Hey everyone! I'm excited to share something I've been working on: a custom-built AI-powered novella creation tool called NovellaXL_15. It's a "wordapp" built on the Wordware platform, designed to help you bring your story ideas to life, generating full-length novellas complete with chapter-by-chapter text-to-speech (TTS) audio.
This entire guide is in flux and my "goal" in posting this to Github was for me to have an easy spot to share outputs/reviews I come across. There isn't anything to "install" here, as this is just a guide on how to use my public novella creation "wordapp".
Before we dive into NovellaXL_15, let's talk about the platform it lives on. Wordware is an innovative AI platform that empowers users to create and deploy a wide range of AI-powered applications, which we call "wordapps." Think of it as a creative playground for building AI tools. These wordapps can do all sorts of things, from generating images to analyzing text, and, in the case of NovellaXL_15, crafting entire novellas.
NovellaXL_15 is a specialized wordapp designed specifically for long-form creative writing. You provide the initial spark – a story idea, writing style, and genre – and it takes care of the heavy lifting, generating a 15-chapter novella based on your input. But it's more than just a text generator. One of the things I find most valuable is how, as the creator, I retain access to all run data from my wordapps. Every run is saved within the IDE. This is especially handy for my image generation wordapps. Every image created is saved in its original spot, along with all the relevant context. This makes it super easy for me to review and grab what I need later. In the case of NovellaXL, access to old versions/ideas is powerful.
The NovellaXL_15 wordapp uses a series of interconnected sub-flows to craft your novella. It starts by generating titles, improving your plot, selecting the most engaging options, and finally, generating the storyline for each of the 15 chapters. A dedicated step is used to write the full chapter length in loop format, that repeats 15 times. Each chapter then gets its own high-quality TTS audio thanks to ElevenLabs integration.
To give you a better idea, let's take a look at some screenshots from the Wordware platform:
 This screenshot shows my "Workspace" on Wordware, displaying various "Deployments" or projects I'm working on. These deployments are my wordapps. NovellaXL_15 is one of them. You can see details like the number of runs, version, and access status (which is set to "Published")
 Here, we dive into the specifics of the NovellaXL_15 wordapp. You can see its public link, visibility status, a banner image, title, and a brief description. On the right, under "Files," you can find the "Entrypoint" (the main script) and "Sub-flows" – these are the building blocks of the wordapp, handling tasks like generating titles, improving the plot, and writing chapters.
 This screenshot shows a specific run of the wordapp. You can see when it was run, how long it took, and most importantly, the "Input Values." This is where you provide your story idea, writing style, and genre. The "Trace" section on the right shows the output generated by each step of the process. In this case, it's displaying 10 novel plot ideas based on the user's initial input...
NovellaXL_15 is public, and you can test it out right now! I've made it available for anyone to experiment with on the Wordware platform. Here's the link to a recent run: Novella-XL-15. It's currently pre-loaded with the concept "ant sim as world history," but feel free to clear it out and input your own ideas.
Wordware offers a fantastic feature called "Make Your Own Version" that provides an increased level of data privacy. This feature lets you clone my wordapp, creating an exact copy within your own Wordware workspace. If you have a Wordware account and are logged in, you'll see a "Make Your Own Version" button when viewing the app's page.
Here's how it works:
- Click the "Make Your Own Version" button. This will initiate the cloning process.
- The wordapp will be copied to your Wordware IDE. You'll now have your own version of NovellaXL_15.
- Run your version of the wordapp. Any data generated from will be stored within your IDE as "runs".
- Customization: Feel free to modify your cloned version of the wordapp, experiment with its code, and tailor it to your specific needs.
- Experimental Stage: Keep in mind that this is still very much an experimental project. I haven't had anyone other than myself critically test it, so you might encounter some quirks.
- Potential Crashes: The web implementation can be a bit finicky. If the app crashes on the first run, don't refresh the page. Just run it again, and it should work.
- Copy Your Input: Before hitting "run," copy the text you entered in the "story_idea," "writing_style," and "genre" fields. If it crashes, you can easily paste them back in without retyping everything.
- Full Output: If the app runs successfully, you'll get a 15-chapter novella with ElevenLabs TTS for each chapter.
- ElevenlabsReader Integration: Each run of NovellaXL_15 generates a unique URL that you can easily import into ElevenLabs Reader. ElevenLabs Reader is a text-to-speech tool that can read your entire novella aloud, including all the chapters generated by the wordapp. This makes it convenient to enjoy your creation while driving, walking, or doing other activities. Just copy the URL from the run, paste it into ElevenLabs via URL upload, and you can listen to each chapter being read aloud, in order. You can start from the beginning, which is the prompt data and novella creation, or skip ahead to the generated chapters.
I'm excited to see what you create with NovellaXL_15, whether you use the public version or create your own! Your feedback will be invaluable as I continue to develop and refine it. Feel free to share your experiences, suggestions, and any issues you encounter. Let's explore the potential of AI-powered storytelling together, and the capabilities of the Wordware platform!