How to Audio Drama: Your (First) Story Bible

Last updated on August 10th, 2020

You have your team. You have your plot. Now, what you need is your anchor, your holy grail, your guiding light as you start putting pen to paper. It’s time for the very, very important step that you will either love or loathe.

It’s time to talk about your story bible.

Outliners, rejoice. Write-as-you go folks, don’t worry. Story bibles are a great, important tool, adaptable to any kind of writing.

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What is a story bible?

Story bibles are tools used primarily by TV writers. They’re an assemblage of everything you might need to reference as you write and develop–and, if they’re made well, they can help inform your directing, editing, sound design, marketing, and every other step of production.

Story bibles should focus on a few key things: facts, tone, and inspiration. At its most basic, your story bible should be your reference for things like character names, important dates, location names, etc.–the nitty gritty story facts that you’re likely to forget. You should be able to search a term or name and be able to find everything you’d need to know about that thing. At a second level, your story bible should root you in how your story feels. Your story bible should weave your show’s inspirations and vibe implicitly in design and explicitly in specific sections. On a third level, your story bible should excite you–and your future actors, sponsors, and more.

When you first write your story bible, though, think about it as a document for just yourself and your team. We’ll talk about your second story bible, the one for other people to see, much later. Every detail should be recorded, no spoiler left unspoiled. Your completed story bible will be a text document, preferably with a table of contents, and necessarily something that can be updated over and over again. A story bible is not done until your entire project is done. You and your team will be adding to your story bible over and over, adding necessary information as you go. I recommend a Google Drive document, given how convenient they are for collaboration and updates. However, your team might benefit more from a Word doc, a PowerPoint, a design-heavy PDF, an actual physical scrapbook or binder.

In order to best explain how your story bible should work and feel, I’ll be using the story bible for Stranger Things–or, as it was called here, Montauk. Yes, the Stranger Things story bible is something you can just access. And if you need more inspiration, you can find plenty of other examples over at Screencraft. One important thing to note, though, is that this story bible was made specifically to pitch the series to networks. You should make a version of your story bible meant with others in mind, but we’ll talk about that later. Your first story bible should be detail-heavy, and include as much or as little design work as you see fit.

How to make your story bible

Your cover page

Because the cover page of your story bible is the first thing anyone will see, you want it to be clear–not just in content, but in tone. The cover for the Stranger Things story bible asserts the concept of the show immediately, if you’re equipped with the cultural knowledge of someone aware of 80s pop culture aesthetics in the U.S. The story bible is made to look not like a reference or pitch document, but an actual horror paperback from the 80s, probably for a young adult audience.

Your story bible does not have to go this hard, but it should accomplish some of the same goals. The most prominent part of your cover page should be your project’s title. A subtitle is a quick way to convey a great deal of your concept: here, the subtitle reads, “An epic tale of sci-fi horror,” but yours could read, “A fantasy rom-com audio drama” or “A podcast space opera retelling of Macbeth.” (If you’re making either of these shows, hit me up. I wanna listen.) You should include the names of everyone contributing to your story bible, and I also recommend writing the date your story bible was last updated. This will make sure you always know if you’re referencing the most current information.

Introduction

Next, you need an introduction to your actual project. The first line here explains the story’s basic format, originally pitched as an eight episode mini-series with hour-long episodes. Aim to do the same with your audio drama. How many episodes are you anticipating? How many seasons? About how long do you expect your episodes to run?

Give a brief summary of your concept, but weave in plenty of evocative language and references to your inspirations. In its introduction, the Stranger Things story bible explains the show as “a marriage of human drama and supernatural fear.” Its inspirations cite Spielberg and King, but also E.T., Jaws, Poltergeist, IT, and Stand By Me.

From its introduction alone, the story bible telegraphs the storytelling conventions, aesthetic, and archetypes that will permeate the show. Your story bible’s introduction should do the same, reminding you of the fundamental core of your audio drama. You should be able to reference your story bible and remember not just what your audio drama is trying to say, but how it’s saying it.

Now, it’s time to go deeper. What is the core mystery or conflict driving your plot? It’s time for your second chunk of introduction: introducing your big antagonist.

Again, focusing on tone, give some details about the core conflict in your story. Use this to help build out your world. How do people talk about this antagonistic force? Do people talk about it? What makes it nefarious, and what makes it a threat?

The next step is explaining your story in full. How do your inspirations, preliminary concept, and antagonist come together to create your narrative?

