What is Story Bible?
What’s Story Bible?
Story Bible gathers the core elements of your story in one place so that you and Sudowrite’s AI can reference them as you expand upon your work. As a feature, it has two purposes:
- Help you systematically grow your narrative, beginning with something as simple as a braindump, and ultimately assisting in developing beats and even your chapter prose.
- Work as a source of truth that both you and the AI can refer back to later.
Each project on Sudowrite has its own Story Bible, and it can be toggled on or off depending on just how you like to work.
Overview
Working with Story Bible lets you build a long-form narrative from just the seed of an idea. You’ll be guided through the various stages of writing a novel, from synopsis to outline to fully-realized scenes.
Like any other Sudowrite tool, the resulting story is only as good as the writer directing it. Think of it like an improv act: pay attention to what Story Bible writes, then edit and respond with words that are true to your vision. In the end, you will have a first draft of scenes that you can develop further.
You’ll find your Story Bible in the left bar of your Project, beneath your document list.
How to move through Story Bible
Story Bible works a little differently from other parts of Sudowrite. Here are the basics:
- When Story Bible is toggled on, the individual Story Bible fields will be displayed beneath the prose section of your document.
- Story Bible is persistent—that means as you jump from document to document in your left Project management bar, the same Story Bible contents will remain visible beneath the prose section. (Only the document’s body will be toggled.)
- Click the (❓) icons for details and examples of how exactly a given section of the Story Bible works. This will give you context on what it influences down the line in regards to generation.
- Any section can be manually populated to any degree—but some sections also feature a Generate button. Click the Generate button and Story Bible will make a suggestion for that section. You can always revise or rewrite these generations to your liking.
- As an alternative to manually editing the generation, whenever you see a Rewrite field, you can use that to give Story Bible specific instructions on how you’d like it to modify the generation you’d produced.
How are the Story Bible fields connected?
A common question when it comes to Story Bible is: Which boxes or steps of Story Bible influence other steps of the process. It’s a little complicated, but here’s an explanation. (Don’t worry, you won’t be quizzed on this, and you don’t need to remember it to get great results!)
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Braindump:
This is the starting point of Story Bible, where you’ll capture your initial ideas for the story. It’s filled in manually, and since it can’t be generated it is not influenced by any of the other fields.
Braindump directly influences the generation of Synopsis. Otherwise, if the Synopsis is never filled in or generated, fields that are typically influenced by Synopsis will defer instead to the Braindump.
Genre:
Genre is filled in manually, and thus is not informed by any other Story Bible fields.
Meanwhile, the Genre influences Synopsis, Outline, Beats, and Chapter Generator.
Style:
Style is filled in manually—or by using the Match My Style feature—and is not informed by any other Story Bible fields.
Style directly influences both Beat and Chapter generation.
Synopsis:
The generation of Synopsis is informed by both Braindump and Genre.
The Synopsis influences the generation of Characters, Worldbuilding, Outline, and Beats.
As mentioned previously, in the event the Synopsis field is empty, the fields that rely on Synopsis would instead defer to the Braindump.
Characters:
Characters are generated based on the Synopsis.
Meanwhile, Characters directly influences the generation of your story’s Outline, Beats, and Chapter Generator.
Worldbuilding:
Worldbuilding is influenced by the Synopsis, when generating random Worldbuilding elements.
Meanwhile, Worldbuilding directly informs your story’s Outline, Beats, and Chapter Generator.
Outline:
Outline is influenced by Genre, Synopsis, Characters, and Worldbuilding.
Meanwhile, Outline directly informs Beat generation.
Beats:
Beat generation considers the most Story Bible context, taking into account Genre, Style, Synopsis, Outline, Characters, and Worldbuilding.
Beats directly influence the Chapter Generator.
Chapter Generator:
When generating chapter prose, the Chapter Generator is informed by Style, Genre, Characters, Worldbuilding, and Beats.