The Father, The Son, and the Five-Act Structure
The idea of a ‘Story Bible’ sounds a bit evangelical, doesn’t it? It evokes images of writers gathered around the altar of a story, worshipping, praying, and raising their arms in the air to beg forgiveness from their god.
In a way, it is.
The good news, however, is that each prostrated writer has a hand in creating their divine text. Many are simultaneously God and Prophet of their Bibles. They share the text with producers, editors, directors, and anyone else who wishes to join the congregation of their production.
But what is this mystical document? What is its purpose? And most importantly, how do you make one for yourself?
What is a Story Bible?
Simply put, a Story Bible is a fancy way of saying ‘development document’. I first came across the term during my initial studies as an undergraduate scriptwriting student, and despite its importance being pressed upon me, it’s not an expression I’ve seen often since.
In its completed form, the Bible is everything. It’s character profiles, story arcs, rules of the story world, research, narrative forecasts, and everything else important to the story. For long-running stories, like soap operas Casualty and Coronation Street, they can be enormous, requiring departments of people to maintain. Think of it as a professionally maintained Wiki Page, like WookieePedia or Doctor Who’s Wiki Site.
Bibles also contain pitching documents. While a producer isn’t likely to read a potentially mammoth document, the treatment they will require is a crucial component of the Bible. To return to religious metaphors for a moment, the treatment is like a Bible in print, the text you put out to gain devoted followers and worshippers while the fullness of your text remains behind lock and key in the Vatican Archive of your computer.
A writer with a comprehensive Bible is a writer that is armed for every question, whether they remember the answer off the cuff or not.
Where was that character at the end of series 2? Check the Bible.
What are the rules of hyperspace travel? Check the Bible.
What was the name of the High Priest that commanded the religious order that killed the first beast at the beginning of time? You guessed it, check the Bible.
Singing from the Same Hymn Sheet
That’s right, more religious metaphors.
On the whole, Story Bibles can be an intensely private document. However, when working on large scale stories that require multiple writers, directors, actors, or even producers, a production needs to be cohesive and communally available. When a production goes live, the Bible becomes more important than ever.
Every story ever told has rules. If a writer comes onto a project and writes something tonally or thematically jarring compared to the rest of the story, the whole thing falls apart. It’s what keeps Casualty predominantly in the A&E and prevents a Dalek becoming the new companion in Doctor Who.
The Bible is as much a style guide as it is a narrative one.
Most writers, even the highest profile, work with script editors. Script editors are like custodians of the Bible. They do not impose their own will on the project but use the Bible to hold them to account of their own plan. They will also use the Bible in conversations with producers, reminding everyone what their journey is, and keeping everyone in line.
As current blockbusters attempt to create ‘shared universes’ or Transmedia experiences, the role of the Bible ensures consistency in continuity. When the Avengers return to 2012 New York in Avengers: Endgame, Bruce Banner can’t find Dr Strange where he expects him to be as the events of the Dr Strange film haven’t happened yet. The Bible is the document that writers and producers would consult to see whether the story they want to tell is even possible. For example, a former script editor for Casualty once informed me that the series has a continuity Bible lasting six months to ensure medical emergencies aren’t repeated with noticeable frequency.
Getting Crafty with It
Creating a Bible can be a daunting prospect. Here are a few tips and techniques you can employ to make its creation an easier process and a more entertaining read:
Focus on the story you are telling. Let the Bible emulate the things about your story that get you excited. Put those exciting elements at the start of the Bible. If this is a project you wind up moving away from for a while, let the Bible immediately remind you why you created the story in the first place.
The Christian Bible is split into the Old and the New Testaments, an unusual formatting decision. So don’t worry so much about conventional formatting. Feel free to include anything and everything that helps yourself or others understand the script you’re writing:
- Spotify Playlists
- Mood Boards
- Poems
- Research Collages (with credits, you’ll thank yourself later)
- Sketches
- Anything!
If the Bible you’re creating is for a long-running series or production then it’s advisable to put the current or ongoing story at the back of the document. For one final religious analogy, the story of Easter cannot be fully understood without prior knowledge that Jesus was born as the son of a virgin youth, a miracle worker, and the proven son of God. By having readers work towards the story’s current events, they are armed with the knowledge required to write its next steps.
If that all seems a little daunting, and why wouldn’t it, here’s an exercise to get you started:
Collate everything you’ve created so far. Every scrap of paper, post-it note, outline, scene idea, character doodle, and whatever else. Start to categorise what you have:
- Production Ideas
- Characters
- Research
- Storylines
- Themes
- Inspiration
- And so on…
Start throwing out the things you don’t like, things that aren’t relevant anymore, or that contradict or complicate.
There you have it; you’ve got the start of your Bible.
Amen
A Story Bible is much like a Christian Bible. It is full of rules, parables, and it’s maintained by a hierarchy of custodians. It’s also, perhaps by design, not a page-turner. It isn’t there to be read at night, or to be lauded over subjects that fail to follow the doctrine. What it is there for is to guide lost writers, to unite a production, and to maintain a single, universal, harmonious truth.
So, it’s what the Bible should be.
Not every story needs a Bible, but no story has ever been made worse by having one.
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