How to Split Your Novel into Chapters for Better Comic Pages
When you import a novel, it is split into chapters, and each chapter is what the comic assistant reads and draws. How to choose the split size, where a good chapter ends, and how to fix the boundaries afterwards.
Why the split matters
A chapter is the unit you ask for — "draw chapter 12" — and the unit the assistant reads before deciding how many pages to draw. A chapter that holds one scene gives it one clear thing to draw. A chapter that stops mid-scene hands it half a story.
How importing works
Upload your novel as a UTF-8 .txt file, or paste the text directly. Then choose two settings:
- Split mode. Chinese, Japanese and Korean text is counted by character, between 100 and 1,000 characters per chapter. English and other languages with spaces between words are counted between 300 and 3,000 characters.
- Characters per chapter. The target size. Once a chapter reaches it, the text is cut at the end of the next sentence, so no chapter stops mid-sentence. No chapter is ever longer than 3,000 characters.
Why two modes: one Chinese or Japanese character carries far more story than one English letter. A 1,000-character Chinese passage holds roughly as much as a 3,000-character English one.
Choosing a chapter size
Short chapters
CJK 300–500 / English 800–1,500 characters
Usually one scene and one page. Best for action, comedy and fast serials where every beat should land on its own.
More chapters to ask for, and a scene can get cut in the middle.
Medium chapters
CJK 600–800 / English 1,500–2,500 characters
One scene with room to breathe, usually one or two pages. The best starting point for most fiction.
Occasionally two short scenes share a chapter; the assistant then gives them separate pages.
Long chapters
CJK 900–1,000 / English 2,500–3,000 characters
Fewer chapters to manage for slow, literary or dialogue-heavy novels.
A busy chapter becomes several pages; fine, but check it reads as one piece.
The size does not decide how many pages you get — the assistant does that by counting the scene's beats and giving each page four panels. What the size decides is how cleanly the story is divided into pieces you can ask for.
What a good chapter boundary looks like
After a completed action
"She slammed the door and pressed her back against it." The moment is finished; the next one can start fresh.
At a change of place or time
"The next morning…", "Back at the palace…". A chapter that stays in one place and one time is the easiest to draw well.
Not in the middle of a conversation
A question in one chapter and its answer in the next splits the exchange across two separate requests.
With the reveal inside, not at the edge
The moment a secret lands should sit inside a chapter with its lead-up, so the page can build to it.
Fixing boundaries after the split
Automatic splitting is right most of the time. For the chapters that matter most — the opening, the big turns, the ending — take a few minutes to check where they begin and end.
- Edit a chapter to move a few sentences into it from the next one, or out of it. Each chapter holds up to 3,000 characters.
- Use Insert after to add a chapter in the middle of the book, for example to give a key scene its own chapter. The chapters after it are renumbered automatically.
- Delete a chapter you do not want drawn, such as a table of contents or an author's note that slipped into the file.
Because chapters are renumbered when you insert or delete one, refer to them by their current number when you talk to the assistant.
A project can only be imported into once, so two books' chapters never interleave. If the whole split feels wrong, create a new project and import again with a different size.
Checklist before you draw
- ☐ Split mode matches the language of the novel.
- ☐ Chapter size chosen for the pace of the story.
- ☐ Opening chapters checked: each starts and ends at a natural break.
- ☐ Front matter and notes removed.
- ☐ First two or three chapters drawn as a test before asking for more.
Import your novel and draw chapter 1
Split it, check the first chapters, and ask the assistant to draw them.
Turn your novel into a comic