In the previous article, we broke down Show, Don’t Tell: Five Senses Description and Catchphrase Design to give your character’s words a soul. But before that, there is actually a more fundamental issue that beginners often overlook: the “formatting” of your typing itself is already teaching the AI how to reply to you. Should you use asterisks? Should dialogue have quotes? Who does the narration belong to? This article will clarify the most confusing rules of AI roleplay formatting at once, guiding you to understand how to write the correct roleplay format.
Why “Formatting” Matters More Than You Think
Large language models are essentially “continuing” text that matches the patterns of their training data. When your message formatting is consistent, the AI will catch this pattern and generate replies using the same logic. However, if you use asterisks in one sentence, quotes in the next, and no symbols at all in the following one, the AI receives multiple contradictory demonstrations and has to guess. The result is usually that the formatting follows your last sentence randomly, or the entire paragraph gets squeezed into a wall of text where it’s impossible to tell who is doing what or who is speaking.
According to model testing notes compiled by the AI roleplay community over the years, the quote style and asterisk style actually draw from “completely different subsets” of the language model’s training data: the quote style is closer to formally published novel texts, while the asterisk style is closer to instant messaging and script-like online conversation habits. Forcing both formats into the same sentence (for example, “quoted dialogue” combined with *asterisk actions*) almost never appears in real training data. The AI will either fail to learn it or be forced to waste tokens trying to piece it together, offering no benefit at all.
Three Basic Elements: Actions, Dialogue, and Narration
Before breaking down “which style to choose,” let’s first understand that a roleplay message consists of only three types of content:
Asterisk Actions—Physical actions, facial expressions, and environmental details wrapped in asterisks, such as “*He smiled slightly and leaned forward*”. This is the part most easily overlooked by beginners; many focus only on writing dialogue, leaving the character like a talking head with no body language.
Quotes / Plain Text Dialogue—The words the character actually “speaks aloud”. Wrapping them in quotes (“What are you thinking?”) is closer to novel writing; writing them directly as plain text is more common in chat communities. Both are valid, but the key is consistency throughout.
Narration—Descriptions that do not belong to character actions or dialogue, but rather background descriptions like scenes, weather, or the passage of time, such as “The rain outside was still falling”. This part is often completely ignored, causing the scene to remain frozen in place with only two people talking continuously.
Most Common Mistakes Made by Beginners
The most common mistake beginners make is sticking actions, dialogue, and emotions all together into a single paragraph without any symbol separation. The AI cannot distinguish between actions and dialogue, so it follows suit, and your character’s replies will also turn into a wall of text. Two other common pitfalls: first, not sticking to one format from beginning to end, forcing the AI to guess every time; second, jumping between perspectives—using “I” in one sentence and the character’s name in the next as a third-person narrative, which easily confuses the model.
How to Choose Between the Two Major Styles: Quote Style vs. Asterisk Style
When it comes to specific formatting, the AI roleplay community has debated for years without a true “standard answer,” but it can generally be divided into two styles, each with clear use cases.
Quote Style: Dialogue is placed in quotes, and actions are described in plain text—this is the most familiar style in traditional novels. The advantage is that the writing quality is usually higher because the model has seen a large amount of formally published text, and the narrative is more coherent. It is especially suitable for multi-user collaborations and more formal world-building stories. The disadvantage is that for users who just want to “message and chat,” it might seem a bit too formal and slow-paced.
Asterisk Style: Dialogue is written directly in plain text, and only actions are wrapped in asterisks—this is a more common habit in roleplay communities and instant chat interfaces, matching the rhythm of our daily messaging and text RP. The advantage is that it is intuitive and easy to start, making it perfect for one-on-one immersive conversations. The disadvantage is that this style is less common in formal literary training data, so its stability might not be as good as the quote style when handling long narratives.
According to a long-updated model tips and tricks compilation on Hugging Face, the author’s specific recommendation is: if you are writing multi-user collaborations or more literary roleplay, it is recommended to use third-person for character cards and quote style for chat; if you just want casual one-on-one chat, first-person + asterisk style is usually a better fit. Mixing both formats in the same sentence is explicitly listed as “strongly discouraged”.
However, there is another more radical opinion. The “Ali:Chat” style guide, which has circulated in the roleplay community for years, even directly suggests avoiding quotes as much as possible—because quotes can easily make the AI mistake itself for writing a novel rather than chatting. Using purely asterisk actions + plain text dialogue can make the conversation more focused and save tokens. This means there is no single correct format that fits all; the key is always to “choose one and stick to it throughout”.
How Do Major Platforms Actually Design This?
Rather than imagining it, let’s look directly at how several mainstream platforms or communities teach this.
