Writing styles
Save, share and apply a prose style across novels.
A writing style is a reusable profile that decides how a novel reads — perspective, tense, prose density, rhythm, how much dialogue, how much imagery, pacing — plus tone tags, things to avoid and free-form instructions. It is the third step of the novel wizard, and it turns up again in Novel Settings → Writing style and in the chat-to-novel dialog.
The step has three tabs: Presets, Custom and Library.
Presets
| Preset | What it does |
|---|---|
| Adaptive default | Lets the story and recent prose set the voice. This is what you get if you never touch the step. |
| Cinematic | Clear physical staging, purposeful images that serve character and tension. |
| Light novel | Character-close prose, lively dialogue, controlled inner reactions, clean paragraphs. |
| Restrained realism | Precise behaviour and concrete detail instead of melodrama. |
| Tender romance | Intimacy built through subtext, hesitation, touch and character-specific reaction. |
| Noir suspense | Limited information, concrete clues, compressed rhythm, consequential uncertainty. |
| Fast web fiction | Clear causality, fast momentum, micro-payoffs, hooks at real boundaries. |
| Mature sensual | Slow, body-aware intimacy with consent and anticipation. Only takes effect where mature content is already enabled. |
Custom: describing or extracting a style
The Custom tab has two ways in, and both end at Extract style.
- Describe it — write what you want in plain language: third person, short sentences, restrained emotion, more dialogue, fewer metaphors. The AI turns the request into a consistent, reusable profile.
- Paste a sample — paste a passage whose craft you want as a reference, between 12 and 12,000 characters. The sample is analysed and converted into craft attributes; it is treated as untrusted reference material and is not kept in the long-term prompt.
Extraction returns How this style was extracted: a Confidence rating of Low, Medium or High across eight aspects — voice and tone, perspective and narrative distance, sentence rhythm, dialogue and character voice, emotion and interiority, description and imagery, narrative pacing, word choice — each with the Evidence behind it, what was Applied to the profile, Limits to keep in mind, and a short Style demonstration with the techniques it carried across.
Reading and adjusting the profile
Whatever you pick, Current style profile shows a one-line summary plus badges for perspective, tense, pacing and the first few tone tags. Advanced controls opens the seven dials:
| Control | Options |
|---|---|
| Perspective | Adaptive · First person · Third person |
| Tense | Adaptive · Past tense · Present tense |
| Prose density | Lean · Balanced · Rich |
| Sentence rhythm | Tight · Balanced · Flowing |
| Dialogue | Sparse · Balanced · Dialogue-led |
| Imagery | Selective · Grounded · Vivid |
| Pacing | Slow · Balanced · Fast |
Adjusting a dial edits the profile in hand; it does not change the preset or the saved style you started from.
Preview it on your own cast
Preview on real story content generates a short sample using the characters, persona and premise you actually selected — not a generic paragraph. Try again re-rolls it.
If the sample is the opening you wanted, Use as opening promotes it to the novel's first passage. You can also write or paste your own Opening prose in the same step; either way that text becomes real story text and the strongest immediate anchor for the voice. Leave it empty and the AI writes beat one instead.
Saving and sharing
Library lists My styles and Public styles, with Use style to apply one.
Save the current profile stores what you have: a Style name (up to 60 characters), an optional description (up to 300) and a visibility of Private, Link only or Public. Copy sharing link hands a style to someone else; a public style shows up under Public styles with its creator's name.
A style is snapshotted into the novel. When you start a novel, the profile is copied onto it. Editing a shared style later — or deleting it — never re-tones novels that already use it. Changing a novel's style in its settings applies from the next generated passage onward; prose that already exists is not rewritten.
Related
- Novel mode — where the style step sits in the wizard
- Directing prose — the per-turn half of the same job
- Chat to novel — picking a style for an adaptation