Controlling tone, direction, style and more with Expand

Federico Escobar, an active Sudowrite user, deserves credit for discovering this technique.

When Federico was experimenting with the Expand button, he discovered that if he added instructions in parentheses at the end of the text about style, plot, and tone, then highlighted those parenthetical notes and the main text when clicking Expand, the expanded text would take those directions and notes into account when generating text.

Federico started out with the following text:

Anna is a fifteen-year-old girl who lives with her mom in Gretna, Louisiana. The house is absolutely full of plants, because her mom loves plants. There are so many plants that Anna and her mom can barely fit in there. Anna arrives home one day after school with Hector, a classmate she is interested in as a boyfriend. They have embarrassing moments because of the plants and because of Ana's eccentric mother.

With nothing in parentheses, Expand gives us this:

Not bad. But Federico decided he wanted everything slightly more absurd.

So, that's what he told it to do.

Anna is a fifteen-year-old girl who lives with her mom in Gretna, Louisiana. The house is absolutely full of plants, because her mom loves plants. There are so many plants that Anna and her mom can barely fit in there. Anna arrives home one day after school with Hector, a classmate she is interested in as a boyfriend. They have embarrassing moments because of the plants and because of Ana's eccentric mother. (Somebody quotes a small segment from Piers Plowman. The scene is full of extremely absurd moments.)

Highlighting all the text and hitting Expand, we get a different generation:

He experimented with giving Sudowrite even more direct instructions on how to expand the text, as well as an author's style he wanted emulated, to see how that affected the style of its output.

Anna is a fifteen-year-old girl who lives with her mom in Gretna, Louisiana. The house is absolutely full of plants, because her mom loves plants. There are so many plants that Anna and her mom can barely fit in there. Anna arrives home one day after school with Hector, a classmate she is interested in as a boyfriend. They have embarrassing moments because of the plants and because of Ana's eccentric mother. (The writing builds up tension and has lots of comedy. Written in the style of Joseph Heller.)

Using the above with Expand, we get:

Or how about aliens? Clearly, the scene needs aliens.

And vaudeville.

So let's tell it that.

Anna is a fifteen-year-old girl who lives with her mom in Gretna, Louisiana. The house is absolutely full of plants, because her mom loves plants. There are so many plants that Anna and her mom can barely fit in there. Anna arrives home one day after school with Hector, a classmate she is interested in as a boyfriend. They have embarrassing moments because of the plants and because of Ana's eccentric mother. (The writing is funny, with vaudeville situations. This scene involves aliens.)

Behold! Aliens!

In writing with Sudowrite, adding more detail can make all the difference if you have a specific idea of where you want your writing to go. It is, after all, the only way for the AI to understand what you are looking for.

It's like baking a cake—the more specific ingredients and instructions you give your baker, the more closely the cake will turn out the way you envisioned.

Made a discovery or invented a new technique for Sudowrite? Email hi@sudowrite.com to share!