Your story bible

Every novelist ends up with a lot of facts to keep track of: who has grey eyes, how far one town is from another, when the storm happened. Galley keeps them next to your writing, so you don't need a separate notebook or document.

Each part of the bible is a tab in the book's top navigation, next to Editor . None of it appears in the finished book.

Characters Locations Timeline World-building Style sheet Research

Characters

Each character gets a page with their role, a description, any other names they go by, and as many sections as you want. Aliases are useful: if you note that "Mr Darcy" and "Fitzwilliam" are the same person, the name check won't flag either one as a misspelling, and typing @Darcy or @Fitzwilliam finds the same character.

Every character, place and world-building entry gets a generated icon. It's made in your browser, so no names are sent anywhere, and it stays the same if you rename them.

A character page: role, aliases, the sections you named yourself, the chapters this character appears in, and the events they are in.

Sections

Add a section adds a named section to the page. There are eight suggestions (Appearance, Personality, Background, Wants and fears, Voice, Relationships, Secrets, Arc), or you can name your own. You can rename, reorder and delete sections.

Sections support bold, italics, underline, lists and quotes. @ and # work in them the same way they do in your chapters, and the links still work after a rename.

In the timeline

The character page lists the timeline events the character is in, next to the chapters. These come from how you tagged events on the timeline, so you don't need to add them twice. Places get the same list, based on where each event happens.

Renaming someone

Change the name at the top of the page. Every tagged mention of that character changes too, in the chapters and in your notes. Galley takes a snapshot of each chapter first, so the old version is in History. Three things don't change:

A mention tagged under an alias
stays the same. Renaming Darcy doesn't turn "Fitzwilliam" into "Darcy".
Untagged mentions in the text
are counted and shown to you, but not changed, because Galley can't be sure the word refers to this character (it might be their cousin). You can replace them all with one button if you want to.
The old name
can be kept as an alias with one click, so the name check and the @ list still recognise it wherever it's still in your manuscript.

The cast overview

Overview is at the top of the character list. It's a table of your whole cast showing each character's role, aliases, how many chapters they're in and which ones, how many times they're mentioned, their first and last appearance, the longest gap between appearances, and who they share chapters with. You can sort by any column.

You don't need to fill any of it in. It counts the @ mentions you've tagged, plus names and aliases that appear as whole words in the text. It's useful for noticing that a main character only appears in four chapters out of twenty-six.

Two things aren't counted:

A name two characters share
isn't counted for either of them, because Galley can't tell which one you mean. If you tag those mentions with @, they're counted.
A name set to match manually
is only counted from tags. That setting is for names that are also normal words, like "Will", so every "will" in the book isn't counted.

Front and back matter aren't counted. It doesn't use AI, and your text doesn't leave your browser.

Locations

Every place in your story gets the same kind of page as a character, and the same list of chapters it appears in, counted from # mentions and the name in the text. Type # to add a place while you write. Renaming works the same way. The suggested sections are for places: what it looks like, sound and smell, weather and season, who's there, history, geography, and what happens there.

Timeline

A scrollable timeline of what happens when, using your story's dates instead of real ones. You can link each event to chapters, characters and places, which makes continuity mistakes easier to spot, like a Tuesday that should have been a Thursday, or someone going to a funeral two chapters after they left the country.

World-building

For everything else about your world: history, a magic system, politics, cultures, religion. Keeping it here helps you stay consistent when you need it later.

Each entry has a category, a text body you can format, and sections like characters and places have. The suggested sections are: the rules, who controls it, its history, where it shows up in the story, and contradictions to watch out for.

Style sheet

Your list of spelling and style decisions for the book, like "grey" not "gray", "OK" not "okay", "email" or "e-mail", and how you hyphenate things. If you write them down, you only have to decide once. Copyeditors keep the same kind of document for every book they edit.

Research

Research in Galley saves the part of a source you need, not a link to it. That might be how a 1911 pistol works, a ferry timetable from Piraeus, or what mill overseers were called. If you only save links, you have to open them again to find the part you wanted, and some of them stop working.

A clipping has three parts:

  • The passage. Paste the sentence, fact or phrase you want. It's shown in a different style so you know it isn't your writing.
  • Why it matters. Your notes on what it changes or explains, or where it goes. This is what you'll search for later when you've forgotten the exact words but remember the idea.
  • The source. Write it however you like, for example Chandavarkar, Origins of Industrial Capitalism, p.94, and add a link if there is one. If the clipping becomes a citation later, it gets formatted then.

What a clipping can become

Some research turns into part of the book. An unfamiliar word can go in the glossary, a fact you use can be cited, and a song lyric needs permission. Galley keeps all three, so Use this on a clipping lets you send it to one of them, with the source attached:

  • Add to the glossary. The title becomes the term and the passage becomes its definition.
  • Cite this in the endnotes. The source becomes the note, and it's numbered when you export like any other reference.
  • This quote needs clearing. It's added to the permissions ledger as to request, with the passage attached. Galley doesn't decide whether it's fair use. That's up to you.

The clipping is copied, not moved, so it stays in your research. If a clipping is missing something an option needs (like a source for a citation), that option is greyed out.

Deleting a clipping moves it to the Bin, where you can recover it for 30 days.

Mentions: @ characters, # places

While you write, type @ and start typing a character's name. A list appears and narrows as you type, so @Eli finds Elizabeth Bennet and not Mr Collins. Pick one and the name is added to your sentence, spelled correctly. Type # the same way for a place.

  • It knows the other names characters go by. If you type a nickname, the list shows who it belongs to ("Lizzy" and "Eliza", under Elizabeth).
  • If you type a name that isn't in the book yet, you can create the character or place from there, or add what you typed as an alias of someone who's already there.
  • You don't have to use it. The list only opens when you type @ or # at the start of a word.

Each mention is also a link, which is how the lists of chapters each character appears in are made. In the finished book, a mention is just the name, with no link or formatting. There's a step-by-step version in Tag a character with @.

Comments

If you want to flag something to fix later, select the text and leave a comment. The text is highlighted and your note is attached. Open the comments panel from the status bar at the bottom to go through them and mark them resolved. Comments never appear in the printed book.

Glossary & references

These two are used in the manuscript itself, and they build the pages at the back of the book. The quickest way to add one is to highlight a word in the editor and choose Glossary or References from the menu that appears.

Glossary ●
A term and its meaning, like invented words, foreign phrases, or anything a reader might want explained. Glossary terms are highlighted in green in your text. When you export, Galley adds an alphabetical glossary page at the back of the book.
References ●
A term that needs a source or citation. It's highlighted in red. When you export, Galley numbers references per chapter, adds the superscript numbers to the text, and adds a numbered endnotes page. If you move chapters around, the numbers update. There's more detail in Preview & export.
Both ●
A term in both lists is highlighted in purple.
🎨 The highlight colours only show while you write. They don't change your text and they aren't printed.

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