What Is a Story Bible? How to Create One for Your Novel (Template)

A story bible is a single document that collects the facts already settled in your story. It holds what you need to check again while you draft, such as characters, places, rules, and the order of events.

This guide is for novel and web novel writers making a story bible for the first time: what to put in, what to leave out, where to start, and how to grow it. How to write up one character is covered in the character profile template. This post covers the document for the whole work, with those profiles inside it. The example is They Say I'm a Dark Mage, but All I'm Good At Is Digging Dirt, the web novel from TypeTak's Write a Web Novel, Step by Step course.

At a glance

1. A story bible holds only facts that are already on the page or that you've decided to use
2. Style notes and ideas you won't use stay outside it
3. Before the first chapter, start with a few characters and the rules the plot depends on
4. When a fact changes, keep the old value and note when the new one starts

When do you need a story bible?

You can write the first few chapters without one, because everything is still in your head. The need usually shows up in moments like these:

• You scroll back through earlier chapters because you can't remember a side character's name
• You work out your lead's age and it doesn't match a year you gave earlier
• A magic rule you set in chapter 3 works differently in chapter 20
• Two characters who haven't met yet talk as if they know each other

The longer the serial runs and the bigger the cast gets, the more often this happens. You make a story bible so you can check one place instead of digging through the manuscript.

Story bible vs. notes vs. wiki

Writing about your lore tends to end up in several places. Splitting it three ways keeps the story bible light.

A story bible is the document you keep in step with the manuscript. A thought like “Maybe Clay has an older brother” goes in your notes. Move it into the story bible once you've decided to put it on the page.

What to put in a story bible

Most story bibles have seven sections. Each one below comes with a one-line example from They Say I'm a Dark Mage, but All I'm Good At Is Digging Dirt.

1. Overview. Title, one-line summary, genre, and the central conflict. Anyone who opens the story bible for the first time (including you, a few months from now) can tell right away what the story is about.

A commoner boy who can only do earth magic is mistaken for a dark mage after an old judging stone misreads him, and he enters the Royal Academy of Magic.

2. Characters. One character profile per character. Use the full template for your lead and major characters, and the short one for side characters. The fields come straight from the character profile template.

Clay Rowen: from a farming village in the Kingdom of Ravien. His goal is to earn a license and land a steady job.

3. Places and factions. Where the story happens, and the groups characters belong to. Write what each one does in the story before what it looks like.

Belkadia Royal Academy of Magic: an academy split into five towers. None of the five teaches earth magic.

4. Rules. Magic, powers, social rank, and any other rule that blocks or opens up a character's choices. Write down only the ones the plot depends on.

The judging stone announces each applicant's attribute aloud. Old judging stones slur their words.

5. Order of events. The major arcs and the events inside them. Add chapter numbers and you can find which chapter changed what.

Early misunderstanding and admission → Settling in and rising status → Traces of real dark magic

6. Terms and spelling. How proper nouns are spelled, what characters call each other, and words that exist only in your story. This keeps you from writing the same thing two different ways.

the Kingdom of Ravien (not “Ravien Kingdom”) · judging stone (not “appraisal stone”)

7. Open questions. A list of what you haven't decided yet. When undecided things have their own list, you're less likely to write one as if it were settled.

Who made the rotten soil near the academy, and in which chapter does it come out?

What to leave out of a story bible

Deciding what stays out matters too, because a story bible that gets heavy is one you stop opening.

• Style and point of view. A note like “third person, Clay's POV, short paragraphs” describes how you write the manuscript, so keep it with your manuscript notes.
• Lore that won't reach a scene. Details like the kingdom's currency or a neighboring country's history go to your idea notes. Move them over if a scene ever needs them.
• Scene drafts and dialogue notes. Sentences you've written belong in the manuscript, and sentences you plan to write belong in your notes.

There's one thing you shouldn't leave out: old values. If a friend turns into an enemy and you overwrite the relationship with the current one, you'll have to dig up what it used to be when you revise an earlier chapter. Don't delete the old value. Add the new one and note when it starts. How to record this is in Fixed fields and fields that change with the story in the character profile post.

