The Editor
AI Story Generation
Instead of writing each panel description individually, you can write the full narrative for a page in one go and let the AI break it into panel scenes automatically.
What it does
The AI Story Generation feature (in the Story tab) takes a block of narrative prose and splits it into individual panel descriptions — one per panel on the current page. It also extracts dialogue from each scene automatically.
The result: every panel on the page gets a scene description and any spoken dialogue, ready to generate images from. You don't have to visit each panel individually.
Workflow
- Open the Story tab in the editor
- Write (or paste) your narrative text describing what happens across the whole page
- The system shows you how many panels are on the current page and suggests a panel count to split into
- Any character names found in the narrative are highlighted — unknown characters (not defined in your Characters tab) are flagged with a warning
- Click Generate Scenes
- The AI breaks the narrative into panel-by-panel scene descriptions and saves them to each panel
- Dialogue is extracted automatically from each scene — no confirmation step needed
- Each panel now has a scene description. Click any panel to generate its image.
Images are not generated automatically
Narrative generation fills in the scene descriptions — it does not trigger image generation. After scenes are filled, you still click each panel individually to generate the illustration. This gives you a chance to review and tweak descriptions before committing to image generation.
Writing a good narrative
Write the narrative as you would a short story — present tense works well. Include action, setting, character names, and mood. The AI will divide it into visual moments appropriate for your panel count.
Example narrative for a 4-panel page
Elena arrives at the abandoned warehouse on the edge of the city, rain hammering the corrugated roof. She finds the door already open and steps inside carefully, hand on her weapon. Inside, Captain Volt is waiting. He sits on a crate, looking exhausted. "I didn't think you'd come," he says. Elena stares at him across the dark space. "You left me no choice."From this, the AI might generate scenes like:
- Panel 1: Elena approaches a dark warehouse in heavy rain, exterior shot, dramatic atmosphere
- Panel 2: Close on Elena's hand pushing open the door cautiously, tension
- Panel 3: Interior — Captain Volt seated on a crate, worn and tired, dim lighting
- Panel 4: Elena in the doorway facing Volt across the dark space, confrontational standoff
Character handling
When you write a narrative, YarnSaga scans it for character names from your Characters tab. Anything that matches — full name, quoted nickname, or first name — gets auto-attached to the corresponding generated panels, so the character's reference sheet is sent to the AI when each panel image is generated. You don't have to do anything extra for known characters to appear consistently across panels.
Unknown character warnings
If you mention a name that doesn't match any character in your story, it's flagged as an unknown character. These names will appear in the generated scene descriptions but won't have a character sheet reference — meaning the AI will render them from description text alone without visual consistency.
If a flagged name is intentional (a minor background character or an extra), you can proceed. If it's a typo or a character you forgot to create, fix it before generating scenes.
Review attached characters after generation
After scenes are generated, open each panel and check the character chips at the top — those are the characters that will be sent as references when you generate the image. If a character you expected to see isn't attached, the most common causes are an ambiguous first name (shared by two characters) or a name that happens to match an English word. You can fix this by /-mentioning the character explicitly in the panel description. See Using Characters in Scenes for the full list of cases where auto-detection might miss.
Regenerating scenes
You can run narrative generation multiple times on the same page. Each run replaces the existing panel scene descriptions. If you've already generated panel images, the images remain — only the text descriptions are updated. Re-generate the panel images afterward if you want them to reflect the new descriptions.
Scene descriptions will be overwritten
Running AI Story Generation replaces whatever scene descriptions are currently in your panels. If you've manually edited descriptions, those edits will be lost. Always generate images before running narrative generation again on a page you've manually edited.