How to Write a Romantasy Brief That Sings

Principle. Specific beats generic, every time. “Tall” tells the AI nothing. “Six foot two with a runner’s long line and the kind of shoulders that fill a doorway” gives the image generator and the chat model a single, coherent person to render.

The platform asks you nine quick questions before you write a single sentence of brief. Don’t rush them — every downstream image and every line of dialogue references this identity. A one-minute investment here pays off in every chat session that follows.

Principle. Realism reads as cinema. Anime reads as feeling. Pick the one that matches the emotional register of your story, then commit to one register of details that won’t change between scenes.

Two style families. Cinematic realism gives you the look of a prestige TV adaptation — rich lighting, depth, the texture of fabric and breath in cold air. Anime gives you the look of feeling itself — bold lineart, expressive eyes, exaggerated emotion. They don’t blend well. Pick one and write your scenes for it.

The custom_features field is for permanent physical details — scars, tattoos, the way someone holds their jaw when they’re thinking. It is not for clothing. Clothing lives in the per-scene image prompts (covered separately in Prompt Studio). Mixing the two breaks both image consistency and chat flexibility.

Principle. Despite the name short description, this is not a tagline. It is the pitch that decides whether someone clicks chat or scrolls past. Write at least 200 characters. Most great pitches are 300–500.

This field appears on the character card. It’s the equivalent of a book’s back-cover blurb — you have a few seconds to make a reader want the story. The most common mistake is treating it as a one-line tagline. Don’t.

Principle. A reader should be able to read three lines of dialogue and know which character is speaking. Personality details are the instructions that make that possible.

The platform asks for a personality preset (Stoic, Friendly, Mysterious, etc.) and then for personality details — at least five sentences of speech patterns, quirks, and signature phrases. Combined with extra_details, you need 1,200+ characters. That sounds like a lot until you start writing it.

The trick: write voice instructions, not voice descriptions. Don’t say “she’s sarcastic” — tell the model what sarcasm sounds like in her mouth.

Principle. The scenario is the heart of the brief. It is written in first person from the character’s perspective. The reader is always “you” — never given a name, gender, or personality.

This is where most of the craft lives. The scenario does four jobs at once:

1. World anchor. When and where, what’s happening at scale.
2. Protagonist anchor. Who the character is in this world — role, status, relationships.
3. Inciting situation. Why this scene, why this moment, why is the reader meeting the character now.
4. Stakes. What changes if this conversation goes one way versus another.

The cast spectrum

Inside the scenario you’ll introduce other characters — the love interest, advisors, rivals. The most successful romantasy stories on the platform use the simplest version of this: just the protagonist and the love interest. Multi-NPC casts unlock richer stories but cost authoring effort and risk diluting the emotional core if you don’t earn them.

The rule that decides whether an NPC earns their place: every NPC needs (a) a distinct function (romance / advisor / rival / lore-keeper) and (b) a distinct voice a reader could pick out blind. If a second NPC fails either test, they’re clutter.

Principle. The first message is the greeting that earns the second message. It does not introduce the character — the scenario already did that. It plunges the reader into action.

Two to four sentences, written in character, in the present moment. Most beginner first messages are introductions: “Hi, I’m Caelan. I’m the heir to clan Stormvane.” That tells the reader nothing they didn’t already know from the scenario, and it gives them no reason to write back.

Strong first messages start in the middle of something happening, with the reader already implicated:

Principle. Fifteen tags. No more, no fewer. Tags are how readers find your character on the catalogue and how the platform clusters recommendations. Choose them deliberately.

Think in three layers when picking tags:

• Genre (3–4 tags) — Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Historical, Paranormal.
• Archetype & setting (5–6 tags) — Dragon Rider, Royal, Warrior, Court Intrigue, Magic, Frontier.
• Tone & format (3–4 tags) — Slow Burn / Fast Burn (mandatory for romance), Choose-Your-Own Adventure, Epic Length, Single Lead.

Romance characters must include either Slow Burn or Fast Burn as one of the 15. That tag determines how readers filter and how the platform clusters your character with similar pacing. (More on burn type in lesson 8.)

Principle. The platform supports two control surfaces for romantic escalation. You can bake the pacing into your brief — defining what your character will and won’t do at each stage, what triggers the next level — so the story builds the way you wrote it. You can also leave it dynamic and use the heat dial at runtime to adjust on the fly. Most great briefs do both: a sketched ladder in the brief, fine-tuned at runtime.

Everything below this point is craft guidance for adult content. It’s not graphic — it’s the structural framework that determines pacing. Reveal it when you’re ready.