Story Parameters

Sup, AIDS. Bust out your notebooks and lotion. I'm gonna teach y'all how to coom on the fly with Novel AI.

For those that have stayed in the loop, one of the most repeated grievances about NAI is that it requires you to be a writefag for your stories to be coherent and satisfying. Not everyone wants to type a 5000 character prompts. Some just don't have that creativity. However, with this 'new' strategy, this will no longer be the case, and enjoyable, easy-to-setup coom stories—AND MORE—will be a possibility once again.
Please note that I am nothing more than a simple anon. I am not smart—just nosy. I had no part in the preliminary testing and discussion of all this—you can thank the NAI discord for that. I simply wanted Sigurd's auto-generating story capabilities exposed to the light for anons who don't have the forethought to go looking for it themselves.

I will attempt to explain the mechanics of it as plainly as I can to those who truly have smooth brains. NAI was trained mainly on professional, curated novels of all types. Knowing that all these genres, authors, and story tropes explicitly exist in Sigurd's training, people began testing to see if they could force the AI to focus and write the particular stories they wanted if given simple parameters. These don't have a real name yet, I think, so I'll simply be calling them 'story parameters'.

So (You) Don't Want to be a Writefag

For those who care to read it, the NAI wiki has already been updated with the core explanation of these story parameters and how advanced they can become. This rentry will be more or less repeating it verbatim while also providing proof of its viability in simple terms for simple anons.

https://naidb.miraheze.org/wiki/Directing_AI_Generation

Now, currently, the most up-to-date format for these 'story parameters' is: [ Author: ; Tags: ; Genre: ]
Based on past tests, every specific space and capitalization is important for story parameters to work their best, so try to follow the formatting pattern as best as possible. This format may be subject to change in the future if more powerful iterations are discovered.

Placing these bracketed words at the beginning of an empty story box, just as you would copy&paste in a prompt, will generate relatively coherent stories on the fly of any random genre from Fantasy to hardcore Erotica. But this auto-generation of eloquent, brand new stories can go even deeper! By adding information to these blank Author/Tags/Genre spaces, you can specify Sigurd to generate—theoretically—any kind of story of your choosing! A short example is shown below.

No editing, no Memory, no Author's Note, and no fancy Advanced Context. All it needed was the story parameters to give me a promising starting point for a brand new story!

And before you say anything—no, this does not attempt to make prose useless. Nor is this supposed to be some all-powerful new formatting that'll bring the AI to its knees. This is only meant to be a tool—a tool to help you create decent stories when you aren't feeling particularly creative. AKA—when you don't want to be a writefag.

And for those curious if I'm just pulling this out my ass, I will once again point to the NAI discord. All of this information was scraped from the NAI discord channel #novelai-research and the development teams supported wiki(wiki link posted above in bold).
In this channel and wiki, only dev supported statements concerning Novel AI's more advanced abilities like auto-generating prompts and other tips/tools are posted, and any information posted in this channel can only be done by officialy appointed NAI researchers.

With that being said, I urge any anon that believes that the information posted here is not accurate to what these researchers have asserted, please respond to the OP and with hope, I'll see it and openly consider any needed changes.

Getting Specific

In this next section, I hope to answer some preliminary questions you may have while also showing how to effectively direct the AI with story parameters.

Do note that all my tests were done on Experimental Moth settings. At the point of this rentry's creation, it is the NAI setting preset that I have the most fun and success with. While the high randomness may be daunting, I've found allowing the AI to have somewhat unrestricted creative freedom leads to more interesting beginnings with story parameters. Keeping your settings dynamic to avoid common AI schizo pit-falls is still very recommended.
https://rentry.co/settings-repository#experimental-moth

Moving on from that, it is important to see just how expansive and customizable the story parameters are. I will explain the big three—Author, Tags, and Genre—first, and then elaborate on how to use some of the more obscure categories to give story parameters more focus. With that being said, while the 'big three' can make your story parameter much stronger, you do not need to fill out each space. You could fill in Tags, Genre, leave Author blank, and still have your story parameter work. The same goes for the rest.

Author: The Author section of the story parameters is pretty cut and dry. With all of the novels put into Sigurd's training, there are many prolific and highly stylized authors that you can direct the AI to draw inspiration from. If you know literature at all, then certain author choices will make a lot of sense. George R.R. Martin, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, and J. R. R. Tolkien are all fine choices for the author spot, especially if the story you want to make befits what they'd usually write.

Do note that putting in an author can greatly affect the eloquence and style of your story, so much so that you might inherit story aspects from an author that you may or may not like. For instance, suddenly seeing Tyrian Lannister if you use George R.R. Martin or a hobbit with Tolkien.

There are also quite a handful of Erotica authors in NAI's finetune data, so don't feel discouraged coomers. Some of the more notable writers for cooms are Sylvia Day, Anna Lores, and Maya Banks, but there are surely many more.

