Series Atlas

What it is

A single book has a Canon: the structured record of who the people are, where the places sit, which factions hold power, what items matter, and which events have already happened. A series needs that same record to hold across every book at once. The Series Atlas gathers that record from every book into one place for the whole shelf, and a cross-book check you start compares part of it across books, so the way your debut describes a character, or dates an event, can be checked against your finale.

Most authors keep this in their head, or in a spreadsheet, or in a folder of notes that drifts out of date by Book Three. The trouble is that the memory that wrote Book One is the same memory that has to remember it three years and a few hundred thousand words later. The Series Atlas carries that record for you. As you import each book, StoryHelm reads it, records its entities in that book's own Canon, and lists every book's entries together in the shared Canon, so the series sits in one place instead of six separate notebooks.

Here is what it holds, and what it checks across books:

• Every book's cast: each book's characters, gathered together. Where a character has the same name, or nearly the same spelling, in two books, a cross-book check compares the appearance and distinguishing marks each book records, so gray eyes in Book One and brown eyes in Book Five can come back as a finding. When both books hold enough of that character's dialogue, it also flags a noticeable change in how the character speaks. It does not compare names, ages or relationships from book to book, and a character renamed between books is treated as two people.
• Places and factions: the harbor, the capital, the order, the crown, as each book's read records them, gathered in one place. The cross-book check does not compare them, so a harbor that changes shores or a faction that changes sides between books is yours to catch.
• Each book's events: the events each book's read records, kept with that book. Your Series Bible export can list the events from the books you select in one Timeline section, with each event's book and chapter, and a cross-book check you start flags the same event given a different year, month, season or length in two fully read books, but it does not work out ages, so a birth year stated in an early book is not checked against an age given later.
• Each book's rules: a magic system, a sworn vow, a line of succession, a prophecy, as each book's read records them. In a Full read, the Coherence Guardian can flag a scene that breaks a rule the same book set up. Those rules are not compared from one book to the next.

Where cross-book contradictions surface

The Coherence Guardian reads one book at a time. In a Full read, it compares each chapter to that book's own Canon. Comparing books is a separate cross-book check that you start from your series' Checks page. It lines up characters that have the same name, or nearly the same spelling, in two books and compares the appearance and distinguishing marks each book records, and, when both books hold enough of that character's dialogue, how the character speaks. It also flags the same event given a different year, month, season or length in two fully read books. A line in Book One can read perfectly, and the contradicting line in Book Four can read perfectly too. What breaks is the agreement between them, and that agreement is the thing no single manuscript can show you. Each cross-book finding appears on the series Continuity page, names the two books and shows what each one records, side by side. It does not quote the passages, but you know which two books to open and what to look for, instead of re-reading three earlier novels to find out. When you start a check, you choose at least two books with a completed read and see the credit cost before you confirm. Adding or removing a book can leave a reminder on your series overview suggesting a check, but the check does not run until you confirm, and finishing a read does not start one.

An example

Take a harbor village fixed on one shore in Book One that faces the other shore by Book Three. No single chapter shows the conflict, and this is a case the Atlas will not catch for you, because its cross-book check compares characters and event dates, not places.