# Story Bible Template _A build order for worlds that carry stories — from Nanowrit Labs_ ## How to use this Fill this in from the top down. Each section should be answerable because of the one above it — if a section needs information from further down, you are building out of order. You are not trying to complete this document. A finished story bible is not the goal and is usually a warning sign. The goal is the smallest world that can carry your story. > **The stopping rule:** when you can write the next three scenes without inventing > anything load-bearing, stop building and go write them. You will find the real gaps > faster by drafting than by planning. Sections marked REPEATABLE are meant to be copied for each character, place, or event you actually need. Copy them as many times as the story requires and no more. --- ## Part 1 — The spine **The premise, in one sentence a stranger could repeat back** > _Not a logline with genre jargon. A sentence a person would actually say to a friend. > If you cannot write it, the idea is probably a setting or a vibe rather than a story._ **The pressure — the condition your world is under strain from** > _Not the plot. The condition that makes plots inevitable. Examples: magic works but > costs the user years of life. The empire fell forty years ago and nobody agrees why. > Everyone can hear the dead, but only until they turn twenty._ **Three people who want opposite things because of that pressure** 1. 2. 3. > _If you cannot name three, the pressure is not generating conflict yet. Fix this before > continuing — nothing downstream will work._ ### Before you build the rest **Who have you said the premise out loud to, and what came back?** **What did they repeat back a week later?** > _An idea that gets played back roughly intact has a hook. One that comes back garbled — > or as a different and more interesting story — is telling you what the real hook was._ --- ## Part 2 — The rules **What is possible in this world that is not possible in ours?** **What does using it take away?** > _Time, memory, sanity, standing, someone else's life. A magic system with no price is a > plot solvent — it dissolves every problem you invent. Price the power and keep the price._ **Who decides who is allowed to use it?** **What does travel cost? What does information cost?** > _These two questions do most of the work in worlds with no magic at all._ **What is the one rule you will never break, even when it would be convenient?** --- ## Part 3 — The people Ask who benefits from the rules and who is crushed by them. That question produces factions honestly, rather than four kingdoms with different coloured banners. ### Faction (REPEATABLE) - **Name:** - **What they want:** - **What they are afraid of:** - **What they would never do:** - **Who they blame:** - **How the rules in Part 2 help or hurt them:** ### Character (REPEATABLE) - **Name and role:** - **What they want, stated plainly:** - **What they want that they would not admit:** - **What they are wrong about:** - **Who they owe, and who owes them:** - **What would make them break their own rule:** - **Physical anchors — the two or three details that recur:** > _That last field matters more than a full physical description. Two recurring details a > reader remembers beat a paragraph they skim._ --- ## Part 4 — The places Geography should be a consequence, not decoration. A city exists because of a river, a mine, a border, a shrine, a chokepoint. ### Location (REPEATABLE) - **Name:** - **Why it exists here and not somewhere else:** - **Who controls it and who resents that:** - **What it smells and sounds like:** - **What the story needs to happen here:** > _Test: if you can move this location a hundred miles with no effect on the story, it is > scenery. Either give it consequence or cut it._ --- ## Part 5 — The history Write only the history that is still hurting. A timeline of nine hundred years is a research project. Three unresolved events that living people still argue about is a story engine. ### Event (REPEATABLE) - **What happened:** - **When, relative to the story's present:** - **Who alive today wants it remembered differently, and why:** - **What it still prevents or still permits:** > _If nobody is arguing about an event, it is backstory. Backstory can wait._ --- ## Part 6 — Keeping it consistent Consistency, not scale, is what makes a world feel real. It is also the first thing to break once the world outgrows what you can hold in your head. Readers never see your files; they only see whether the world behaves the same way twice. ### Decision log The most valuable section in this document. Every time you invent something while drafting — a distance, a title, a custom, a price — write it here immediately. The details you invent unconsciously are the ones that contradict you in chapter thirty. | Decision | Where it first appeared | Date | | -------- | ----------------------- | ---- | | | | | | | | | | | | | ### Names and terms One spelling, one meaning, one place to check. | Term | Meaning | First used in | | ---- | ------- | ------------- | | | | | | | | | | | | | ### Open questions Things you have deliberately not decided yet. Keeping them visible stops you from accidentally deciding them twice, in two different ways. | Question | Blocks what? | Decide by | | -------- | ------------ | --------- | | | | | | | | | --- ## Part 7 — If this becomes a series Fill this in only when a second book or project is real. Doing it early is the most common form of productive procrastination. **What carries across every installment and cannot change** **What is allowed to change between installments** **What did you establish in book one that you now regret** > _Answer the third one honestly. It is cheaper to work around a constraint you have > named than one you are pretending is not there._ --- _This template is free to use, copy, and adapt, including commercially. No attribution required. — Nanowrit Labs, nanowritlabs.com_