Biblical Proportions: Guide to Developing the TV Series Bible
Be it for broadcast or online the mythical ‘Series Bible’ is a much cited but rarely clarified or defined cornerstone of episodic screen story-telling. The scale and scope of an episodic series demands a different development mechanic and paradigm than that of a feature film. Where the traditional Logline, Synopsis and Treatment can adequately serve a focused feature, the episodic series demands a greater depth of consideration if it is to sustain narratives and character archs over a long-form duration. Moreover, the ongoing series often involves a team of writers and directors who may change and evolve over time and require a central resource to guide and ensure coherence with the original concept.
Enter the Series Bible - a document package that details the scope, rules, concepts, themes, characters and parameters of the Story-World in which the series plays out in.
That all sounds well and good but as anyone who has ever gone looking for examples of series bibles can attest, the diversity, range and variation in what might constitute a series bible makes such examples very far from consistent. Unlike a screenplay lay-out, the series bible has no set form or format. Each bible for a series is in effect a direct response to the needs of the unique story-world. Thus the bible for a show like Battlestar Galactica is decidedly different to that of The Wire as the story-worlds of these two shows have very different demands. That said, there are consistencies to be found in how series bibles are assembled and the purposes they serve.
Before we can dig into a useful structure and makeup of the series bible it’s worth noting that different kinds of bibles may serve different purposes. Commonly there are two: the Pitch Bible - a document used to ‘sell’ the show to producers and financiers; and the Production Bible - which is more generally a compendium generated over time with the series documenting facts, plots and character elements to ensure that staff-writers have a reference for future episodes. The former is commonly submitted along with a pilot episode script to give a sense of where a series might head as it develops or to map out the larger narrative and episodic archs over a season. The later is something that develops over time with a long-running series as it is in production.
What I am proposing here is a more clearly defined third kind of series bible; the Development Bible. The purpose of this is for the bible to serve as an effective writing and project development tool. Certainly parts of the Dev Bible might become part of the pitch and indeed it may also serve to guide writers of a series into the future when a show is in production, but its primary purpose is to give the creator of the show a firm structure and platform to flesh out story-worlds, natural dynamics, characters and story-archs in a way that will feed the series scripts.
In specific, the dev bible structure proposed below is an attempt to deal with one of the more common issues writers new to series development (particular younger filmmakers whose headspace has more readily come from short and feature films) fall afoul of; that is the development of Plot or Story-Arch before Story-World. The Development Bible focuses on ensuring you don’t put the cart before the horse and go for Plot before you’ve established your World. A series has to be able to sustain and maintain drama over a long period of time as opposed to a feature film which generally has a single protagonist focused on the fulfilment of a singular goal in the tiny span of 2 hours. A series will often see several characters pursuing different goals, facing different problems, and being beset by new problems at different times. The Story World is therefore of primary importance as it provides the fuel to ensure that your show doesn’t run out of steam. If you create a world that is too confined, limited or lacking in natural dramatics then you will find your show will quickly collapse regardless of how intricate your plotting on interesting your characters. If however, you can construct a world beset with contradictions, conflicts and engaging potential problems in an authentic and considered way then you will have given your story a much bigger fuel tank.
Take the superb series Breaking Bad as an example. Whilst we may on the surface cite great performances, great characters and great plot as the backbone of the show; its real strength that drives and underpins all of these is the pressure-cooker of the Breaking Bad world. Before we think about Walt, Jesse and the tension of drug-deals lets consider the circumstance pressures the story-world applies from the very outset.
The story-world of Breaking Bad is one where teachers are paid poorly, a wholly capitalist privatised health system is fundamentally failing, and it is a theoretically libertarian society where great sums of citizens demand a drug that is illegal and in short supply. This is all elevated again by the visual, conceptual and geographical setting of the story-world; a city on the ‘frontier’, isolated, desolate, surrounded by deserts, in close proximity to the Mexican border. A place where American white suburbia collides head-on with the wilderness and the wildness of drug-cartels, illegal migrants and poverty. A place where the rationality of science sits side-by-side with a kind of pagan, tribal pecking order.
This is the carefully developed and specifically crafted story world of Breaking Bad; one packed with natural drama and plenty of fuel to sustain many stories and many plots over a long period of time. What serves to spark off the ‘plot’ in the pilot episode is a character and an event in the context of that world - a down on his luck scientist is diagnosed with cancer and his health insurance wont cover it. With this spark the powder-keg of the Breaking Bad story-world catches fire and burns hot and bright for multiple seasons.
This example illustrates the importance of the Story-World and the construction of a story-world pressure cooker. The parameters of the Development Bible outlined below are focused on ensuring you have a solid world in place, driven by concept, metaphor and natural drama, from which an engaging dramatic plot can organically emerge. Rather than the all too common world imposed artificially on a plot.
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Series Bible Development Guide
[click here to download the complete Series Bible Development Guide project as a ready-made Celtx document - or Right+Click save as. If your computer incorrectly renames the file to an .XML then simply rename the suffix back .celtx)]
1. LOGLINE
The logline is a short proactive statement that distills your series into focused pitch. The Logline should be less than 30 words and depict clearly the Protagonist, their Flaw, their Objective, and the Antagonist.
For example the logline for Breaking Bad might be something like:
“When a high school chemistry teacher, struggling to financially make ends meet, is diagnosed with cancer and health insurance that wont cover the cost of treatment, he turns to selling drugs and cooking crystal meth to secure a financial future for his family.”
