Starting with the Ending

[slyc_willie]

The ending was PUBLISHED first. Who knows when it was written?

No, it was written and published first. John Byrne and Roger Stern quibbled about the content of The Lost Generation even as it was written, with Byrne and his ego winning out in the end. Issue to issue, the series was a month-by-month deliberation of content.

 

[Athalia]

I'm curious if anyone has written like this. I kind of stumbled into it indirectly while turning a single story into a chaptered series. I figured out exactly where I wanted it to go before I began on Ch. 2.

Not exactly. I know what the ending is going to be, and when writing I start from the beginning and proceed to the end. But often I end up re-writing the beginning because I've discovered a better "voice" for the character or narrator as I write, and have to go back and recast the narration to match.

 

[sr71plt]

A common techniques for the creation of books, music, video games (forgive me.) or basically anything else that's ongoing, is to split the planned creation into thirds, write the end third first, the starting third second and the middle third last. Hence as quality inevitably drops as time goes on, through boredom, or a stressful deadline, only the middle bit which people remember least is affected.

Have you come up with real people who have said they've actually done it this way yet?

 

[49greg]

I would like to do it that way, but among the stories that I have posted, I have at most only had a general idea of what I thought the end might be at the time I started.

Some of the ones I'm working on I've got the end nailed down. And I find it's easier to write knowing what's going to happen.

Speaking of ending, my take on Mad Men is that Don invented the Best Coke Ad ever done. Anyone else think this?

All along I thought he was going to jump out a window.

 

[PervOtaku]

I always have the ending planned, actually the entire story planned, before I start the actual writing. As far as having the idea for the ending first, and then working the rest of it out, no, I don't think I ever have.

 

[DreamCloud]

I never know the ending until I get there. I usually write with only one scene in mind. Somehow, cohesion is achieved and something legible comes out. Planning seems rigid. Rigidity is boring. Hopefully, only my titles are boring.

 

[MissPrim]

Beginnings and Endings

You're not alone.

I usually, though not always, write the first pages, then the ending, and then make it all come together. Anything that needs smoothing out is done in rewrite.

Aside from having the beginning and ending well formed in my mind, and then on paper, I'm a pantser in story writing. Having a final scene helps me know where I'm going.

And if I don't write this way, I'm usually dissatisfied with the ending.

I like my endings to have as much if not more of an emotional impact as the first pages, and this comes to me more naturally with the first blush of the story.

 

[Black_and_White_Writer]

I have to know the ending in my head and the whole story is worked out before I begin.

To be honest a lot is in a grey fog but once I've gotten the idea for a story and what I want to say it comes together quite well. I will always make some changes and even surprise myself with the way the story unfolds, but this is to stop myself getting bored.

As J. Michael Straczynski wrote about Babylon 5: "It's like writing about the Second World War. You know what the ending is going to be, but not necessarily how you get there. You know what things need to happen at certain places, but the rests up to you. If I had absolutely everything known then I couldn't write it as it'd bore me, and if it's boring to me it will bore the person watching."

 

[Black_and_White_Writer]

You're not alone.

I usually, though not always, write the first pages, then the ending, and then make it all come together. Anything that needs smoothing out is done in rewrite.

Aside from having the beginning and ending well formed in my mind, and then on paper, I'm a pantser in story writing. Having a final scene helps me know where I'm going.

And if I don't write this way, I'm usually dissatisfied with the ending.

I like my endings to have as much if not more of an emotional impact as the first pages, and this comes to me more naturally with the first blush of the story.

I do too. I have to have a rough draft of a couple of pages at times giving the story outline, a little like a script outline. It works great not just for ideas but also for creating a quick reference for myself to work on other stories. Not just my erotica but all my fiction.

One reason is if only to ensure I'm following up a story in a series with something completely differently.

 

[GriffyD_Boy]

I sometimes know the ending when I begin, but sometimes I don't. It depends on the idea and what I want to do with the story. Hell, sometimes I know the ending and it changes on me because the characters end up taking me someplace else instead.

 

[49greg]

....

Hell, sometimes I know the ending and it changes on me because the characters end up taking me someplace else instead.

Even when I don't know the ending (and most of my posted stories were done this way) my story and characters go all over the place, a few times to scary dark places.