How to Seed Characters for Your AI World (And When to Seed None)
To seed characters for an AI world, give the engine a small cast with clear roles and one sharp hook each — two to five people is usually better than a full roster. The AI will introduce anyone else the story needs, so your job is the load-bearing few, not the whole ensemble.
What a seed character is
A seed character is someone you hand the AI before chapter one: a name, a role, and a short description. Everything after that — their arc, their secrets revealed, their survival — is the AI's authorship. Think of seeding as casting, not scripting.
How many to seed
The free Candle plan allows five seeds; paid plans raise the cap to ten, fifteen, and twenty. The cap is a ceiling, not a quota. Two or three sharply-drawn characters beat eight sketches, because the AI writes a better chapter about a tense triangle than about a crowd it must keep rotating through.
A useful rule: seed the people whose relationships are the premise. If your story is "two rival lighthouse keepers and the sea between them," seed both keepers — the sea, the AI will handle.
What to write in the description
- Role in one line: "retired smuggler who now repairs boats" — function plus a hint of history.
- One want or wound: characters the AI can move are characters with a vector. "Owes money to the wrong people" is an engine; "kind and brave" is furniture.
- A relationship to another seed where possible — pre-connected characters give chapter one somewhere to start.
For deeper craft on making people who can change across a long story, see creating characters for an AI novel.
The case for seeding nobody
Empty cast is a legitimate, underrated choice. When you seed no one, the AI builds the cast from the premise itself — protagonists emerge where the story's friction is, rather than where you guessed they'd be. Some of the best runs start this way: you find out who the story is about the same day the AI does. You can always watch which AI-introduced characters appear and seed a related world differently next time.
A hybrid worth trying: seed one character with a strong want and let the AI populate around them. The story gets your anchor plus the AI's improvisation — a protagonist you chose, surrounded by people nobody chose.
Common mistakes
- Over-specifying. Three paragraphs of backstory constrains without helping; the AI needs a vector, not a biography.
- Seeding the whole plot. If the cast contains the entire story, the AI has nothing to introduce — leave room.
- Forgetting opposition. Seed someone who wants the opposite of your protagonist; friction is fuel.
- Writing stats instead of vectors. "Level 12 swordsman, 6'1, scar over left eye" tells the engine nothing about where the character is going. One line of desire outperforms a paragraph of attributes every time — the AI writes people, and people are moved by wanting things.
Ready to cast? Start a world, seed two people who want different things, and see who the AI adds to the mix.
Sources
- Cogweald — How to Create Characters for an AI Novel, https://www.cogweald.com/blog/how-to-create-characters-for-an-ai-novel-build-people-who-can-change
- Cogweald — Seeded Cast vs AI-Introduced Characters, https://www.cogweald.com/blog/seeded-cast-vs-ai-introduced-characters