Story Bible

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  • #200321
    Linda Adams
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      What do you do for a story bible? I was a con, and there was a workshop for pantsers. Evidently a lot of us rely very heavily on memory for everything in the story (including me!), and the recommendation was to get it all on paper or computer. If you keep one, what do you keep in it?

      #219607
      Magic Seeker
      Moderator
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        I keep mine in a spiral-bound notebook, with one page per character or city or religion — whatever I plan to mention again. Nothing fancy, but if in the first chapter I say a character has blue eyes, loves to play bridge, and is terrified of the dark then I’d better not have her brown eyes staring at her poker cards at midnight while planning to walk home in chapter ten — unless she got brown contacts and changed a whole lot since chapter one.

        Happy writing,
        Deb Salisbury
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        #219608
        BonnieRS
        Participant
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          Truthfully, if I don’t know all that stuff cold, without thinking about it, then I don’t know my characters well enough to write the story.

          #219614
          Wandering Author
          Participant
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            Magic Seeker wrote:
            I keep mine in a spiral-bound notebook, with one page per character or city or religion — whatever I plan to mention again. Nothing fancy, but if in the first chapter I say a character has blue eyes, loves to play bridge, and is terrified of the dark then I’d better not have her brown eyes staring at her poker cards at midnight while planning to walk home in chapter ten — unless she got brown contacts and changed a whole lot since chapter one.

            That could make for a neat plot twist: she’s an impostor! B) Or, hey, she was replaced by careless aliens. Perhaps they don’t notice the same details we do…

            #219609
            JuneDrexler
            Participant
              0 Pirate Gold Coins

              I keep my notes in the OneNote program that comes with MS Office. I like it because it allows you to create folders and in each folder is just a blank page on which you can paste anything — images, words, imports from websites, etc.. You can just toss things anywhere you want on the page, as if it were a digital scrapbook, and I like that too.

              I like as little order as I can get away with in notes, so this is excellent for me.

              –June

              #219610
              Sbarret
              Participant
                0 Pirate Gold Coins

                I just started using Scrivener. So far so good! It allows me to keep everything together and write the story, all in the same app.

                #219611
                Ashe Elton Parker
                Moderator
                  38 Pirate Gold Coins

                  I’m in the process of learning how to write information pertinent to my stories down. Not having a great deal of success with it yet. It’s the little bits, the ones which are easy for me to keep in my head and remember–detail things. Big-picture things I’m better at writing out.

                  Ashe Elton Parker
                  "Just love me, fear me, do as I say, and I will be your slave." ~ David Bowie as Jareth in Labyrinth
                  ~*~
                  Member since 1998.
                  ~*~
                  #219612
                  Wandering Author
                  Participant
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                    I’ve been thinking about this question, since I don’t have a single answer. Rather, my answer is to suit the solution to the story I’m writing. My memory is my primary resource in all cases, but if I need to keep track of information, it will vary from story to story. For example, in one story, I deal with enough amounts of money (in an invented world) that I have a chart to keep track of how many silver pieces equal one gold piece, etc. For other stories, I’ll keep notes of the questions I asked to get into characters’ heads. I haven’t found any one system that works for all stories.

                    As for software, well, I do like RightNote, and Tomboy Notes, and NoteFrog – but, again, each has it’s place. In some cases, my notes are all in a single HTML page, with links to various sections, so I can load it up in my browser in a hurry. (The chart with relative values of money comes to mind.)

                    #219627
                    Linda Adams
                    Participant
                      0 Pirate Gold Coins

                      That’s one of the challenges for me. I’m not very good with details, so it’s easy for me to get overwhelmed by trying to track any of them. Yet, yesterday, as I writing, I referenced a surfboard the character owns and had used in an earlier chapter, and I had to go back to see what color I had made it.

                      #219628
                      Linda Adams
                      Participant
                        0 Pirate Gold Coins

                        I’m still working out what the heck will work for me. I get the value of not having to remember everything, because I have had things — usually small details — that I have forgotten and needed to reference. It’s not fun scrolling back through the story trying to find the single reference to it. I finally started using a style sheet because it was too hard trying to remember all the character and place names, especially the ones that didn’t get used often but were needed for world building.

                        But I also know I won’t use a standard story bible, so I’ve been experimenting with a visual one. I ended up having to start by doing layouts of some of the setting to make sure I was clear on what it was, since I’ve gotten consistent comments about setting issues. I do them in PowerPoint, which I know sounds like it would be time consuming. But I’m a PowerPoint speed demon — most of my time is finding out the information!

                        #219620
                        jhmcmullen
                        Participant
                          0 Pirate Gold Coins
                          BonnieRS wrote:
                          Truthfully, if I don’t know all that stuff cold, without thinking about it, then I don’t know my characters well enough to write the story.

                          I used to think that, but then my memory went south. :)

                          I keep a lot of details in a dataabse. (A free one.) I make stuff up as I’m writing: this sounds good where that didn’t. Now, I’ve never gotten to the point where my male human leper with claustrophobia has become a female werewolf with agoraphobia, but generally what stays consistent in my head is emotional reasons for doing things. She hates her father, he is afraid of getting hurt, that sort of thing rather than eye colour. So I write it down, and if the new eye colour is better for some reason, I go back and change it.

                          But I also look at changes like that for impact on the character and the story. Changing eye colour might not matter (though it might), but changing gender or handedness might, or changing birthplace from a hip place to the outsider spot would. So generally, when I discover that the new detail is in conflict with the old detail, there’s a momentary consult: what sort of this would this affect?

                          If it’s none, either new or old will do.

                          If it’s minor, I change it immediately because I’ll forget otherwise.

                          If it’s major, I put it down on my to-be-done list.

                          Great at theory, terrible at practice.

                          #219613
                          Michael E. Walston
                          Participant
                            0 Pirate Gold Coins

                            Some of my “story bible” stuff comes out in the first draft, and has to be cut or severely edited. When I’m first inventing a story background I sometimes tend to do it on the fly.

                            For example, this or that character might say to another, “You know, Joe, it’s pretty cool how magic works reliably inside the borders of the TransDoodie Empire. But here in the Terran Confederacy? Not so much.”

                            To which Joe might reply, “You think that’s cool, Dave? Really? It sucks, man! And it’s really effed up how our advanced weaponry doesn’t work in TransDoodie Territory, you know?”

                            Then Dave might airily respond, “Well, no biggie. We’re a benevolent enlightened society, you know? It’s not like we’d ever try to conquer the TransDoodians.”

                            And Joe might retort, “Well what about the Cockamamie Cluster Regime, huh? Those suckers aren’t so enlightened!”

                            And so on and so forth.

                            Like I say–a lot of that stuff has to be cut or heavily edited…

                            #219807
                            Ashe Elton Parker
                            Moderator
                              38 Pirate Gold Coins

                              ROFLMAO re TransDoodie Territory.

                              Ashe Elton Parker
                              "Just love me, fear me, do as I say, and I will be your slave." ~ David Bowie as Jareth in Labyrinth
                              ~*~
                              Member since 1998.
                              ~*~
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