Custom story bibles have arrived! 🎉 Now taking bookings!
You can find out more about custom story bibles by clicking the button above, but in this post, I want to talk a bit about why this particular service and what kinds of authors will benefit the most from it.
Why story bibles?
You might not have known this about me before, but I LOVE LISTS.
Like, I have entire notebooks dedicated to list-making. The fun part of planning a vacation is creating a list of activities. I write down my weekly chore list every week even though it’s the same every time because I like doing it. You see where this is going.
My favorite part of copyediting, for publishers and indie authors alike, has always been compiling a style sheet. (What’s a style sheet, you ask? I happen to have a blog post about style sheets right here!)
Basically, you can think of a style sheet as a giant list of all the different style, grammar, punctuation, and spelling rules that are followed in a piece of writing. Style sheets for fiction also usually list out basic character and setting details, too.
And a story bible is pretty much a style sheet on steroids. An enormous megalist of every little thing in the story. A list made of smaller lists, if you will. List-ception.
So obviously I love me a story bible. The more complex the better!
But why story bibles for authors?
Because story bibles are hard and they take a lot of time to put together and they mean rereading your entire book YET AGAIN.
A lot of authors just can’t be bothered, even if they’d enjoy the benefits.
And I don’t blame them. Especially if they’ve been through many drafts. And especially especially if they don’t like lists as much as I do.
So I thought I could help! Authors can leave all the organizing and list-making to me, and they can get back to the part they like—the writing part.
Everybody wins!
So who benefits the most from a custom story bible?
First of all, anyone writing a series can benefit from a custom story bible. The longer the series, the more essential a story bible becomes (and also the more tiring it gets to put one together). Why? Because the longer the series, the more details come up, and the more stuff there is to forget.
What’s wrong with forgetting? Readers remember. Especially readers who are binge-reading your series at a rate of two books a day. And whenever those readers catch something that’s off, it kicks them out of the story briefly, breaks their reading momentum. We don’t want that!
But even if you’re not writing a series, per se, but instead a companion novel or a totally separate story set in the same universe, you can still benefit from a custom story bible. Books set in the same story universe will naturally have some things in common, and you’ll want those to remain consistent throughout.
And yes, a custom story bible can still benefit you if you’re writing a true standalone. The benefits will just not be as substantial. For example, you may use your custom story bible to make sure you don’t cross-contaminate your next book. (That is, accidentally take names, settings, or concepts from the previous book and put them in the next book even though they’re totally not connected.) We (probably) don’t want all the love interests to have the same name!
Finally, anyone working on multiple books at once can benefit from a custom story bible. A story bible is a quick way to jumpstart yourself into remembering what you were working on without having to reread a bunch of material. If you ever find yourself accidentally mixing projects, then a custom story bible will certainly help you out!
I truly believe that a custom story bible will be a boon to you and your writing process. And if you don’t wanna do it yourself, let me do it for you!
Happy organizing!
