Can You Start Writing Before Knowing the End of a Story?

The short answer is "sure," but the longer one would be, "Start if your characters and their motives are known, as well as the setting and how it contributes to the story."

If you write series, these items would be clear, but that's not a green light to meander as you write. My suggestion would be that you know at least these four things:

1) The main characters' regular routine(s) -- because you are about to disrupt their lives. How do they spend their time? What matters to them? Who do they love or especially dislike?

2) Understanding of what will disturb their daily life. It doesn't have to shatter their routines, but it has to spur them to action of some sort. Action does not have to be dramatic -- the outcome it generates does have to matter to readers.

3) The ability to plan ahead at least a few chapters. 

4) Options for how the main characters can resolve the situation/tragedy/romantic break-up so they can get back to their routines -- even if those will be altered.

I've adapted a phrase I learned when writing nonfiction reports. It is: If you don't know where you are going, how will you know when you get there? 

In fiction, if you don't have an idea of where you are heading, how can you prepare the characters and readers for what they need to know as the book progresses? For example, you could add foreshadowing later, but that can result in choppy writing. 

I usually do these things and have at least a couple pages of notes about where I want the story to go. Sometimes an idea seems so good I jump in and start writing. That usually results in a stall after 15 or 20,000 words. Then I do some more heavy thinking.

Leaping into an idea can also lead you to think that's where the story should start. That's not necessarily so. It's where you needed to start writing, but it could end up as the middle of the book after you figure out more aspects of the story. 

I'm somewhere in the middle of the panster/outliner equation. I write a better book when I do more planning, but I'm not capable of doing a full outline. Too impatient.

When I do a post, I look for outside resources to refer readers to. K.M. Weiland's comprehensive blog and writings often have something. Lo and behold, this week she has Six Ways to Find Your Best Ideas Before You Start Writing.

It's a good approach. Most writers have lots of ideas pinging around in their brain. Weiland offers a thought process to filter through them.

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Making the Bad Guys Worse

Every author needs to be able to critique herself. My most consistent comment is that I resolve conflict too quickly. That's great in life, but not so good in mysteries.

After giving it more thought, I believe this is because I don't fully develop the villains of the story. In my head, I look at almost everything from one of my antagonist's point of view. I'll think carefully about how a murder takes place and the immediate reason, but not the ultimate why.

In preparing for a presentation on villains I considered several books and movies. Some portray the hero's life and motives so well we don't need  to fully understand the bad guy. Every year I watch It's a Wonderful Life (the Christmas story with Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed). We see the clear angst George Bailey feels at having to remain in Bedford Falls and we understand why his wife Mary loves being there.

Slowly George comes to see himself as the town sees him, and he understands the full value of his life. But what about Mr. Potter? We know he's a skinflint, know that when he didn't return the Bailey Savings and Loan Bank Deposit it sets the stage for George's belief that the world would be better off without him in it.

But why is Potter a mean, miserly man? Is he angry that he ended up in a wheelchair? Did his parents abandon him? We don't know, and in that story, his actions matter more than his motives.

Consider the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope. The story opens with Darth Vader chasing the rebels to secure the return of the plans for the Death Star. Leia is important, but it's when Luke's aunt and uncle are killed on his home planet that he gets the drive to combat the evil of the Empire.

So did the theft of the plans start the action? I'd say no. Darth Vader was compelled to seek to quash the rebellion because, in his words, he felt "a disturbance in the Force." Of course he wanted those plans, but he knew how strong his weapons were. Surely he would have felt it possible to combat any threat.

Except the threat that challenged his very existence. As the story progresses through three movies, we come to fully understand his desperation.

Where does that leave us? It tells me I need to know the enemy's backstory, his or her motives, to develop an enemy as strong as Darth Vader and the Empire. Strength comes in many forms. I think the strongest ones are secrets.

How will this realization change my writing? I've  decided it will be okay to jot down ideas for a plot or the main characters (the antagonists, for me), but I won't let myself start another mystery without developing the entire story from the villain's point of view. I probably won't use all the material in the novel, but knowing it will created a stronger enemy for my sleuth to overcome.

