A character profile is the record BookZeta works from every time it writes that character or draws them. Thin profiles produce generic dialogue and inconsistent portraits, and the effect compounds across a series. This is what to put in one, and what to leave out.

You build profiles in the Series Bible or in an individual project's assets panel. The field-by-field mechanics are in Creating characters, settings and entities; this article is about what to write in them.

The fields that do the most work

Name. Use the name that appears in the text. If a character is called something different by different people, put the variants in the description so the AI does not treat them as separate people.

Physical identity. The traits that never change: build, face, hair, skin, distinguishing marks, apparent age. This is what keeps a character recognizable across every generated image and every book. Write it as fixed facts, not as a scene. "Tall, narrow-shouldered, close-cropped grey hair, a burn scar across the left jaw" works. "She looked tired that morning" does not, because it is a moment, not an identity.

Outfits. One per recurring look. A named outfit is how the same person appears in armour in chapter two and at a funeral in chapter nine without turning into somebody else. See Character portraits, outfits and consistency.

Status. Alive, dead, missing and so on. This is a continuity guardrail, not decoration. It is what stops a sequel casually reintroducing somebody who died in the previous book.

Role and alignment. How the character functions in the story and where they sit morally. These steer tone in generated scenes more than most people expect.

Description. The largest and most important field. What goes in it is below.

What to put in the description

Write it as prose, not a form. Five things earn their place:

What they want, in this book. A concrete goal, not a state of mind. "To get her brother out of the debt he signed for" beats "to protect her family."

What they are afraid of. Preferably something specific enough to be triggered by an event you will write.

How they speak. This is the field that most improves generated dialogue. Sentence length, vocabulary, whether they answer questions directly, what they never say. "Short sentences, deflects with jokes, never says the word sorry" gives the AI something to work with. "Witty and charming" does not.

One contradiction. The generous man who is cruel about one particular person. Contradictions are what make characters read as people rather than roles.

What they do under pressure. Fight, negotiate, go quiet, leave. Half of characterization is behaviour in the scenes that matter.

What to leave out

Backstory that never appears. A full childhood history does not improve output and dilutes the fields that matter. Include the past only where it explains present behaviour.

Stat blocks. Numbered attributes, personality-type labels and lists of adjectives generate flat prose. Concrete specifics beat categories.

Everything about the plot. The profile is who the character is, not what happens to them. Plot belongs in the outline.

Traits everybody has. Loyal, brave, determined. If it would fit half your cast, it is not characterizing anybody.

A worked example

Thin:

Marcus is a brave soldier who wants to protect his family. He is loyal and has a troubled past.

Usable:

Twenty-six, a quartermaster rather than a fighter, promoted after everyone senior to him died at the crossing. Wants to be released from a contract he cannot legally leave, and is quietly assembling the money to buy his way out. Speaks in short, procedural sentences and becomes noticeably more formal when he is lying. Generous with his own rations and unforgivably cold about his brother, who signed the contract for him. Under pressure he counts and organizes rather than acting, which reads as calm and is not.

The second one generates in-character dialogue, a consistent portrait and scenes that behave. The first generates a soldier.

Casting into a book

The Bible holds the canonical profile. Casting a character into a specific book pulls in a local copy you can edit for that story, without changing the original. This is how a character legitimately evolves across a series: book three carries the scar and the new rank while the Bible stays stable.

Edit the casted copy for book-specific changes. Edit the Bible only when you are changing who the character fundamentally is.

Before you start writing

Fill in profiles for your protagonist, your antagonist and anyone with a viewpoint. Everyone else can start as a name and a line and be expanded when they earn it.

In Writer Mode, tag characters with @ before asking for a scene so the assistant uses the profile. An untagged character drifts towards a generic voice within a few chapters.

For the craft side, see How to create characters readers actually remember and How to write a villain.