# Novel mode

> Direct a scene in one or two sentences and let the AI write the prose.

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

A novel is a blank page with a cast. You give one short directive; the AI writes the next **beat** of prose. Do it again. There is no authored structure to fill in and nothing to fill in it with — a novel is a flat, ordered list of beats, and that's the whole model.

> **There are no chapters.** Novel mode has no chapter model, no act
> structure and no section breaks. Everything scrolls as one continuous run
> of beats. If you want chapters, milestones and roles, that's
> [story mode](https://reverie.im/en/docs/writing/story-mode).

## Starting one \[#starting-one]

Your novels live at `/app/novels` — **My Novels**, with **New Novel** to start the wizard. You can also skip the wizard: **Start novel** on a character's page, **Novel** on a character card or on one of the character's scenarios, or **Write Novel** from the home quick actions all create a novel from that character (and, for a scenario, from its title and description as the premise). To adapt an existing conversation instead, see [chat to novel](https://reverie.im/en/docs/writing/chat-to-novel).

### Characters \[#characters]

Select 1 to 5 characters in one multi-select. The **first** one you pick is the protagonist — the character the novel is attributed to. The cast cannot be changed after creation.

### Story Setup \[#story-setup]

An optional **Title** (≤200 characters) and **Premise** (≤20,000), or let the outline generator draft one from your cast. This step also holds your **Persona**, the **AI Model** and the novel's World Books.

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

Pick a preset, describe the voice you want, or paste a sample to extract one — then preview it on your actual cast. You can also write the opening passage yourself, or adopt the preview as the opening. See [writing styles](https://reverie.im/en/docs/writing/writing-styles).

**Begin Adventure** creates the novel. If you didn't supply an opening, the play view starts empty with **Begin the story** — that first tap generates beat one.

## Writing a beat \[#writing-a-beat]

Choose a direction type, type the directive, send. `Ctrl`/`⌘` + `1`–`4` selects a type directly.

| Button    | The beat it produces                                                                      |
| --------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Do**    | Your protagonist performs the action, narrated as movement, and the scene responds        |
| **Say**   | Your line reaches the page as quoted dialogue, and the scene responds                     |
| **Story** | You don't act — the event you name happens; leave it empty and the story moves on its own |
| **Look**  | A close look at what you named, without your protagonist acting                           |

A directive can be up to 8,000 characters, and only **Story** accepts an empty one. Each generation is capped at roughly a 900-token beat, and a beat that hits the ceiling is trimmed back to its last complete sentence. Length comes from directing more turns, not from asking for more words — see [directing prose](https://reverie.im/en/docs/writing/directing-prose).

Only one generation runs per novel at a time; a second request while one is in flight is refused. Generation also requires the novel's status to be **In Progress**.

## Revising a beat \[#revising-a-beat]

Tap a beat to bring up its toolbar: **Edit Content**, **Edit & Regenerate**, **Regenerate**, **Delete Segment**, plus **Illustrate** / **New illustration** / **Remove illustration**.

> **Deleting or regenerating a beat also removes every beat after it.**
> This is a cascade, not a splice, and it cannot be undone. Reverie asks
> first — *Remove later beats?* tells you how many go with it — but the count
> is easy to skim past. **Edit Content** is the one revision that leaves the
> rest of the novel alone — it rewrites that beat's text in place.

**Regenerate**, **Edit & Regenerate** and **Delete Segment** are offered on the **last 8 beats** only. An older beat still gets **Edit Content** and the illustration actions — it just shows *Earlier beats are folded into the story memory and can no longer be rewritten or deleted* where the other three would be. That matters after a long [chat conversion](https://reverie.im/en/docs/writing/chat-to-novel), which can land dozens of beats at once with most of them past the window.

The last beat has two shortcuts of its own: **Undo** removes it, and **Rewrite last beat** rolls it again with a **Restore previous version** option in the toast.

## Story memory \[#story-memory]

Past some length the novel keeps a rolling summary and a raw tail of recent beats rather than the whole text. You can read and edit that summary in **Novel Settings → Story Memory** (up to 20,000 characters) to fix a detail or pin something the story must not forget. Editing or deleting a beat the summary already covered discards it, and the next generation rebuilds it from what survives.

## Status, covers and sharing \[#status-covers-and-sharing]

| Setting              | Where                    | Notes                                                                                                                                      |
| -------------------- | ------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Status**           | Novel Settings           | **In Progress**, **Completed** or **Abandoned**. The last two show a banner with **Resume writing**; you cannot generate until you resume. |
| **Cover**            | Novel Settings           | Generated from the title, premise and cast, with an optional description. Costs credits.                                                   |
| **Visibility**       | Novel Settings → Sharing | **Private**, **Unlisted (link only)** or **Public**. Needs at least one passage written.                                                   |
| **Reading settings** | Play view                | Font size, serif or sans, and **Show directives** off for a prose-only read.                                                               |

A public novel gets a reader page, appears in the public novel feed and is listed under **Novels** on its protagonist's character page. Anyone reading a public novel can **Continue this story** — that copies it, optionally up to a chosen beat, into a new novel of their own. Novels do not branch, and that copy is the only thing resembling a fork.

## Export \[#export]

**Export** offers two formats, for the owner, on a novel with at least one beat:

* **Markdown** — plain prose with the title, byline, cover, premise and inline illustration links.
* **HTML** — a self-contained illustrated page with its own styling, light and dark, and print rules for saving to PDF.

There is no EPUB, DOCX or direct PDF export.

## Models and credits \[#models-and-credits]

The model is chosen per novel and can be switched mid-novel; each beat records the model that wrote it. Unlike story mode, the novel picker is not restricted to tool-capable models. Credits are the tokens used times the model's multiplier, which is shown next to each model in the picker; illustrations and covers are charged separately. The free model has a per-user rate limit shared with chat and stories. Subscribing does not put novel generation in a faster queue — no such queue exists.

## Related \[#related]

* [Directing prose](https://reverie.im/en/docs/writing/directing-prose) — the four direction types in depth
* [Writing styles](https://reverie.im/en/docs/writing/writing-styles) — the wizard's third step
* [Chat to novel](https://reverie.im/en/docs/writing/chat-to-novel) — start from a conversation
* [World Books](https://reverie.im/en/docs/writing/world-books) — lore attached to a novel
* [Introducing novel mode](https://reverie.im/en/blog/introducing-novel-mode) — design notes