerful tool that allows writers to engage in a chat-like conversation with their novel or elements of their novel, and integrates seamlessly with the Codex and scenes. This allows you to interact in various ways with the information stored in each project.

For example, I once asked it to act as one of my characters, and it pulled up the Codex entry for that character and started to converse with me as if the AI was her. The experience led me to find some inconsistent character traits that were affecting her voice, and I was able to fix those so she sounded more natural and like I imagined her.

The chatbot is also LLM-agnostic, meaning you can use any of the AI models connected to your Novelcrafter account. This allows you to switch between more logical, more creative, or less expensive models at your leisure.

You can also give context of your outline or a specific scene in order to chat with the AI about it. For example, let’s say you were half-way through writing a scene and you don’t know where to go next. You could pull in that scene into the context and ask for ideas.

There really is no excuse for writer’s block anymore.

Working with this Chat feature, given the context of the Codex, has become my #1 way to brainstorm and worldbuild my books.

Prompts and Customization

Novelcrafter allows for full flexibility of its prompts. Any prompts used in any area of Novelcrafter can be cloned and modified to your hearts content. You can also create entirely new prompts, and I’ve seen some that are insanely creative and complex.

For example, I once imported an old public domain book into Novelcrafter, and then created a prompt that allowed me to select a large piece of text from the book, run the prompt, and then turn the selected text into modern prose.

It’s ended up being a really useful feature.

Not all AI-writing programs allow you to change the base prompts or have anywhere near the flexibility that Novelcrafter offers, which is another plus in its favor.

The Plan Tab

The Plan Tab is where you put your outline. You can also summarize a scene and place it in the spaces for your outline.

This lets the AI have a more brief understanding of what happens across the whole novel, or what happened prior to the current chapter. This is useful context for the AI to have, but it’s too unwieldy to have it read the entire novel. Instead, some summaries of each chapter, contained in the Plan tab, make the process a lot easier.

I always make sure that the story of my book is contained here, even if I’m discovery-writing a book.

The Write Tab

The Write Tab appears simple, and in some ways it is, but this is where all the magic happens.

When you’re ready to write (assuming you’re using AI), all you have to do is type in a “/” and a box will pop up that gives you the option of creating a “Scene Beat”. The Scene Beat is just a box where you input what comes next in the story.

Then, Novelcrafter will automatically look for any Codex entries referenced in your scene beat, like names of characters or items. It will also look at the outline for that scene, and the summary of what’s come before.

Then with all of that context, assuming you picked the default prompt, it will write the next few hundred words of the scene.

It’s then up to you to validate those words and make sure they match your vision.

This is essentially where all of the other features (Codex, Plan, etc.) collide to actually help you write the book.

And if you don’t like the output, you can always change the prompt in the Prompts section. It’s relatively easy and gives you ultimate flexibility with how Novelcrafter writes.

Other Smaller Features I Like

In addition to the big things above, here are a few other smaller features I like:

• Sections: Segment your writing with notes, alternatives, and content markers.
• Revision History: Access previous versions and track changes.
• AI Connections: Set up and manage AI providers from a number of sources, including privately hosted LLMs via Ollama or LMStudio, so you can run the AI from your home computer.
• Collaboration: Work with others on your projects (highest tier only)
• The Extract Feature: Pull structured data from chat conversation into the Codex.
• Tagging and Custom Categories: Organize Codex entries with tags and categories to declutter and organize your personal wiki
• Relations: Build networks for families, organizations, etc.
• Prompt Preview: See the exact prompt sent to the AI (I sometimes even copy this to use inside of a chatbot like ChatGPT).
• Novel POV and Tense: Easily set these up to keep a consistent POV and novel tense.

How to Get Set Up in Novelcrafter

Here's a step-by-step guide to setting up your Novelcrafter account and starting your first novel:

Step 1: Create Your Novelcrafter Account

• Go to novelcrafter.com.
• Click on the “Start Writing” button in the top right corner.
• You can sign up using Google, Notion, or Git accounts, or manually enter your details.
• Go to your email inbox and click on the confirmation link sent by Novelcrafter. If you don't see the email, check your spam folder.

Step 2: Create Your First Novel

• Once your account is confirmed, log in to Novelcrafter.
• Click on the “Create Novel” button.
• In the book details section, enter your book title, author name (or pen name), and assign it to a series if applicable.
• Click “Create Novel” to set up your project.

