Techniques are disclosed to assist an author in creating content variations of a given input text to better suit the mood or the affect preferences of the target audience. Affect distribution in the content is utilized to capture these psycholinguistic preferences. According to one embodiment, in a first phase the optimal/idea psycholinguistic preference for text content aimed at a particular audience segment is determined. In a second phase, a given text content is modified to align to a target language distribution, which was determined in the first phase. In one example case, word level replacement, insertions and deletions are executed to generate a modified and coherent version of the input text. The output text thus reflects the psycholinguistic requirements of the audience.