Does anybody else find themselves writing the ending of a story before finishing the middle?

[Areala-chan]

I usually write the beginning and the end first, then bullet point out scenes to lead from one to the other. Quite often it all changes as I write, I'm very much a pantser and it all just builds up n my head as I move along. I don't often make many notes either. I just sit down and start writing and it comes....

I've always felt you and I were similar in how we approach our stories.

I don't outline, but I always have the main story beats that I want to hit in my head, and I will write them down on post-it notes or in a text file while I'm brainstorming just so I don't forget. Once I start writing those beats though, they develop organically along with the characters and their reactions to them, and I'm apt to rearrange the order of their appearance until I feel I've got the flow right.

I almost always know what I want the story's outcome to be (especially if I have a twist or surprise in mind) before I begin writing. But the words of the ending are almost always composed after I've hit every story beat so I can tie everything together, close the loop, and snip any dangling threads.

 

[theMasterBaiter]

I usually have an outline, then I go back to fill in the details. But a few times, the story has just come flowing out, fully formed in one shot. It doesn't seem to correlate with ratings or even my own personal satisfaction, but the outline ones seem much less likely to get finished. I think I have 10 stories, including a book, sitting there in Google docs taunting me. I think it's current me giving the finger to past me for "demanding" that I take the story in the outlined direction. LOL. But then I've also tried just allowing myself to change the outline and that hasn't helped

 

[WCSGarland]

I usually have an outline, then I go back to fill in the details. But a few times, the story has just come flowing out, fully formed in one shot. It doesn't seem to correlate with ratings or even my own personal satisfaction, but the outline ones seem much less likely to get finished. I think I have 10 stories, including a book, sitting there in Google docs taunting me. I think it's current me giving the finger to past me for "demanding" that I take the story in the outlined direction. LOL. But then I've also tried just allowing myself to change the outline and that hasn't helped

So far, I've found that I can only work on one story at a time. Hopefully you can get your plotter self and your pantser self to reconcile and finish all those stories.

 

[WhiteTailDarkTip]

I usually have an outline, then I go back to fill in the details. But a few times, the story has just come flowing out, fully formed in one shot. It doesn't seem to correlate with ratings or even my own personal satisfaction, but the outline ones seem much less likely to get finished. I think I have 10 stories, including a book, sitting there in Google docs taunting me. I think it's current me giving the finger to past me for "demanding" that I take the story in the outlined direction. LOL. But then I've also tried just allowing myself to change the outline and that hasn't helped

This. Exactly this. My story ‘Mrs Adams’ fell out of my head over a period of four days. There was virtually no rewriting. It’s not really my milieu either. It’s one of my most popular too.
I have several tens of thousands of words lingering in the wings, waiting to become a fully fledged story

 

[Britva415]

The responses remind me of that time I saw back-to-back replays of Inside The Actors Studio. One was Dennis Hopper and the next was Christopher Walken.

They were both asked to describe their process of reading a script and anticipating how they would perform it. And they couldn’t have been further apart in their approach.

Hopper really got into it, and would in fact read the whole script out loud, including other characters’ lines, and really wring out all the different interpretations and performance options he could find in the script. He wanted to be prepared for anything the director might think up.

Walken said, “The first thing I do is take a heavy black magic marker and strike out all the lines that aren’t mine.” And he’d just wait for direction after memorizing the lines.

 

[WCSGarland]

Thank you all for taking the time to respond to this thread that I started. The responses and comments are helping me feel connected and welcomed to the community. I'm now really glad that I decided to join the community and finally give voice to the stories banging around in my head.

 

[Duleigh]

I got about 6000 words into the story I'm currently working on and suddenly I'm feeling compelled to write the ending. I'd had a general idea for how I wanted to end the story, but now it looks like I'm going to be filling in the middle after I get the rest done.

It doesn't matter what order you piece the story together but I try to stay chronological. If you write the ending, then go back to the middle and do something like introduce a character, you have to dash to the end to make sure he's in the right place for the end to happen properly.

 

[CarmineBlancheJr]

Not really writing the end, no. But I have gotten in the habit of outlining how I would like the story to end, then I create a series of "floating waypoints" that I will use to guide the story along. Then as I get closer to what I think the ending will be, I have something to shoot for.

I never set a "hard ending" for any of my stories because I have found, over the years, that my stories take on a life of their own. The ending I get may not be the one I originally planned on. So if I were to set the ending up before I wrote the rest, I would be constraining myself to follow a more rigid path, so to speak.

If that all makes sense.

 

[WCSGarland]

Not really writing the end, no. But I have gotten in the habit of outlining how I would like the story to end, then I create a series of "floating waypoints" that I will use to guide the story along. Then as I get closer to what I think the ending will be, I have something to shoot for.

I never set a "hard ending" for any of my stories because I have found, over the years, that my stories take on a life of their own. The ending I get may not be the one I originally planned on. So if I were to set the ending up before I wrote the rest, I would be constraining myself to follow a more rigid path, so to speak.

If that all makes sense.

It does make sense. And a lot of the stories I have written have often taken a different direction (maybe it could be said as taken a life of their own) than my original thought. I don't think floating waypoints would have helped me. The ending of the story I was working on when I posted this just kind of spontaneously coalesced based upon what was happening organically in the rest of the story. The middle was set, all I had to do was finish writing it, but the ending demanded to be finished first.

 

[karina_jayde]

Yes, I do this a fair amount. Sometimes I find that a great ending serves as a 'magnet' for me writing the rest of the story. Gives me clarity and momentum to reach that epic finale.

 

[CarmineBlancheJr]

It does make sense. And a lot of the stories I have written have often taken a different direction (maybe it could be said as taken a life of their own) than my original thought. I don't think floating waypoints would have helped me. The ending of the story I was working on when I posted this just kind of spontaneously coalesced based upon what was happening organically in the rest of the story. The middle was set, all I had to do was finish writing it, but the ending demanded to be finished first.

I will only say that it has never worked out for me when I have tried that. I have spoken about this before, but my characters tend to take over my stories and lead them in directions I was not always planning. So I have learned to role with that. I have even gotten to points where I have no clue where my characters are taking me until we get there.

For a person with a background in technical writing, where there is no grey area (you cannot put much mystery into telling people how to work on a Cisco Switch), it feels alien sometimes to have your product lead you where you need to go.

 

[Whanmore]

This is very common in writing. Directors don't shoot movies in order. Singers don't record songs in the order they release on an album. Lots of artists work backward

 

[Otto26]

I work through a story in my head, playing the various scenes along the way, until I get to the end. Then I write down the outline of the ending and start working at the beginning to move towards the ending. Knowing the ending allows me to indulge in a little foreshadowing and creates a list of beats I need to hit. I will frequently be driven to write a scene out of order and I go ahead and do that and make edits as required when the rest of the narrative catches up to it.

 

[ArdentHemingway]

All too often. I also have I story I'm already writing the prequal to. And two where I'm very tempted to begin writing side-stories already.