Know Your Ending, But Don't Stick to It

  Without purpose, your story will wind in one
direction and then another.

A story is never more compelling than when it has direction and purpose, when it seems to be heading toward an inevitable clash or a certain doom. That sense of urgency and suspense keeps us turning the pages; but the only time a story can get better than this is when that expectation of certainty is surprised or upset. In order to get to that surprise, though, we needed that galloping direction in the first place.

Today I want to talk to you about that crucial two-part aspect of the writing process: having an ending in mind, but not sticking to it. I'll tell you why you'll run into problems if you have no ending in mind at all; and then I'll tell you why you may have just as many problems if you've planned everything out in advance.

Why Having No Ending is Problematic

A lot of people with artistic mentalities feel defensive about making a plan. They picture the dull, concrete outline of a five-paragraph high school English paper, and they recoil in horror. "It's more natural to just let the story flow," they say. "I can't impose limits on my writing. I can't plan ahead. I just write as it comes to me."

While these people may feel more artsy for doing this, their stories will suffer terribly. The way great stories usually work is that they have very tight structures, with arcs, climaxes, skillful introductions and discrete scenes. All of these things take planning; while a few things may happen naturally, all of them won't. It's important to try looking down the road at what you want to be your climactic moment, or what event will rock your character to his core. Without these things, your story will be directionless, wandering in first one direction and then another. It won't make sense, and worse, it'll be boring.

After the jump: why having too much planned is just as bad.

Why Planning Out Everything Will Also Hurt Your Story

On the other hand, there are people who realize that stories need structure, and so they overplan. They make detailed outlines, chart out character histories, pick their climactic scenes and bear inexorably toward it even if the writing reveals a better direction. If every scene has been mapped out beforehand, they will lack an organic feel. They'll be stodgy, lackluster, and forced.

Often ideas can change as you start the writing process and learn more about your characters. I often feel like I am "discovering" things about my characters rather than inventing them. If I have planned everything out in advance, however, there's no room for this wonderful process of discovery to take place.

So Have Your Ending! But Be Flexible

So my advice to you is to strike a balance between these two unfortunate (and boring!) extremes. Instead, make sure you have an idea of where your story is headed. Imagine your last haunting image, or the climactic scene that will change everything. With that in mind, start writing. Don't plan out the scenes in-between; as long as you keep this ending in mind, your writing will have purpose, bearing towards that big finish. And sometimes by the time you get to the end, you realize that you've taken a different route. If that's the case, remember you're not married to your first ending idea. It was the fire burning under your tail that kept you writing well, but you don't need it in the final draft.

Comments

[Naomi Hamm]

sometimes I think some of us writers should start instead of with the beginning. to begin with the end.

To have ready the time and place and the characters but to write at least 2-3 endings way before you write in Chapter One heading. Whether you stick with the ending or not is not important. It leads you to believe where you have gone wrong if at all and what needs to be done to repair it.

If you write the ending first, it leads you to know you at least can write that novel or screenplay, will inspire you to do so and will make your plot and story line and characters stronger. Do it from time-to-time and see how it works for you. I know I am going to try it a few times or less at least.

I'll let you know how it goes for me and if it works for me it may work for you also.

[KerryAnne]

Thank you for this post. I have several beginnings that I feel start our strong but have been filed because I don't know where to take the character. A loose but plausible ending will give me and my character a goal. I will definitely be trying this approach

[Ana]

This is a really great post, and honestly that's more or less how I naturally write. Personally, long before I write I think of a character or characters. I give them a small piece of a personality. They grow from there. I spend spare time thinking about them, and I find out what they're like and I begin to picture them. (Sometimes, actually a character is born through a drawing first.) After that I start to see their goals. That leads me to why they are the way they are. I think about where they're heading with themselves and that turns into my very loosely imagined climax. I realize how I would like to leave things once my story's through. All of these thing develop as I mull them them over either in the back of my head or whenever I have time. When I finally get around to writing most scenes really do flow, though a few spring into my head while I'm still in the thinking process. When I reach my climax it's usually differnt from what I thought would happen because my characters reveal to me what they would like to do as I go along. After I reach that peak, my story wanders downhill through whatever path my characters choose. This gets me to ending which is usually a different one than I had imagined, but everything works out comfortably.