Selling a show nobody has seen
A television series is often bought on paper. Before anyone pays for a pilot, a producer or a channel wants to know what the show will be like by its fifth episode and in its second year. A pilot script can only show the first hour. The series bible covers the rest: the situation the show runs on, the world it is set in, the people at its centre, and the stories of the first season.
Show bible, series bible and pitch bible are names for the same document. It is usually read alongside a pilot script, and often after a meeting, when the person who liked your pitch has to explain it to someone who wasn't in the room. Writing one also tells you early whether the idea can last.
Pitch bible and production bible
Two quite different documents share the name, and Screen Australia's guide to story documents keeps them apart. A development bible, also called a pitch bible, is written to get a new series commissioned. A production bible serves a show already being made, and keeps its writers, directors and crew consistent from one season to the next.
| Pitch bible | Production bible | |
|---|---|---|
| Written | Before anyone has committed to the show | Once it is commissioned, then kept up to date |
| Read by | Producers, executives, funds, broadcasters | Writers, directors, cast and crew joining the show |
| Holds | The idea and how far it can go | What has happened so far, who knows what, the rules of the world |
| Length | Often 10 to 20 pages, sometimes fewer | As long as the show needs, and growing |
The guide also notes that most bibles found by searching online are the long production kind, so a hundred-page bible for a famous show is no guide to the length of yours.
What goes in a pitch bible
Layouts vary, and a comedy's bible can look very different from a drama's. Most hold these parts, in roughly this order.
- The title and the logline, on the cover or at the top of page one. A series logline names the situation the show keeps returning to (see the logline guide).
- The premise and the engine. What the show is, what produces its episodes, and the longer question running under them. Give the format here too, with the number and length of episodes.
- The world and the tone. Where it happens, and what pressure the place puts on the people in it. Tone is easier to show than to name, so write this section in the voice of the show.
- The main characters. A paragraph or two for each lead and a few lines for the people around them: what each one wants, what they hide or get wrong, and where they might be two seasons from now.
- The pilot. The first episode, told in a paragraph or a page, ending included.
- Season one. A line or a short paragraph for every episode, giving its own story and the step it takes in the season's larger one.
- Beyond season one. A few sentences for each later season, enough to show that the idea keeps going.
Some add a page of comparable shows and a short note from the writer on why this show matters to them. Screen Australia's guide also suggests a look-and-feel section with images, where a bible starts to overlap with a pitch deck.
The engine
Of all the parts, this one carries the most weight. The engine is whatever keeps producing episodes, a situation that brings a fresh story through the door every week while the characters stay recognisably themselves. Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories run on a famous one. A stranger climbs the stairs at Baker Street with a problem that has defeated everyone else, Holmes untangles it, and the rooms are ready for the next visitor.
Most series now pair a weekly story like that with a longer one across the season, such as a secret or a marriage coming apart, and a bible should name both. A quick test is to write ten episode ideas, a line each, without stopping. If they come easily and differ from each other, the engine works. If the sixth sounds like the second with new names, the idea may suit a film or a limited series better.
How long a bible runs
There is no fixed length. Screen Australia frames a development bible at around ten to fifteen pages, and many pitch bibles run somewhere between ten and twenty. Visual bibles, designed page by page with images, are often shorter. If the person asking names a length, use it.
| Part | Pages in a bible of about fifteen |
|---|---|
| Cover | 1 |
| Logline, premise and engine | 1 to 2 |
| World and tone | 1 to 2 |
| Characters | 2 to 4 |
| The pilot | 1 |
| Season one | 3 to 4 |
| Beyond season one | 1 |
| Comparable shows, a note from you | 1, if you include them |
An example: The Night Desk
A short bible for The Night Desk, the original drama the library uses for its television examples. With a cover and some space on the page, it comes to about seven pages.
Logline. The night editor of a failing London newspaper keeps it alive by chasing the stories the day staff won't touch, while secretly feeding its rival the ones the owner won't let her print.
The engine. Every episode is one night at the Meridian, from the moment the day staff go home to the moment the first edition comes off the press. Each night brings one story nobody upstairs wants: a tip, a leaked document, a caller who won't give a name. The night desk has until the deadline to stand it up. If the owner kills it, Nora has a choice to make, and as the season goes on each leak costs her more. The night's story is settled by dawn; Nora's secret carries on.
The world and the tone. The Meridian is 140 years old, losing money every week, and still housed in a building it can't afford. After eight in the evening half the lights are off and the newsroom belongs to a skeleton crew: Nora, two subeditors, a picture editor who also runs the website, and whichever reporter drew the short straw. Outside is London after dark. The show is funny the way a newsroom is funny at one in the morning, and tense the way a deadline is. Nobody makes speeches about journalism; they argue about headlines.
NORA QUINN (40s), night editor. Twenty years at the Meridian, the last eight running it after dark. She can hear a lie down a phone line and can't remember the last party she went to. She loves the paper more than its owner does, and every story he kills goes quietly from her desk to the Lantern, its loudest rival. Season one takes her from believing the leaks keep the stories alive to suspecting they are finishing off the paper.
