Characters: a dedicated section, separated from the AI Analysis
Characters now have their own section in Narraya, separated from the AI Chapter Analysis. Seven specialised tabs, transparent costs, credit-based coherence.
When we first built Narraya, the character analysis was a feature of the chapter analysis: you ran the AI on a chapter's text, and the characters present in the scene came back among the results. It worked, but it conflated two different things — reading a chapter to improve it, and following a character's arc across an entire book. Starting today, the two live in separate places: Characters has its own dedicated section, with its own page, its own sheets, and its own pricing.
Why we separated characters from the chapter analysis
The AI Chapter Analysis is about that chapter: style, pacing, dialogues, targeted suggestions. It's a focused, short-horizon activity — something you close in the same afternoon you wrote in. Character work is the opposite: long, cross-cutting, growing chapter by chapter. Today you want to check whether a character's eye colour is consistent between chapter four and chapter fourteen; tomorrow you add a relationship; next week you realign a narrative arc.
Keeping both functions in the same place was convenient at the start, but it made it hard to understand what you were paying for, where to click to see a character's history, and when an analysis had updated the character sheet rather than the chapter analysis. Now every concern has its own home.
What you'll find in the Characters section
The new Characters section gives you a per-character view with seven specialised tabs. You don't need to look at all of them right away: they fill in as your book grows.
| Tab | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Profile | The main sheet: name, aliases, age, physical description, psychological traits, backstory. Editable by hand at any time. |
| Timeline | Every appearance of the character chapter by chapter, with presence level, role in the scene, key moments. |
| Biography | A narrative biography generated by the AI from the appearances: useful for back-cover copy or a sequel's bible. |
| Attributes | A table comparing the character's global attributes with those declared chapter by chapter. Surfaces divergences at a glance. |
| Evolution | The character's arc: starting state, ending state, key changes. Editable by hand whenever you want to assert your version. |
| Relationships | A navigable graph of friendships, conflicts, loves, betrayals. Relationships can be created manually or suggested by the AI after analyses. |
| Coherence | The analysis that hunts for narrative contradictions across chapters: unjustified personality shifts, contradictory physical attributes, out-of-character behaviour. |
How a sheet gets populated
Character sheets can be created by hand — useful when you have a clear idea before you start writing — or they fill in automatically during the AI Character Analysis on a single chapter. The logic is straightforward: every time you run the analysis on a chapter, the AI recognises the characters present, traces the appearance, and enriches the existing sheets without overwriting what you've written manually. New characters get created. Two characters that look very similar trigger a confirmation question before they're merged.
The AI Character Analysis carries no feature surcharge: you only pay the actual credits the AI consumed on the chapter. Unlocking the Characters section is a one-time purchase (included in the PRO and STUDIO plans, available separately for everyone else); once unlocked, every subsequent analysis costs only the real inference.
Character coherence: the new credit-based model
The Coherence Analysis used to be PRO/STUDIO only. It's now available to every plan with a transparent formula: 50 credits to access each analysis (free for users on PRO or STUDIO), plus the AI credits actually consumed. The total cost shows up in the confirmation popup before you start — no surprises.
The analysis compares all the character's appearances looking for three kinds of inconsistency:
- Semantic. A change in personality or meaning that isn't motivated by the plot. The classic example: the detached brother of chapter one becomes a caring brother by chapter four with no intervening event to justify it.
- Descriptive. Contradictory physical attributes. Blue eyes in chapter two, green eyes in chapter seven. An age that shifts in a way incompatible with the story's timeline.
- Behavioural. A character acts against the established profile without a narrative cause. The most subtle category: it catches the breaks in characterisation that often slip past during your own re-read.
For every inconsistency you receive a severity (high, medium, low), an impact (plot break, reader confusion, style only) and a concrete suggested fix, with reference to the chapters involved. You can choose between Quick (top 5 inconsistencies, lower AI cost) and Full (every inconsistency found, deeper analysis).
You don't need to run the coherence check on every chapter. It works better after you close a writing block — an act, a narrative turn, the return of a character who's been off-stage for a while. Those are the moments when inconsistencies are most likely and the bird's-eye view pays off most.
What changes for those already writing on Narraya
Nothing you need to worry about. The characters already in your book stay where they are, with the same sheets, the same relationships, the same history. The separation is a matter of interface and accounting: a dedicated entry in the side menu, more transparent costs in the confirmation popup, a hub page that gathers every character of the book grouped by role.
If the Characters section wasn't included in your plan and you'd already unlocked it in the past, the unlock stays valid — nothing to repurchase. If you're on PRO or STUDIO, everything is included as before; only the AI credits (the credits effectively consumed by the AI on each analysis) are now shown separately from the feature cost, for consistency with the rest of the system.
Open the Characters section from your book's side menu. If it's your first time, a brief onboarding will walk you through. Characters are no longer a by-product of the chapter analysis: they are the heart of your novel, and now they have the page they deserve.