Everything you NEED TO KNOW About Story Bibles
If you’re struggling to make sense of a full-length script, getting all the characters and stories muddled in your head, this article is for you. It’s easy to get overwhelmed while writing, not knowing why a scene isn’t working. The anxiety it causes turns many writers away from finishing what could be their greatest storytelling achievement. There is a fix, and I’m going to present it to you now, but be warned:
It takes a lot of effort.
Writing properly isn’t a hobby to be taken up in your spare time. If you’re serious about making it, you have to do the leg work. You can’t build a skyscraper in a swamp. This article is going to provide you with the foundational blueprints to build the storytelling tower of your dreams, and I’ll be following up with breakdowns of each step to fully prepare you for the task of writing something amazing that lasts longer than 20 pages.
The answer is a document called a ‘Bible’. While you can live a full, satisfying, and positive life without the Judeo-Christian Bible, you can’t write a long-form or serialised screenplay without a story bible.
A story bible is everything. It’s the document where you’ll find the lives of your characters, the lore of your fictional world, the laws of time and space, everything. It’s a first point of contact, a pitching document, and in some cases a never-ending development of unfolding narratives.
Daunted yet?
For Writers
As a writer, you’re mostly going to be interested in what this document can do for you, so I’ll explain. Predominantly, for you, the story bible is a near-perfect reference point while you’re writing. You can’t possibly be expected to keep the entirety of your fictional world in your head at all points. Especially if you’re writing professionally. Projects come, go, and come back again. Scenes become so densely packed they lose sight of their original goal. The bible will steer you in the right direction.
Once the script is completed, and you’re ready to start pitching, the bible will give you the tools to create an astonishing pitch document. You’ll have a logline, a brief outline, captivating biographies ready to drop at a moment’s notice. With a well-curated bible, you’ll astonish producers with how comprehensive your knowledge is, even if you can’t remember the first thing about what you’ve actually written.
The bible is also, blessedly, scalable. If you’re creating a story that you expect to go on for a long time, you’re going to need to make sure that your storytelling, continuity, and themes remain consistent. Admittedly, if you get that far, you’ll probably have someone else maintaining the bible, but the point stands that this scalability will free you from the shackles of anxiety. Audiences find poor consistency repugnant and amateurish, a well-maintained bible will keep your audience engaged and reward their dedication to your story world.
For Producers
Once you’ve written your script and used your bible to find a producer, the bible becomes a shared blessing. If they’ve taken on a multi-story project like a TV series or potential franchise of movies, they’re going to need to know what they’ve signed up for. Most producers are busy people that don’t have the time, patience, or will to read every single script written for a given project. The bible will provide them with everything they need to know what they’re working on. Hopefully, they will have read at least one script to give them a flavour of your style. The rest of their time will likely be spent devouring your bible for character arcs, episode numbers and lengths, and more production-focused needs around density of required sets, cast numbers, etc.
Most producers will have departments to do that work for them, but being able to make that job easier is going to make you instantly more employable.
In Production
If you’ve got to production, the bible is really out of your hands. At this point, it’ll be split up, compressed, expanded, and mutilated beyond recognition to suit the needs of each department. Its core, however, will still be entirely your work.
The collage of sets and references? The art department have built their whole ethos around it.
The Spotify playlist you made? Sound have listened to it so much it’s now made up 80% of their Spotify Wrapped.
Your episode outlines? The script editors are using them as the foundations for all their reports and meetings with guest writers.
And all of it is useful to the marketing department, who are scouring your bible for taglines and hooks to get audience bums on seats for you.
For those that still thing a bible is a pointless, monotonous document designed to suck all creativity from the storytelling process, I hope you enjoy your hobby. To those that now understand that the bible is at least as important as your actual script, here’s a breakdown of how I design my story bibles. You can take what you need from each section, and I’ll be releasing detailed articles on each step so you can really sink your teeth into making something truly professional.
The Basics
The basics should be front and centre of any bible. It’s easy to want to dive into the sparkling visuals, riveting characters, and genre-defining brilliance of your story, but they’ll all mean nothing if you don’t know what you’re actually looking at.
So, these first pages, usually two pages, cover what the reader can expect to find within. Firstly:
Title of the Project
Genre
Medium (including number and length of episodes if for TV)
Then comes the logline. That’s basically what you’d read on any poster. It’s one sentence that encompasses vibe, story, genre, and the like. Think of Alien, “In space, nobody can hear you scream”. It’s a science fiction horror. Don’t worry if you’re not that clever, though. The marketing department is paid for a reason. If all you can muster is, “Billy Elliot meets the Marvel Cinematic Universe”, that also works.
Next is the premise, which isn’t quite an outline, but sort of is. This is a short (no more than 100 words), sharp introduction to the protagonist, the conflict, and the stakes. It’s open-ended, designed to present the question that the bible and script will ultimately answer.
Finally, it’s good to include a one-page outline. This is probably the hardest, but most important element. This is the essence of your story, and MUST include the ending. I know, it goes against every storytelling instinct to put twists and turns up at the front, but this isn’t a document for the audience, it’s for you and production to know what the hell is going on. Not telling them now won’t make them love the twist when they see it, it’ll piss them off that you let them undertake potentially fruitless work to fuel your own ego.
Story
Most stories can be broken into at least three strands, the A, B, and C storylines. Think of murder mysteries. There’s the central crime and story of the detective, then there’s usually two or more lesser stories that wind around the central narrative and tie someway into the final resolution.
This is your chance to briefly outline each of those stories. It’s important these are brief. Your reader still doesn’t know about the intricate lore you’ve created, or the quirks of your characters.
