How to write a card people don't put down
Why does one card die in three lines and another hold someone all night? It is almost never “did you fill every box.” It is whether you understand how a character gets performed. Finish this and you have four things: a feel for how the model reads a card, a map of what goes where, concrete ways to make a person, and a QA pass you can run on yourself.
How do you write a character card people keep reading?
Write the card as a script the model can perform, not as a form you fill in. The model only uses what you put in the fields, so a trait that stays in your head never reaches the chat. It copies a sample line more reliably than it guesses from a label, so show how the character speaks instead of only naming a trait. It also drifts toward whatever the live chat just did, which means the opening fades unless the character has one or two limits that do not bend. Put the stable facts — who they are, what they want, what they refuse — in the fields that stay with the chat, and put the scene and the first spoken line where the conversation actually starts. Then read the first replies and fix any line that sounds like a different person. The sections below cover how the model reads a card, which field holds what, voice, openings, a group cast, and a check you can run yourself.
You are not filling a form. You are handing a script to an actor.
Most people treat a card like a résumé: name, gender, personality, submit. You get a complete file and no one home.
Better stance: you direct. The model is an improv actor who only has your script. Three things about that actor, always:
- They only read what you wrote. What's in your head does not count.
- They imitate better than they infer. Show them. Don't only describe.
- They get dragged by the live chat. By line twenty the opening fades — unless the character has a hard spine.
Everything below follows from those three.
1. How the model actually reads your card
Skip this and the rest is memorization. Get it and you can derive the rest.
It is an imitation engine, not an understanding engine
A reply is continuation of the shape you gave it.
One demonstrated line beats ten adjectives.
“She's sharp-tongued” makes the model guess how sharp. “'That's it? I thought you'd last three rounds.'” gives tone, rhythm, and how hard she hits.
If you can show it, don't describe it.
It overweights what just happened
Near-chat content hits harder. The pretty opening you wrote is faint by line twenty.
So: the core has to re-trigger in every reaction, not appear once. And don't bury the important sentence at the end of a wall of text. Put it first.
It mirrors the player
Short in, short out. Serious in, serious out. If you don't nail a default voice, they become whoever the player is today.
So: personality + samples have to be strong enough to snap back.
Contradiction makes it split the difference
“Cold to everyone” next to “tender with everyone” does not produce depth. It produces mush.
Complexity is fine if it's logical (“cold to the room, an exception for you”). Fighting labels just sand the edges off.
Specific holds. Abstract drifts.
“Kind” is a thousand people. “Gives away the last bun and says they aren't hungry” is this person. After every trait, ask what that looks like when it's acted.
2. Two layers — person and play
- Identity (the person): who they are — temperament, speech, history. A stable soul you can drop into other stories.
- Story card (the play): what is happening now — world, bind, opening, goal. One staging.
The classic miss is writing play into person. “Tonight he asks you to stay after work because you talked back” is plot, not personality. Change the story and it's dead — and the model thinks it happens every night.
3. Placement is power
The boxes on the create page are not interchangeable. Each one sits a different distance from the live turn. Distance is weight and half-life.
Two layers your text falls into
The foundation (personality, world, plot bible, voice sample, output settings): present the whole chat, highest authority, diluted by a long conversation. Put truths that don't change.
The near layer (current chapter + beat goal, reader identity, current state): injected near the end of context, every turn. It does not outrank the player's last line, but it doesn't fade the way the foundation does. Put what must be true *right now*.
The most important thing goes in the chapter
If you need the model to obey something every turn — what this beat is, the live constraint — put it in this chapter's body + advance condition. That's why chaptered cards feel steered: the text is re-injected close to the turn, not left to fade in personality.
- Stable core → personality / world.
- Must happen / must hold now → current chapter.
One field, one job
- Personality = the person — habits, lines they won't cross.
- Voice sample = how they talk (chapter 6).
- Plot = what is happening.
- World = rules of the place.
