How I use #Scrivener for my series #Storybible @Scrivenerapp #amwriting #write

Livia Quinn's Storm Lake series Storybible

I offered this as part of my "Why You Should be Using Scrivener to pants, plot, revise, brainstorm or analyze your next novel." It's a bit more of an advanced tip though it's very easy to do once you understand the flexibility of the binder, labels, status and cork board.

If you write multiple series - or would like to - keeping track of books, how they relate, when they are scheduled, when they published, which series they were in can be challenging. Scrivener is so flexible and such a great organizer that it is perfect for doing story bibles. In this case, I have my greater series - Storm Lake - and under that umbrella I have a series set in each community around Storm Lake. So it’s my Storm Lake series bible.

I could have chosen to organize by community but I wanted to see the list of books and my progress in my ongoing plan. So this is more of a series tracker than my storybible, which I have for each individual series since they each have their own set of characters and premise.

Since the Destiny Paramortals are paranormal I gave that label the color purple and called it Paramortals. Each label (see on the right in the picture) is the name of a series and each status item a date when the book published, or I expect to publish. In the binder on the left I named each file with a code I use to tell me what series and in what order each book falls. SL6 PMS4 BIOTM is Storm Lake 6, Destiny Paramortals 4, Blame it on the Moon. You’ll notice on the index cards which are produced from the synopsis, I can add information like how much of the book is already written, 53k, 70k, etc.

This system helps when I am planning my writing and revision schedule for the year. I can also plop my finished .doc into a file inside each series folder. I can’t tell you how often that came in handy. I wish I'd thought of it back in in 2007 when I began using Scrivener.

As you can see not only is Scrivener flexible and organized but it creates a great visual. At a glance I can see all the purple Destiny books, Hot pink Under-Cover Knights (appropriate eh?), and blue Thunder Points.

Hope this gives you some ideas for your series bible or another way to let Scrivener work for you.

Livia