“I’m a huge believer that your story is all about your ending. So I would never write a story without knowing exactly, on a moment by moment basis, what’s going to happen at the climax of your story. I would never do that to myself. (You don’t want to be grasping for an ending after having written a hundred pages.) And then you reverse engineer your story from there. Because usually your character, like Olive [in Little Miss Sunshine], is going to have to make a big decisive action that’s going to lead to a climax. And you’ve got to know what’s at stake in that decisive action in terms of the external stakes, the internal stakes, and the philosophical stakes of the story.”
Oscar-winning screenwriter Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3)
2007 talk at Cody’s Books
Related posts:
Insanely Great Endings (“An ending has to wrap not only the narrative logic of the story —it also has to be emotionally fulfilling.” Michael Arndt)
What’s at Stake? (Tip #9)
I’m currently working on something I have no ending for. I haven’t made up my mind whether it will be happy or tragic. As for now, I can’t agree or disagree with what you say. I’ll know more when I get close to finishing. Maybe it’s for selfish reasons, but I don’t want to know what happens. It keeps it more interesting for me that way, keeps me wondering and engaged, keeps me wanting to come back. I think I would lose interest if I knew what was going to happen.
@ldlagarino–Technically, I didn’t say anything…just pulled a quote from an Oscar-winning screenwriter. So feel free to agree or disagree with anything he said that will help you in your own writing. Every writer works a little differently. In fact, Stephen King says he learns what happens to the characters about when the character’s learn what happened. So I don’t think he works towards a predetermined ending and that’s worked out okay for him.
Gotta love Michael Arndt.
Exactly.
Guess I missed the quotation marks. Thanks for the response. It helps to look at things from different points of view.