James Patterson suggested writing the ending first, asking questions to work your way up to the beginning. That way, I believe, the characters would behave the way we wanted them to, because we already know they end up in triumph or defeat with every nuance in between (win-but-lose, lose-but-win). The ending contains the beginning.
That’s my two cents on planning a story from scratch. Know it’s prescriptive or cautionary from the get-go. Craft the ending. Why did it end this way? What happened before that… and before that… and before that…?
Re: How do we go about writing our stories.
I’ve unconsciously started my stories with a conversation between 2 people. That sets the scene and introduces some characters. I find the story naturally evolves from there, without knowing the end in detail.
Funny, because I was going to suggest something in the opposite direction. Somehow I want to make it more NIAD-like and the only way I can think to do that is to reveal the theme/genre closer to deadline. What if it was just two weeks notice? SCIAF: Short Story Collection in a Fortnight!
Any theme, any genre, any time of year. I am in – if only by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin.
I’m a great admirer of Philip Pullman, both as a writer and as an individual. In my journey through storytelling, his Dæmon Voices was a revelation. His Dark Materials is equal to anything in the British canon, as far as I’m concerned. That many folk still think of it as a children’s story is a mystery, but sadly their loss.
One of the joys – and there are many, I find – of not planning a story is your character’s free will. When you adopt an iterative approach, as I do, all of that can be accommodated, often at great cost, but always thoroughly enjoyable. It’s a lovely feeling when you reread a section of a scene and say to yourself, “So-and-so would never do/think that.”
I seem to remember Patrick Ness saying that he writes the ending first. My approach is to find an ending as soon as possible, but not be afraid to move or rewrite it if something better turns up. But it must be something firm and not just a hand-wavy, worry about it when I get there thing. This is probably carried over from my reading preferences, where I loath non-endings. Ditto cliffhangers, though a surprise or twist is fine, of course.
I’m not sure I could ever work backwards towards a story’s beginning. But I must give it go and see what happens. There’s always learning to be done.
Conversations are a great starting point for ideas, I agree. And similarly actions, though you relinquish precision for your reader’s imagination. That’s kind of what I tried to do with my story here: set characters going and let the reader fill in the blanks.
For those of us who procrastinate, the story usually gets written at the last minute anyway. I think I wrote mine in less than a day, once the deadline drew close.
@pigfender You should start by reading Pride and Prejudice. It tells the love story between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy and is one of the best romantic novels ever written. It’s extremely witty, humorous and with plenty of the irony for which Jane Austen is famous.
Jane Austen - you could also start by watching several of the films a) of her books and b) of stories based on her books, like Clueless.
I started by writing a story about someone baking at home and thinking about the cousin off at war, and being visited by a ‘fetch’ as he died; then I rewrote it with the focus on the man who died. I’ve long been fascinated by the idiocy of Gallipoli, which basically wiped out the heroes of the Dublin Protestant middle class - the head of the Irish Rugby Football Union and former head of the cricket equivalent called on his lads to volunteer in the British Army, and they did so (volunteering as privates) and formed a ‘pals’ unit, of which something like three-quarters were wiped out in one day. Their divisional commander persuaded the survivors to now volunteer as officers…
But each collection should include an intro about an “historical” episode in which various characters – some now famous – repair to some mansion and, to pass the unpassable time, decide to write short stories.
…Yes, there was that time when the weather in [insert location] was just too clement to go outdoors, so the various figures, Jane Austen among them, needed a diversion. Jane suggested they all write short stories about young women of surpassing wit and intelligence. Everyone let that remark pass before settling on the theme of romance.
I think another staple of these introits should be that, no matter the theme/genre, Mary Shelley is among the guests and she writes Frankenstein.
I believe the Brontë sisters who wrote under pen names (Bell) deserve their place in the historical anecdote opener. Because they would have discussed their work and influenced each other.
How wonderful it is to have your work published within two days of submitting it! It’s like a dream (as sporting folks on the telly put it) “come true.” I enjoyed the rush of NiaD, but it has become a victim of its own success and once there were six volumes of the same story the fun seeped out like lifeblood from a corpse in a box. I’ll bet only rog got around to reading more than the volume his/her chapter featured in. I liked the Villa Diodati flash fiction alternative, but in any future iteration I’d be more fascist about length. One suggestion from the cornucopia of responses above that appealed to me would be for Pigfender to provide the final sentence, and possibly the genre (but not ‘Jane Austin’ please!).
Thanks again rog for what can only be a labour of love. (For me it will always be the chance to earn another NIAD Flair).
Dr Wombat