Story Bible gathers the core elements of your story in one place so that you and Sudowrite’s AI can reference them as you develop 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, Scenes, and Prose Generation in Draft.
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 Prose Generation in Draft.
Synopsis:
The generation of Synopsis is informed by both Braindump and Genre.
The Synopsis influences the generation of Characters, Worldbuilding, Outline, and Scenes.
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, Scenes, and Draft.
Worldbuilding:
Worldbuilding is influenced by the Synopsis, when generating random Worldbuilding elements.
Meanwhile, Worldbuilding directly informs your story’s Outline, Scenes, and Prose Generation in Draft.
Outline:
Outline is influenced by Genre, Synopsis, Characters, and Worldbuilding.
Meanwhile, Outline directly informs Scene generation.
Scenes:
Scene generation considers the most Story Bible context, taking into account Genre, Style, Synopsis, Outline, Characters, and Worldbuilding.
Scenes directly influence Prose Generation in Draft.
Draft:
When generating chapter prose, the Draft tool is informed by Style, Genre, Characters, Worldbuilding, and Scenes.
<aside> 📌 Note: Scene and Prose Generation (in Draft) will only look at explicitly mentioned Characters and Worldbuilding elements.
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good news: You don't have to stress out about your brain dump. You can put absolutely anything you want in this field, but here are a few pointers on what you may want to include to get the most out of it:.
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. It’s part elevator pitch, part “everything I know for sure.”
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 picture the AI will have of 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’s generated by Sudowrite. Rather than jotting down a literal genre, we recommend you unpack some of the themes and thematic elements you’re looking for in your story.
<aside> ✏️ Examples
<aside> ✨ Pro-tip! Is the AI writing romance that’s a little tired? Change it to friends to lovers romance, or small town cozy romance, or avoid the term romance altogether. In general, you’ll get the best (least tropey) results if you can unpack the thematic elements you’re actually looking for.
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Genre is filled in manually, and thus is not informed by any other Story Bible fields. Meanwhile, the Genre influences Synopsis, Outline, Scenes, and Prose Generation (in Draft).
Style affects the tone, word choice, and sentence structure that Sudowrite uses anywhere the Style is included. What you put here has the most significant style influence on Prose written with Draft or the Write button.
<aside> ✏️ Examples
</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.