(Edit: A list of NSFW authors was discovered on the NAI discord. There are still likely more, but these should be effective for cooming purposes. I'd recommend researching the author of your choice before plugging it in to your story parameter. This is to avoid using an author that may only specialize in writing a specific kind of smut, which may negatively influence a story's direction if the fetishes clash.
[ Authors: J.R. Ward, Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, Marissa Meyer, Robin Hobb, Diana Gabaldon, Nalini Singh, Kresley Cole, Charlaine Harris, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Christine Feehan, Ilona Andrews, Elizabeth Hunter, Lisa McMann, Carrie Ryan, Rachel Caine, Laurell K Hamilton, Maggie Shayne, Patricia Briggs] )

At the end of the day, simply searching for "popular erotica author" or something more specific like "popular mystery author" will usually give some idea on what author might be the best pick to drive your story and give it a certain style.

A general rule of thumb proposed by NAI's fine-tune team is that any Western author with 10 or more popular novels will usually be useable for story parameters. However, for the more obscure authors who may not meet that requirement, there is an explicit way to determine whether or not the author of your choice is present in Sigurd's fine-tune data.

All it requires is putting in the author of your choice like so: [ Author: (Your Author) ; Tags:
Make sure the Ban Bracket Generation option is greyed out when doing this.

Note the open bracket in the first example. With this, you would put in your author's name and let the AI generate what Tags match with said author. If you were to put Tolkien, Tags like hobbit and adventure would generate, confirming that author's place in Sigurd's data because of its accuracy. BUT BE AWARE. The AI will not reject fake authors or authors not included in its training data. As show in the example below, even FAKE authors will generate Tags.

To truly confirm whether or not your author of choice is included, you must cross-reference the Tags the AI generates and judge whether that fits what that author would actually write.

Tags: Tags have the most varied use and freedom out of the big three, and will be the longest section of this part of the guide.

So, let's say you wanted to add the Tag 'dragon' to your story parameter. The AI sees Tags as a gentle nudge in a certain direction rather than a harsh push. So, if we were to use 'dragon' as a Tag, there is only a chance that dragons will be mentioned at the beginning of your auto-generated story, and if dragons are brought up—whether it be by you or by the AI—the story will usually end up describing that dragon with greater focus and detail than without said Tag.

This is where it becomes important to make it clear that while your custom story parameter can help the AI write a story completely on its own with little hand-holding, giving your story even just a sentence or two of guidance—especially in the beginning—can do wonders for the AI and make it give you what you want.

A little guidance can go such a long way mainly because of how flexible Tags are. While some Tags are definitely easier for the AI to understand than others, Tags can virtually be anything. Do you want your story parameters to give you an output that starts you off with a dog companion? Just make one of the tags literally 'dog-companion' and watch the AI spin you a tale about you fighting evil with your domesticated dire wolf. With no use of memory!

And for the coomers, Tags are pretty much just the fetish zone and can accommodate a wide arrange of sexual terms as long as they are straightforward. The AI will be able to latch onto certain NSFW-tier Tags easier than most and require little guidance—mainly Tags and terms you'd see in your average Literotica, like 'sub/dom' and 'lesbianism'. The more exotic and unusual you make your Tags, the more guidance you'll likely have to give the AI as it auto-generates your story. With that being said, the average NAI user would likely be surprised just how well Sigurd can understand certain Tags, so feel free to experiment!

—Example—

In this story parameter, I added the Tags 'alien', 'alien sex', and 'brothel'—Tags that the AI seemingly wouldn't be able to handle at first glance. In my test, it handled the concept of a 'brothel' Tag just fine, but I could tell it was going to need a little push to bring up any aliens. So, I provided a simple sentence to help set up the concept, and with every reroll of the output, the AI would finish my sentence of guidance with my character showing interest in fucking aliens. This means that—while the AI would struggle to bring up such an odd thing on its own—the tag being present in the story parameter does make a difference and does affect how the AI focuses on the word of your choice. Remember, this was done with NO Memory or AN.

To prove that this wasn't placebo or a mad stroke of luck, I copy&pasted what the AI had made so far—including my sentence of guidance—but this time removed the 'alien' and 'alien sex' Tags from the story parameters. Again, NO Memory or AN. In my fifteen rerolls of the output, it did not mention aliens once, and the AI simply filled in the dots on what would be the most appropriate answer for the specified Sci-Fi genre—which tended to be robots.

—Example End—

The way you write a Tag can also make quite the difference in how the AI understands it. To give in an amusing example, let's take the phrase 'bbw' (Big Busty Women). When it is specifically used as a Tag, Sigurd is utterly incapable of understanding this acronym when it is lowercased. However, the AI CAN understand 'BBW' and would incorporate the Tag into the story when expected to, showing that capitilization can make a ton of difference when it comes to the effectiveness of your Tags.

Acronyms appear to be the touchiest by far when it comes to this captiliazation rule, and making them lowercased will almost always caused them to be ignored by the AI. Other Tags—like shown in my previous examples—can be recognized when lowercase and have no need to be captilized. All in all, it's just a matter of testing what works.

