A Series Bible is a master container that holds the world-building shared by every book in a series — your characters, settings and entities (lore) — all in one place, with version tracking built in. Think of it as the canonical record of your world that sits above the individual books.

When to use a Series Bible

Create a Series Bible whenever you plan more than one book in the same world: a trilogy, an ongoing saga, or sequels, prequels and spin-offs. If you only ever expect to write a single standalone story, you don't need one — but the moment a second book in the same world is on the horizon, a Series Bible saves you from rebuilding characters and places from scratch.

What it holds

The Bible stores the canonical, original versions of every shared asset:

• Characters — the people of your world, with their physical identity, outfits and status.
• Settings — the places your stories happen in.
• Entities (lore) — organizations, objects, technology and other world-building.

You can read more about building each of these in Creating characters, settings & entities.

How the Bible and your books relate

The Bible is the source of truth, but individual books don't automatically contain every character in it. That keeps each book's roster clean and relevant to the story you're actually telling.

To use a Bible asset in a specific book, you cast it into that book. Casting pulls a localized copy into the book's roster, which you can then freely edit — change a description, adjust an alignment, swap a portrait — without touching the canonical original in the Bible. This is what keeps continuity intact: the Bible stays stable while each book carries its own tailored version.

Because casted copies can be edited per book, an asset naturally evolves over a series. BookZeta tracks that lineage so you always know which iteration is which. See Versioning assets across books for how to pick the right version when you bring an asset into a new book.

Getting started

1. From the Writer dashboard, choose New Series. BookZeta automatically provisions a Series Bible for it.
2. Add your characters and settings directly in the Bible.
3. When you create a new story project, link it to the series. Once linked, the story inherits access to the Bible — it appears in the right-hand panel in Graphic Mode, or the lower-left panel in Writer Mode.
4. Cast the assets you need into each book as you write.

Tips

• Build out a character or setting once in the Bible and reuse it everywhere — you'll never re-describe your hero from scratch.
• Keep the Bible itself as your "clean" reference. Make story-specific tweaks in the casted copies inside each book.
• Planning a follow-up? You can start a sequel, prequel or spin-off that inherits the right assets automatically.

Common pitfalls

• Editing in the wrong place. Changes you want to apply only to one book belong in that book's casted copy, not the Bible. Editing the Bible changes your canonical original.
• Forgetting to cast. A book won't show a Bible character until you cast it in. If a character seems "missing" from a project, cast them from the Bible first.
• Disconnecting a story. You can unassign a story from its series in Project Settings, but that converts it back to a standalone project and severs its link to the Bible.