Because your first copy of the story bible is for you, go into as much detail as possible. You can use this entire section as your outline; it doesn’t need to be written in prose, and can absolutely be written as a bulleted list. It only needs to make sense and be helpful for you as you write. You can go episode by episode, story beat by story beat, or if you’re not so much a planner, you can just explain where the story starts. Just be sure to update this section as you go.

Structure

Here, the story bible for Stranger Things explains its typical three-act structure, inspired by the structures of classic 80s sci-fi, horror, and adventure films. This is the first major difference between a story bible for a TV show and a story bible for an audio drama. In this section, you can focus on your acts, but you should also focus on the the actual structure of your episodes and release schedule.

Some audio dramas start right into the action, but some have wraparound narration first–things like, “[Title] is a serialized audio drama meant for adults,” for instance. Some audio dramas deliver their ads at the top of their episode or during a pause in the middle, aka the midroll. Some audio dramas release weekly, biweekly, monthly; some audio dramas have mid-season or between-season hiatuses. You don’t have to plan this all out perfectly write now, but record whatever information you do know. As with everything else in your story bible, update as you go.

Tone and style

The tone and style for Stranger Things is evident from the get-go, but it’s always good to explain things in more words instead of relying too heavily on aesthetics–especially if you didn’t have a designer for your story bible, which I’m assuming this team did.

Here, explain the feel of your audio drama–but focus in on how you want your audio drama to sound like versus look like, given. How much sound design are you anticipating? Will your audio drama use background music, and if so, what will that sound like? How experimental do you want your sound design to get? Explain your ideal soundscape here, then explain the emotional tone of your audio drama. Is your story light and comedic, dark and dramatic, or does it weave between the two? Should listeners expect to be relaxed, enchanted, excited, or afraid when they listen?

This section is a handy place to include more details on what you’re pulling from your inspirations. If you’re someone who’s visually driven like me, include some images that can help you place tone. If you’re someone who just needs a quick reminder or two to help you steer a scene or character, you can jot quick notes like “Janice from Mean Girls” or “That arcade dream sequence from Mr. Robot with the Pixies song.”

Characters

Likely to be one of your meatiest sections, you want to list out every recurring or otherwise important character in this section.

Give as much detail on your characters as needed. Write out a paragraph, or just jot down their identifying traits in a bulleted list. Because this example story bible is meant as a pitch document, it doesn’t have much of the boring rote facts your story bible will need. Include the character’s age, birthday, favorite foods and smells and sounds, Myers-Briggs personality, Hogwarts house, astrological natal chart, where they come down on the trolley problem, anything else that will help you remember the facts about this character and how they behave.

You don’t need to be this thorough with every character–but more detail never hurts. Make sure that before you start writing scripts, you at least have a good description of your protagonist and antagonist here.

Other important details

The story bible for Stranger Things ends after its characters, but there’s going to be plenty more you’ll need to reference when writing. Here’s a list of other sections you may want to include:

• Setting details, macro to micro
• A timeline of events
• A glossary
• Research materials you’ve amassed
• Potential casting ideas
• Lists of which characters know which information, and which characters don’t
• Lists of underlying motives
• Lists of things to foreshadow for coming seasons or episodes

Remember that your story bible should be everything you and your team need to write scripts. It should be a reference. It should be an inspiration. And it should be a living document.

Updating your story bible

While you are writing, you should be periodically updating your story bible. It isn’t a useful document if it isn’t consistently filled with new information. Get into the practice of updating your story bible after each script you write, or slot a time each week to make sure it’s up to date.

And then, once you’re done with your first season, save a copy of your story bible and label it as the season one version. Then, keep creating on the original. Do the same after each season or other big chunk of writing. Save an archive of story bibles, but keep the document evolving for as long as you write.

Let me get sentimental for a moment. As of writing this article, I’m halfway through season 2 of my audio drama’s scripts. I have been bad at my own advice in keeping my story bible, and half of the reason is because I already look at it with such love and nostalgia. There’s such excitement for concept in those pages. There’s ambition and energy and love. There’s so many things that have changed for the better as we wrote and produced. Story bibles aren’t just a reference guide if you do them right. They’re also a keepsake, a reminder of your early-project joy and vigor. Give your story bible as much love as you can, and you’ll always have a reminder of why you’re doing what you do.

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How to Audio Drama is our weekly column documenting every piece of information you’d need to start your own audio drama (aka fiction podcast). The series can be read in full, or read volume by volume. You can use our table of contents to find each How to Audio Drama installment, and you can submit questions to our monthly How to Audio Drama advice column.