Start small

If you try to finish your story bible before you start writing, you'll be worn out before the manuscript begins. It lasts longer when it grows only as fast as the manuscript does.

A standalone novel often reaches the end with just Start and Grow. A series or long serial has to reopen one book's lore in the next, so plan for the last stage too.

Story bible template to copy

Copy the box below as it is. There's no sign-up and no email. In the Characters section, attach one character profile per character. For a serial or a book series, the same box works as a series bible template.

[Story]
Title:
One-line summary:
Genre / length:
Central conflict:

[Characters: one character profile each]
Lead:
Major characters:
Side characters (short template):

[Places and factions]
Name:
What it is:
What it does in the story:
First appearance:

[Rules]
Rule:
What happens if it's broken or crossed:
Who knows about it:

[Order of events]
Arc:
Chapter / what happens / what changed:

[Terms and spelling]
Spelling to use (spelling not to use):

[Open questions]
Question:
Decide by:

Example: the first page of the story bible for They Say I'm a Dark Mage, but All I'm Good At Is Digging Dirt

Here's the template filled in for this story before its first chapter. It's the Start stage, so the order of events and terms are kept short. (The story's joke runs on Korean, where the words for “earth” and “dark” sound almost the same.)

The Characters row has only names and a few words each. The details go in each character's profile. If you try to fit everything on one page of the story bible, things get harder to find.

Continuity checklist: keeping the story bible and manuscript in sync

Keeping a story bible in step with the manuscript is harder than making it. Run through this list when you finish a chapter, or when you revise several chapters at once.

1. Did new names, places, and terms go into the story bible?
2. Does every name match the spelling in the story bible?
3. Do ages, dates, and elapsed time match earlier chapters?
4. If a scene in this chapter breaks a rule, did you break it on purpose?
5. Does any character say or act on something they don't know yet?
6. If a relationship or affiliation changed, did you note the chapter where it changed?
7. Did this chapter settle anything on the open questions list?

For item 5, the quickest check is the “What they know / don't know” field on each character profile.

A story bible the AI reads before writing

A story bible stays just as useful when you draft or revise with AI writing tools. An AI can read only so much at once, so as the manuscript gets longer it loses track of earlier parts. That's why several tools keep a story bible separately and have the AI read it. Sudowrite calls this the Story Bible, and Novelcrafter calls it the Codex. How they differ is covered in Sudowrite alternatives and Novelcrafter alternatives.

A story bible for an AI follows the same principles as one for people. A few of them matter more:

• Short facts go in fields. Values like age or affiliation buried in a paragraph are easy to miss, for people and AI alike.
• Settled and unsettled stay apart. With a separate open questions list, the AI is less likely to write an open question as a settled fact.
• Changed facts get periods. If only the current value is there, the AI uses it even when revising an earlier chapter.

Making a story bible in TypeTak

TypeTak is an AI writing editor where you write alongside an agent. Your story bible lives in your World, your own lore dictionary that doubles as a graph. Here's how the sections in this post fit into a World.

• Characters, places, and factions become nodes. A node type such as Character or Place sets the fields, so every node of that type has the same ones. The era and social order that apply to the whole work go in the World Setting, written once.
• The order of events goes on a board. Turn events into cards and lay them out by arc. (Board)

• Changed facts keep their periods. For values that change, like affiliation or relationships, set a start and end on the property. Changes you'd rather record in sentences go into a section's Progression.
• Style stays outside the story bible. Point of view and sentence rhythm go in each manuscript's Writing Style.
• Organize World keeps it in step with the manuscript. Lore you settled in chat and manuscript pages that aren't in your World yet collect in the World backlog. Press Organize World and the agent organizes them into your World. For each work, you can write down how it should organize things in World Organizing Rules.

Before it drafts or answers, the agent finds and reads the lore it needs in your World. That way, lore you set early carries into drafts later in the story. How this story bible template was chosen is in the devlog post A Story Bible Template, and What a Wiki Taught Me, and how its screens were designed is in What Does a Story Bible You Actually Want to Open Look Like?.

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