Wild Card: 3 Tips for Making a Story Bible

An example of my location collage from my story bible for "Untitled Story".

Welcome back to another Wild Card Wednesday. Today we are going to talk a little bit about Story Bibles, what they are, and how you can get started making one whenever your heart desires.

What is a Story Bible Anyway?

I'm glad you asked! To make a very long explanation short:

A Story Bible is the guide to the story you are trying to create. It holds everything from the story arch to character bios to that thing you read on the back of the book (also called a logline, but who cares about the technical stuff, am I right?).

Your story bible is the heart of your story. It's where you get to all the good stuff and lay it out to see what's gold and what's just an old leaf that somehow made it into the pile. This is the lifeline of any story you are trying to create that you don't want collecting virtual dust on your hard drive. So how do you make one?

3 Tips to Starting Your Story Bible

1) You better love what you're setting out to write because it is A LOT of information!

This book is called a bible for a reason. When I said that this book holds all the good stuff, I meant ALL of it. Just to give you the basics you must cover at least:

• Logline

• Backstory

• Setting

• Character Bios

• Story Summary

• Examples of said summary and other fun things

And this is all a very watered-down version. If you would like a more in-depth explanation of these things and more, there is an awesome article you can read all about it here.*

(*Note: This article references TV Scripts, however, the information about what to include in a story bible is universal and even makes you think outside the box a little bit.)

2) You gotta do research!

Research is something I never understood until very recently. Basically, for all of you that suffered through the painful research papers of days past (or days present/future), this is nothing like that. The research for this book is only to make your imagination explode with more ideas for your story. You ask questions for the sake of asking them, research pictures of the story you are trying to tell. This is why #1 is so important because, without it, this task will make you want to give up before you even write "The".

3) Set some goal markers to actually get it done.

You will never, ever, ever, get this thing done right if you don't make it a priority. If you have a story in your heart just ready to burst out of your chest, you need to get it out and in some kind of time frame that might, I don't know, get it done. We have all started this new year with goals and low expectations, but that doesn't mean that will get in the way of us making our stories. Even if you say that your going to dedicate one month per part, by the end of the year you'll have a Story Book and maybe even a rough draft. Because the beauty of this book is once you finish, all that's left is to write.

This "article" was written in the spirit of play and encourages all writers and nonwriters to go out this week and write some quality word vomit. Who knows, it might actually be good!