# Chat to novel

> Turn a conversation into a novel manuscript.

Source: https://reverie.im/en/docs/writing/chat-to-novel
Language: en

Chat to novel rewrites a whole conversation as narrative prose and hands you back a [novel](https://reverie.im/en/docs/writing/novel-mode) you can keep writing. The chat itself is untouched: the conversion is additive and one-way.

Open it from the chat: **Chat Settings → Chat Management → Convert to Novel**.

## What the dialog asks \[#what-the-dialog-asks]

There is no range picker — the conversion always takes the **entire active conversation**. Because only the active branch is read, [forking](https://reverie.im/en/docs/chatting/forking) first and converting the fork is how you narrow what gets adapted.

What it asks for instead is two settings:

### Adaptation mode \[#adaptation-mode]

| Mode                    | Messages per section | Reads like                                                                                                                               |
| ----------------------- | -------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Faithful**            | 8                    | Every meaningful exchange and event kept in order. Nothing invented — no private thoughts, motives or consequences the chat didn't have. |
| **Novelized** (default) | 10                   | Atmosphere, action and inner thought added on top of the story as it happened.                                                           |
| **Condensed**           | 18                   | Turning points kept, repetition and transitional back-and-forth compressed. Omission is allowed; inventing a replacement is not.         |

The messages-per-section figure sets how the chat is cut up: **Faithful** makes the most sections, **Condensed** the fewest. **Condensed** also writes the least prose per section, which makes it the lever for a very long chat.

### Writing style \[#writing-style]

The same [writing style](https://reverie.im/en/docs/writing/writing-styles) control the novel wizard uses — a preset, a style you describe or extract, or one from your library. The novel keeps that style afterwards.

Both settings update a live **credit estimate** and a section count in the dialog before you commit. That badge is the same estimate the credit check runs against, so it is the number to go by.

## How the run works \[#how-the-run-works]

> Conversion is a **queued background job**, not something you wait out. You
> press **Convert**, the novel is created straight away in a generating
> state, and a worker writes it section by section. You get a notification
> when it's ready — you can close the dialog, leave the page, or close the
> app.

Reopening the dialog while a conversion is running shows a progress bar, how many sections are done, and a rough time remaining. One conversion runs per chat at a time; starting a second while one is in flight is refused. A failed job is retried, and the dialog tells you if the last attempt failed so you can start it again.

The conversion uses the model selected in that chat, not a novel-specific one, and the novel it creates inherits that model.

## What carries over \[#what-carries-over]

| Carried over                                                                                                                                    | Left behind                                                                                        |
| ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| The text of your messages and the character's replies, in order                                                                                 | Plugin output, tool results, images and stickers — a message with no text left is dropped entirely |
| Speaker names in a group chat, so lines stay attributed                                                                                         | Inactive branches and regenerated alternatives                                                     |
| The chat's existing summaries, reused as section boundaries and as context between sections                                                     | Reactions and memory entries                                                                       |
| Canon from the cast's [World Books](https://reverie.im/en/docs/writing/world-books)                                                             |                                                                                                    |
| Your mature-content state and its intensity, and the narration style — from the writing style you picked, or your per-character chat preference |                                                                                                    |

Chronology and causality are locked to the source: events, locations, what characters know, their motives and the outcomes stay as the chat had them. Prose is added around them, not over them.

## After it finishes \[#after-it-finishes]

Open the novel and keep directing it like any other. Two things to expect:

* **Most beats arrive past the rewrite window.** Only a novel's last 8 beats can be regenerated or deleted, so a long conversion lands with the bulk of it outside that window. You can still edit any beat's text in place and still illustrate it — you just can't re-roll or remove it. A short chat converts to a handful of sections and stays fully in the window; a 500-message chat does not.
* **There is no way back.** The novel does not convert into a chat, and there is no novel-to-story conversion anywhere in Reverie. Your original chat is still there, unchanged.

## Related \[#related]

* [Novel mode](https://reverie.im/en/docs/writing/novel-mode) — continuing the result
* [Writing styles](https://reverie.im/en/docs/writing/writing-styles) — the style half of the dialog
* [Forking](https://reverie.im/en/docs/chatting/forking) — choosing which branch gets adapted
* [Chat to novel](https://reverie.im/en/blog/chat-to-novel) — design notes