Creating Characters

Where to Create Characters

You can create characters from two places. The Characters page (accessible from the main navigation) is your character library — it lists all your characters and has a prominent Create Character button. You can also create characters directly from inside a project by adding a Character node in the writer's left panel.

Either way, you'll walk through the same four-step creation wizard. Characters created from any project are available across all your projects — they live in your personal character library.

The Creation Wizard

The character creation wizard guides you through four steps: Intent, Identity, Portrait, and Publish. You move through them in order, but you can go back to any previous step at any time to make changes.

The four-step character creation wizard

Step 1 — Intent

The Intent step is where you describe the character you want to create. Type a free-text description (between 10 and 1,000 characters) that captures who this character is, what they want, and what makes them interesting. Think of it as a pitch — the more specific you are, the better the AI can help you flesh out the details in later steps.

Describe your character or start from a boilerplate

Boilerplate Starters

Not sure where to start? Click the Boilerplates button in the text area to choose from six ready-made character descriptions you can use as-is or customize:

• Reluctant Hero — jaded, guilt-driven, dragged back into conflict.
• Cunning Trickster — silver-tongued, masks-on-masks, hidden honor.
• Gentle Scholar — brilliant, curious, in over their head.
• Fierce Rebel — passionate, reckless, fighting injustice at any cost.
• Haunted Detective — brilliant but self-destructive, chasing closure.
• Morally Gray Antagonist — understandable goals, unacceptable methods.

Each boilerplate is structured with five sections that the AI uses to build a complete character profile: Role, Personality, Voice, Conflict, and Appearance. Here's what the Reluctant Hero boilerplate looks like:

Role: Protagonist dragged back into conflict against their will.

Personality: Jaded and world-weary, masks deep guilt with dry
humor. Keeps people at arm's length but will sacrifice everything
for someone they care about.

Voice: Clipped, understated speech. Never uses two words when one
will do. Sarcasm is their first language. Avoids talking about
the past — deflects with dark jokes.

Conflict: Torn between the peace they've earned and the fight
they can't walk away from. Their greatest fear is failing
someone again.

Appearance: Weathered, scarred, carries themselves like someone
who's been hit enough times to stop flinching.

This structure consistently produces the best AI-generated characters. You can edit the text freely after selecting a boilerplate — they're starting points, not constraints.

AI Generation Toggle

At the bottom of the Intent step, you'll see a toggle for AI generation. When enabled, the wizard uses your description to auto-fill many of the Identity fields in Step 2 — name, backstory, personality, and more. You also choose which AI model to use for generation.

If you prefer to fill everything in manually, turn the toggle off and click Skip to jump straight to the Identity step with empty fields.

Step 2 — Identity

This is the heart of character creation. The Identity step contains all the fields that define who your character is. If you enabled AI generation in Step 1, many of these will already be filled in — but you can edit everything.

Define your character's core identity

Core Fields

Category Selector

Choose a genre category for your character. This affects which preset portraits are available and helps with marketplace discovery. The categories are:

• Contemporary
• Fantasy
• Historical
• Horror
• Literary
• Mystery
• Romance
• Sci-Fi
• Thriller
• Other

Personality & Backstory

Below the core fields, you'll find longer-form text areas for deeper character work:

• Personality (max 1,000 chars) — their temperament, quirks, and how they interact with others.
• Motivation (max 500 chars) — what drives them? What do they want more than anything?
• Strengths (max 800 chars) — abilities, skills, and positive traits.
• Weaknesses (max 500 chars) — flaws, fears, and blind spots.
• Backstory (max 8,000 chars) — the full history that shaped who they are today.

Voice & Speech

Two fields control how your character sounds in generated dialogue:

• Voice & Speech (max 500 chars) — describe verbal tics, speech patterns, catchphrases, accent cues, and mannerisms. For example: “Speaks in clipped, military sentences. Never uses contractions. Calls everyone by their last name.”
• Vocabulary Level — choose from Simple, Moderate, Sophisticated, or Archaic. This affects the word choices the AI makes when writing dialogue for this character.

AI Fill Buttons

Every text field in the Identity step has a small Fill button next to it. Click it to have the AI generate a suggestion for that specific field based on your character's description and the other fields you've already filled in.

This is different from the full AI generation in Step 1. Fill buttons let you selectively auto-complete individual fields while keeping the rest of your manual edits intact.

Step 3 — Portrait

The Portrait step is optional — you can skip it entirely if you don't need a visual for your character. But if you want one, you have two options:

• Preset portraits — choose from a library of pre-made character portraits organized by genre category.
• Generate a custom portrait — use AI to create a unique portrait in one of five ink illustration styles: Classic, Sketch, Editorial, Dramatic, or Stylized. You can provide a custom prompt (up to 200 characters) describing the character's appearance.

Each custom portrait generation costs 15,000 Genesis Tokens. Generated portraits are saved to your portrait library for reuse across characters.

Choose a preset portrait or generate a custom one

Step 4 — Publish

The final step determines who can see your character. You have two visibility options:

• Private — only you can see and use this character. It lives in your personal library and doesn't appear in the marketplace.
• Public — your character is published to the Character Marketplace where other writers can discover and add it to their own projects. Your name appears as the creator.

The Publish step also shows auto-generated tags based on your character's category, archetype, and traits. Tags help other writers find your character in the marketplace.

Click Create Character to finish. Your character is saved to your library and ready to use in any project.

Next Steps

Your character is created — now put them to work:

• Character Profiles & Biography — learn how character data feeds into AI generation.
• AI Character Chat — have a conversation with your character to develop their voice.
• Character Portraits — explore all five portrait styles and the portrait library.
• Context Building & Story Bible — understand how character context flows into AI prose generation.