The beginning is in the end

Overcome the blank page by counting your plots before they’re hatched

Some writers like to outline out every detail of their stories before ever penning “Chapter 1”; others find themselves only interested in a story for as long as they’re still discovering more of it. There are highly successful authors in both camps, and most writers probably fall somewhere in between, adapting their approaches to fit the project at hand.

If you’re struggling to get a new story off the ground, it might help you to try a method different from whichever you’ve been using, so here’s mine: figuring out what the climactic moment of my story is (the big spoiler, the moment the story couldn’t end without), and working backwards from there. That’s how I determine what to include, especially in the beginning, and what not to include.

What to include

Once you know the climax of your story, you can start making a list of what you need to establish earlier on in order for the ending to pack the emotional punch you intend it to—perhaps character traits, or relationships, or conflicts, or facts about the world. These will be your high-level plot points, to be distributed throughout the story. The most crucial of them, upon which the largest part of the payoff hinges, will be what you’ll open with. A microcosm of the story, containing the same essential theme of the overarching conflict but on a smaller scale, makes for a good first scene.

This is because the beginning of a story serves to tell the reader what the problem is, or, to put it a different way, what question the story promises to answer. That’s what your reader is expecting you to deliver, the win and lose conditions of the finale. The student must learn to control her powers if she is to be accepted by her peers—will she? The detective must determine who the killer is, or he will be the next victim—will he? The couple must reunite to have any chance at happiness—will they? (If you can establish what hangs in the balance, getting the pacing right will be much easier, because you’ll only have to show how scenes are moving the story towards its reckoning.)

Now, you, the writer, must deliver on your plot promises—answer your story questions—whether the answer is that the characters succeed or fail. If you don’t, your readers will feel dissatisfied, and like you betrayed them, and they will be right. To allay their reasonable fears, it’s essential to establish as soon as possible that you can be depended on. You do this by making a small plot promise as early as possible, and quickly delivering on it.

What not to include

Knowing the ending of your story also gives you insight into what you’re better off leaving out: You can only afford to put as much into the story as the resolution will pay off, so worldbuilding and backstory and subplots that don’t contribute anything to the crux will probably be left on the cutting-room floor. By all means, write The Silmarillion—just don’t try to stuff it into The Hobbit.

Often, this will mean that your scenes have shorter time-skips between them as the story goes on, plot-relevant events happening with accelerating frequency as the conflict comes to a head. In short stories, however, the entire tale will more likely be told at the same pace, no room for acceleration because the beginning lies at the point where the plot reaches breakneck speed.

As I’ve written about before, while promised answers ought to be described in satisfying detail, there’s real value in leaving what isn’t essential to the plot up to the reader’s imagination. “I’m just trying to always have in my head the idea that maybe I’m somehow, on some cosmic level, paying somebody by the word in order to be allowed to write,” Neil Gaiman said—and if we aren’t paying to write, we are at least paying for our tangents in readers’ waning interest. This is why I start as close to the end as I can, and when I get there, I stop.

Further reading

If this article has gotten you interested in plotting, you might want to check out Richie Billing’s Bracketing Method of corralling plot points next—it’s a model I reach for often.

Another invaluable tool for thinking about plots comes from Kurt Vonnegut: story shapes, later to be beautifully illustrated by Maya Eilam.

If you’ve heard enough about plot for now, perhaps you’d prefer to read about writing characters next. Here’s a dichotomy I find particularly rewarding: