I like writing fiction (also technical documentation, but that is another matter entirely). But I hate spending time writing only to throw it away, or worse, forget/give up. So here is the solution, I’ve probably got a couple hundred hours of development time in it already, and it is a barely-functional alpha. But, it seems the way forward to me. But go ahead read the basics so you know what I mean.
Parametric Writing- a meaning based Word Processor
Parametric Writing adds functionality to a Word Processor. By marking up your raw text with Briefs and Rules, the story becomes a substantial and solidified creation. These extra elements are invisibly linked to specific sentences in your story to provide/explain justification and purpose. The image above shows the concept- Briefs and Rules can be checked to link to a Sentence. Clicking the Sentence highlights its background (user text selection to cut and copy is not affected).
Rules remind and reward you for applying true facts throughout the story and point out factual mistakes. Briefs are a live outline you can start before you story, and add later to describe plots after you have done some writing. Both store the writers’ thoughts attached but apart from the story text.
Writing is an iterative process. Parametric Writing changes the process by splitting the work apart. Other writers have to hold the whole story in your mind along with endless reference documents, world facts, and plots. Instead, you use the Rules and Briefs to paint the text, considering one sentence at a time. Then, reviewing becomes a safe, incremental pleasure: every sentence has multiple justifications, it incorporates many Rules and Briefs. This encourages putting more information into each sentence, and avoids writing paragraphs that ignore or contradict each other. You can consider just one Rule or Brief as it is used in the whole story; you can look at any Sentence and decide if it is showing or implying enough of the key points in the story.
By breaking the writing task into small concrete steps, authoring becomes closer to grammar editing. Incremental tasks can be done by new authors to the story. Deciding if a Rule is used in a Sentence is manageable like grammar-checking is for a human (automatic spell-checkers lack the ability to know the meaning of the Rule). Work at the sentence level is kept consistent and safe. Authors who are new to the story (or have forgotten it) can make improvements immediately, without first needing to read the whole story. Authors’ implicit ideas or hidden facts are listed and tagged on the sentences that they apply to.
Since Briefs and Rules appear with the Text, there is little need to create as separate documents – ‘levels’ of plot, outline nor summarization, descriptions of characters and locations; details of the worlds and their histories. Instead, all of this data is kept as Rules and Briefs, and linked directly to Sentences it applies to. That way it plays a live role in writing. Instead of two separate word processor documents that authors try to read in full to try and compare and maintain. Rather than feeling you are wasting time writing everything twice, PW lets you build that information directly into the story itself.