Starting at the end

[Duleigh]

Did you ever start a story with the end? I just came up with the perfect ending to Enchantress 6, and I had to start writing it out before I lost the vision, now I have to pick a start point and work to that end. This isn't the first time I've done this, but it's the first time I've done this to an entire series.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Did you ever start a story with the end? I just came up with the perfect ending to Enchantress 6, and I had to start writing it out before I lost the vision, now I have to pick a start point and work to that end. This isn't the first time I've done this, but it's the first time I've done this to an entire series.

My Pink Orchid 2024 entry started with the title, which defined/was about the ending, and then I worked backwards from there.

 

[StillStunned]

The final instalment of The Rivals ("Orgy of Death") is started with the climax. I've been trying to get there for months.

And yes, I know how that sounds.

 

[33RPMVinylPants]

I write an outline that includes a rough description of the scene and what I want to happen in that scene.

Sometimes the order I write the scenes is arbitrary, sometimes it's in order.

 

[PennameWombat]

My "Chronicle: Mel & Chris" series has a very definite end, but I'm not yet close to it. The beginning and the ending were almost simultaneously clear in my mind, and there is actually a sensible connection that can be made to the two. It's just there's plenty in the middle yet needing to be done.

Other stories here have started with the ending, such as "Adrift in Space." Another case where I knew how it started and how it ended. Many details in the middle morphed as I thought it through.

But since most of my writing is pantsing, I don't always have an ending in mind until I'm writing.

 

[Duleigh]

My "Chronicle: Mel & Chris" series has a very definite end, but I'm not yet close to it. The beginning and the ending were almost simultaneously clear in my mind, and there is actually a sensible connection that can be made to the two. It's just there's plenty in the middle yet needing to be done.

Other stories here have started with the ending, such as "Adrift in Space." Another case where I knew how it started and how it ended. Many details in the middle morphed as I thought it through.

But since most of my writing is pantsing, I don't always have an ending in mind until I'm writing.

Yeah, I'm a pantser too. most of the Enchantress series started out me just noodling around on the Discworld, I started with a great joke (leaving a baby at the library book return because the fire brigade had burned down) and played from there and I was utterly shocked how well it turned out. Now I'm on Enchantress 6, the 7th of the series (Happy Hogswatch! falls in line with the stories) and I have a delicious ending for all seven stories if read end to end.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I don't generally write the ending first, but I never start a story without knowing the ending, and I often write the ending fairly early in the process.

 

[AchtungNight]

I start with climactic action quite often. A few examples-

A Step Up ends with Emily Blunt and Anne Hathaway having sex. The rest of the story was getting them there.

Passion 3 starts and ends with Erika fucking Alicia. The rest of the story is Erika telling Alicia about other women who were important to her lesbian history.

My God of War story ends with Kratos shagging Freya and then confronting an army of space aliens alongside her. I conceived of those scenarios before deciding where to start the tale.

Fear, Lust, and Vanity ends with a lesbian threesome. The Rendezvous ends with a lesbian foursome. See first note above.

Two Cats in Heat does something similar with a shower sex scene.

In all these cases, I wrote the climax before the lead up events.

 

[madelinemasoch]

Yes, but only just now on my current WIP. I wrote the ending of Part I first.

 

[ronde]

I always have an end to any story in mind before I start writing. I don't write the ending first, but it's always in my mind so I know who my characters are and how to guide my characters so they get there. I don't write it first because sometimes my characters redirect it a bit, but it's the guide for the rest of the story.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I don't generally write the ending first, but I never start a story without knowing the ending, and I often write the ending fairly early in the process.

That's interesting. I don't always know the ending before I start but I certainly know it before I finish and I never write chronologically. I jump all over the place filling in my plot skeletons and I often find that the last part that I finish is a sex scene.

 

[lovecraft68]

In a couple of chapters of Siblings with Benefits that feature a fight scene, I write that scene first, then swing back around to what leads up to it. It's the opposite of how it should work because the lead in should 'whip you up' for the fight scene, but I've found more success with doing it backwards.

On the other hand, I've never done a sex scene first, that I need to lead in to

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Noooo... but it is nice to have an ending to get to.

 

[geronimo_appleby]

Did you ever start a story with the end? I just came up with the perfect ending to Enchantress 6, and I had to start writing it out before I lost the vision, now I have to pick a start point and work to that end. This isn't the first time I've done this, but it's the first time I've done this to an entire series.

yeah, and then it usually fucks up becasue the characters take it another way.

damn characters. sometimes it's like herding cats...

 

[pink_silk_glove]

yeah, and then it usually fucks up becasue the characters take it another way.

damn characters. sometimes it's like herding cats...

