Why you should Understand Metadata before you write your story?

It is crucial to have an understanding of metadata and how to use and apply it to your story before you begin writing. The reason for this is the more information you can key or tie to your story as you write it, then the easier it will be to find specific pieces of information that may need to be edited or adjusted based on changes in the story as you write. This can be especially crucial for someone who is a pantser.

By definition a pantser’s story is created as you go and the details may need to be adjusted. I will be posting a series of articles to help you understand metadata’s potential uses. You can tie it to characters, locations, and themes such as romance or conflict. Or you can use metadata to track foreshadowing, clues in a crime drama, minor characters, or specific items that have a meaning to your story. They can also be used to track how you’re using sensory information such as touch, smell, sight, sound, and taste to enhance the immersive element of your story.

The progress of your writing and/or your editing can be tracked with metadata as well.

If you understand how to use metadata before you begin, then you’ll be able to tag your scenes as you write them in an appropriate way so you can track any type of information that you need to evaluate or to rearrange in your story later. Whether this involves characters, themes, locations, or anything else. This does require some forethought and hopefully the articles in this series will give you ideas that you can apply to your own story. The most useful piece of metadata in my mind is keywords. Their "key" advantage being that multiple keywords can be applied to any single document. There is no limit to the number of keywords that you can use. These can also be colored in various situations such as the corkboard or the outliner to give visual cues as well.

Spending a little bit of time and planning can be helpful, even if it is just in general terms. Then as you write your story, especially as a pantser, you can add the keywords, labels, or custom metadata that are appropriate as the story unfolds. So this can enhance a spontaneous story and not detract from it.