Story bible template: what goes in a series bible (with show bible examples)

A story bible template is a fixed set of sections — logline, tone, world rules, characters, arcs, locations and an episode or book map — that you fill in once and keep current, so everyone working on a series tells the same story. In television the finished document is called a series bible or show bible; novelists writing a series keep the same thing for themselves.

This page gives you the template section by section, a filled show bible example for an original drama, the differences between a TV bible and a novel-series bible, and a routine for keeping the bible true to the script once the drafts start changing it. If you mainly need to invent a world from scratch, start with the worldbuilding template and come back here when it is time to organize it for other readers.

What is a story bible?

A story bible is the reference document for a story that runs longer than one sitting: a TV series, a book series, a franchise or a long serial. It records the decisions that must stay the same from one episode or book to the next — who the characters are, what the world allows, where things happen and where the story is going.

A series bible, also called a show bible, is the television version. It has two jobs. Inside a production, it is what a new writer reads before pitching an episode. Before a production exists, it is a selling document that shows a producer or network that the pilot is the start of something that can run for seasons. That second job is why a show bible leads with premise, tone and the episode engine rather than with lore.

The story bible template, section by section

Copy these seven sections in this order. The order matters: a reader who stops after the first two pages should already know what the show is and how it feels.

1. Logline and premise

• Logline: one sentence with the protagonist, the situation and what stands in the way. The logline guide has formulas and examples.
• Premise: a paragraph on the situation the series starts from and the question it keeps asking.
• Format: half-hour or hour, number of episodes, limited or returning, and where it would sit (network, streaming, vertical).

2. Tone

• Three adjectives that describe how an episode should feel, and one thing the show never does.
• Two or three reference points, described in your own words: "the pressure of a hospital drama, the patience of a slow mystery".

3. World rules

• The ways the show's world differs from ours, or the rules of the institution it is set in, written as statements that can be checked.
• The cost of each rule — who pays, and how often. Rules without costs produce no episodes.

4. Characters

• For each regular: name, age, role, what they want, what they need, their secret and one line of dialogue in their voice. The character profile template has the full version.
• Relationships: who depends on whom, who is lying to whom, and which pairing the audience will wait for.

5. Arcs

• Season arc: where the story starts, the turn in the middle of the season and where it ends. A beat sheet works for a season as well as for a film.
• Character arcs: who each regular is in episode one and who they are by the finale.
• Beyond season one: two or three sentences on where later seasons could go.

6. Locations

• The standing sets — the places the show returns to every week — with what each looks like, who controls it and what kind of scene happens there.
• A note on which places are new each week. Standing sets keep a series affordable; production readers look for them.

7. Episode map

• The episode engine: the kind of story a typical episode tells, in one or two sentences.
• A table of episodes with a title, the story of the week and the season-arc turn each one carries. For a pitch, the pilot plus six to ten short episode ideas is plenty.

Show bible examples: a filled series bible for an original drama

Here is the template filled in for "The Quiet Hours", an invented eight-episode drama. It is short on purpose: this is what the first pages of a pitch bible look like, and a new writer could pitch an episode from it.

Logline, premise and tone

• Logline: In a city where broadcasting any sound between midnight and five is a crime, the night dispatcher at the one licensed emergency radio station must decide which calls to put on air, knowing every broadcast is logged and every mistake is hers.
• Premise: Twelve years ago the city passed the Quiet Hours Act after a panic spread by late-night radio. Now only Station KQH may transmit at night, and only for emergencies. The series asks who gets to decide what counts as one.
• Format: hour-long drama, eight episodes, limited series with room for a second season.
• Tone: hushed, tense, warm underneath. Each episode is one night. The show never plays the city as a dystopia; people mostly like the quiet.

