Worldbuilding template: rules, places, history and a filled example

A worldbuilding template is a set of headed sections — world rules, places, history, factions, characters, tone and story arcs — that a writer fills in to record how a fictional world works. Kept up to date, it becomes the story bible: the reference every draft, episode and collaborator checks so the world stays consistent.

This page gives you a copyable template, a filled example for an original series and advice on keeping a bible useful rather than enormous. It works for fantasy and science fiction, but also for grounded stories: a hospital drama or a small-town mystery has rules, places and history too.

What is a story bible?

A story bible is a single document that holds the facts of a story's world and characters so they stay consistent across a long work. Novelists keep one for a series of books; television writers keep a series bible, also called a show bible, that explains the show to new writers, producers and networks.

A writer's private bible can be a list of notes. A series bible written for others also has to sell: it opens with the premise and tone and shows how the show produces episodes, not only what is in the world.

The worldbuilding template

Copy these sections. Fill the first three before anything else; the rest can grow as the story needs them.

1. Premise and tone

• Logline — one sentence: who, what they want, what stands in the way. See the logline guide.
• Core question — the issue the story keeps returning to.
• Tone — two or three reference words and one thing the story will never do.

2. World rules

• What is different about this world from ours, stated as rules, not descriptions.
• The cost or limit of each rule. A rule with no cost creates no story.
• Who knows the rules, and who does not.

3. Places

• Each recurring location: name, what it looks and sounds like, who controls it, what happens there.
• How the places connect — distance, travel time, borders.

4. History

• Three to five events before the story starts that still shape it now. Skip the rest.
• The secret: what really happened, if it differs from what people believe.

5. Factions and institutions

• Groups, families, companies or governments; what each wants; who leads it; who it is in conflict with.

6. Characters

• Main and recurring characters with want, need, secret and a line of how they talk. Use the character profile template for the full version.
• Relationships: who owes whom, who loves whom, who lies to whom.

7. Story arcs

• For a film: the main turning points. For a novel: the arc of each book or part.
• For a series: the season arc, the kind of story a typical episode tells and where future seasons could go.

8. Glossary and open questions

• Invented words, spellings and titles, so every writer uses the same ones.
• Decisions not yet made, kept visible so nobody invents an answer by accident.

A filled story bible example

Here is a short bible for an original series, "Low Tide", a six-episode mystery.

• Logline: When the sea retreats a mile overnight and stays out, a harbor town's new constable has to find out why the townspeople are glad.
• Core question: What do people hide when the thing they feared finally happens?
• Tone: damp, wry, slow-burning. The show never explains the tide with science.
• Rule 1: The sea has gone out and does not come back. The exposed seabed is safe to walk by day, not by night.
• Rule 2: Anything lost to the sea in the last forty years is now lying on the seabed, where anyone can find it.
• Rule 3: Cost: the town's fishing income is gone. Every week the tide stays out, someone runs out of money.
• Places: the Harbor Arms pub, the drained harbor with boats lying on their sides, the old lifeboat station (now the police office), the wreck a mile out.
• History: in 1986 a fishing boat sank with three men aboard; the inquiry blamed the weather. The wreck now sits on open sand.
• Factions: the Harbor Board, which wants the seabed fenced; the Cole family, who own half the town; the beachcombers, who want what the sea gave back.
• Characters: Constable Ana Ruiz, new, outsider, honest to a fault; Martin Cole, Harbor Board chair, charming, frightened of the wreck.
• Season arc: episodes one to three find objects on the seabed that unpick the 1986 inquiry; episode four reaches the wreck; five and six decide whether the town lets the truth out — and whether the sea comes back.
• Episode engine: each episode begins with one object found on the seabed and ends with what it reveals about someone in town.
• Open question: Does Ana have a connection to the 1986 crew?

Fourteen lines, and a new writer could pitch an episode from it. That is the test of a bible: can someone else write in this world without asking you?

Series bible vs worldbuilding notes

A series bible is the version of the story bible written for other people — producers, a network, a writers room. It leads with premise, tone, characters and the episode engine, keeps world rules brief, and usually adds a pilot summary and sample episode ideas. Worldbuilding notes are the writer's own record and can be as long and messy as useful. Many writers keep both: private notes, and a 10 to 20 page bible drawn from them when it is time to pitch. The story bible template lays out the sections a series bible needs, with a filled show bible example, and the TV pilot guide covers how the bible and pilot work together.

How to keep a story bible useful

1. Write only what the story uses or will use. A history of every century is a second project, not a bible.
2. Update it when the draft changes a fact, the same day. A wrong bible is worse than none.
3. Put every rule's cost next to the rule.
4. Date or version the bible when others rely on it, so writers know which facts are current.
5. Re-read it before each new draft or episode; it is quicker than re-reading the script.

Write it in Scenaloom

In Scenaloom, Worldview holds a project's story bible as entries — logline, core issue and any custom entries you add — and you can start from templates such as Short drama or Feature film. Novel projects have a Story Bible with genre, style, synopsis, worldbuilding and elements such as places, groups, lore and history, and magic or technology. Scenaloom AI reads the bible before it answers, so its proposals keep to your rules. See Worldview and knowledge or start a project.