Every writer needs a story bible or two. A story bible (also called a series bible or universe bible) is a collection of all the materials you need to write your book, gathered in one place.

Story bibles, as an organizational tool, grew out of TV series where there are often different script writers who need to know everything that came before in the previous episodes.

Why Writers Need a Story Bible

For a writer, a story bible can do the same. Before beginning a draft, it provides a place to gather together all the research on setting, character building, and preliminary plotwork, so it is easily found.

During the actual writing, it provides a place to record facts, updates, and new information as you add it to the story.

At the revision stage, it becomes the resource you use to make sure all your names, places, facts, and elements are correct and consistent.

And if you should happen to decide to turn your book into a series, you already have the background information organized and at hand.

I created my first story bible when I expanded my first romantic suspense into the Skin Quartet series. But even if you are writing a stand alone, a story bible can be an invaluable tool and not just for fantasies, sci-fi, and historical fiction that have a lot of world building, but also for contemporary thrillers, horror, and romance. Basically, if you have characters, and you have a setting, and you have to look up anything to make your story more real, you need a story bible.

Lastly, having a story bible will make it far easier to create marketing materials for your book when it is published.

Building a Story Bible

If you are a writer, you probably have book information gathered for the story you are working on. But how easy is it to find or add a piece of information? You need a systemic way to order these materials for quick retrieval.

There are several formats that story bibles can take.

Binders: Traditionally, loose-leaf binders were used in the TV industry. These allowed data to be tabbed by topic. New data sheets were easy to add and move around. This is still true, and many authors love their binders.

Folders: Another traditional way to gather data is in physical file folders. However, both these and the binders are bulky, hard to store, and subject to damage from fire and water.

Digital Story Bibles: The alternative is to save your book data using a digital organizing tool, such as the folder system built into your computer. You can also use OneNote (comes free with Word) or Evernote or Notion. These programs are all free, and because they resemble physical binders, fairly easy to master.

The example above is a OneNote story bible page from my book Censored Angel. The far left column with the tabs lists the topics. The column to the right of that one are the individual pages or files under that topic. One nice feature of OneNote is that if you copy information from a web source, it automatically adds the reference link.

Organizing a Story Bible

Once a format is in place, the book data needs to be organized for easy retrieval. One way is to divide the book materials into three general areas: Setting, Characters, and Timeline/Plotting. Under these, put subtopics as they are needed. But don’t be afraid to design what works best for you. As you can see in my example above, I have those three main topics, but I also have more specific ones that were of major import to the novel.

A Story Bible at Work

If you would like to learn more about story bibles and get help constructing your own, I teach a Story Bible workshop. It will be offered in August of next year or you can take it one-on-one for a more personalized experience. More information here.

My book Research Your Subject and Validate Your Writing contains detailed information on analog and digital organizational methods.

Or if you want to see a working story bible, I have created something new for my upcoming romantic suspense series – an online public story bible at Tide Harbor Suspense. Here you can watch me build the bible as I write and get helpful tips and templates for building your own.

I would love to hear what you think of my new public story bible. Please comment below.