What goes in a series bible?
One section each for people, places, things, and the rules of the world, plus a line per book for what it changes. Add a fact the day you write it, not after the draft.
What belongs in it
A series bible holds every fact a later book could get wrong. That is more than the cast. A town's layout, who owns the sword now, how much the magic costs, and which of the brothers was told about the letter are all continuity, and each is the kind of thing a reader three books in will remember better than you do.
What a single-book profile does not need is time. Readers of book three remember book one, so every entry wants a note of when it became true.
Writing one book? Call it a story bible and leave the by-book fields empty.
Series bible template
| Role | What they are for in the series. |
|---|---|
| Appearance | What a reader would recognize them by. |
| Personality | How they behave when things go wrong. |
| Goals | What they are after in this book, and in the series. |
| Related to | Family, allies, enemies — and since when. |
| Birth year | So their age in any book is arithmetic, not memory. |
| Knows by book | What they have learned by the end of each volume. |
| First appearance | Book and chapter. |
| Location | Where it is, relative to places a reader already knows. |
|---|---|
| Description | What it is like to be there. |
| Significance | What happens there that could happen nowhere else. |
| Changes by book | What burned down, and when. |
| Description | What it looks like in a hand. |
|---|---|
| Origin | Where it came from. |
| Significance | Why the story needs it. |
| Held by | Who has it now. |
| Whereabouts by book | Who has it at the end of each volume. |
| Definition | What it is, in a sentence a new reader would follow. |
|---|---|
| Rules | What it can do, what it cannot, and what it costs. |
| Usage in the story | Where the plot leans on it. |
| Exceptions | Every time the story bent the rule, and in which book. |
| Title | And its place in reading order. |
|---|---|
| Time span | When it starts and ends in story time. |
| What changes | The facts that are different at the end of it. |
Copy it as plain text
SERIES BIBLE TEMPLATE People Role: Appearance: Personality: Goals: Related to: Birth year: Knows by book: First appearance: Places Location: Description: Significance: Changes by book: Items Description: Origin: Significance: Held by: Whereabouts by book: Concepts Definition: Rules: Usage in the story: Exceptions: Books Title: Time span: What changes:
Keeping it true
Add a fact when you write it. A bible filled in after the draft misses the small things. Readers write in about those. When the bible and a published book disagree, the book wins; correct the bible. The character details answer covers checking a new book against it.
In Tabularia
The first four sections are the four kinds of Sheets, field for field, so the template moves in without renaming anything. Keep every Book in one series manuscript and one set of sheets serves the whole series. The by-book fields go in each sheet's Notes for now; nothing yet records which book a fact belongs to.
Tabularia in brief
- What it is
- Tabularia is book-writing software for drafting, navigating, and revising a complete manuscript, on every device you write on.
- Price
- The Free plan includes the whole writing application, with no limit on how much you write. The Cloud plan adds backup, sync, sharing for review, and publishing for $18 a month, or $172.80 a year.
- Runs in
- A browser: Chrome 125+, Edge 125+, Firefox 140+, or Safari 18+. It installs as an app and keeps working on projects you have already opened while you are offline.
- Opens
- TXT, Markdown, RTF, HTML, DOCX, PDF, EPUB, Fountain, plus Scrivener, Obsidian, and novelWriter projects and Notion exports.
- Saves as
- HTML, DOCX, EPUB, PDF, Markdown, plain text, Fountain, or straight to a printer. The Cloud plan adds a Project archive of the whole project.
- Status
- Public Beta. This page was last checked on September 25, 2026.
Try it on your own manuscript
Nothing is metered: as many projects as you like at any length, the outline and minimap to move through them, drafts and markup mode for revising, snapshots to return to, sheets and timelines beside the page, and export to DOCX, PDF, EPUB, HTML, Markdown, plain text and Fountain. Bring in what you have already written and read it back as a book.
The Cloud plan is $18 a month, or $172.80 a year, and adds backup, sync across your devices, sharing a manuscript for review, and publishing your work as a web page — the readers and collaborators you invite do not need a paid account of their own. Tabularia is in Public Beta and shipping steadily; the release notes record what has landed.