Know the End
Or you may get lost along the way

A bad beginning makes a bad ending.
(Euripides [484 BC - 406 BC], Aegeus)

In an article in the NY Times, the process of a woman who's staging an old ballet was described. She runs the company through the acts in reverse order, starting with the last act. The basic idea is:  unless you know where you're heading, you don't know how to start.

Isaac Asimov said the same thing more than once in the third volume of his autobiography. If the ending is not clear in your mind when starting a story, there is a good chance of getting lost on the way. (not exactly his words, but very close).  —Lesly Sloan

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From Michael Moore
I always know the direction the stories headed, or at least I think I do. If the story relies more heavily on characters than plot they can sometimes head off in directions I didn't think of at first. I'm not writing on a deadline so I have the luxury of chasing after them. It usually leads to a better ending than I'd planed, but not always. I really do need to learn how to plot it all out and keep those voices in my head under control.

Remittance Girl
This is rather an ironic thread to be reading right now because I'm in the middle of something that doesn't have an ending yet and, had I crafted an ending originally, it wouldn't have worked. The characters grew as I started to write them - and then they took on a life of their own.

I think it probably is good to have an ending in mind, especially for long stories and novels. But I don't think you have to have one at the very start - maybe a couple of chapters in, when you get the feel for the characters, it emerges as obvious. 

From Morgan Hawke
Some authors can write without plotting the end, because they have been writing long enough to instinctively know what they need to end their story. I, on the other hand, do not possess such sharply honed instincts. I MUST plot to the end, before I begin, to insure that the story is workable and sellable. I rely on my writing to pay the bills. Everything I write HAS to be completed. I cannot afford - literally or figuratively - to waste time waiting on the Muse.

From Bob
You need to have at least a vague idea where you are headed in a long piece of writing, but I've written short stories spawned by just a character and begun writing around the character, concocting a situation for him/her to act in. The ending might come to me in the process, but I don't always start with one. I'd never attempt that with a novel, but sometimes it's about the journey.

From G. Gregory
There are so many things that require one knowing the outcome before beginning the journey. I deal with that every day in my profession of Human Performance Improvement. Without knowing the business goal, there's no prayer of defining a multi-faceted performance solution. With writing a story, I have to agree as well...and then on occasion...disagree. I think it has to do with the length of the story and often the source of inspiration of the author.

The best example is a story I had published some years back. I was inspired to write and wanted to see what would happen when I opened a Rand McNally road atlas and blindly stabbed a finger onto a random page to define where my story would be based. Oddly enough I landed on the Puye cliff-dweller ruins of northern New Mexico. A 6,000 word story, "Puye", that was actually published came out of my lack of knowing where the story was going to go - at least at first. It was a cross-country trip from Georgia to California and it would pass through the Puye ruins. That's all I knew. The rest came to me as I wrote. Believe me, it does not always happen like that. I had help on a spiritual level. I made up words that "sounded" native American. Several actually were legit dialect...a startling discovery mid-way as I researched the ruins for correct context in the story. It was almost scary.

I'm not sure how many of us believe in or have the blessing of an active muse, but I feel that it is indeed possible to write a story and have no clue where it's going or what it will ultimately be about. I do think, however that a story premise must be formulated at some point during the creation of the piece, but I've even had some stories where that was clarified very late in the development.

For longer works like something Asimov would write, I do believe that there is an incredible amount of planning and flow work that must be accomplished first. I can see starting with the ending and piecing together what happens to get to that ultimate point. I'm writing a novella now that is pushing 20,000 words, and I've had to outline the journey and have had to target the destination well in advance. I'm not sure how long it's going to be when finished, but a plan has been laid in place. I'm doubtful a good story of length can be written without it.

Conversely, I've written shorter pieces of erotica where my only inspiration was something insignificant...like the way sheers blow and billow, falling in upon themselves on a spring breeze. Inspiration, at least for me, is not always so complete or calculated. There have been times I felt like writing and just started to write. I've actually just sat down and taken a fragment of a thought and began to write putting faith in my muse to provide guidance. That may come across as voodoo to some folks on this list...to consider writing a story and not knowing where it's going to wind up. For me, writing can be a spiritual experience. It can be more faith than knowing. When one of those rare moments comes along it's pure magic. If I'm not in one of those moments, I'm planning, plotting and mapping, otherwise it's a futile attempt to create...and yet within that calculated approach there could easily be a detour or two along the way influenced by something over which I have little control.

So...in closing, I agree that there are literary efforts that must have comprehensive planning before pen is laid to paper...or fingers to keyboard, but if I ever lost the spiritual connection I find when I write my best, I think the reward for writing would be lost. Writing erotica is like making love. Sometimes the best lovin' is discovered more than it is scripted. Now that's an inspiration...

From Sandaidh
I had no idea where most of my stories were going, and that includes the published ones.

With one story, Temptation, I not only had no idea where it was going, I don't even remember writing the ending! I was listening to the music, typing away on the keyboard, and I got about 3/4 of the way through, then stopped because I had no clue what came next. I kept the song going, waiting for some inspiration, some hint of where this thing was headed. Nothing. So I decided to go back and do some editing. I'd reach where I stopped and...stop. Nothing. Go back and edit some more. then one time, when I was immersed in the music, my fingers kept going. I was not even consciously aware of what I was writing. When it was over, I sat back, looked at it, and wondered where the Hell *that* had come from. Then I went back and reread the whole story. It worked. The ending, of which I'd had no previous knowledge, completed the story perfectly.

This is the way most of my stories have come about, even my forever-a-work-in-progress novel. That started with a 5 page, typewriter written, short story. When my muse abandoned me, it had gotten to a bit over 176,000 word count. Emach's Story, my novella, is comprised of four parts. I had no idea where each individual part was going until I got there, and the ending of the complete story surprised the hell out of me. I remember sitting back and laughing because it had been so unexpected...and so appropriate. When I put the four parts together, about all the real editing I had to do, to pull it all together, was to make sure that whatever part was read, the titles of the other three parts are in there. Somewhere. There is also one sentence which is the same in all four parts.

Seems to me that the "answer" to most 'rules' is...it depends.

E. L. Frederick
The items I write usually come in two flavors, un-finished novels, and flashers. The flashers can vary from a few minutes of work, to a few hours (no more than three). The "best" ones so far have come to be in less than ten minutes of work.

The novels usually start out as a short scene that appears and works its way into the black and white of Microsoft Word. Once the initial creation process is done, I taken a look at what has manifested itself. I ask the questions "Who, What, Why..." and explore the motives of the characters. In so doing, I outline the plot, and then divide the work into chapters.

By the end of that process, I know the story and the characters. I know the beginning, the middle, and the end. I also know about events before the beginning and after the end.

I don't always know how to tell the tale, but the story is outlined and in a form where all that is left, is to fill in the words. If I were better "ground" then the "seed of the story" the muse planted would flower and grow better than it does.

The original short scene almost ALWAYS ends up in the middle of story somewhere. With the notable exception of the piece I submitted this weekend "The Reading".

I have no clue where THAT one is going yet.

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