What to put in a story bible

6 min read · Updated October 23, 2026

Put in your story bible every fact the rest of the story has to agree with: names and spellings, how people look, how old they are, who's related to whom, where places are, how the rules of your world work, and what happened when. Leave out anything that doesn't constrain the story.

The checklist below goes category by category. You don't need every item for every book. A contemporary romance won't need a magic system, and a three-day thriller won't need a calendar. Use it to see what you might be missing, then keep only what earns its place.

One rule applies to everything: note where each fact came from. A chapter number next to each detail turns your bible from a list of claims into something you can check.

Characters

Characters generate most continuity errors, so they usually get the most space. For a deeper look at profiles that stay useful, see the character bible guide.

• Full name, nicknames, titles and aliases. Readers notice when a nickname drifts. Aliases also matter for searching: "the Grey Lady" and "Mara Thorne" are the same person.
• Physical details. Eye color, hair, height, build, scars, tattoos, disabilities, distinctive clothing. These are the classic errors because they're mentioned once and then repeated from memory.
• Birth date or age, with the date it applies to. "Nineteen" is only useful if you know when she was nineteen.
• Death, if it happens. When and where. A dead character showing up at a council meeting is a real and common mistake.
• Family. Parents, siblings, children, spouses. Family trees break easily in multi-generation stories.
• Relationships. Allies, rivals, mentors, lovers, employers, and when each relationship began or ended.
• Voice. Speech habits, vocabulary, verbal tics, what they never say.
• Skills and limits. What they can and can't do, so a convenient new talent doesn't appear in book three.
• Knowledge. What they know and when they learned it. Who knows the secret is a continuity fact.
• Arc. How they change, and the chapters where the changes happen.

Places

• Name and spelling, plus any older or alternate names.
• Geography. What's north of what, what's on the river, what's across the sea.
• Travel times. How long it takes to get from one place to another on foot, horse, ship or train. In The Ashen Crown, Varrow is three days' ride south of Thornwatch. If a character makes it in one, you need a reason.
• Appearance. Layout of buildings that recur, number of floors, which window faces the sea.
• Who rules or owns it, and when that changes.
• What happened there. Battles, deaths, founding dates.

Factions and groups

• Name, symbol, colors, motto.
• Members and leaders, and when membership changes.
• Goals and loyalties.
• Structure. Ranks, titles, who answers to whom.
• History. When it was founded, major events.

Groups matter even in contemporary fiction: a police department, a law firm, a family business, a school.

Items

• Named objects. Weapons, heirlooms, artifacts, ships, cars.
• Description. What it's made of, what it looks like.
• Who has it, and when it changes hands. Lost and found objects are a frequent slip.
• What it does, if anything.

Rules, magic and technology

This is the category that most needs to be written down, because readers treat your rules as a contract.

• What it can do.
• What it can't do. Limits are more important than powers.
• What it costs. In the sample series, Emberfire burns away a memory each time it's used. Every later scene that uses Emberfire has to respect that.
• Who can use it, and how they learn.
• Exceptions, and why they're exceptions.

For world-heavy books, the worldbuilding bible guide goes further.

Timeline and calendar

• Events in order, with dates. Births, deaths, battles, journeys, meetings, discoveries.
• Backstory events. Things that happened before page one but fix ages and relationships.
• Your calendar, if invented. Month names, days per month, eras. The Ashen Crown uses a ten-month calendar counted in years After Sundering (AS).
• Chapter time. What in-story date each chapter covers, roughly. This is what lets you check whether a character can be in two places.
• Seasons, holidays and moon phases, if the story mentions them.

A timeline is the backbone of continuity checking. See how to build a story bible timeline.

Facts that change over time

Many facts are only true for a while: a title, an allegiance, a hair color, a job, a marriage. Record both the fact and when it held.

Without the dates, a bible that says both "Kael is a knight of the Order" and "Kael was cast out" looks like a contradiction. With them, it's a history.

Secrets and reveals

• The truth, even if readers don't know it yet.
• When it's revealed, and to whom.
• Who in the story knows, and from when.

In the sample series, Brother Tolan set the fire at Thornwatch, but that isn't revealed until book two. Writing it down, clearly marked as a secret, stops you from accidentally hinting at it too early or contradicting it later.

Style and language

• Spellings of every invented name and word.
• Capitalization and hyphenation. Is it "the Order" or "the order"? "Ember Knight" or "ember-knight"?
• Naming conventions by culture or region.
• Forms of address. Who says "my lord" and who says "Aldric."
• Words you've decided against, such as modern idioms in a historical setting.

This is the part a publisher's copyeditor would call a style sheet. For more on the overlap, see story bible vs. series bible vs. style sheet.

Series and book information

• Books in order, with chapter lists.
• What each book reveals, so you know what a reader of book one does and doesn't know.
• Open threads. Promises and mysteries you still owe the reader.

Ideas that aren't canon yet

Most writers keep ideas, alternatives and abandoned versions somewhere. Keep them in the bible if you like, but mark them clearly so you never mistake a maybe for a fact.

What to leave out

• Details the story never uses. The bible exists to serve the manuscript.
• Long prose. A bible entry should be scannable. If you need to write an essay about a character, link to it from the entry.
• Duplicates. One entry per person or place, with all their names listed as aliases. Two entries for the same character is how conflicting facts creep in.

Start with the errors you'd most regret

If the full list feels like too much, start with the five things readers complain about most: name spellings, eye and hair color, ages, who's dead, and travel times. Add the rest as the story needs it. A story bible template can give you a ready-made structure for each of these.