Building a Story Bible: Export Your Planning as a PDF or Web Page
The Story Bible is a single document that gathers your planning for a book. Use it as a reference while you revise, or print it for a copy you can keep beside your desk.
What the Story Bible contains
The Story Bible includes:
- The outline: every chapter, with what happens in it.
- Plot lines: each plot line, beat by beat.
- Codex sheets: one sheet for each codex entry, with its details, its ties to other entries, its facts, and the chapters where it is named.
- The timeline: your events, in story order and in the book's order.
- Threads: the things you have set up that may need paying off.
- Open story findings: the problems the Story workspace has flagged that you have not yet marked as intended.
The document reflects the book as it is when you save it. If you change your planning afterwards, save a new copy.
Save a Story Bible
1. Open the book in Pendrilo Studio.
2. Choose Book → Save Story Bible….
3. Choose Typeset PDF or Web page.
4. Choose where to save the file.
The file opens as soon as it is saved.
Choose a format
A Typeset PDF is laid out like a printed document. It is the better choice for printing or for reading on a tablet.
A Web page is a single page you can open in any browser. It is quick to search with the browser's find command.
Check the open findings before you save
The Story workspace checks your events, facts and threads against each other. Its checks include:
- two facts about the same thing that disagree;
- events whose dates and "happens before" links don't match;
- links to chapters or entries you have deleted;
- threads that are never paid off;
- quoted sentences that are no longer in their chapter.
Open findings appear in the Story Bible. If a finding is intended, click This Is Meant… in the Story workspace and say why. It then no longer counts as an open finding. Resolve or mark findings before you save if you want a clean document.
Keep your copies organised
Pendrilo does not save the Story Bible into the book file. Each export is a separate file, so give each one a clear name, such as the book's title and the date. Save a new copy when your planning has changed significantly, and keep older copies if you want to see how the plan developed.