Category: General

Pantser or Planner, it should be easy to start a book and write it either way. The methods should not be mutually exclusive and the results should be comparable once the work is complete. There is no reason to force someone into one or the other mode. But, with Parametric Writing, the expectation is you will perform all of the legwork some time, or, an editor or helper will.

Writing in the Pants mode, ‘bottom up,’ is comparable to designing a car by starting with individual components- maybe the wheels, maybe the transmission, the seats. Here the author is throwing drafts out and trying to organize them; in PW we tie outlines (Briefs) and Rules to the draft as we go. This leads to a clear and built-in summary of the Text tied directly to the draft.

Imagine dragging around plot events- in the outline- and having the appropriate paragraphs shift in the Text.

Rules, too, can be put in with clear ‘to-make’ choices. Create mutually contradictory Rules (e.g. “Bob is nice”, “Bob is too nice” and “Bob is average”) and link them as you draft Text; after, at a glance, you can review the places where these Rules actually got used in the draft, and weigh out which approach makes the most sense for the Story.

Planning

In the Planner mode, where an outline is written before the Story Text, Parametric Writing provides the tree view to the left to establish the gridwork and skeletal frame of the work. This can be done in machine design- roughing in entire automation cells as empty black boxes, leaving the specific choices of ‘what’ to the end while reserving space and interfacing for them.

Parametric Writing’s ability to insert placeholder text makes this possible. The placeholder text establishes the order of the outline, and allows you as an author to create a book-length draft that doesn’t have actual words and Text. The pages are filled with placeholder Text that matches up to the draft outline, the Briefs list. This text makes it clear how many pages are devoted to each chapter, segment and plotline; even without the real words in place, it is possible to gauge out the book, decide where the midpoint is and how the flow of the Story will go.

As the ghost Text is replaced with real words, Parametric Writing makes it clear how much Text was reserved for each Brief. This can help when filling in the Text so that we don’t accidentally write too much in a sideplot, or too little in an important event; of course, authors can always change their minds, but that decision should be conscious- not accidental.

Either Way

Parametric Writing is the same tool in either writing philosophy. The planning and the drafting- the bottom up and top down- methods still use the same tools, and it is perfectly reasonable to combine them. I tend to enjoy writing the critical middle events in full, but chunking out- leaving in reserve and assigning a placeholder to- those build-up and preparation sections, and the closing and shut-down parts of a book. Everything is important, but for me, setting aside 5 pages to explain the neighborhood and the Johnsons is easier than trying to put a note in.

Having the pages assigned having the Text held in position and waiting for finalization, helps me eyeball how the work will end up.

Computer Programming

In computer programming, and specifically in writing a large program of your own, both approaches are often used interchangeably. For me, writing a difficult algorithm and skipping for later details such as I/O, user interaction, error handling, and web boilerplate like JSON with HTTP requests, makes sense. I get a basic thing working, then start taking all of the functionality and splitting it into better functions (pieces). But I avoid certain tasks and put placeholder empty functions there, outlining the work without completing it.

The mechanical outline tools for Computer Programming include creating separate Files, and creating Functions and Properties that might be only ‘for future’. This mechanical form of outline is comparable to creating Briefs and using placeholder text. With programming, it is rare to put in a placeholder like ’50 lines of code’ as comments in a function, but more common to write overall comments and pseudo-code where the final code would go. These tools are analogous to the Briefs and Placeholder Text within PW.

Indepth description of how Parametric Writing is applied to and assists and aids even this short Story to be consistent and maintainable.

I wrote a simple and straightforward Story wanting to show Parametric Writing in a simple way. Normally the system only applies to long-format Stories like books and novels. So, it seemed silly to me to write a short Story using Parametric Writing.

However, I saw two direct benefits to doing it this way:

1. I made a slight consistency error by conflating which character was squatting next to Pat; the mistake lead to placing the actors in the wrong positions, generally confudling the piece until I took the time to create a Rule and verify it throughout the last third of the Story
2. By providing comments and metadata to the Story Text, I think I have described the reason I wrote the Story as it is- justified the Story

A Shining Star came right after I read a friend’s self published book “The Sweetie and the Sanctuary” so I was coming from a framework of acknowledging the fault sof a mentally subnormal person and working that into a progresssive Story with a moral to impress upon the others a basic lesson of will and strength. Yet I decided to remove all of this from the work because it can be off-putting to acknowledge that not everyone is born with identical skills (high IQs) and some take these notions as something like a weak form of racism, some kind of ethnic offense.

In any event the idea that Pat was born with Downs Syndrome entered and left the sphere of Parametric Writing rules surrounding the Sentences of the Story and I consider the whole thing safer, more Politically Correct (PC) and much weaker for the effort.

The Story is basically split into a ‘behind the scenes discussion’ comparable to this WordPress Post and the publishable work. The work has Briefs that simply define it, with very few parent-child relationships, in a simple and flat hierarchy.

I used Parametric Writing to create a short Story that is easy to understand as an example. The Story revolves around Pat, a young child trying to do good, but because of his innocent ignorance he wastes a pressious asset on a trifle.

The story is free online and available in audio (MP3- I read it aloud) on my personal website under ‘A Shining Star’. I’ve given it to a few friends to review and probably threw 3 hours at the short 3-page story, maybe 1 hour at reading it and editing the recording.

To see the behind-the-scenes author’s work on the Story, including the Briefs, Rules and Sentences, use the Parametric Writing Editor to view ‘A Shining Star’, a publically visible Story. You can save a copy to play with the storyline yourself if you make a free email verified account.

Learn how Parametric Writing is used in this short Story (without using the Story Editor) and get extra author notes.

The following PDF is a printable user guide that explains how Parametric Writing works.

After about three years of development on my laptop locally, with EasyPHP Dev Server, I decided to start putting Parametric Writing out on the open internet!

Welcome to my website that let you use the fiction novel editor to add backstory and link it tightly and directly to the text of your fiction. No longer will character cards and plot lines be seperate from the story; now, the specific details will be linked directly to individual Sentences within the Story Text.