It's a double-edged thing. To plot you need to know your characters, but then to know your characters you need to play with them a little bit either on the page or in your head. On the other hand if all you do is pants the characters, you will almost certainly end up with some looseness in your plot and poor integration.

Anyone who claims to be a 100% pantser is probably actually a 90-95% pantser, and likewise anyone who claims to be a 100% plotter is probably in reality a 90-95% plotter.

 

[geronimo_appleby]

It's a double-edged thing. To plot you need to know your characters, but then to know your characters you need to play with them a little bit either on the page or in your head. On the other hand if all you do is pants the characters, you will almost certainly end up with some looseness in your plot and poor integration.

Anyone who claims to be a 100% pantser is probably actually a 90-95% pantser, and likewise anyone who claims to be a 100% plotter is probably in reality a 90-95% plotter.

is pantser like seat of the pants? like discovery writing?

 

[pink_silk_glove]

is pantser like seat of the pants? like discovery writing?

Yes. Writing off the top of your head, or you will hear people refer to it as 'stream of consciousness' writing. It basically means writing with no map and barely if any destination in mind, usually totally chronologically, start to finish.

 

[geronimo_appleby]

Yes. Writing off the top of your head, or you will hear people refer to it as 'stream of consciousness' writing. It basically means writing with no map and barely if any destination in mind, usually totally chronologically, start to finish.

a lot of wrong turns and false starts...

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Not necessarily first, but also not last. Sometimes I have a story that kinda runs out of steam, so writing the ending before that happens makes the structure of the whole story more likely to stand up. I've just written the ending of my Christmas story, though I still need to write the Christmas just before it. And a few other bits, but it's amazing what plot I can just gloss over in a sentence or two if necessary.

If I'm bored by the idea of writing it, then readers would probably be too - we might as well all get onto the good stuff (or what my drugged-up brain considers the good stuff at 4am, so you're as likely to get analysis of UK class structures and dialect and opinions on public transport, as sex scenes... You get what you pay for.)

 

[Duleigh]

is pantser like seat of the pants? like discovery writing?

Exactly! I like that term, discovery writing! (That's how I play video games too - screw the plot line, go for a walkabout)
The only problem I have with discovery writing is that it's fun! I end up with a 65,000 word "short story" that I don't dare put in Novel/Novella because I want someone to see it

 

[EmilyMiller]

Starting at the end​

I’ve done both. Just have an idea, start writing and see where it goes. Have an idea about and ending and then try to figure out how to get there.

I’ve also done both with the same story. With Heaven & Hole, I just started playing with two characters I had previously created, thinking it might be a an 8k story. Then realized it had grown arms and legs. Then sat down and thought about the ending. Then decided how to get there.

Em

 

[MillieDynamite]

Let's start at the very ending
A very good place to start
When you read, you end with X-Y-Z
When you white, you End with The End

Nuff said!

 

[PennameWombat]

a lot of wrong turns and false starts...

Texts and writers and all that really discuss two styles, pantsers (by the seat of your pants) and plotters - who plot out their story beginning to end and usually do it via outlines. The most extreme of these latter claim they simply make the outline incrementally more detailed until, done! Stephen King has described himself as a pantser, and I have in my mind a quote from him but can't find it (so mayhaps apocryphal) "If I knew what was going to happen next, I'd get too bored to write."

But George R. R. Martin popularized the "plotser" or "gardener," a writer who initially outlines or plots (his "A Song of Ice and Fire," aka, "Game of Thrones," is loosely based on the historical War of the Roses in England), but then goes pantser with the details, and if something feels right, does it. To be fair, most anyone who writes will fall somewhere in a continuum between the extremes.

As to your point, one key claim that Martin has hinted at in why "Winds of Winter" may never get finished (not to mention the likely impossibility of "A Dream of Spring") is that in the books already out he killed someone, or multiple characters, and that's driven him into a gulch, or a blind alley, or what have you, and he's having great difficulty making "Winds of Winter" work without that or those characters. It's not like dead characters can't come back to life in his books, but apparently in this case that's not a reasonable solution.

And I've always approached Stephen King's novels with the attitude that "90% will be good if not great and the ending will be crap." That attitude has rarely seen me disappointed in it being true (IMHO), but to be honest, I'm far from a dedicated reader of his stuff.

 

[tenyari]

I think about half my stories start with an ending in mind that I have to write out to. What I've never done is write the ending as the first piece and give that to the reader and then work backwards inside the story - a format that while rare, does happen in fiction 'flashback' style stories.

 

[Phantom300]

I wish. I suck at ending stories. I can write the beginning and middle fairly well, even fake my way through sex scenes, but wrap one up nicely? Never once.