How to write a story bible for your novel

A story bible is the one place where you write down what is true in your story. Juliet is thirteen. The potion lasts forty-two hours. Mantua is where Romeo goes when he is banished. You keep it so that chapter 30 agrees with chapter 3 without you rereading chapter 3.

This post covers what goes in a story bible, a template you can copy, and the habit that keeps it useful after the first week. The examples use Romeo and Juliet, because you already know the plot.

What a story bible is, and what it is not

A story bible is a reference, not a plan. Your outline says what happens and in what order. The bible says what is the case: who people are, where places are, how the world works, and what has already been fixed by a scene you wrote.

The same document goes by other names. A series bible is the same idea across several books, and it is also the name for the version you hand to a co-writer, a publisher or a producer. The method is the same.

Two tests decide whether a fact belongs in it:

• You will need to look it up again.
• Getting it wrong would contradict something a reader has seen.

What goes in a story bible

Six kinds of entry cover most stories.

Keep the entries short: a list of facts, not an essay.

Timeline facts often outgrow a list. When they do, give them their own document: see how to make a timeline for a story.

A story bible template, filled in for Romeo and Juliet

Copy the field names and replace the values. These are real entries, written the way you would keep them.

Character

Place

Faction

Rule of the world

The limits line is the one that matters. A rule with no limit can solve any problem, and then the plot has no problems left.

Timeline facts

• The story runs from a Sunday morning to before dawn on the following Friday.
• Sunday night: the Capulet feast. Monday: the secret wedding, then the duel that kills Mercutio and Tybalt.
• Lord Capulet moves the wedding to Paris from Thursday to Wednesday, which cuts a day off the Friar's plan.
• Friar John is held in quarantine, so the letter never reaches Mantua.

Open questions

• Romeo's age is never stated. Decide it before a scene needs it.
• The cause of the feud is never given. Mark this one as deliberate, so nobody "fixes" it later.
• Does forty-two hours fit the days between the potion and the tomb? Check it against the timeline.

Draft ideas and settled canon

The fastest way to ruin a story bible is to mix what you have decided with what you are only considering. A year later you can't tell which of two entries is the real one.

So give every entry a status, and be strict about one rule: a fact becomes canon when a scene depends on it, not when you think of it. Until then it is an idea, and ideas are cheap to change.

When you change a settled fact, don't overwrite it. Keep the old version, write one line saying what changed and why, and note where the change takes effect. Suppose an early draft let Mercutio survive the duel. The record reads: "Mercutio now dies. His death is what makes Romeo kill Tybalt." When a stray line later still has him alive, that note tells you which version is the mistake.

Keep it alive while you draft

A bible goes stale when updating it is a separate job. Tie it to work you already do.

1. Start small. Ten entries are enough: the leads, the main places, and the rules the plot depends on.
2. Add an entry when a scene fixes a fact. You gave the apothecary a shop in Mantua, so Mantua gets that line today, while you remember it.
3. Look it up, then write. When you are unsure of a fact, check the bible before inventing an answer. If it isn't there, decide, and record the decision.
4. Sweep once per chapter. Read the finished chapter with one question in mind: what did this make true? Promote those ideas to canon.

The bible prevents contradictions. It does not find the ones already in the draft. For that, see how to find plot holes and continuity errors.

How Plotra holds a story bible

In Plotra the bible is not a separate document. Each entry is a page in the same project as the manuscript, and the scenes link to it.

Entity pages and custom types. Characters and locations are built in. Switch on the World bible module and the project gets nine more types to start from, among them Faction, Object, Event and System. Each type has its own fields: a Faction has Kind, Leader, Based in and Goal, and a System has Source and Limits & costs, which is the potion entry above. You can rename the types or define your own, with fields such as text, number, date, select, checkbox and link. A field's type can't be changed once the type is saved, so pick it with care.

Links from the scene to the page. Type [[ in a scene, pick [[Juliet]], and the scene is linked to her page. Rename the page later and every link shows the new name. If you wrote a name before the page existed, unlinked mentions lists each place it appears as plain text, with a Link button.

Backlinks. The Links tab of the inspector lists every note that links to the open page, with the sentence around each link. So the Mantua page shows every scene set there without you keeping that list by hand. A new link takes a few seconds to appear under Backlinks.

The Codex. The Codex view (⌘⇧C) is the bible as pages to read: sections for Characters, Locations and each of your types on the left, the page on the right with its properties and a Mentioned in list. It is for reading. Click Edit to change a page.

Open questions have no type of their own. Keep them in a plain note, or as lines on the page they concern.

Canon status, retcons and the series bible

With World bible on, every note has a canon status, set in the Story tab of the inspector. A new note starts as Draft.

A page can be Canon while one line on it is still Speculative: put the cursor in that block and press ⌘⌥T to give it a status of its own.

Choosing Retconned opens a short form. You have to give the reason, and Plotra saves the text as it stood as a named version and adds an entry to the page's retcon history. The Continuity view then warns when a Canon scene links to something Retconned or Non-canon. It reads links and properties, not your prose, so it can only catch what you linked.

When someone else needs to read the bible, switch on the Publishing module and open the Publish view. Download .html on the series bible card saves one web page: a cover, an outline of the story with each synopsis, the plot threads, an entry for every character and place, and a section for each of your types. Two things to know: it includes pages whatever their canon status, and it is written for insiders, so don't hand it to readers.

Both modules are on the Free plan, which has every feature. See pricing.

Start with ten entries

Open a blank document, or a new project, and write ten entries today: your two leads, the person who opposes them, three places, two rules the plot depends on, and two open questions. Give each one a status. Then draft your next scene, and before you close the file, add the one fact that scene made true.