Story bible
A story bible, also called a series bible, is a reference document that records the established facts of a book or series so you can keep them consistent. It isn’t an outline of what will happen; it’s a record of what is already true in the story.
A typical story bible covers:
- Characters: names and spellings, ages, appearance, relationships, history, how they speak, and what they know and when they learned it
- Places: layouts, distances, businesses, street names and what the important rooms look like
- Timeline: dates of key events, characters’ ages at each point, and the season and day in each chapter
- World rules: how magic, technology, law or institutions work, and their limits
- Style decisions: invented words, spellings, capitalization and recurring phrases
Why it matters for indie authors
Readers notice continuity errors: a hero whose blue eyes turn brown three chapters later, a cat whose name changes, a Monday followed by a Wednesday. In a series the risk grows, because book four has to match details from book one that you wrote years earlier. If you publish a series on a steady schedule, a story bible saves you from rereading earlier books to check a detail.
Example
An entry in a cozy mystery series bible:
Biscuit (Nell’s cat): orange tabby, male, about six years old. Adopted in book 1, chapter 3. Sleeps on the flour sacks in the storeroom; afraid of the vacuum. Detective Ruiz is allergic to him (book 2, chapter 7).
Before drafting any scene with Biscuit in book three, the author checks the entry.
When you import a Word manuscript into AIBookWriter, an optional AI pass reads it and fills in the characters and story bible for you. For a series, you can add up to five earlier books as context, so book two remembers book one.
Common mistakes
- Building it once and never updating it. Add new facts as you write, not after the book is done.
- Making it too elaborate to use. Pages of backstory you never consult won’t prevent errors. Record what appears on the page.
- Skipping small details. Minor characters’ names and recurring objects are easy to forget and easy for readers to spot.
- Keeping it scattered across notebooks, files and memory. One searchable place is easier to keep current.