Tablets of Stone or DNA? TV series bibles

Abstract

Abstract The term ‘bible’ is applied loosely to a document setting out the essential elements of a screen narrative, usually a TV series but also a film (especially if it is complex or part of a franchise) or digital medium. Advice from published manuals, and information from professional writers suggest its use, form, purpose and meaning is both vaguely applied and little understood. Investigation of around 40 such bibles, plus another 90 historic sales documents, mostly from the United Kingdom, suggests a series bible can be defined as: A document (or documents) which propose(s) a screen idea, in ways which identify it as a unique story-world or narrative context sufficient to host new stories yet to be written. The term bible covers at least six different types of document: (A) a writer’s framework; (B) a sales document; (C) a re-definition of the elements after purchase; (D) a development tool; (E) a ‘codification’ or archive of story ‘case-law’; and (F) a sales document for the finished screen-text. The elements included vary in each, but the core items are usually concept, place, character and storyline examples. A bible may not actually be a document; it can for example be a wall-chart during development stages (D), or even a human expert in the series’ story history (E) – a ‘walking bible’. The question of how we are to view it, whether as a statement of the DNA (or essence) of a narrative yet to be produced, or as Tablets of Stone whose information is regarded as sacred, depends on how the bible is being used at the time, i.e. whether the Screen Idea Work Group is looking forward to a new series, or backward to ensure new ideas fit the understood template.