Capstone: Continuity Bible

Build a continuity bible for a small original universe, good enough that a stranger can write into it without contradicting it.

Due: 28 May 2027 · Weight: 35%

The brief#

Build a continuity bible for a small original universe, good enough that a stranger can write an episode into it without contradicting anything.

A continuity bible is the document a writers’ room checks before it breaks a story. Week 2 covers what goes in one. Here you write your own, for a universe you invent, and find out whether it works by handing it to someone who has never heard of it.

Keep the universe small: three recurring characters, one location, and a history short enough to read in one sitting. Scope is the most common way a bible fails. Whatever it leaves out is where the stranger will contradict it, and a bigger universe leaves more out.

The stranger test#

Bibles are swapped in the week 11 seminar. Your stranger writes a one-page outline for a new episode from nothing but your bible, and brings it to the week 12 studio. Together you find every place the outline contradicts your universe. Each one is a gap in the bible, not a mistake by the stranger. Log it, and repair the bible before you submit.

What you submit#

One PDF in three parts:

1. The bible, no more than 4,000 words: a timeline, a character register, the rules of the world, and a canon policy that says what counts as canon and who decides.
2. The stranger-test report, no more than 800 words: each contradiction in the outline, the gap that caused it, and the repair you made. Attach the outline itself, unedited.
3. The canon policy note, no more than 600 words: why your policy, argued against one that a real franchise uses instead.