Somewhere around chapter fifteen, most writers can’t remember whether her eyes were grey or green, which year the war ended, or how old the sister is supposed to be by now. A story bible is where those answers live. It’s a reference for the facts of your book, kept in one place so you don’t contradict yourself.

What goes in it

  • Characters. Names and nicknames, ages, what they look like, how they talk, who they’re related to, and what they know.
  • Places. What’s where, how big it is, how long it takes to get from one place to another.
  • Timeline. When things happen, and in what order, in your story’s own dates.
  • Rules. How the magic works, how the police procedure goes, anything the reader will hold you to once they’ve learned it.

If a reader could catch you contradicting it, it belongs in the bible.

Standalone or series

For one short novel, you might be able to keep it all in your head, and that’s fine. You need a bible when the book gets big: a large cast, a complicated timeline, or more than one book.

For a series it’s not optional. Book three has to agree with book one, and you wrote book one two years ago. Your readers often remember your world better than you do. There’s a separate post on a series bible for book two and beyond.

What readers notice

Names, timelines and physical details. An eye colour that changes. A character who’s 34 in one chapter and 37 in another with no time passing. A Tuesday that turns into a Thursday. Conan Doyle moved Watson’s war wound from his shoulder to his leg between two novels, and people are still writing about it. None of these break the plot, but they tell the reader you weren’t paying attention. The continuity errors post goes through the four kinds.

Keep it next to the writing

A story bible only works if it’s up to date, and a bible in another app is one you stop updating as soon as the writing gets going. Switching windows is enough friction to kill it.

That’s why the story bible in Galley is a set of tabs on the book itself, next to the editor: characters, locations, a timeline, world-building, research and a style sheet. Type @ while you write to put in a character’s name or # for a place, and it’s spelled the way the bible has it. Each character’s page lists the chapters they appear in, counted from the text, so you don’t have to maintain that yourself. There’s more in keeping the story bible beside your manuscript, and a filled-in example in a character sheet that’s actually useful.