Authors - Do you know the end in advance ...?

When I start writing a short story (not a novella or something more substantial which calls for a different strategy), I go where the story takes me, and I have no idea at all on how it's going to end until I get there!

Am I alone in this, or do other authors scope out the beginning, middle and end well in advance of the actual writing?

Just wondered cos' I'm nosey

flopsy

A writer friend of mine (and he writes mysteries that get published in hardcover) says that you always should write the ending first. I try to at least know how it's going to end. You have to if you've got a particular plot device that begs for resolution. Otherwise you might get to the end and not know what to do with it. My process is to first figure out the MacGuffin, the thing that will drive the story, then I decide who my characters will be, then I outline the plot and figure out how it resolves.

I approach stories differently. Sometimes....like the one Gabbs and I are working on together....the story is WELL planned out. We know exactly where it is going. However, many stories I start (like you Flopsy)... I just see where it goes. Some, like The Spanked Little Rich Girl was intended to be ONE story.....well now it is almost six! I do like to kinda know how I want it to end and some of the events...otherwise it doesn't flow very well.

So I really have no USUSAL way of writing.....It varies from story to story! And this all sounds garbled!

Katie B.

All writers are different, some use an outline and others just sit down and write, letting the story take them where it will. Apparently Stephen King is what is known as a freewriter and is one of the latter. I have an outline in my head, I know all the major points and the ending, I just have to fill in the blank bits, that's not to say that occasionally events will turn out different to the way I originally envisioned.

In my brief experience so far, it's a mixture for me too. Sometimes I just start with a character or two and a story-type (eg spank shop) and go with it, while others have more of an outline and the spanking scene's been defined. The ending usually comes to me half way through.
Most fun for me is when it's like flopsy's experience and characters develop minds of their own; the story moments I enjoy the most all come spontaneously and surprisingly.
Even the much longer serial I've been working on grows itself and pulls me along, which often means going back and changing earlier bits so they fit the new dispensation. Alice Walker says at the end of TCP: "I thank all the characters for coming."

Flopsy, yours is one of the best questions to ask any writer. I'm in the group that must see an ending down the road somewhere. I don't have to have every last detail, but when the idea on how it should end comes to mind, then I know I have a story to tell. When I do the opposite, i.e., just start writing to see what happens, invariably I lose my way.

To be honest, I usually have an end in mind, but I allow myself the opportunity to change my mind just in case a brilliant stroke of genius is realized (i.e., I read someone else!) My long "JOURNEY AND JOURNAL" written as Jack Crawford was just such a circumstance. The twist at the end became apparent to me while writing the middle sections ... and it was those middles sections I had no idea about when I started.

So ..yes and no

Not that I'm in any kind of position to offer advice but I'm muddling along with a tale that I have a broad outline to, I see it more as a film script but am trying to keep it as a story in written form. I don't really know the exact end but am trying to develop the characters, make them more three dimensional in the hope that here is where I'll find surprises and direction.

And the research is fun.

Although I've not written anything new in a long time, I generally had an ending in mind before I started. Occasionally, however, I would have an experience akin to that in Quillis's delightful story, 'The Characters are Revolting' where my creations developed minds of their own, or I would suddenly realise that a character had developed in such a way that s/he simply wouldn't do or say what I had originally planned.

Of course, many of my own stories are of the 'domestic' variety, which generally don't need much in the way of plot: wife misbehaves, gets caught, gets spanked!

I see it all in my head, I 'live' it all, before I start writing. I always know the story arc and the main scenes. But as I write I often find subplots growing, secondary characters are added, some of them don't behave the way I intend - that's part of the fun. And sometimes a short story grows, and grows....

But I always know roughly how it's all going to finish.