Step 3: Connect Novelcrafter to an API

• Set up Novelcrafter to connect to popular APIs like those found in OpenRouter
• To connect to OpenAI:
  • Go to platform.openai.com and sign up if you haven't already.
  • Navigate to the API keys section and create a new secret key. Save this key securely, as OpenAI won't provide it again.
  • In Novelcrafter, go to your account menu in the bottom-left corner, select “AI Connections”, find the OpenAI section, and enter your API key. This will connect you to GPT models
• To connect to OpenRouter:
  • Create an account at OpenRouter.ai
  • Follow similar steps as with OpenAI to obtain an API key.
  • In Novelcrafter's “AI Connections” settings, find the OpenRouter section and enter your API key. This gives you access to a wide range of models, including those from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Gemini
• If desired, follow similar steps to connect to LMStudio, Ollama, etc. for locally-hosted LLMs

Step 4: Establish Your Settings

• Go to the Codex and create your first character. Enter any details about them that you can come up with on the spot (you can always change it later). Make sure this is the main character who will have a POV (usually your protagonist).
• Click on the cog icon in the top left corner to open the Novel Settings.
• Select the “Writing” tab.
• Under “Point of View,” select the type (e.g., first person, third person limited) and choose the character you created. This will ensure they are the main viewpoint character. You can always change this later or adjust for individual scenes.
• In the Writing tab, choose the language for your novel (e.g., US English, British English)
• Decide whether your story will be in past or present tense and select it in the Writing tab

Step 5: Start Writing

• Go to the “Write” interface.
• Click “Add Initial Scene” to begin writing.
• Start typing your story. Novelcrafter automatically saves your work as you write. Feel free to use a backslash command to bring up the option of writing a scene beat for the AI to write.
• Fill in your outline and/or Codex as needed

Pros: What I Like About Novelcrafter

Here are my favorite features that I like about Novelcrafter. These are the main reasons I use it.

• The Codex: This is a wiki-like feature on steroids. And unlike tools like Campire or World Anvil, it’s built with authors in mind rather than end-users. Meaning it seamlessly integrates with the actual writing part of things, especially if you’re using AI.
• The Chat: I love using the chat, with its context awareness, to do the bulk of my brainstorming and planning. Because it has access to everything in the Codex and outline, it makes it much easier than, say, a chatbot like Claude or Gemini, at bringing in that context so it can help me brainstorm better.
• Flexibility: Novelcrafter is by far the most flexible AI-writing software for authors. It can do practically anything with its prompting system.
• Pricing: The pricing is relatively low compared to competitors, and even though the price doesn’t include the AI tokens, which are paid for separately through services like OpenRouter, at the end of the day I’ve found myself paying far less for this tool than even chatbots like ChatGPT, and I get more usage out of it.

Cons: What I Don’t Like About Novelcrafter

• Complexity: Novelcrafter isn’t the most intuitive program in the world. It’s definitely more of an Adobe Photoshop than a Canva, favoring versatility and power over simplicity and ease-of-use. 
• Needs More Built-in AI Generation: This kind of goes with the last one, but because Novelcrafter is so complex, it lacks some simple features that competitors like Sudowrite have, features that allow you to easily generate outlines for your chapters, characters, and worldbuilding elements automatically. While these technically can be done in the Novelcrafter Chat, sometimes it’s just easier to enter in a few details, push a button, and out pops a fully-fleshed-out character profile or whatever.

Verdict: Is Novelcrafter the Best Tool for Fiction Writers?

As of this writing, I believe Novelcrafter to be the most powerful AI-writing tool on the market.

That said, there are reasons why you might not want to use it and go with a competitor like Sudowrite instead.

Novelcrafter is better for the author who wants fine-tuned control over every element of their writing process, from the choice of LLM to individual prompts used, or who need AI for other long-form writing projects that are not just fiction.

But I do think Sudowrite is a good option for fiction authors who want something simpler. Plus, Sudowrite’s Muse model is one of the best I’ve seen for writing fiction, and it’s exclusive to Sudowrite, so that makes it an attractive model for writing fiction or creative nonfiction. Especially if you’re new to AI writing.

Try Novelcrafter

And if you're interested in AI, I have a whole community where we study how authors can integrate AI into their businesses to enhance their career. You can find that community at this link: https://kindlepreneur.com/click/story-hacker