One story bible, shared by every book in your series

Where series start to slip

Book by book, you add names, places, alliances and rules. By book three, those facts are scattered between your memory, a spreadsheet and old drafts. A careful reader finds the contradiction you missed, and tells you about it in a review.

Keep the series in one project

• One series bible. Your characters, places, factions, magic systems and objects sit in one place, ready for every book.
• Each entry knows where it starts. Every entry records the scene where it first appears, in any book of the series.
• Facts that change over time. If a character leaves a faction in book one, the bible keeps a note of when.
• Switch books in the sidebar. With “New book”, the next volume joins the same series.
• Start with one book. Begin with a single book if you like. You can turn it into a series later, and turn it back again, with nothing else shifting.

An example: The Salt Maps

We wrote a sample science-fantasy novel, The Salt Maps, to show this in action. It is book one of a series, and its bible holds one clear rule: every tide-song costs the singer one memory. Then, in chapter 4, Nadia sings the tide and loses nothing. Journzy flags the scene and quotes the rule from the bible.

• The skiff crosses the Saltwaste in three days without recharging, though one charge lasts one day.
• Iru travels dry for a week, but the velkar must go into water once a day.
• The Spine gets called “an afternoon's walk” from Port Velkar. The place entry and the map both say four days on foot.
• In chapter 5, someone still calls Okon “Warden”. Okon left the Wardens in chapter 3.

A flag can mark something deliberate. The Regent puts Landfall 400 years ago. The Wardens' records say 312. She is lying, and she means to. The author clicks “Keep as written”, and the last word is hers.

Keeping a world together

A fantasy or science fiction series asks for more than a cast of characters. Journzy's worldbuilding gives your cultures, religions, magic systems, species, languages and factions entries you can shape to fit, and its interactive maps nest inside each other. Have a look at the worldbuilding page.

Where to begin

1. Create a series project, or turn the book you already have into one.
2. Import your manuscripts, or start writing book one.
3. Put what you already know into the bible: the characters, the places, the rules.
4. On the Author plan, each scene you save is compared with the bible, and each flag comes back to you for a decision.

Frequently asked questions

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