Septangular
Chapter 5
Story Bible
The Story Bible keeps what you need to know about the story’s world: an entry for each character, place and thing, in categories of your own, read and written beside the book.
Entries and categories
The Story Bible’s sidebar lists its entries by category, each category in alphabetical order and each entry in it the same. Categories are whatever your book needs: Characters, Places and Things to start with, then Ships, Families, Regiments, or anything else. A category is there for as long as it has entries in it.
Hover over an entry to see its other names. Click it to open it in the editor.
Folding categories
Click a category’s name to fold its entries away; a folded category shows how many entries it holds. Click it again to open it. Option-click any category to fold or open every one at once, or use the fold button beside + at the top of the sidebar, which offers Collapse All Sections and Expand All Sections.
As you scroll, the Story Bible’s title and the name of the category you’re in stay at the top of the sidebar.
Adding an entry
To add an entry, click + at the top of the Story Bible’s sidebar, or choose File → New Story Bible Entry… from anywhere in the window. To add one to a particular category, right-click an entry in it and choose New Entry in and the category’s name. The form has three fields:
| Field | What to put |
|---|---|
| Name | The entry’s name, as the story writes it: “Elizabeth Bennet”, “Pemberley”. It can’t be empty. |
| Category | One of the bible’s categories (or, while it has none, Characters, Places or Things), or New Category…, which asks for the new category’s name. |
| Other names | Optional: the other names the story uses for it, separated by commas, such as “Lizzy, Miss Eliza Bennet”. See Other names. |
Click Create Entry, or press ↩ in any of the text fields. Cancel or Esc closes the form without making anything. The new entry opens in the editor, with its name as a heading, ready to write.
The entry is made in the bible’s folder straight away. Versions records it at your next save.
Writing an entry
An entry opens in the same editor as your scenes, with everything the editor offers: italics, bold, quotations and the rest (Appendix B). Write it however suits you, as notes, lists or paragraphs. The header above it shows the entry’s name and, if it has any, “Also known as” and its other names.
The first line is the entry’s heading, written # Name: that’s its name in the sidebar. If it has other names, they come first, between two lines of three hyphens (see Other names).
Like a scene, an entry’s changes are unsaved until you save the book with File → Save ⌘S, and they’re part of that version. The sidebar and the header show a changed heading or other names once the entry is saved.
Story Bible entries are never part of a built book. Edit → Find… ⌘F searches the book itself, not the Story Bible.
Other names
Characters, places and things often go by more than one name: a nickname, a title, a married name, a surname on its own. An entry can list them, so Septangular knows them all as the same entry.
Other names given in the New Entry form are written at the top of the entry, before its heading, like this:
---aliases: Lizzy, Miss Eliza Bennet---# Elizabeth Bennet
To add, change or remove other names later, edit that aliases: line in the editor, and save. Separate the names with commas. If the entry doesn’t have the lines yet, type all three at the very top, before the heading. A name the same as the entry’s own is left out.
How names are recognised
Septangular recognises an entry in your scenes by its name and its other names:
- Whole words only. A character called Will isn’t found in “willing”.
- Exactly as written, capitals included. A character called Will isn’t found in “will”, so for someone the story calls by a role, such as “the boatman”, give the lowercase form as another name.
- A possessive still counts: “Darcy’s” is Darcy.
- A name split across two lines still counts.
- Your notes to yourself in a scene, between
<!--and-->, are left out.
In a series, this is how Septangular works out which books mention each entry (see A series’ Story Bible).
When two entries share a name
If two entries have the same name or other name (two characters both called “Mr Bennet”, say), Septangular counts the name for only one of them: the first in the sidebar’s order. The status bar shows a problem; hover over it to read which name it is and which entry it counts for. Give one of the entries a different name to clear it.
Renaming, moving and deleting
Right-click an entry in the sidebar for its menu:
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| Open | Opens the entry in the editor, as a click does. |
| Rename… | Lets you type a new name in place, in the sidebar: ↩ keeps it, Esc leaves the name as it was. The entry’s heading and its file’s name both change. An entry that’s open stays open, under its new name. |
| Move to Category | Moves the entry to another category, or with New Category…, to a new one whose name you type in place. |
| New Entry in … | Shows the New Entry form with this entry’s category already chosen. |
| Show in Finder | Shows the entry’s file in Finder. |
| Delete… | After asking, moves the entry’s file to the Trash, and closes it if it was open. |
Before it renames, moves or deletes an entry, Septangular saves the book, so nothing you’ve typed is lost. That save is an ordinary one: it’s a version in Versions, and it carries out any deletes waiting in the Stash (Chapter 3).
A deleted entry is in the Trash, and Versions has it as it was at the last save. Find in History… lists files that are no longer in the project and can bring an entry back where it was (Chapter 8).
Where entries are kept
Each entry is a plain text file, one per entry, in the book’s bible folder, in a folder for its category: bible/characters/elizabeth-bennet.md. You can read and write entries in any other program too, and Septangular sees the changes the next time it reads the bible.
- An entry’s file is named after it, in lowercase with hyphens. If the name is taken in that folder, a number is added:
mr-collins-2.md. - A new category’s folder has the name you typed: a category called “Ships and Boats” is kept in
bible/Ships and Boats/, and listed as “Ships and Boats”. A category’s name comes from its folder, with a capital letter to start and hyphens read as spaces, so a folder calledminor-charactersis listed as “Minor characters”. - An entry kept directly in
bible, in no category folder, is listed under “Other”. - An entry with no
# Nameheading is named after its file.
Appendix C describes the rest of the book’s folder.
Turning a note into an entry
A note about a minor character often turns out to be the start of their entry. To move it to the Story Bible, right-click the note in Notes, choose Turn into Story Bible Entry, then a category. The note’s title becomes the entry’s name, its text becomes the entry, and the note leaves Notes. Chapter 6 has the details.
A series’ Story Bible
In a series, every book shares one Story Bible, kept in a bible folder in the series’ folder rather than in each book’s. Whichever book is open, you read and write the same entries, so a character’s eye colour can only be wrong once.
Beside each entry, the sidebar shows the numbers of the books whose scenes mention it by any of its names, such as “1 · 3”; hover for “Mentioned in books 1, 3”. An entry that no book mentions yet shows a dash.
Deleting an entry in a series deletes it for every book, as the question before it reminds you.
When a book becomes the first of a series, its Story Bible becomes the series’. When you add a book you already have, its entries join the series’ Story Bible, in the same categories; if an entry’s file name is already taken, the book’s folder name is added to it, so neither is lost. Chapter 10 covers series in full.