I'll keep notes as I go and let you know how it turns out.
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Making Your Fiction Better

Authors constantly look for ways to improve their writing. Even the best plot and characters who grab readers may not be perfect. Or they may be, but the author hasn't let them show it.

With much hard work and a little luck, we writers figure out how to apply fixes as we work or while in revision mode. Some of the 'quick fix' things I've learned to do through the years are:

• Get rid of he-said and she-said. Readers need to know who said what. Generally, the designation can be made through action rather than constant repetition of words such as said, mentioned, exclaimed, replied, or told.
• Watch for all forms of the verb 'to be.' These can dilute the punch of a phrase. After reading Jane Cleland's 2016 book (Mastering Suspense, Structure, and Plot), I searched for 'was' in the final draft of Demise of a Devious Neighbor. I changed sixty sentences! For example, "I was seething but tried not to show it"  became "I seethed, but tried not to show it." Some of the changes entailed a complete rework of the sentence, to put emphasis on the action.
• Show emotions or frames of mind through action or adjectives rather than using adverbs to imply them. I won't go so far as to model Stephen King, who believes "the road to hell is paved with adverbs." However, saying, "Samuel studied distractedly while he waited for his mom," is lazy. More descriptive is: "Samuel unfastened all connecting paperclips in the drawer and walked to the window every three minutes. Study was nearly impossible as he waited for his mom." Sure, if Samuel is in a room with no paperclips or windows, the author needs to express distraction in different ways. It's the old axiom -- show rather than tell.
• Give characters different speech patterns. A teacher may speak with perfect grammar and diction, but her high-school-age son probably won't.

As a largely self-published author I can change a book -- probably some kind of heresy. I did go back to some of the early books in the Jolie Gentil series and changed a lot of the "she said" types of phrases.
 
I usually had action in a segment -- "...she said, patting the dog's head." I moved a number of the phrases to precede the dialogue. "Jolie patted the dog's head" (as a complete sentence) would be first, then her dialogue. It's clear Jolie is talking and also gets rid of a gerund -- I find ing words almost as annoying as misused adverbs.

 The reader has a cleaner read.

 For a very early book, I did change some substance. In 2006, Author House (a firm for self-published books, long before Amazon's KDP) issued Searching for Secrets. It was a short mystery that put almost as much emphasis on a potential romance between the two main characters, a teacher and police officer in Iowa City.
 
After a lot of thought, I revised the book. The romantic elements of the older version seemed forced and took away from the plot. I liked the story, so I reworked parts of the book. Searching for Secrets is probably 90 percent the same, but with less focus on the characters' thoughts about one another. It flows better and emphasis is on what the characters do rather than think.
 
Some will call this sacrilege. I am much happier with the new version. A friend's note confirmed that the revision was a good decision.  He had just finished reading Appraisal for Murder and said, "It is a good read; much better than your first effort Searching for Secrets." Only a good friend will tell you something like that.
 
I believe the writer has a responsibility to keep working until a book is as close to perfect as it can be. We aren't just asking for a buyer's money, we're asking for a reader's time.

However, as a part-time writer with a very busy day job in the early 2000s, I didn't work with a critique group. I hadn't read a lot of books on writing or taken as many courses that focused on mysteries. But I had probably read twenty or more and attended a lot of writing workshops, which only serves to stress how much we can learn by doing more to improve.

An effective review technique I now use is to send a draft book to my Kindle. Seeing it as a reader does points out typos. It also emphasizes the pace of the book. Where does it lag? (It isn't always the middle.) I don't send it to Kindle until my Decatur critique group has reviewed it, but I read it on Kindle prior to sending it to beta readers.

Don't know how? Every Kindle has its own email. After signing in, check in the "Manage Contents and Devices" link at the bottom of your Amazon page. Look at your individual devices and you'll see the email. Send the book as a "doc" not a "mobi" file. Look for it in the documents part of the Kindle, not as a regular Kindle book.

 Are my books perfect now? No, but the reviews are consistently good. More important, I continually work hard to improve. 
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