Like Butler's other novels, Parable of the Sower is written in the first person; this time concertedly because the novel consists entirely of entries in Lauren Olimina's journal which cover a selection of days spanning three years and three months from Lauren's fifteenth birthday on July 20, 2024 to October 10, 2027. We do not know if some entries have been omitted, although the likelihood is that none are.

The reader knows in addition that some time has passed since the journal entries were completed, because it has been interpolated with headnotes to its twenty-five chapters consisting of excerpts from the apparently published volume by Lauren titled Earthseed: The Books of the Living. The effect is much like the quotation of biblical passages.

In fact, Butler's title is explicitly biblical, and she ends the novel with the King James translation of the passage of St. Luke 8: 5-8, beginning "A Sower went out...