World rules

• Rule 1: No sound may be broadcast between midnight and 5 a.m. except by KQH, and only for an emergency the dispatcher declares on the log.
• Rule 2: Every declared emergency is reviewed in the morning by the Quiet Hours Office. Three bad calls and the dispatcher loses her license.
• Rule 3: Anyone may bring a message to the station door in person. Cost: the dispatcher hears everything the city wants said, and can air almost none of it.

Characters

• Dell Okafor, 41, night dispatcher. Wants to keep her license until her pension. Needs to stop treating the rules as a place to hide. Secret: she aired the broadcast that caused the panic twelve years ago. Voice: "I can hear you. I can't play you."
• Gree Paz, 26, station engineer. Wants to keep the old transmitter alive. Needs to tell Dell she has been recording every message that was never aired.
• Inspector Hal Brandt, 58, Quiet Hours Office. Reviews Dell's log every morning. Wants the Act to work. Was the one who covered up who caused the panic.

Locations

• KQH: a radio station built inside a disused water tower; the booth, the stairwell, the door where people queue with messages. Standing set, used every episode.
• The Quiet Hours Office: a bright, carpeted morning room where the night gets judged. Standing set.
• The all-night laundromat across the road, where people wait for their message to be aired or refused. Standing set.

Season arc and episode map

Episode engine: one night, one message at the door that Dell cannot refuse and cannot safely air. Season arc: Gree's archive of unaired messages surfaces, Brandt starts to suspect Dell remembers the night of the panic, and the finale is a night when Dell must declare an emergency on her own past.

That is roughly two pages. A pitch bible would add a page on the pilot, a page of visual notes and two or three paragraphs on season two — but every page after this one only works if these two pages are clear.

TV series bible vs novel series bible

Both kinds of story bible hold the same facts. They differ in who reads them and what they lead with.

A novel-series bible rarely needs an episode map, but it gains a timeline: which book each event happens in, how old each character is in each book and what each narrator knows. Novelists also tend to record style decisions — point of view, tense, the words a character would never use — because no showrunner will catch them.

Story bible vs pitch deck vs treatment

These three get confused because they are often sent together. A pitch deck is a short visual presentation, usually ten to fifteen slides of images and a few lines each, made to get a meeting or carry one. A series bible is a written document that explains how the show works in enough detail for someone else to write it. A film treatment tells one story — a film or a single episode — in prose, from beginning to end. Many pitches use all three: the deck to open the door, the pilot and the bible to show the series can last.

How to keep a story bible in sync with the script

A bible starts accurate and drifts. Scripts rename characters, merge locations and settle questions the bible left open. A bible that disagrees with the scripts is worse than none, because new writers trust it.

1. Treat the locked script as the source. When the script and the bible disagree, update the bible, not the other way round, unless the script is wrong.
2. After each script is locked, read it once only for facts: new names, ages, places, rules, relationships. Add them to the continuity log with the episode number.
3. Rename in one place. If DET. RUIZ becomes LT. RUIZ, change the bible and every script that mentions her the same day.
4. Move answered questions from the open-questions page into the section they belong to.
5. Date the bible on its cover each time you change it, so a writer knows whether their copy is current.

Build your story bible in Scenaloom

Scenaloom keeps the story bible in the same project as the script, so most of it fills itself in and stays current. In a script project, the Story bible stage holds:

• Characters, created from the cues in your script, each with a page for notes and a relationships graph. Renaming a character there renames every cue. See characters, locations and props.
• Locations, created from your scene headings, and Props, for the objects the plot depends on.
• Worldview, for the logline, the core issue, world rules and any entries you add. The Short drama template starts a series bible for a vertical series; the Feature film template starts a development bible.
• Knowledge, for files such as a pitch bible written elsewhere or research notes.

Season arcs go in the outline's beat board, and a series has an Episode Board with every episode as a card. Novel projects have their own Story Bible page — genre, style, synopsis, worldbuilding and elements such as places, groups and lore — plus a story canvas for laying out characters and chapters. Scenaloom AI reads the bible before it answers, so its suggestions keep to your rules. Read Worldview and knowledge or start a series.