Why to start with the ending? [when writing] p1

My sometimes endeared and sometimes hated, Isaac Asimov, plus Robert McKee agree in one thing. To write backwards. Which means…


START WITH THE ENDING

For Asimov, writing the ending was logic. The same way it is for McKee to solve the main character’s crisis before we write the rest of the story in order for the solution to make sense.

The technique is good for novices like me who have no idea how to move beyond the start. I always get stuck in the main idea and I can think a lot of ideas to begin but none of them is any good to go on or they are good enough but I can’t make them go on in may possible way.

ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY

Hilary Mantel [historical writer] explains that in History, there are some things that acquière an inamovible kind of certainty. This or that battle, the birth date, the death or wedding. Questionable certainty but agreed upon by documents and chronicles ( so long no one burnt such records or altered them).

Certainty ups the game. You need to get there. You have to imagine and think to recreate what happened. How did it happened. Because what happened in between is what is in the whitest blank. Even with diaries and chronicles, no one knows what someone was thinking or what had them take this decision. You can only imagine.

TO BE CONTINUED