Free template
Story bible template for novels and series
Every fact your book has to keep straight, in one document: who is who, where things are, how the world works and when everything happened. Free to copy.
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Story bible template
Add each fact as it appears in your draft, with the chapter where it first appears. Skip any section your book does not need.
The book at a glance
- Working title, genre and target word count
- Premise in one sentence
- Point of view and tense
- Setting: where and when the story takes place
- Story span: how much time passes from the first page to the last
- Themes the book keeps coming back to
Style sheet
- Spellings and capitals you have chosen: place names, invented words, titles
- How you write numbers, dates and times
- Words and phrases to avoid, including anything wrong for the period
- Formatting: italics for thoughts, how texts and letters are shown
Cast
- Every named character, their role and the chapter where they first appear
- Fixed details: age, birthday, eye and hair color, height, scars
- What others call them, and how they speak
- Relationships: family, friends, rivals, who knows whom
- Main characters: want, need, wound and arc (see the character profile template)
Places
- Each location, and the chapter where it first appears
- Layout and distances: how long it takes to get from one place to another
- How it looks, sounds and smells
- Who lives or works there
World rules
- How magic, technology or the law works, and what it costs to use
- What is impossible in this world
- Money, travel and messages: what things cost and how long they take
- Groups, institutions and who holds power
Timeline
- Backstory: events before page one that the plot depends on, with dates
- Main story: each key event, its date or day number, and its chapter
- Birthdays, ages and anniversaries that fall during the story
- Seasons, weather, holidays and moon phases mentioned on the page
Objects and details
- Objects that matter to the plot, and who has each one when
- Houses, vehicles, weapons and pets, with names and descriptions
- Small details a reader will notice if they change: an address, a tattoo, the name of a boat
Open threads
- Setups: promises, clues and questions you have planted, with the chapter
- Payoffs: where each setup is resolved, or not yet
- Secrets: who knows what, and from which chapter
- Changes made in revision that still need carrying through the draft
For a series
- What each book covers, and how each one ends
- Characters who carry over, and how they have changed since the last book
- Facts readers learned in earlier books that cannot change
- Threads left open for later books
What a story bible is
A story bible is the reference document for a book or a series: every character, place, rule and date the story has committed to, in one place. Its job is to keep chapter 30 from contradicting chapter 3.
It is not an outline. An outline plans what will happen; a story bible records what is already true on the page. Many writers start one during the first draft, as the facts pile up, and keep it through revision.
How to create a story bible
- Fill in the overview and the style sheet first. They take ten minutes and settle questions you would otherwise answer differently in different chapters.
- Add every named character when they first appear, with the chapter. One line is enough for a minor character.
- Record facts as you write them, not as you plan them. When the plan and the page disagree, the page is what readers will see.
- Note a chapter for every entry. When a fact has to change, the chapter numbers tell you where to look.
- Keep a running list of setups and the scenes that pay them off. Anything still open at the end of the draft is either a sequel hook or a plot hole.
- Update the bible after each revision pass. A bible that has fallen behind the draft is worse than none, because you trust it.
Series bible template: what changes for book two
A series bible is a story bible that outlives one book. Readers of book three remember what a character said in book one, so it has to hold every fact a reader has already seen. Across books, these drift most easily:
- Ages and elapsed time. If two years pass between books, everyone is two years older.
- Injuries, scars and anything a character has lost.
- Relationships that changed: a betrayal, a marriage, a death.
- Rules the books have stated, especially the limits on magic, technology or power.
Keep one bible for the whole series, with a section for each book, rather than a copy per book. Copies drift apart, and then there are two versions of the truth.
A filled-in example
Here is part of a story bible for THE LAST FERRY, the invented mystery from our query letter and character profile examples.
- Premise: when the lighthouse keeper on Skerra vanishes, his daughter Nell comes home to settle his debts and finds his logbook full of ships that never existed.