More on that, if you're experimenting with a unique Tag with two words like 'first person', the AI may read 'first person' and 'first-person' (note the added hyphen) differently. So if you feel that the AI may ever be ignoring one of your Tags, try rewriting it a couple of times and see if that could possible be the issue.

All of these examples apply to NSFW and SFW interests.

Genre: Finally, back to the simple stuff.
Genres, much like with Authors, are very dry with little need for explanation. The strongest power of specifying a Genre in your story parameter is that it guides the AI on what kind of person/objects/things or even mood would be the most appropriate to show up in your story. Making 'Fantasy' the Genre would naturally make strange names and magical concepts more likely to show up without any prompting from you, without any use of memory, etc.

Then there would be adding Horror to the Genre space, which would direct the story to have more gritty, foreboding situations and descriptions to appear. Do note that the guiding sentence I provided for the Horror Genre example was the same for the Fantasy Genre example. This was to show just how much Genre can change what direction the AI will consider appropriate as it generates your outputs.

If you ever run out of ideas, much like with authors, you can always search up a list of Genres to use for your story parameters. The Genre space can be quite customizable but does not share the creative freedom of Tags and—for most situations—you won't be able to stuff just any word into Genre space.
Also, for coomers, the most tested Genre for NSFW has been 'Literotica'. I've also had had success with using 'Romance' as the Genre if I wanted the story to eventually take on more sexual matters with little direction.

—And that is the Big Three—
These three categories of your custom story parameter will have the greatest effect on whatever story the AI auto-generates for you. There ARE more categories for story parameters, but they are self-explanatory and require a lot less elaboration, so I will prattle off all that I know about them now. Remember, if you ever feel that my explanations require more detail or this guide becomes somewhat outdated, the NAI wiki should also have this information.
https://naidb.miraheze.org/wiki/Directing_AI_Generation

Miscellaneous Categories

[ cast: Name ]—If you already have off-hand names in mind for your character/characters, then filling in this cast space will save you the trouble of needing to fill in memory as the AI will incorporate them into whatever it generates.

[ setting: word] AND [ place: word ]—Setting and Place can be seen as rather interchangeable. Their basic use is to specify to the AI where your story takes place. If you wanted to use both without overlap, then you could use Setting for very general area descriptions, like a 'Tundra', and for Place, you'd give specifics, like specifying you're in a 'cabin'. So, if all went well, the AI would make your story start off in a frozen tundra with your characters huddled up into a cabin.

[ style: word, word] AND [ tone: word, word]—Very straightforward. Use these categories to tell the AI how you want your story to be written. Things like this have been around since AID, so if you've been around for a bit, it shouldn't need any relearning.

[ theme: word ]—A very interesting category for story parameters. It can help direct the AI on what kind of these things are most likely to happen in your story. So, if you were to use 'betrayal' for the Theme, you'd potentially see a lot of characters stabbing you in the back, one way or another. There are many examples of themes to be found on the internet, so if you draw a blank, feel free to look it up.

[ pairings: Name 1 / Name 2 ]—Building off Cast, pairings will specify that you want two characters of your choice to have history or relationship with each other.

[ Do: action]—Last, but definitely not least. This Do: category of your story parameter can have a lot of power in determining how your story starts off. If you've been spending any time on the past threads, you've probably seen people use Do: before. As mentioned earlier in the guide, certain types of stories are harder for the AI to auto-generate without guidance, especially in the beginning. For those that may lack the creativity or energy to make any guiding sentences, Do: is here for you. With Do:, you will help the AI know where and how to start your story, and it's rather flexible.
Ex: 'Do: A battle to the death with your father.', 'Do: Having sex with my girlfriend, Stacy.', 'Do: Chopping wood in a forest.'

The best part about all these categories is that they all can be linked together and with the big three! I tend to keep my story parameters rather simple and effective, but feel free to experiment. For the anxious few out there, a rather big story parameter could look something like this:

[ Author: Sylvia Day; Tags: monster girl, centaur, love; Genre: Erotica, Fantasy, Romance; cast: Jacob, Mary; setting: frozen forest; style: poetic, descriptive; tone: romantic; pairings: Jacob / Mary; Do: Mary the centaur will save me from Hypothermia. ]
Yes—it looks messy as hell. Because of this, I tend not to make long story parameters myself, but for those that want to, the option is there. And as shown in the example below, longer story parameters can work quite well.

To Be Continued

There is a lot more I want to be added to this guide still. Mainly examples of my successes, tips, and a short FAQ for curious anons. As it stands, there's enough information here to set just about anyone up, and with the Prefix feature, I'm sure there are going to plenty of anons rushing in trying to get the best coom they can.
If you believe there are any inaccuracies or need for greater detail beyond what I already have planned, please reply to the OP when you do. I'm not on this thread all the time, but I'll try my best to respond and fix whatever I can.