You've seen them-stunning, isolated images of cyberpunk samurais and elf queens in crystalline forests, generated from prompts like "epic warrior, intricate armor." They're beautiful, but they're snapshots. They have no past, no future, and no soul. As a writer, your frustration isn't creating a single cool image or paragraph; it's building a world that feels lived-in, with characters who breathe across multiple pages and prompts. You're not a director of stock photos; you're an architect of entire realities.
What if your AI could stop generating random art and start collaborating on your narrative? This isn't about better adjectives; it's about learning a new language of narrative instruction. I'll show you how to move from generating random "wonders" to commanding consistent story elements, building a visual and textual bible that your AI can understand and expand upon.
The Core Principle: You Are the Showrunner, Not the Clicker
Forget being a prompt engineer. You're a showrunner. Your job isn't to type a wish into a machine. It's to provide the show bible the master document that keeps every episode, script, and set design consistent. Your AI is your entire production crew, waiting for direction.
Your first prompt for any new story should never be for the final image or chapter. It should be to build the bible.
Instead of: "A weary knight in a dark forest."
Try this with Claude/ChatGPT: "You are a master worldbuilder. I am creating a low-fantasy story called 'The Gutter Saint.' The tone is grim and hopeful, like a rusted locket found in the mud. Help me establish a foundational worldbuilding document. First, let's define the core aesthetic: technology is decaying late-renaissance, magic is a forbidden, fungal rot that grows on living things, and the dominant color palette is moss green, tarnished copper, and bone white. Now, ask me three questions to help flesh out the social hierarchy of the main city."
You are not asking for an output. You are initiating a worldbuilding session. The AI's questions will force you to make concrete decisions that become your canon.
Building Narrative Consistency: The Character Anchor
A character is more than a face. It's a history etched in posture, a morality reflected in costume, and a future hinted at in a gaze. To keep your protagonist consistent across 100 images or plot points, you must build them like a real person.
Create a Character Anchor Prompt. This is a living document you paste at the start of every new chat or generation related to that character.
Example Character Anchor for "Elara, the Gutter Saint":
CHARACTER ANCHOR: ELARA
- Core Identity: A former plague-doctor turned relic-thief, motivated by a debt she can never repay.
- Physicality: Age 32. Wiry, strong from climbing city walls. A permanent, respectful stoop from years in tunnel-shrines. Has a scar pulling her left lip into a near-smile.
- Key Visual Motifs: Wears a modified plague doctor's coat, stripped of its beak, now holding tools. Carries a "saint's lantern", a jar with bioluminescent fungal rot. Eyes are fever-bright, observant, perpetually tired.
- Psychological Tell: She touches the scar on her lip when lying.
- Speech Pattern: Uses medical metaphors for everything. "This city's sickness is in its foundations, not its fever." Now, for a Midjourney visual, you don't just say "woman thief in a coat." You use the anchor: "cinematic still, Elara (Character Anchor: wiry, scar on lip, fungal jar lantern) assessing a crumbling cathedral wall, her posture a respectful stoop, touching her scar thoughtfully, grimly hopeful tone, moss green and copper color palette --style raw --ar 16:9" For Claude, you can paste the anchor and say: "Write a scene where Elara has to negotiate with a tunnel-gang leader. Use her speech patterns and psychological tell." The anchor does the heavy lifting. You're just directing the scene. The Contrarian Take: Start with the "Wrong" Genre The biggest block to unique storytelling is asking for what you think you want. "A fantasy knight" will get you plate armor. "A sci-fi bounty hunter" will get you a trench coat. To break clichés, feed the AI a productive contradiction. Don't: "A powerful fantasy sorceress." Do: "A powerful sorceress whose aesthetic and magic system are based entirely on the deep-sea marine biology of the midnight zone. Her robes are like anglerfish flesh, her spells create currents of cold light, and her tower is a bioluminescent hydrothermal vent." By forcing a genre (fantasy) through an unrelated aesthetic lens (deep-sea biology), you short-circuit the AI's most generic associations. This is how you create stories that feel truly yours. Apply this to characters, settings, and magic systems. What would a noir detective story look like in a world of sentient, decaying plants? What if a cyberpunk city was built by Roman engineers? Ask the "wrong" question to get a right, original answer. From Snapshots to Sequence: Prompting for Plot A single image is a sentence. A sequence is a paragraph. To generate a storyboard, you need to think in cause and effect. Establish the Beat: Define the emotional or action beat of the scene. (e.g., The moment of reluctant alliance). Use Consistent Tags: Reuse your world's key adjectives and your character anchors. Direct the Camera: Tell the AI what we are looking at and why.
A 3-Prompt Storyboard Sequence:
Prompt 1 (Wide Shot): "Wide establishing shot of the fungal cavern of Veridia. Bioluminescent rot paints the ceiling, light reflects off copper ruins half-swallowed by growth. In the center, Elara (see anchor) stands before the gang leader, Korb. --style raw"
Prompt 2 (Mid Shot, Tension): "Medium shot, from over Korb's shoulder. Elara's hand is subtly reaching for a tool in her coat, her fever-bright eyes calculating. Korb is a hulking figure with rot-crystals growing from one arm. The fungal jar lantern casts a sickly green light between them. --style raw"
Prompt 3 (Close-Up, Decision): "Extreme close-up on Elara's face. Her fingers are touching the scar on her lip. Her expression is the grim near-smile of someone who has just decided to tell a very convincing lie. Shallow depth of field. --style raw"
You have just directed a three-panel cinematic sequence with clear narrative progression, all because you prompted with a director's intent.
Your Storytelling Prompt Toolkit
For your next writing session, do this:
The Zero Draft: Open a doc. Don't generate a thing. Instead, prompt your text AI: "Interview me about my new story. Ask me one question at a time about the world's central contradiction, the protagonist's fatal flaw, and the most important object in the plot." Answer in the doc. This is your zero-draft bible.
Build One Anchor: Take your protagonist from that session and write a 5-bullet Character Anchor (Core Identity, Physicality, 1 Key Motif, 1 Psychological Tell, Speech Tic).
Generate a Contradiction: Fuse your story's core genre with one wildly unrelated aesthetic. Prompt for a single scene or image using that fused concept.
You are no longer just typing keywords. You are conducting an orchestra of narrative elements. The AI holds every instrument imaginable, but you are the only one who can read the score.
What's the most frustrating "snapshot" you've gotten from an AI when you were desperately trying to build a cohesive character or world? What detail was consistently lost in translation?
Top comments (0)