Starting Near The End

The old writing adage says to “start as close to the end as possible.”

It’s also essential not to write a story thinking the end is the beginning.

At its heart, Story is about change. But it is not about triumph. It is about the journey there, the conditions that led to the change.

When Sasha Baron Cohen was involved in the early stages of what would become the film Bohemian Rhapsody, he was in a meeting with the surviving band members who said that what was so amazing about this film is what happened halfway through. He asked what was it that happened, and the band members replied that after their singer died the band continued and went “from strength to strength.” Cohen knew then that it wouldn’t be the film he wanted to make – he wanted to deeply explore Freddie Mercury’s life and personality – and ultimately he left the project.

There are many problem with this statement but let’s just look at the two most obvious relating to story. Firstly, the story of Queen is Freddie Mercury’s story; fans don’t think about Queen without thinking about Freddie. The Doors made three records after Jim Morrison’s death but that’s hardly the identity of the band. The second obvious problem is that a story cannot go from strength to strength. A story is about trials and tribulations, it is about complications that make success seem unlikely, and then the force of the protagonist to withstand all of it to emerge triumphant.

A story doesn’t begin with “Once upon a time, while they were living happily ever after, more good fortune befell them.”

If each story has a beginning, middle and end then we can lay it out like this:

– The opening sets up the problem. The obstacle. And promises or infers a particular ending. In a romance, the lovers will end up together. In a murder mystery, the detective will outsmart the murderer. In an entrepreneurial memoir, the author will succeed brilliantly.

– The middle complicates this. There are obstacles that make the path more treacherous. It makes the outcome less likely by showing the hero risking more, showing grit and determination. Coming up against romantic entanglements, something from the past. A witness ends up dead, and the murderer frames someone else. The first business fails and the entrepreneur returns to working as a typist. Or begins working on Wall Street the day the market crashes. The middle adds weight to the journey, increased odds stacked against the protagonist.

– The ending completes the promise from the opening, but not in the way originally expected. It is a moment of cathartic release; all the stress and tension that’s been building finds a resolution. A new form. The world has been changed.

If we are to start at as close to the end as we can then there will always be information required for the hero’s context or for the reader’s understanding. This is exposition. It happens in the middle but started before the beginning of the story. It’s the romantic history resurfacing, bringing something that happened before to the struggle now. A broken heart years ago giving context to the love interest’s abandonment issues. The complicated relationships between the murder victim and all those suspected of the crime. The entrepreneur’s childhood experience that swore they’d never go down the road they’re avoiding.

These are all important in understanding the story and giving context to the climax. Without it, the climax is just an event. It carries no emotional weight and so it has no meaning. The protagonist finds a shoe. A meaningless event. But with the right set up the shoe can be a terrifying sign that the killer is in the next room. It can be a sign that the lovers will rekindle. It can be a reminder of the way to make the next step as an entrepreneur.

So, the story starts as close to the end as possible. The reader wants to see the suffering and the difficulties to give meaning to the ending. Without it, the success is meaningless and a particularly dull read.

This originally appeared as a Dispatch – join the wire here.

[Image by MJ Boswell from Annapolis, Md, USA, taken from wikiCommons – under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license]