The Series Bible: A Topic Workbook, #2

​​Introduction

ANYTIME YOUR STORY covers more than one book, you need to keep notes for consistency. On Broadway and in film and television production, we kept continuity bibles. Characters had closets—we’d keep all the clothes a regular character wore together, so we could match if we had to go back and reshoot, and, so we could mix-and-match over the course of the season, the way a real person would go into a closet and wear something more than once.

Every detail, every accessory, even the number of buttons closed or left undone was carefully noted in photographs and verbally. It’s jarring to watch a piece with continuity errors.

It’s equally jarring to read a series with continuity errors.

As a writer, it’s difficult to maintain continuity. We work on multiple drafts. Things change from draft to draft. Our editors may work on multiple drafts with us, and something might get past both of us.

Creating a  Series Bible helps you keep things consistent as they need consistency. It also gives you context when you CHOOSE to make a change. Let’s say your protagonist, in a long-running series, likes to change her hairstyle. You establish that she enjoys this, so five or six times in the course of ten books, either her hair color or cut differs. You keep track of it in the  Series Bible, so that you can address it logically in the text without the whole series becoming about your character’s hair.

Of course, creation is only the first step. Then, there’s maintenance. I have suggestions for that, too.

Important Note: This Series Bible is for prose: novels, novellas, novelettes, linked short stories. It is NOT for theatre, film, and television production, although I use some of the techniques I used in those fields. Those Series Bibles use a different format, specific to the medium.

Enjoy!

Topic #1: The Medium

Decide what’s the most efficient way to keep your notes. I like to keep my  Series Bible in a three-ring binder. That way, I can separate out topics, and move pages, add pages, delete pages as necessary.

Sometimes I work in longhand; sometimes, I’ll make notes as I’m working on the hard copy and then type them up, or work in longhand as I read on screen and then type them up. Sometimes I move between screens.

If you keep the bible primarily in your computer, make sure you have multiple backups.

Whether it’s a hard copy or a digital copy, keep a section for Old/Discarded Information. The minute you permanently delete a file, you’ll need to refer to it—an editor will want something, you’ll discover the direction you were convinced was right isn’t working, and so forth. It’s much easier to keep the different versions organized in hard copy than digitally, in my opinion., but if you’re super-electronically organized, digital formats might work better. I like to be able to physically move things around.

I’ve played a bit with Scrivener, but have not yet mastered it. I think it’s more