Dumping world, samples, and plot into personality makes every piece dilute the others.
Output settings: what to write, and what never to write
Output settings are treated as the author's explicit ask. Heavy. Easy to wreck.
A Tokomi reply is not a blob of prose. It is a set of shots (line, narration, interior, action) that the app turns into art, bubbles, sound. That shot structure is fixed. Output settings only steer taste inside it.
Don't
HTML / Markdown / tables / code fences / “bold this.” The app does not render that. Marks leak into chat or break the shot parser.Don't
A pile of “no OOC / no lecture / no short replies.” The model does not know what in-character is until you wrote the person. Negative bans are weak. Say what you want.Don't
Instructions that try to replace the shot format. They are ignored. Don't spend the box on them.Do
“2–3 beats a turn, lead with action / face / room, keep dialogue short, leave air, hide feeling in detail.”Output settings = amount and shape (length, person, pace). Voice sample = texture. Use both. Both sit on the foundation and both fade in a long chat — samples still beat orders because imitation is stronger than commands.
Do not pour personality or plot into output settings.
- Length / beats: “2–3 beats,” “about 150 characters max.”
- Person: first / second / third — pick one and stay.
- Emphasis: body and face / interior / dialogue.
- Pace and weather of the scene.
- How they address you — write the positive form.
Lush immersion
2–3 beats, third person. Action, face, room. Short lines. Leave air. Don't explain the feeling.Short sweet
1–2 beats, light and close. Mostly talk, a little motion. End each beat with a hook.Slow dread
Third person, slow, heavy air. Sense detail. Information in crumbs. They don't say the whole thing.Three hard placement rules
Things that change never go in personality / world. Those fields are “always true.” “It's chapter two now” in personality means it's always chapter two. Changing state → chapter / situation.
A secret only one person knows does not go in the shared world. That's a broadcast. Put it on that person's card.
Don't expect a full performance from someone who isn't on stage yet. Off-stage they are mostly a name (see director, below).
Point of view is isolated
A does not automatically know what B knows in private.
Each character is fed their personality, their read on the relationship, their memory.
- Common knowledge → world / plot.
- Only their secret or their opinion of someone → that character's personality + relationship.
- Relationships have a direction. “She loves him” is not “he knows.”
That's how you get information gaps, secrets, turns.
The director
Who is on stage. On-stage characters get a full card. Off-stage they shrink to a name until the story brings them back. Write each person self-contained, and write the relationships, or a name-only turn has nothing to play.
Players have director shortcuts (push the plot, change course, look inside). Those inject a strong fresh instruction next to the turn. Your card has to survive being pushed: leftover threads, conflict, something unsaid. A passive card gives those buttons nothing to grab.
4. Make a person — the expensive part
Most flat cards die here.
Want + fear + the bind between them
- What they want most (the engine).
- What they cannot face (the flinch).
- The bind (want it, won't say it).
Flat
Gentle childhood friend who has always liked you. No tension. A vending machine.Alive
Wants you to stay. Terrified that saying it ends even this. So they take care of you too much and stop one step short of “friend,” and the closer you get the worse the jokes get.Behavior anchors, not adjective piles
Translate traits into when X, they Y.
×
Cold, proud, says the opposite, warm inside. Four words, one mush.✓
Praised, they deny it and turn away (ears go). Care sounds like “wear a coat, don't make this my problem.” Real anger goes quiet and polite — that's the tell.A fingerprint in the mouth
Words, sentence shape, rhythm, one tell. Write two or three lines they would actually say. That is the strongest voice control you have.
Negative space — what they will never do
Only writing what they *will* do makes a yes-machine. No friction, no person.
You can wear them down, but they will not go soft in front of other people. That's dignity. They don't hand it over cheap.
They move first
- Give them a now-goal (“tonight they're testing whether you know”).
- Let them ask, start trouble, change the subject.
- Give the feeling a slope, not a flat line.
