Start with the details you choose

Personalization begins with the story ingredients you provide. For a custom character, you can set a name and job and answer three setup questions. A story can include up to three characters. Those details give the generation a more specific brief than a generic prompt, but they are creative guidance—not a script that controls every sentence.

Choose a trope and narrator voice

Velvet offers 25 story tropes and a choice of narrator voice. Use them to set the kind of situation and narration you want before a chapter is generated. If you are new to the app, a simple setup is enough: choose one or two characters, select a trope, keep the default heat ceiling if it suits you, and try a narrator voice. You can change your heat and boundary settings any time.

Do not expect a character detail to appear in every paragraph or assume the model will always preserve a particular point of view or pronoun choice. AI output is probabilistic: it can omit, repeat or unexpectedly phrase a detail. The app's choices shape the request, but the result is not guaranteed to follow every preference exactly.

Continuing a story is another generation

You can continue a story in later chapters. Each new chapter is generated, so treat continuity as an aim rather than a guarantee that every small detail will be recalled perfectly. If an important fact changes or disappears, review the result before treating it as part of the story you want to keep. Similar setups can also lead to similar passages; Velvet does not promise that every reader receives a unique story.

Understand what is sent for generation

To create a story, Velvet sends your prompt, character details and boundary settings to its servers, which pass them to AI providers. Your stories remain private to your account unless you choose to publish one. Heat and boundary choices are stored on your device; your free-text avoid list is included with each generation request. Use fictional details if you do not want personal information included in story generation, and read the privacy policy for the full data-handling explanation.

For practical boundary controls, see the reader FAQ and content rules. Personalization gives the model a clearer starting point; you still decide what to keep reading and what to change.

A character brief that is easy to check

Use invented details rather than information about real people. For example: “Mara is a reserved architect who wants to restore a coastal library. Jules is an outgoing archivist who disagrees about the building’s future. Both are adults. Their relationship develops slowly, and professional disagreement stays separate from personal boundaries.” This is an illustrative brief, not a sample result or a promise that every detail becomes a dedicated app setting.

Keep the motivation and central disagreement short enough to remember. If you provide a long list of traits, decide which two matter most to the next chapter. Use only the fields and choices the app actually offers; this checklist is a reading aid, not a claim that Velvet has a story-bible editor.

Before you continue the next chapter

  • Names and roles: are the same people doing the things attributed to them?
  • Motivation: does each character’s decision make sense given what the story has established?
  • Timeline: has the scene moved location or time without explanation?
  • Boundaries: does the result match what you are comfortable reading? Stop if it does not.
  • Privacy: have you kept identifying details and sensitive real-life information out of the setup?

If a detail drifts, do not assume the next generation will repair it automatically. Review the available choices before spending another story token. The generation guide explains why continuation can vary; the heat-level guide explains reader controls.