For romance writers
Romance series continuity, from eye colors to backstories
Romance series run on interconnected casts: last book's groomsman is this book's hero, and the whole town remembers everything. Bunsho keeps the eye colors, backstories, family ties, and timelines on record, and checks your chapters against them when you ask.
The binge reader has a better memory than you do
You wrote book two eighteen months ago. Your reader finished it on Tuesday. When your heroine's brown eyes turn green, when the diner moves to the other end of Main Street, when a heroine greets a secret she already learned at the end of someone else's book, the reader who is two days removed from the earlier book catches it instantly, and reviews in this genre are not shy.
The standard defence is a series bible in a spreadsheet, and the standard outcome is that it goes stale around book three, exactly when the cast gets too big to hold in your head. Rapid release makes it worse: the faster you publish, the less time there is for bookkeeping.
What Bunsho keeps straight
Physical details that must not drift
Eye color, hair, scars, ages. Bunsho reads them out of your prose into the World tab, each tied to the sentence that established it, and a check flags the chapter that quietly disagrees, with both passages in view.
Backstories and family trees
Who grew up together, whose divorce still stings, which sibling left town and why. Relationships get their own entries, so the ties your plots lean on are on record instead of scattered through five books of prose.
Who knows the secret, and since when
Romance plots turn on withheld information. Bunsho tracks what each character knows and when they learned it, and flags a scene where someone reacts to news she has not been given yet.
The town itself
The recurring small town is a character. Places get entries with who has been there and what happened, so the bakery, the harbour, and the drive between them stay where your earlier chapters put them.
A pace that suits rapid release
Nothing runs while you draft, and writing is never metered. Check each chapter as you finish it, or run one full review before you publish, with the cost shown before anything runs.
Built for the series, honest about today
Today each book is its own project, and Bunsho keeps that book straight. For the series, hand entries carry canon forward: record what earlier books settled in the World tab and the checker holds the new book to it. One shared canon across every book, applied automatically, is the headline of the series roadmap. For what a finding looks like when a check runs, see the continuity checker, and for everything the cast record holds, see the World tab.
Common questions
Why is continuity so hard in romance specifically?
Because the genre is built on interconnected casts. Book four's hero was book one's best man, the whole series shares a town, and every couple's backstory becomes background furniture in everyone else's book. Romance readers binge the series in a week, so a detail that drifted between books written a year apart sits two days apart for them, and they notice.
Can it keep track of a big recurring cast?
Yes. Bunsho reads your chapters and gives every character an entry: eye and hair color, age, family ties, history, what they know and when they learned it. Relationships get entries too, so who dated whom, who is whose sister, and which secret is still being kept are all on record, each detail tied to the sentence that set it.
Does it work across the whole series?
Honestly: within one book today, across books on the roadmap. Each book is its own project and keeps itself straight. Anything you add to the World tab by hand is canon, so you can record what earlier books settled and the checker holds the new book to it. One shared canon across a series is the headline feature we are building next.
I publish fast. Will checking slow me down or meter my writing?
No. Writing is never metered and needs no account. Checks run only when you ask, with the cost shown first: check a chapter as you finish it, review just the pages that changed, or run a full review before you upload. Fast-release schedules are exactly why checking is deliberate instead of constant.
Can I bring in my backlist?
Yes. Import each book as .docx, Markdown, or .txt, and Bunsho reads it and builds the World tab from the prose, which is the quickest way to reconstruct a series bible you never had time to keep. Export goes back out as .docx or Markdown whenever you need it.
Your readers binge. Your books should hold up.
Bunsho is free to download for macOS and Windows. No account needed for the editor, World, or Planner.