The Prompt
When I first started teaching fiction writing classes many years ago, I noticed that most student stories I received were ten to fifteen pages of exposition, filled with purposeless activity and empty conversations between characters, eventually leading up to a cool idea or image…and then they were over.
I struggled to explain to students that their fiction should be interesting from the start and become increasingly more interesting as the story progresses, but nothing I said to them sunk in – until I came up with a prompt I call Begin with “The End.”
I assigned students to write a first draft of a story, and after they were finished and the feedback sessions were over, I told them to write a second story, only this time take the ending scene of the first story and make it the beginning of a new story.
The prompt worked far better than I’d hoped.
The new stories were fresh and exciting, full of life and energy. And my students were shocked to discover just how little background from their first stories was needed in their new ones.
The prompt wasn’t only an exercise in beginning strong; it taught them a vital lesson about using minimal exposition in short fiction.
An Example
One new student story was especially good. In the first version, a father and teenage son visit Grandpa (the father’s dad) at his home in the country. Father is in a financial bind and wants to ask Grandpa for money, despite their strained relationship.
When Grandpa refuses Father’s request, Father and Son leave, and Father, angry, drives over Grandpa’s roadside mailbox, knocking it down as they go.
The first version was mostly a silent car ride to Grandpa’s house, during which
primarily delivered exposition about Father and Grandpa’s relationship. The teenager was a silent, passive observer throughout the story, and only the last page had any life to it.
The second version began with Father and Son running over Grandpa’s mailbox as they sped away. Furious and vindictive, Grandpa calls the police, and Father and Son argue about what happened as the cops pursue them.
The second story had more action, tension, and suspense, and the son became a much more active character, giving the story the strong emotional core the first version lacked.
All of this happened naturally, simply because the student started his second story with the end of the first.
Now it’s your turn.
Take a story you’ve already written, and write a new version beginning with the ending scene/situation of the first and see where it takes you.
Don’t have a story to work with? Choose an ending situation from a book or movie you know and use that as the beginning of your tale.
For extra fun, swap stories with a friend and write new versions of each other’s tale, using the original endings as jumping-off points.
Tim Waggoner
Tim Waggoner is a Four-Time Bram Stoker Award-Winning Author
Website: www.timwaggoner.com
Blog: http://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/tim.waggoner.9
Twitter: @timwaggoner
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I used a sci-fi story about clones I was in the middle of writing. In that version the protagonist was fighting a mandate ordered by the society she was in and the ending showed her working on getting around the mandate. For this prompt, I began the story with the mandate. It worked! Now I’m going to use this prompt for other stories I’ve got going and see if I like them better with the ending at the beginning!
Use this pompt with a story that I was writting. This makes me have a more powerful start that contue during the writing process. It is like, if you are more focused on the story. Love this prompt.
I completed this on the 18th and have worked some pinpoint revisions on the projects (seven drabbles) which I produced for this prompt. It was fun, and it’s something that I may revisit in the future. Thanks for the prompt.
A fun and helpful prompt. I used the ending from the Day 12 story to write a new story with a different POV.
1004 words beginning where Day 13’s story ends.
I didn’t feel especially focused for this one, but I did it! I also learned that I quite like a lot of the stories I’ve drafted / outlined this month so far and don’t necessarily want to augment them in this way? But, I will definitely keep this trick in my back pocket for some of the stories languishing in my trunk. It seems like a great way to refresh a story that has failed to launch.
This prompt scared me. I looked back at the stories I wrote this month. On day 4 the prompt was about two characters having a conflict. I wrote a story (inspired by the song Good Directions by Billy Currington) about two girls trying to decide which way to go left or right. They go right. But on day 13 we had to change the story so my character went left. Today’s prompt takes over where day 13 left off. Pretty happy with the results.