I’ve been thinking about what to do to speed up my writing. Every writer does, I’m sure. My own plans, as ephemeral and unstated as they are, involve a lot of speed, but more than speed, we cannot waste time. As per our previous criteria, of course.
If we are going to do some design work on the story before drafting (more soon), it is best to start with the ending.
That doesn’t necessarily mean write the ending first or know exactly how it ends. Instead, we should know what the end is and, most of the time, why it ends that way. What will be the final climax, what will be the general resolution, and when will the story stop? We need to know that last one most of all. Unless we begin at the creation of the universe and end at the last gasps of entropy, there is always more before the start and more after the end. There may be more before and after even then.
What we want to know is where the goal post is. Our job is now to reach that spot. In the first story I’m preparing to publishing serialized, I know what the final battle is. I know who is fighting, who will win, and why. How, I don’t know yet, and considering the contenders, it will be one insane pile of ridiculousness. But that’s the end of the story. That’s the final climax before things come to an end. I would hope it’s at least entertaining.
I know what the stopping point is, and despite that distance (god help me it is very, very far off), it feels real. I can imagine stories about what happens afterwards, and other things that could be said, but the narrative as a whole has a nice, clean, final moment there.
Knowing the the ending means I know what the arc of the people involved in that ending will be. After all, I have to bring the two combatants to that point, and if I have any idea what they are like, I know what kind of events and ideas will have to strike them to get them ready for the showdow.
And now, knowing that arc tells me where I need to begin it: I need a point where all the interesting parts of the arc come after, but as much of the boring stuff is before. With that, I now have the whole story. To end here, with this arc, starting at this point. The middle may be mushy and muddled, but that’s going to leave room to grow.
One could also work the other direction, and after starting with the ending, first decide the beginning. We want to reach that climax: where is the most impactful and emotional moment where we could start from? What starting point gives us the most to work with to drive home what we want to say to get to that ending? With that, we simple draw in a path between the points that seems interesting.
I’ve said before we’re not here to be literary, but a good story involves themes, foreshadowing, and grand ideas implied and explicitly shown through metaphor and symbolism. Hey look, foreshadowing involves knowing where the ending is, and then putting in moments earlier on that reference that. We can do that now. Themes and ideas and symbolism? If we know where to end, we know the climax. That will almost certainly push forward some ideas. Why this person wins the final showdown over the other really does capture a lot of what I want to say. So I will say those things a lot. We almost look literary.
Of course if we wrote the whole story first, we would be in the same boat. We could include all those things knowing full well where we’re going. But serials don’t have that luxury. We need to get the first section right before even thinking about writing the fifth, let alone the last. Besides, why not save ourselves more revision work? Build the ideas in earlier.
I know this works for me, and I understand how that isn’t exactly going to work for everyone. But there is another, small scale value to this. To use a fighting example again, I never want to sit down to write a conflict anymore without knowing who wins. It’s a failsafe: if I know the winner but they can’t pull it out, that’s going to set off warning flags immediately. Did I overlook something? Is the reason they’re going to win not powerful enough? Or does what I think happen in the story conflict with my more subconscious understanding of the story? Sometimes I’m wrong. But deciding first, and then watching my own reactions turns my unconscious from bias to tool.
More on that, too, in a bit.
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