Story Resolutions: Starting at the End (Laurie Faria Stolarz)

 

The topic this month revolves around resolutions, the story kind. How does a story end? A good question, and many writers – those who lean toward approaching a story scene-by-scene, page-by-page – learning what happens next right along with their inner-reader. 

When I start a work, I have a vague idea of where I want my plot and characters to end up. I know what my character wants, for example, and whether or not they’ll get it in the end. I’m just not quite sure how to get them there. 

Sometimes, for certain works – like the one I’m working on now – I begin at the end. That is, I write out how I imagine the character will end up. Where will she be in the end? Will she have achieved what she wanted/needed? How? What happened? What was the climax? How did she learn her lesson? How did what she learned help her evolve in the end? 

This “starting-at-the-ending” approach forces me to envision the final moments of the story. From there, I can work backward to create a narrative that builds toward a climax.

Hard? Yes, but interesting (and challenging) as it allows me to approach my story from a different angle. When I go back and write the beginning, for example, I have so much more information than I would have had I started at page one. I can then layer in more nuanced details that provide insight and meaning in a way I wouldn’t have been to do without fleshing out that resolution first. 

But, this is only one approach. Sometimes, for some works, I enjoy going page-by-page, scene-by-scene, discovering things as I go, right from page one until the very last page. There’s something so exciting about getting to the resolution with this method – the notion of seeing the events unfold, enjoying the element of surprise even (even though, with this method, I know how the story will end up).

Of course, with both methods, one needs to go back and revise, revise, revise – and layer in; and make sure all ties together; and that the characters are three-dimensional, having learned their lesson and evolved in some way; and so on, and so on, and so forth.

There are no short-cuts. There is just process and perspective: page by page, scene by scene; whether starting at the beginning, the middle, or the end.