Writing When We Know The Ending
Moneyball – both the book and the film – is a great example of a story that grips your attention even though you know the end.
It’s a non-fiction work about a baseball team going into the 2002 season. If you want to look up the results then you know how it ends. So the book isn’t about that baseball season.
The story is more personal. It’s about the general manager, Billy Beane, who is taking a risk by throwing away decades of accepted scouting techniques and finding a new way to understand the value of players. Moneyball is about this risk, where these ideas come from, and the results they bring. The personal risk is that Beane will lose his job if the team underperforms. But a further personal aspect is brought in – when Beane was a player he was a highly prized recruit. His playing career did not back up the future those scouts had foreseen. Throwing away those scouting approaches and adopting a mathematical approach is shown as a way of understanding his own place because Beane knows that those scouting approaches are not without fault.
If it was a straight sports story then the heartbreaking loss at the end of the season would be the climax. There would be different beats, a different focus, and more attention following the players. Instead, the climax of the story is not on the field. It’s in Beane being offered the highest paid general manager position in the history of sports by another team – after the loss on the field. The success is that other teams understand what he has done and have begun adopting the same philosophy.
The facts don’t make a story. Sometimes, they’re a challenge to a great story. Instead, the story is identifying the challenge and the obstacle, weaving in the information about Beane’s history, and giving a powerful ending in an empty arena when a piece of paper with the salary offer is handed over to Beane. It is validation in his risk and his vision.
The setting is the sports genre. The story can be seen as Beane’s personal quest to understand his place in baseball, understand his shortcomings as a player, and show how to properly build a team.
It’s hardly the first story to hide its story in another genre. Some famous stories aren’t as they seem. The Godfather looks like a gangster film but the climax is a man lying to his wife. The story is Michael’s descent into this world. Finding that thread of what your story is really about and what is purely setting can give your story a new perspective. A new angle. It also allows you to reshape what would be a failure as something more foundational to the journey. It is a driving factor, not for triumph or revenge but for understanding.
When plotting a memoir, it’s important to understand what stepping stones are actual failures and victories. They are not always as they seem. What really is at risk? What is the protagonist actually chasing?
When we understand what the core goal is then the story reveals itself in a different light. And, like Moneyball, becomes more nuanced than another sports film.