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The Manual

Documentation

Writing Styles

Style Lab (Voiceprint) lets you define exactly how Ash writes — every slider controls a real aspect of prose craft, from sentence complexity to emotional directness.

Style Lab — found under Voiceprint in the sidebar

Style Lab is where you create and manage voice profiles that shape every word Ash generates. Without a style, Ash defaults to generic AI prose. With one, it writes in your configured voice.

What Are Writing Styles?

A writing style is a named profile of 33 core prose elements. When you attach a style to a generation run, Ash uses those settings as primary instructions — overriding its default patterns.

Why it matters

  • • Consistent voice across all chapters
  • • Eliminates generic AI sentence patterns
  • • Matches your personal writing style
  • • Applies to every generation mode
  • • 33 configurable style elements
  • • A growing library of premade styles from literary traditions
  • • Analyze your own prose to extract a profile
  • • Fork any style as a starting point for your own

Style Card Layout

Each style card in your library displays the style's name, description, and four preview metrics. The full set of style sliders is visible when you open the style editor.

Card actions

View — read-only preview of all style settings
Edit — adjust any slider, update name or description
Delete — permanently remove the style

The Style Elements

Each element runs from 0 to 100. The four metrics shown on the card preview are the ones most visible in prose:

Core Voice Dimensions

Pacing

0 = contemplative / slow — 100 = kinetic / fast

Sentence Complexity

0 = simple / direct (Hemingway) — 100 = complex / nested (Pynchon)

Metaphor Density

0 = literal / plain — 100 = figurative / poetic

Emotional Directness

0 = oblique / subtext only — 100 = emotions named explicitly

Technical Influence

0 = literary / universal — 100 = domain-expert vocabulary

Cynicism / Hope

0 = cynical / dark — 100 = hopeful / optimistic

Dialogue Ratio

0 = minimal dialogue — 100 = dialogue-heavy

Visual Emphasis

0 = minimal visual description — 100 = rich visual detail

Structural Dimensions

Action-Heavy Opening

0 = scenes open with setting/thought — 100 = scenes open mid-action

Paragraph Length

0 = short / punchy — 100 = long / flowing

Time Linearity

0 = strictly linear — 100 = fragmented / non-linear with flashbacks

Setting Detail

0 = sparse / functional — 100 = rich / atmospheric

Premade Styles

Style Lab ships with a curated library of public voice profiles. Use them as-is or as starting points for your own. The current library includes styles across a range of literary traditions:

Literary Experimental

Premade

Stream-of-consciousness, fractured chronology, dense interiority.

Middle-Grade Adventure

Premade

Clear syntax, minimal darkness, accessible and fast-paced.

Contemporary Romance

Premade

Warm, emotionally explicit, high interiority and hopeful tone.

And more

Premade

Browse the full library in Style Lab, including hard-boiled noir, epic fantasy, cozy mystery, and more.

Creating a Custom Style

1

Manual configuration

Click + New Style and adjust the sliders by hand. Name and describe the style so you can identify it later. Fully manual — no tokens used.

2

Prose analysis

Paste a sample of your own writing (or any author's) and let the system analyze it to extract slider values automatically. This uses tokens from your Prose Generation key — the panel shows which model will be charged before you run it.

3

Start from a premade style

Fork a premade style and adjust from there. The Showdown at /showdown is a good way to compare results before committing.

Using Styles in Generation

How to attach a style

  1. Open any chapter inside a story
  2. Click Generate PRO
  3. Select your writing style from the dropdown
  4. Describe the scene and generate

Banned words: Story settings also include a banned words list. Words on that list are excluded from all generated prose, regardless of which style is active.