Storiis Support
Preparing a Story for AI Writing
Updated
An AI writing system can produce fluent prose from a thin prompt. That does not mean it can produce your story from one.
The quality of an AI-written scene depends on the quality of the decisions available to it: whose experience shapes the scene, what each character wants, which facts are fixed, what must change and how the prose should sound. Storiis gives you places to make those decisions before the AI begins cheerfully filling every gap with its own.
This guide is for writers who intend to use an outside AI system to draft much—or all—of a manuscript. Storiis remains the story’s planning and continuity system. The outside AI becomes the prose-writing environment through Cloud AI Access or an exported Story Bible.
With Cloud AI Access, the writing system can also file suggestions when drafting reveals that the Plan should change. Storiis keeps those proposals separate from the live story until you review them, preserving a clear source of truth without forcing the manuscript to obey an outdated Plan.
What a Writing AI Needs
A strong prose request needs three layers of information:
- Story direction — what the story is about, where it is going and what kind of experience it should create.
- Canon — the people, places, rules and prior events the prose must not contradict.
- A scene brief — what this particular scene must accomplish, reveal and change.
Giving the AI more text is not automatically better. The goal is relevant, specific and consistent information. A precise constraint such as “Mara never admits fear aloud” can influence every line of dialogue; three pages describing her general complexity may influence none of them.
The Information That Matters Most
1. Tone & Style
Story → Tone & Style has the greatest direct influence on the prose itself. Complete the fields that describe:
- Point of view and tense
- Narrative voice and prose style
- Influences and qualities to emulate
- Tendencies or techniques to avoid
- Audience, complexity and level of detail
- Maturity and sexual-content guidance
- Standing directions that should apply throughout the manuscript
- Example prose that demonstrates the desired result
The example is especially valuable. Labels such as “lyrical,” “cinematic” or “literary” mean different things to different systems. A representative passage demonstrates sentence length, rhythm, interiority, description density and dialogue balance at the same time.
Keep instructions concrete. “Atmospheric but restrained; one or two precise sensory details per setting; no ornamental metaphors during action” is more useful than “beautiful writing.”
2. Story Overview and Outline
The Overview tells the AI what all the individual scenes are collectively trying to become. Prioritize:
- Synopsis and dramatic question
- Genre, theme and mood
- Point-of-view approach
- Setting and important story constraints
- Key Cast Wants and Needs
The Outline provides the broad progression. It prevents a locally plausible scene from steering the book towards a globally irrelevant destination.
Keep both current. If the Plan has evolved beyond the original synopsis, revise the synopsis rather than asking the AI to decide which version is secretly authoritative.
3. Characters
Generic character information produces interchangeable voices. For every character with a meaningful role in the scene, give the AI usable dramatic and behavioral information:
- Current motivation and goal
- Wants, Needs, wounds and beliefs
- Relationship to the other people present
- Voice, temperament and social presence
- Knowledge and secrets at this point in the story
- Journey starting state, destination and relevant journey beat
Physical descriptions help the AI describe a character. Motivations, relationships and voice help it write the character.
Update profiles when drafting reveals something true. Otherwise, the AI may keep retrieving an older version of a character while the manuscript quietly develops a newer one.
4. Storylines and Story Beats
Storylines explain the continuing dramatic threads. Story beats identify what changes within those threads.
Connect the relevant beats to each scene and mark a Primary beat when one development is chiefly responsible for the scene’s existence. This helps a writing AI understand that an entertaining conversation must still advance the mystery, relationship or conflict it belongs to.
A scene can carry several beats, but too many equal priorities often produce unfocused prose. Decide what the reader should feel has changed when the scene ends.
5. The Scene Plan
The selected scene is the AI’s immediate writing brief. The most useful fields are:
- Narrative Function — why the scene exists
- Entry State — the emotional and situational conditions at the opening
- Scene Goal — what the characters are trying to accomplish now
- Core Events — the important actions in their intended progression
- Conflict or Obstacle — what prevents an easy success
- Turning Point — the development that changes the direction or meaning of the scene
- Exit State — what is different when the scene closes
- Point of View — whose experience controls what the audience notices and understands
- Cast and journey developments — who is present and how this moment affects them
- Location, exposition and timing — where and when it happens, and what information reaches the audience
Core Events should provide direction without becoming a prose draft in miniature. Leave room for moment-to-moment invention while making the required causal chain unambiguous.
Canon, Worldbuilding and Locations
Use Canonical Facts for truths the prose must respect and Constraints for rules it must not violate. These are more reliable than burying definitive information inside an exploratory note.
Connect only the relevant worldbuilding information to a scene as exposition. This tells the AI not merely that a fact exists, but that this is an appropriate moment for the audience to encounter it.
Location descriptions should include details that affect action and perception: scale, access, atmosphere, hazards, privacy, social meaning and physical limitations. Images can establish visual direction, but written facts should remain the authority for anything the prose must preserve.
Timing and Continuity
Scene timing helps a writing AI understand elapsed time, parallel events, travel, recovery and what characters could reasonably know.
Keep the Timeline current when the story includes flashbacks, several points of view, time-sensitive events or long gaps. Narrative order tells the AI what the reader saw previously; timing tells it what actually happened previously.
Before drafting a scene, the AI should inspect the preceding narrative scene as well as any earlier event that directly causes the current one.
Is a Scene Ready to Draft?
A scene does not need every field completed. It should answer these questions:
- Whose point of view controls the scene?
- What does that character want right now?
- What prevents them from getting it easily?
- Which story or character beat advances?
- What important events must occur?
- What changes by the end?
- What may the audience learn, and what must remain concealed?
- Which canon and style rules apply?
If those answers are clear, an AI has enough structure to make useful prose decisions. If they are not clear, additional generation often produces length rather than progress.
Once the Story and scenes contain this information, continue to Writing a Full Book with AI for Cloud AI Access, Story Bible exports and scene prompting. See Keeping the Plan Aligned with AI Suggestions for the prose-to-Plan feedback loop.
Return to the AI Tools overview for the complete tool map.