2. SYNOPSIS
The Synopsis of your series is short document of less than 1 page (4-5 paragraphs) that summarises the world of the story, the major characters and the central tension.
3. FORMAT
The Format of your series encompasses a number of structural elements of your series. These include:
- The Length of episodes
- The Number of episodes
- The Structure of the episodes and their story archs
- The Genre of the series
- The Release pattern of episodes (how often and how spaced apart)
4. AUDIENCE
Here you should clearly define your target audience; by age, demographic or interests - sometimes around particular network, channel or medium. You may also take into consideration the audiences of other shows and aim your project to appeal to the same audience as a similar series, or one in the same style or genre.
5. SETTING
Setting details the time, place and period of your series - the Where and When. The length of this document can vary depending on the genre of the series. A SciFi drama for example may need detailed description of the setting where as a suburban drama in the present day may be relatively short.
6. WORLD + BACKGROUND
The World + Background section outlines the world of your series going beyond the Where and When to encompass the Why - the circumstances, rules and given principles of the world your story plays out in. Consider:
- The Events that have lead to the current ‘situation’
- The Backstory of the characters
- Social groupings and hierarchies
- Character and World Relationships
- Established Behaviours and Attitudes
- Rules that govern the Tone of the story (certain types of humour, language, inflections)
7. SERIES OUTLINE
The Series Outline is a self contained document of 1-2 pages that overviews character and narrative archs over the course of the series. Much like a feature-film Treatment it focuses on the major events and the journey of the protagonists.
8. CHARACTERS
The Characters section should list all your major characters and in 2-3 paragraphs for each, outline their personal characteristics, wants, needs, obstacles and flaws. It should also clearly indicate the relationships between characters.
9. MINOR CHARACTERS
The Minor Characters section is a listing of minor characters in the story with a brief sentence on who they are.
eg: “Mary - a aeroplane pilot and friend to Bob.”
10. KEY LOCATIONS
Key Locations lays out the central locations in the series, the recurring locations that are important to the characters and the world and the dominant locations where the story will play out.
This section should list the locations and provide a 1-2 paragraph description of each.
11. EPISODE STORY OUTLINES
The Episode Storylines provide a focused summary of the major plot archs for each episode showing both the storyline within each episode and how each episode contributes to any over-arching story line across the series.
Each Episode should be summarised in 2-4 paragraphs.
12. CREATORS STATEMENT
The Creators Statement is an opportunity to clearly and succinctly spell out the thematic and conceptual ideas and premise behind your series. What are the metaphors and philosophies embedded in your story? How do your characters reflect the questions you wish to explore? What are the underlying beliefs that drive the story?
13. LOOK AND FEEL
The Look + Feel section details the intended visual aesthetics of your series. What is the Style of the show, how will it appear to audiences? What are the techniques, colours, compositions, and visual influences on the series?
14. VISUAL REFERENCES
A visual gallery of images that provide a mood-board and visual guide to the aesthetic style of the show. Interiors, exteriors, tones, texture, style, costume and design. This may also include images and elements drawn from other productions or artists that ‘resonate’ with you as relevant or informative to your project.
15. GLOSSARY
Many episodic series take place in a world removed from our own. This may be because of a SciFi or Fantasy setting, or it may be due to jargon of a particular sub-culture (eg the Military or Prison)
In such cases it can be useful to compile a glossary of terms and terminology to inform the writing and development of the story and contribute to a consistent and authentic story world as the series progresses.
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DEVELOPMENT TOOLS
With this density of elements, information and contexts, the series Dev Bible can quickly become an unwieldy beast. As such it is important to keep organised and ensure your bible has structure and purpose in order to that it be useful to you as a tool, not an obstacle. In this regard there are a number of software and online tools tools that can help build, articulate and structure your dev bible.
Chief amongst these is CELTX which is a software screenwriting tool purpose-built for this kind of development. No other app on the market is better suited to the purpose of writing a series dev bible than Celtx.
A Celtx project document allows for a collection of discreet items to be collated in the Project Library dedicated to each of the major components that may make up your Series Development Bible. The SCRIPT and TEXT elements are perfect for writing each part and the Storyboard feature provides the perfect way to construct visual galleries of images that resonate with the project in regard to look and feel. Celtx can also hold folders of bookmarks and external documents (such as word files and PDFs) which may form part of your research. [the Celtx application wont cost you a cent and is not limited in any way)
Other tools that can be very useful in visualising and mapping your Story World are those that allow for mind-map structures and node-based elements linked together. particularly useful for planning character relationships. In this regard X-Mind provides a very powerful and free mind-mapping tool with a powerful feature set.
For visual brainstorming and developing visual references for your story-world Getty Moodstream is a fantastic online tool that draws upon the vast libraries of Getty Images (inc video and audio) to provide a real-time brainstorming system.
Lastly Evernote is the perfect online research tool that gathers and sorts links and references and provides a very capable system for annotating and making notes.
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CONCLUSION
The Dev Bible is a complex document but developing an engaging episodic series for TV or online is a complex undertaking; exponentially more complex and challenging that writing a feature film. However the point of the Development Bible is not to diligently complete each of the elements defined above; not all projects will necessarily need all elements, or else different shows from different genres will rely more heavily on some parts than others. Different story worlds require different information. The structure and set of elements above should be a guide to the kind of things that could comprise your bible to make it substantial and useful as a development tool.
That said there are certainly some elements that you should consider vital, a project may be doomed before it starts without a focused Logline and clear idea of intended audience, but if you stay focused on the Story-World first and foremost then great characters and great plot will quickly and organically follow.
