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:
When Story Bible is toggled on, the individual Story Bible fields will be displayed beneath the prose section of your document.
Story Bible is persistent—that means as you jump from document to document in your left Project management bar, the same Story Bible contents will remain visible beneath the prose section. (Only the document’s body will be toggled.)
Click the (❓) icons for details and examples of how exactly a given section of the Story Bible works. This will give you context on what it influences down the line in regards to generation.
Any section can be manually populated to any degree—but some sections also feature a Generate button. Click the Generate button and Story Bible will make a suggestion for that section. You can always revise or rewrite these generations to your liking.
As an alternative to manually editing the generation, whenever you see a Rewrite field, you can use that to give Story Bible specific instructions on how you’d like it to modify the generation you’d produced.
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 informs the generation of Synopsis and Scene beats (you’ll hear more about these later). In the future, other parts of Story Bible may use the information you put in Braindump.
</aside>
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>
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>
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.
<aside> 🕓 QUICK TIP
Use the Clock icon to access this section’s History and see past versions of your Synopsis.
</aside>
<aside> ✏️ Rewrite Examples
Once you’ve typed the changes you want made, just click the Rewrite button.
The Characters section is where you define the characters in your story. This affects how they’re described, how their dialogue is written, what choices they make, and how they interact with each other.
To tell Story Bible to create your Characters, click the Generate button.
When you generate characters, Story Bible will take what you’ve written in your synopsis and use it to generate six main characters for your story. Characters mentioned in your synopsis will be included, along with a brief description of who they are and their motivations. If you don’t mention any specific characters in your synopsis, or only mention a few, Story Bible will create additional characters for your consideration.
You can also write this section manually, but be sure to follow the same format as Story Bible: Character Name: Description .
You’ll almost definitely want to customize your Characters list to get it just right. This could be as simple as changing a character’s name, or as extensive as completely rewriting their description (or introducing relationships!). For example, you can add detail about who a character is, their backstory, and what motivates their actions in the story. Rich and detailed character descriptions will help Story Bible do a better job expanding upon your story according to your vision for it.
There are two ways to make changes to characters:
Do this by editing Characters directly in the text box. Make sure that you follow the format of Character Name: Description otherwise the AI might not be able to recognize the character. Character Names should always begin a paragraph, followed by a colon. E.g., Colonel Greg “Little Stinker” Anderson:
You’ll see “Rewrite Characters” beneath the main Characters text box. Use this to give the AI instructions for rewriting your characters, the same way you might give a junior writer feedback. Ask for things like:
<aside> 🕓 QUICK TIP
Use the Clock icon to access this section’s History and see past versions of your Synopsis.
</aside>
<aside> ✏️ Examples
Once you’ve typed the changes you want made, click the Rewrite button.
The outline is where you tell Story Bible about the structure of your story.
You can have Story Bible generate an outline based on your synopsis, genre, and characters, or you can bring your own outline.
To tell Story Bible to suggest an Outline, click the Generate button.
After generating, make sure to read the text and either change or add to it so that it fits your vision. Just as with every section in Story Bible, the more specific you are, the better yours results will be.
If you are bringing your own outline, you must match the following format:
Act 1 - Introduction:
Chapter 1:
Chapter 2:
Chapter 3:
Act 2 - Rising Action:
Chapter 4:
Chapter 5:
<continue for rest of outline…>
As soon as you have appropriately formatted information in your Outline, you’ll get a small prompt beneath the outline box that looks like this.