How to Convert a Chinese Novel into a Manhua with AI
A step-by-step guide for Chinese-language web novel and wuxia writers who want to turn their story into a manhua-style comic without hiring a drawing team.
The opportunity
Chinese web novels have been adapted into manhua for decades, but the process has always required a full drawing team. AI changes that. A solo writer can now produce a visual preview of their novel without outsourcing to an art studio.
Recommended settings
- Split mode: Chinese, Japanese, Korean — counted by character.
- Characters per chapter: 600 to 1,000. Chinese prose is dense; 1,000 characters already holds a full scene.
- Art style: Chinese manhua — elegant figures, painted rendering, ink-wash mountains, jewel-tone palette.
- Comic language: Simplified or Traditional Chinese, depending on your readers.
Step 1: Import the novel
Save the novel as a UTF-8 .txt file and upload it, or paste a shorter piece. Choose the Chinese, Japanese, Korean split mode: it counts characters instead of words, because one Chinese character carries far more story than one English letter.
Cultivation novels can run to thousands of chapters. That is fine. Nothing reads the whole book at once; the assistant opens only the chapters you ask for, so a 3,000-chapter novel is as easy to work with as a 30-chapter one.
Step 2: Choose the look
The Chinese manhua preset was written for xianxia and palace stories: elongated figures, flowing hair and robes, traditional architecture, glowing spiritual light. For a harder, more martial wuxia look, keep the preset and add a few words such as "calligraphic ink strokes, monochrome ink wash with red accents".
If you have a manhua whose look you love, upload a page of it and use "Extract style from comic image" to turn it into a style description.
Step 3: Set the bubble language
The comic language setting decides what language appears in speech bubbles, captions and sound effects. Keep it on Simplified or Traditional Chinese for Chinese readers. To introduce the story to overseas readers, set it to English: the chapter stays in Chinese, and the dialogue on the page is written in English.
Step 4: Ask for chapters, in Chinese or English
Open the comic assistant and write to it in whichever language you prefer — "画第一章" works as well as "draw chapter 1". It sets up the main cast with reference sheets first, then draws each chapter as four-panel pages, as many as the chapter's scenes need.
Start with the first two or three chapters and look at the character sheets in the material library. If the protagonist does not look the way readers imagine, fix the sheet now; every later page is drawn from it.
Common challenges with Chinese novel adaptations
Power system descriptions
Pages of cultivation levels and technique names have little to draw. The breakthrough itself — the light, the shockwave, the faces watching — is the page. Ask for that moment.
Many names at once
A sect assembly introduces twenty disciples in one paragraph. Only the ones who return need character sheets; the rest are described inside the panel, so the library stays readable.
Very fast combat
Ten techniques in two hundred characters cannot all be drawn. The assistant picks the decisive exchanges and gives each a panel; say so if a specific move must appear.
Timeskips and breakthroughs
When years pass or a realm changes someone's appearance, the assistant adds a new version of that character from the chapter where it happens. Earlier chapters keep the younger face.
Chinese novel to manhua checklist
- ☐ Import with the Chinese, Japanese, Korean split mode, 600 to 1,000 characters per chapter.
- ☐ Use the Chinese manhua preset, adjusted with a few words if needed.
- ☐ Set the comic language to Simplified or Traditional Chinese.
- ☐ Draw two or three chapters and check the character sheets before a batch.
- ☐ Let breakthroughs and timeskips become new character versions, not new characters.
Final thought
Chinese web novels are some of the most visually rich stories in the world — they just lack an accessible path to visual adaptation. Even a few drawn chapters of a five-million-character xianxia novel give readers a window into the world that words alone cannot.
Turn your Chinese novel into manhua