- Story span: 14 days in late October, from Nell's arrival to the last ferry before winter.
- Place: Skerra, two hours by ferry from the mainland. The lighthouse is a 40-minute walk from the harbor.
- Rule: the ferry runs twice a week until October 31, then not again until March.
- Timeline: day 1, Nell arrives (chapter 1). Day 3, she finds the logbook (chapter 4). Day 9, Calum Reid, the harbormaster who signed all three drowning reports, admits the island leaned on him to sign (chapter 17).
- Open thread: the logbook's last entry names a ship for a night that has not come yet. Set up in chapter 4, paid off in chapter 31.
Story bible mistakes to avoid
- Building the world for months before you write a scene. The bible should follow the draft, not stand in for it.
- Writing facts down without the chapter. A fact you cannot trace back to the page cannot be checked.
- Keeping it in five places: an app, a notebook, the margins and your memory. One document, one version.
- Letting it fall behind in revision. When a scene changes, change the entry the same day.
Let the manuscript fill in the bible
A template only knows what you type into it. In StoryWith AI, the story bible is filled in from your manuscript: characters, relationships, world-building, themes and a story timeline. For non-fiction books it becomes Reference, where you keep the people and organizations you write about, the terms and facts a reader must follow, and your sources.
The continuity check then reads the draft against what the book has already said, and flags a detail that contradicts an earlier chapter, like eyes that change color or a date that moves. You decide which version is right; the check shows you where the book disagrees with itself.
See how the AI book editor checks a whole manuscriptRun it on the whole manuscript
These tools read a sample. StoryWith AI reads the whole book: structure, pacing, continuity, and a readiness score with every issue linked to its passage. Start free, then upgrade when you're ready to analyze the whole book.
More free tools
- Manuscript Readiness ScorePaste your opening chapters for a score out of 100 and the issues most likely to stop an agent.
- Story RaterRate a chapter or short story on hook, pacing, clarity, dialogue and character, with your top three fixes.
- Query Letter GraderInstant checks on length, word count, genre, comps and greeting, plus an AI review with line-level fixes.
- Query Letter GeneratorAnswer six questions about your novel and get a first-draft query letter in agent format.
- Editing Cost CalculatorEstimate developmental, line, copyediting and proofreading costs from published EFA rates.
- Novel Word Count CheckerCheck your word count against what agents expect for your genre, from fantasy and romance to YA and memoir.
- Beat Sheet CalculatorSee where each beat of Save the Cat! or three-act structure falls in your novel, by word and by chapter.
- Query Letter TemplateA fill-in-the-blanks query letter in the format agents expect, with an annotated example and word counts for each paragraph.
- Book Synopsis TemplateA one-page synopsis in five parts, with a word budget for each and a full example that gives away the ending.
- Book Proposal TemplateThe eight sections of a nonfiction book proposal, with what to put in each and how agents read it.
- Character Profile TemplateA character profile with the questions that matter: want, need, wound, voice, relationships and arc.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is a story bible?
A reference document that records every character, place, rule and date in a book or series, so the facts stay the same from the first chapter to the last.
What should a story bible include?
An overview, a style sheet, the cast, places, the rules of the world, a timeline, important objects and a list of open setups and payoffs. A series adds what carries over from book to book.
How is a story bible different from an outline?
An outline plans what will happen. A story bible records what is already true in the draft. Many writers keep both.
What is a series bible?
A story bible for more than one book. It keeps the facts readers learned in earlier books fixed, and tracks how characters and relationships change between them.
When should I start a story bible?
During the first draft, as facts appear on the page. Planners can fill in the overview and world rules before they start; the rest is easiest to record as you write.
Is a character bible the same thing?
A character bible is the cast section on its own, usually with a full profile for each main character. Our free character profile template covers that part in more depth.
Is the template free?
Yes. Copy it, or download it as a text file on the website, and use it for as many books as you like. No signup.