The A story will likely be very similar to the outline created in the basics chapter. It should be around one page and cover the central conflict. It’s crucial that this version of the outline only covers what you consider to be the A storyline. The previously written outline may have included some dips into side characters and worldbuilding that simply aren’t relevant to the play-by-play of the A storyline.
The B and C storylines can usually be compressed onto one side of paper, with the B storyline taking up much of the page space. As with the A story, the outlines should only include pertinent information to THAT strand. There will be time for detailing and elaboration later. We’re still enticing the reader to explore further, overwhelming them with information here is just going to turn them off.
Characters
Now the reader knows what they’ll be looking at, it’s time to introduce them to their guides through this story. Character profiles are a crucial element of the bible. Not just for the writer to refer back to when things are getting murky. They’re also a vital tool for actors. There’s no guarantee a writer will be on-hand at short notice to explain a characters motivations, intonations, or physical tics. The character bio, however, is always available.
These character profiles can be as elaborate as you like. Names, ages, birthdays, complete and comprehensive diaries dating back five years, maybe a CV, whatever you like. Just make sure you scale your effort depending on the influence of the character. You can even break down this section into micro-chapters. Have your key characters in one section, then list who the mentors, incidental, and other characters are in their own chapters.
Have fun with it.
Setting
If you’re writing a work of fiction, chances are you’ve created a fictional world. It may look, sound, and feel like our world, but ultimately it’s a conjured fabrication that imitates what’s real. You, your reader, and any prospective crew, are going to need to know the rules that govern this world. They’re also going to need to know about the actual geography of the world. If the story is set in space, what are the rules of space-travel? What are the key rooms on the spaceship? How does the theme of the story influence the world they inhabit?
You can get visual, you can defy format, but this section must be clear. Personally, I love a subheading. But whatever you decide to do when presenting the world and vibe of your story, just make sure you and others can turn to it for reference later without needing a translator.
Research
This is, depending on your persuasion, probably the most boring element of the bible. It is, however, the one chapter of the bible that will most clearly set you apart from an amateur writer. You don’t want to be caught out down the line by an actor or journalist presenting you with the fact you’ve got the symptoms of the common cold completely wrong.
Research is super important. It’s tempting to think that, if you’re writing fantasy or in a world you know well, you don’t need to do fantasy. You either already know everything or you intend on making everything up anyway. I’m here to tell you that you don’t know everything, you only know your own perspective on that world, and making everything up on the fly is going to lead to enormous continuity and story issues down the line. The research chapter is the foundation of smugness. When someone reads your script and says, “are you sure that’s right?” you can point to this chapter with the confidence of someone who’s actually done their homework.
Other
There are elements of your story that are so specific that I wouldn’t be able to cover them in a hundred articles. Perhaps you have a specific filmmaking style in mind for the story, or a spotify playlist like I mentioned earlier. From here, you can create as many or as few chapters as you like. By this point, any reader should be sold on what you’re trying to do, so reward their engagement with some of your favourite elements and creations.
Full Outline
Yes, you have already written outlines, but now you need to do it again, properly this time. Buckle up, these outlines are going to be long. They will still need to focus on the specific strand you’re telling, but if there is any overlap, write the outline from the perspective of the strand you’re outlining. So if your A and B storylines cover two people in a relationship, the outlines that cover scenes where they are together should be told from their perspective, as if they are the protagonist.
That’s essentially what you’re doing here, you’re writing complete, contained stories that will one day happen to overlap. It’s tricky, potentially tedious, but important work. It’ll help the director, DP, and editor prioritise their work, just to name a few.
Again, each storyline should be scaled in length to reflect their overall screen time.
Once that’s done, it’s finally time to put it all together.
Kind of.
You may have signed up to be a screenwriter, but it can be good to get the whole story down in prose. If you’re writing episodic television, you can subhead each episode. When you write the full outline, you should focus on the physical elements of your story. Remember, you’re ultimately writing for a visual medium, but you can start to play with some dialogue, camera trickery, and ultimate vibe of what your scripts will showcase. Get poetic with the language. Why not? Nobody is going to film this outline. What they will do, though, is use it as a reference point for guest writers. Script editors will use the prosaic outline to keep you, other writers, and everyone else in-line.
These prosaic outlines will probably be the most-referenced chapter of the whole document, so make it sing.
Scene-by-Scene
Okay, this one is my personal preference, and I don’t do it most of the time, but it’s worth including. You’re writing for a visual medium? Prove it.
A scene-by-scene synopsis is a popular writing tool for writers to set out how their script will look. Where will the flashbacks go? How many scenes are there? Are they all necessary? Some will use index cards, while others will use Final Draft’s beat card tool. However you do it, remember the scene-by-scene outline is a tool to chart the physical and pacing elements of your script.
It's the slugline, directions, and little else. If you need to include a lot of dialogue at this point, you need to ask yourself if you’ve picked the right medium for your story.
And that’s it! Once all that’s done, you can get to writing, if you can find the energy. Now, one thing I’m not saying is that you MUST make a bible BEFORE writing a single word. I often write my bible after a first draft. Some don’t write one until after their third or fourth, and some only do it once a producer has shown some interest. The point is that this document is important. We haven’t even gone into detail yet and I bet you can’t remember half of the titles, let alone what you’d put under them for your own projects.
Don’t worry, I’m here to help. I’ll be providing full breakdowns of each section so you can build your own professional-quality story bible. You can also contact me directly on my website if you want me to have a read of your own development document or if you want me to help you build one.
Otherwise, thank you for reading, leave a comment if you enjoyed, and I’ll see you soon!
