Story Bible gathers the core elements of your story in one place so that you and Sudowrite’s AI can reference them as you expand upon your work. As a feature, it has two purposes:
Each project on Sudowrite has its own Story Bible, and it can be toggled on or off depending on just how you like to work.
Working with Story Bible lets you build a long-form narrative from just the seed of an idea. You’ll be guided through the various stages of writing a novel, from synopsis to outline to fully-realized scenes.
Like any other Sudowrite tool, the resulting story is only as good as the writer directing it. Think of it like an improv act: pay attention to what Story Bible writes, then edit and respond with words that are true to your vision. In the end, you will have a first draft of scenes that you can develop further.
You’ll find your Story Bible in the left bar of your Project, beneath your document list.
Story Bible works a little differently from other parts of Sudowrite. Here are the basics:
A common question when it comes to Story Bible is: Which boxes or steps of Story Bible influence other steps of the process. It’s a little complicated, but here’s an explanation. (Don’t worry, you won’t be quizzed on this, and you don’t need to remember it to get great results!)
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Braindump:
This is the starting point of Story Bible, where you’ll capture your initial ideas for the story. It’s filled in manually, and since it can’t be generated it is not influenced by any of the other fields.
Braindump directly influences the generation of Synopsis. Otherwise, if the Synopsis is never filled in or generated, fields that are typically influenced by Synopsis will defer instead to the Braindump.
Genre:
Genre is filled in manually, and thus is not informed by any other Story Bible fields.
Meanwhile, the Genre influences Synopsis, Outline, Beats, and Chapter Generator.
Style:
Style is filled in manually—or by using the Match My Style feature—and is not informed by any other Story Bible fields.
Style directly influences both Beat and Chapter generation.
Synopsis:
The generation of Synopsis is informed by both Braindump and Genre.
The Synopsis influences the generation of Characters, Worldbuilding, Outline, and Beats.
As mentioned previously, in the event the Synopsis field is empty, the fields that rely on Synopsis would instead defer to the Braindump.
Characters:
Characters are generated based on the Synopsis.
Meanwhile, Characters directly influences the generation of your story’s Outline, Beats, and Chapter Generator.
Worldbuilding:
Worldbuilding is influenced by the Synopsis, when generating random Worldbuilding elements.
Meanwhile, Worldbuilding directly informs your story’s Outline, Beats, and Chapter Generator.
Outline:
Outline is influenced by Genre, Synopsis, Characters, and Worldbuilding.
Meanwhile, Outline directly informs Beat generation.
Beats:
Beat generation considers the most Story Bible context, taking into account Genre, Style, Synopsis, Outline, Characters, and Worldbuilding.
Beats directly influence the Chapter Generator.
Chapter Generator:
When generating chapter prose, the Chapter Generator is informed by Style, Genre, Characters, Worldbuilding, and Beats.
<aside> 📌 Note: Beats and Chapter Generator will only look at explicitly mentioned Characters and Worldbuilding elements.
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You can’t bake a cake without ingredients.
In this case, the cake is your novel and the ingredients are your Braindump, Genre, Style, Synopsis, Characters, and Outline. You’re the baker, and Story Bible is like a junior baker helping you out. This is not the best analogy… we probably should have asked Sudowrite for help.
In any event, for each of these “ingredients,” Story Bible can make suggestions or you can do it yourself. Let’s walk through how it works. No more (bad) analogies, promise.
Imagine that you’re meeting with another writer who will collaborate with you on your story.
You’re meeting them for the first time, and they have zero context. The Braindump section is what you’d tell this writer in order to introduce them to the core elements on your story.
This could be a sentence, a paragraph, a snippet of a scene, or any free-form passage of text. The more information you put in Braindump, the better the AI will understand your vision.
We recommend writing at least a few hundred words here. You can always revise Braindump later as story elements change.
<aside> 🧠 Braindump directly influences the generation of Synopsis. Otherwise, if the Synopsis is never filled in or generated, fields that are typically informed by Synopsis will defer to the Braindump.
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This is where you specify the genre of the story you’re writing, which affects the tropes, tone, and style of the outlines and prose that is generated.
<aside> ✏️ Examples
<aside> ✨ Pro-tip! Is the AI writing romance that’s a little too mushy? Change it to romantic, or avoid it altogether. In general, expanding upon or changing out your genres can help the AI get away from overly tropey writing.
</aside>
Genre is filled in manually, and thus is not informed by any other Story Bible fields. Meanwhile, the Genre influences Synopsis, Outline, Beats, and Chapter Generator.
Style affects the tone, word choice, and sentence structure the Story Bible uses. What you put here has the most influence on Prose.
<aside> ✏️ Examples
<aside> ✨ Pro-tip! While not necessary, Sudowrite experts recommend tweaking both your Genre and Style boxes in advance of generating a particular chapter, so that you can really dial-in a specific tone. Style in particular has a big impact on prose.
</aside>
Style is filled in manually—or by using the Match My Style feature—and is not informed by any other Story Bible fields. Style directly influences both Beat and Chapter generation.
Synopsis establishes the characters, their goals, the central conflict, how your story begins and how it ends. It also conveys your story's tone, themes, and unique elements.
To tell Story Bible to create your Synopsis, click the Generate button.
If your Braindump is missing crucial elements, Story Bible will fill in the blanks to create the Synopsis here. So be sure to include anything of vital importance to your story in the Braindump!
Once Story Bible has generated your Synopsis, you’ll likely want to make changes. These changes can be small, like changing a character name or setting, or big, like restructuring the entire ending. As with Braindump, it’s good to provide as much detail as you can in your Synopsis, because the AI will use this information later on in other sections.
There are two ways to make these changes:
Do this by editing the text of your Synopsis directly in the text box.
You’ll see a “Rewrite Synopsis” box beneath the main Synopsis text box. Use this space to offer the AI some guidance on rewriting your synopsis, the same way you might give a junior writer feedback.
Once you’ve typed the changes you want made, just click the Rewrite button.
<aside> 🕓 QUICK TIP
Use the Clock icon to access this section’s History and see past versions of your Synopsis.
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<aside> ✏️ Rewrite Examples
The generation of Synopsis is informed by both Braindump and Genre. The Synopsis influences the generation of Characters, Worldbuilding, Outline, and Beats. As mentioned previously, in the event the Synopsis field is empty, the fields that rely on Synopsis would instead defer to the Braindump.
