Formatting your description
A character's Detailed Backstory is the long public page people read when they're deciding whether to start a chat. Written as one unbroken block, even a good story goes unread. A few lines of formatting turn it into something with a shape — and it takes about two minutes to learn.
Everything here is typed as plain text in the same box you already write in. There's a toolbar above the box that inserts the syntax for you, and a Preview tab so you can see the finished page before you publish. Nothing you write is ever sent to the AI — this field is for readers.
Headings
The single biggest improvement, and the one to learn first. Start a line with # and a
space, and it becomes a coloured section heading with a divider above it. Headings cycle through
four colours in order, so you never have to pick one.
THE SETUP
You are twenty-six. Your lease ended four months before the new one starts, so you moved back into your father's house.
In June, your father remarried.
HER
Renata is thirty-eight. She spent eleven years as a court interpreter, mostly in asylum tribunals.
THE SETUP
You are twenty-six. Your lease ended four months before the new one starts, so you moved back into your father's house.
In June, your father remarried.
HER
Renata is thirty-eight. She spent eleven years as a court interpreter, mostly in asylum tribunals.
Use ## instead for a subheading — a smaller labelled block, good for a list of
scene openers or a set of rules. It's the quieter sibling of # and doesn't get a
divider.
She is waiting for you when you get home.
It's a cafe date. She wants to hear about your day.
She is waiting for you when you get home.
It's a cafe date. She wants to hear about your day.
Naming your headings: name the thing, not the topic. # WHAT SHE ISN'T
and # THE HOUSE are memorable; # BACKGROUND and
# PERSONALITY are furniture. Four to eight sections is a good target — enough to give
the page a rhythm, few enough that it still reads as one story.
Lists
Start a line with - and a space for a bulleted list, or 1. for a numbered
one. Consecutive lines join into a single list; a blank line closes it.
- the way she laughs before the joke lands
- the fact she never says your father's name
- how she stands in doorways instead of entering rooms
Lists pair beautifully with highlights (below), which is how a lot of scene-selector pages are built:
- Home To Mommy: you arrive home and she's waiting for you
- Let It Brew: a cafe date. She wants to hear about your day
- Warm Night: you're getting ready to sleep when she slips under your sheets
Emphasis
The toolbar has buttons for all of these, but the syntax is worth knowing so you can type it directly.
| You type | You get | Where it's useful |
|---|---|---|
**bold** |
bold | Pulling a reader's eye to the important clause |
*italic* |
italic | Titles, foreign words, a softer aside |
~~struck~~ |
What she says out loud versus what she means | |
==highlighted== |
highlighted | Scene names, key facts, anything list-shaped |
==amber|highlighted== |
highlighted | A named colour — also rose, violet,
cyan, green |
||spoiler|| |
spoiler | A secret a reader has to choose to reveal. Hover or tab to it |
`code` |
code |
An in-world text message, a letter, a rule |
Emphasis nests, so **bold with ==a highlight== inside it** renders exactly as you'd
hope. It does not carry across a blank line — if a marker isn't closed by the end of its
paragraph, it stays visible as literal text rather than silently swallowing the rest of your
page.
Typing a literal *? Put a backslash in front: \*.
Quotes and callouts
Start a line with > for a pull quote — set off to the side with a coloured bar.
Great for a line of dialogue you want to land, or a fragment from her past quoted directly.
She stands in the kitchen with her back to you.
"You don't have to knock. It's your house too."
Use !> for a callout box, which draws attention instead of retreating from it. The
natural home for an out-of-character note to your readers — a content warning, a heads-up, or how
long the intro runs.
Dividers and centred lines
Three hyphens on their own line become a decorative divider — useful between scenes that don't warrant a full heading.
She didn't answer.
He sent a message four days later.
He sent a message four days later.
Wrap a line in -> and <- to centre it. It reads as a title card, so
it's best used sparingly — once at the top, or once between major movements.
A story about the house you grew up in
Links
[label](https://example.com) makes a link. Only http and
https addresses work; anything else is left as plain text, so a mistyped link stays
visible instead of quietly breaking. Links open in a new tab and don't affect search ranking.
She keeps a photo album she never shows anyone.
Coming from another site?
If you're moving a description across from somewhere else, paste it in — a handful of common HTML
tags are converted for you, so <b>, <i>,
<br>, <hr> and <center> all survive the
move. Everything else stays as text. There's more in the
FAQ about what happens when it doesn't.
Old-style headings still work
If you've already written a backstory using the older convention — a line in all capitals, by
itself — it still renders as a heading, exactly as it did before. Nothing you've written is
broken, and there's no need to convert anything. The # syntax is simply easier to
type and lets you control the level.
THE SETUP
A line in all capitals, on its own, becomes a heading.
Ending a capitals line in a colon makes it a subheading instead.
THE SETUP
A line in all capitals, on its own, becomes a heading.
Ending a capitals line in a colon makes it a subheading instead.
Things worth knowing
- This field caps at 10,000 characters. The counter above the box turns red as you approach it. That's a lot of room — roughly three times the length of a typical short story.
- Only Detailed Backstory supports this. Short Lore stays plain text, because it's shown on gallery cards where formatting would only get in the way.
- No images. Every picture on the site goes through safety screening before it can be used, and an image inside a description would bypass that entirely — so this field is text only.
- Nothing here reaches the AI. If you want the character to know something, it goes in Personality, Deep Lore, or Dialogue Examples. See every character field, explained.
- Preview before you publish. The Preview tab renders with the same code the profile page uses, so what you see there is what readers get.
That's everything. If you want help with the writing itself rather than the formatting, the character field guide goes through each box in turn, and how to roleplay covers what makes a chat actually work.