I was just reading one of the original Star Trek Series Bibles. It's actually called the “Writer's Guide” and was a, well, a guide for new writers who were interested in writing a Star Trek script. It's most interesting!

Being very interested in fiction and writing for many years, I'm a bit ashamed that I've never read any series bibles before. I've seen references to them here and there, but never tried to track down any series bibles.

I've written my own series bible, sort of, for my first comic, Typical Strange. It came together slowly, over the course of a couple years, and was mostly notes about which characters had been working together for years, where they worked (in a video store, or nearby mall, or pizza place), and what kind of general relationship they had with each other.

I also had some elaborate notes about one character “coming back to town” early in the series, and a few other little details because there were stories I wanted to do down the road that filled in the blanks of where they'd been during those lost years…I wanted to make sure there was space for that stuff and it would make sense. That probably wasn't necessary now that most of those stories have been told in the comic and I've seen that it was easy enough to say there was a lost period of time. Actually, that preplanning mostly showed up in the animation I made before the comic - in the comic I skipped all that stuff and just introduced the backstory things when it was time, and it worked out fine.

Anyway, that's not the point!

A series bible is handy for keeping track of the parameters of your story and characters. It's not 100 percent NECESSARY - I read that Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul didn't have series bibles. And for most of us, it's just one of us in charge of the characters and world, so we can keep track of that stuff however we want. We can have it in our own minds what can and can't happen with our characters and our worlds.

I found that to be the most useful thing about planning ahead - I was more solid about what the tones of the stories would be, and what was open to changing and what would be BIG changes that would have to come later in the series if ever, and what things would NEVER change.

The nice thing about being the only one in charge is that these rules are only as binding as we want them to be. If I want to do a serious dramatic episode, or action thriller in my comedy series, or a non-canon Halloween issue, or suddenly have a meta story where the characters know they're in a comic and talk to ME in the comic, I can do it. I can bend or break the rules as I see fit.

My rules about what can't happen in both of my ongoing comics are mostly about relationships and how much they can change or not change during a normal story. Relationships might have big changes, but I know which changes are only for very big turning points in the series. In Kaiju Valentine i'm now building out my story world in order to answer some basic questions about some of the dimension-travelling stuff and other details that have been going on.

Do you have a “story bible” or “series bible” and rules about what can and can't happen in your comic? How flexible are they?

See you next time!


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