SAM OKAFOR (25), reporter. Came to the Meridian from a local news site that closed under him, and treats every shift as an audition. He is openly in awe of Nora, so when the owner asks him to find the leak, he says yes before he has thought it through.
FELIX HART (60s), owner. Made his money in property and bought the Meridian when nobody else would, a fact he mentions often. He never takes his coat off in the building. Felix kills the stories that touch his friends and calls it protecting the paper. What he hasn't told anyone is that the money has run out and he is quietly looking for a buyer.
1. "Late Final". Sam's first night shift. A caretaker rings the night desk with fire-safety reports for a block of council flats, signed by inspectors who never visited. Nora and Sam stand the story up by eleven, and at half past Felix kills it, because the developer is an old friend. At one in the morning Nora takes a second phone from the lining of her coat and calls the Lantern. By breakfast the story is on their front page, and Felix wants the leaker found. He gives the job to the one person on the night desk he is sure is innocent, Sam.
2. A woman reports her brother missing and the police won't take her seriously. While Sam searches south London, he also starts on the night's phone records, and Nora offers to help.
3. A strike at the print works threatens to keep the Meridian off the news-stands for the first time in its history. The Lantern's editor asks Nora for more, and she learns what he will do if she refuses.
4. Felix brings a story of his own to the night desk, a smear on a businessman he calls an enemy of the paper. Checking it line by line, Nora finds the man is bidding to buy the Meridian.
5. Sam finds the second phone. He doesn't take it to Felix. He puts it on Nora's desk and asks for a byline on the front page.
6. The Meridian is sold, and the buyer owns the Lantern. On the last night before the deal closes, Nora can print how the paper was bought so cheaply, if she is willing to put her own part in it under her name.
Beyond season one. Season two puts both newsrooms on one floor. Nora works for the paper she spent a year feeding, under an owner who knows what she did, and the stories people in power want buried keep coming, with nowhere left to send them.
The engine paragraph answers a producer's first question, how an episode begins and when it ends. Each episode line then tells its own story while moving the season on a step.
Bible, deck and pilot
A bible is written to be read, often days after a meeting. A pitch deck carries the same idea as slides and is often on the screen while you talk, and many pitch bibles now sit somewhere between the two. Plenty of buyers read the pilot before anything else, though, and some read nothing else, so the bible's job is to back the script up. The TV script templates show how a pilot is laid out. Have a one-page synopsis of the series ready as well, for the reader who asks for something shorter.
Writing it well
- Write in the show's voice. A comedy's bible should be funny to read, and a thriller's should make the reader turn the page.
- Make each episode line a story. "Nora confronts her past" is a theme; "Nora's ex-husband walks in with a story about her" is an episode.
- Plan season one in detail and the rest loosely. Nobody expects season three to survive the writers' room, and a long plan for it can read as a writer who won't take notes.
- Put your name, contact details and the date on the cover, since a bible tends to be forwarded and read apart from the email it came with.
In ScriptopusA series project holds seasons and episodes, and every episode has its own script, synopsis, treatment, beat board and title page. Above them in the sidebar, Overview & Season Arc opens the series in prose: the Overview for the whole show, and an arc for each season with its planned number of episodes and their length in minutes. Drafting the engine and the seasons there keeps them beside the episodes they describe.
Download the series bible template
A template laid out as a short pitch bible, with a page for each part and a note on what belongs there, and The Night Desk bible from this page set out the same way, to keep beside your own while you write.
Fill it in on screen
The same template as a Word file, which Pages and Google Docs also open.
Questions
Is a show bible the same as a series bible?
Yes, and so is a pitch bible. A production bible is the different one, the reference a show keeps for its own writers and crew once it is being made.
Do I need a bible to pitch a TV series?
Not always. Some producers want a pilot script and a page about the series; others ask for a bible or a deck before they read anything. Keep a short one ready, so that a request for it doesn't send you back to a blank page.
Should I write the pilot or the bible first?
Writers do it both ways, and many go back and forth. A rough bible helps you decide what the pilot has to set up; the pilot shows you who the characters really are.
How many episodes should a bible describe?
All of season one, if it runs to ten or fewer. For a long network season, describe a handful and sketch the shape of the rest.
Can I send a bible to a company that hasn't asked for it?
Check first. Many production companies don't accept unsolicited material and will return or delete it unread, mostly for legal reasons. Look for an open submission window, a development scheme or a competition, or go through an agent or a producer who knows your work.
Sources and further reading
- Screen Australia, Story Documents: Drama (PDF), for the development and production bible and what a bible holds.
- William Rabkin, Writing the Pilot, on the engine that keeps a series producing episodes.
- Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the stories whose engine is described above.
Write it formatted from the first line
Scriptopus sets every line as you type, keeps the beat board and the treatment beside the script, and exports the PDF and Final Draft file you will need. The editor is free on Mac and Windows.
- Every element in its place, with Tab, Enter and Ctrl+1 to 6.
- Beat Board, Treatment and Synopsis in the same project as the script.
- Six title page layouts, Industry Standard first.
- PDF, Final Draft, Fountain and Celtx exports.