Character.AI—Example Conversations Feature
The Character.AI official creator guide provides an “Example Conversations” field, allowing creators to demonstrate how their characters should be conversed with—including fixed catchphrases and sentence patterns. The official documentation specifically gives an example showing how demonstrating fixed sentence patterns like “fortunately / unfortunately” through example conversations can help other players quickly catch the rhythm of interacting with the character. This is essentially teaching the AI using “formatting examples” rather than just writing text descriptions.
To understand more completely how to set up character cards, personalities, and example conversations, you can refer to the previously written Complete AI Character Card Setup Guide.
SillyTavern / Ali:Chat Style—Example Separation Markers
The character design page of the SillyTavern official documentation directly demonstrates example messages mixing asterisk actions + plain text dialogue, using exclusive separation markers to separate each set of example conversations. Combined with name prefixes for both the character and the user, this lets the AI clearly know “this is an example, not a formal conversation” and helps the AI learn when to switch speakers.
If you also want to add a complete world setting to your character, aligning formatting with background knowledge, you can check out the Complete AI Roleplay World Lorebook Setup Guide, or read the Complete SillyTavern Guide first to grasp the operational logic of the entire system.
Advanced Tips: How to Make the AI “Stick” to Your Format
Knowing the rules is only the first step. Making the AI actually follow them requires a few techniques.
A tutorial summarizing how to write system prompts points out that a complete roleplay system prompt usually contains five blocks: character identity, tone and speaking habits, behavior and motivation, scene and background knowledge, and the “reply format” itself—first-person or third-person? Should actions use asterisks? Pure dialogue or mixed? If this block is missing, the AI can only guess, and if it guesses wrong, the formatting will start to drift.
There are three specific methods: First, place two to four sets of demonstration messages that completely follow your specified format in the character card’s example conversation field, rather than just writing a single sentence—the more specific and consistent the examples, the more accurately the AI will mimic them. Second, write the formatting rules directly into the last sentence of the character description or system prompt, such as “Please use asterisks to describe actions throughout, and do not add quotes to dialogue.” Clarity always beats ambiguity. Third, if the AI starts to get messy mid-chat, insert a reminder directly using OOC (Out of Character) or Author’s Note (supported by most platforms), which is usually more efficient than rewriting the entire paragraph and much faster than deleting and starting over.
How Does AI Dreamweaver Handle These Two Styles?
AI Dreamweaver provides both “Interactive Novel” and “Roleplay” modes, which correspond exactly to the two major styles discussed in this article: the Interactive Novel mode leans toward third-person narrative, suitable for the formal narrative rhythm of the quote style; the Roleplay chat mode is closer to one-on-one real-time dialogue, where the combination of asterisk actions + plain text dialogue is particularly useful. No matter which one you prefer, you can set up the character card’s example conversations yourself according to the above principles. The anime style and complete Traditional Chinese interface are also very friendly to beginners. Platform members can get 500 points for daily check-ins, creators get a 30% points rebate for publishing character cards, and there is a 15% discount on the first top-up by entering the promo code WELCOME15.
If you want to see how others design their character card formats, you can also go directly to the exploration page to browse public characters created by other players on the site, grab some inspiration, and then adjust your own writing style.
FAQ
Do I have to use asterisks? Can I use plain text for the entire piece?
Absolutely. Plain text (without specially marking actions) is even the default style on some platforms. As long as the example conversations between you and the AI maintain the same logic from beginning to end, the AI will catch on. What really causes problems is inconsistency, like “using asterisks in this sentence but not in that one”.
What should I do if the AI keeps failing to follow my formatting?
First, check if the example conversations in the character card itself lack a unified format—this is the most common reason. If the examples are fine, you can explicitly remind the AI mid-conversation using OOC or Author’s Note, which usually shows results faster than regenerating the entire paragraph.
Does the “quotes vs. asterisks” rule also apply to Chinese roleplay?
Yes, it applies, except that quotes are replaced with the full-width quotes “「」” commonly used in Chinese, while the logic for using asterisks remains the same. In terms of Chinese language flow, mixing plain text dialogue with asterisk actions is actually more common than in English and reads more naturally.
What is the difference between narration and action? How do I distinguish them?
Actions are “things the character is doing,” usually tied to the character themselves, such as their expressions or gestures. Narration is “things happening in the scene itself,” which have no direct relation to any specific character, such as the weather, the passage of time, or distant sounds. Distinguishing between these two gives the scene breathing room, preventing it from being permanently stuck in a vacuum of dialogue between two people.
Conclusion
Formatting sounds like the most boring, technical detail, but it is actually the foundation of all immersion in AI roleplay. No matter how detailed the character setting is or how complete the world-building is, if the formatting is inconsistent, the AI will still generate replies that read clunkily. Choose a style you like, write it into the character card’s example conversations, and stick to it throughout. You will find that the character suddenly becomes much smoother.