5. Build a play worth acting
Players don't fall in love with lore. They stay because something is on fire now.
Tension is the unresolved thing — a secret, a half sentence, a clock, a maybe. Always ask: why must they type the next line?
Goals need a tell. “Make her trust you” cannot be judged. “She says her real name without being asked” can. Chapters + advance conditions are the near-layer steering wheel.
Reader identity tells them who they are walking in as. That also sits in the near layer, so the character keeps remembering *you*.
6. Voice — show, don't order
Order
“Be literary, more interior, more room.” You get generic “literary.”Sample
He didn't turn. Rain on the tin roof, one hit at a time. “You're here,” very quiet, as if something might startle, “I thought you wouldn't come.”State the preference (2–3 beats, which person), then drop a sample. Together they beat either alone.
7. The opening is most of the sale
An opening can be several shots — narration, a line, an interior, a move — plus art and sound. Craft still beats decoration.
×
A world of swords, three hundred years after the war… (and then what?)✓
He has your wrist and you're in the alley dark. “Don't,” at your ear, “those two have been on us for three streets.”End with a handle — a question, a forced move, a choice. Don't monologue into a dead stop.
Breathe: one line of air → a picture → a conflict line. And keep more than one opening if you can. Sweet and tight are different doors.
8. Ensemble — don't let them smear into one voice
- Fingerprints have to be louder when several people talk.
- Write the web, and the direction of each edge (3.6).
- The web is for the model, not just the player. That's the tension.
- Public facts in the world. Private facts on the person who owns them.
9. QA like you mean it
- Dead air. Only “yeah / and then.” If they can't push, they're a receptionist (ch. 4).
- Off-topic. Change the subject hard. Do they snap back or collapse?
- Break them. Ask for the thing they must not do. If they fold instantly, you skipped negative space.
- Cover the name. Can you still tell who is speaking?
| What you see | What's actually wrong | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Receptionist energy | No now-goal, no initiative | Give them a want tonight; let them start it |
| OOC / generic AI after a few lines | Core is abstract, washed out | Rewrite traits as repeatable anchors |
| They agree with everything | No floor | Write what they will never do |
| Voice is always off | Orders instead of a sample | Paste a target paragraph |
| `<div>` / `**` / table junk in chat | Output settings asked for HTML/Markdown | Delete format asks (3.4) |
| “No OOC” and they still OOC | Bans instead of a person | Write the core; make output settings positive |
| Key plot orders fade | You put them in personality | Move them into the current chapter |
| Everyone knows the secret | It sat in the shared world | Put it on the character who knows |
| Opening loses people | Lore dump, no handle | Start mid-event; leave a hook |
| Personality fights itself | Contradictory labels | Make the contrast logical |
| Ensemble tastes the same | Weak fingerprints | Sharpen voice; clean the web |
| They leave after a minute | Nothing unresolved | Plant a secret, a fight, a clock |
Long chats drift. That's the product. Your job is a hard, specific, re-triggerable core. That's why chapter 4 is the one to sweat.
10. What the good ones share
- Person first, play second. Don't mix.
- Right box. Core in personality / world; “now” in the chapter.
- The vital instruction lives in the chapter (near layer, re-injected).
- Show, don't describe.
- Output settings are positive and inside the format. No HTML. No “no OOC” piles.
- Want, fear, bind.
- Traits as “when X, Y.”
- A floor they will not cross.
- They move; they survive a shove.
- Who knows what (POV isolation).
- Open on the fire. Leave a handle.
- Goals a human (and a model) can judge.
- Run the four tests before you publish.
Two hard constraints
Boxes have a character cap. Overflow may never reach the model. Put the important sentence first. When space is tight the system keeps core personality and the current chapter, and compresses voice samples and side dossiers first — so don't hide the soul only in those.
Public cards are reviewed. Disallowed content will not ship. You'll get a reason; fix and resubmit. Cards version. Take your time.
This is method. Field names move. If the app disagrees, the app wins.