Dumb Little Writing Tricks That Work: Plot Backward

You’re doing prep work, breaking the story. Problem is, the story is breaking YOU! The plot is a mess, you can’t figure it out, bits and pieces here and there, no flow, no coherent structure, just a bunch of scenes.

Quick question: Do you know your ending? Not the Denouement, but the Final Struggle, the climax of the story?

You do, you say? Well, good news, my friend, ‘coz I’ve got a dumb idea that just might work for you.

Start at the end and work your way backward.

Again, you KNOW the ending. So what scene comes BEFORE that?

And what scene comes BEFORE that?

And what scene comes…

You get the picture.

It’s a way of reverse engineering your story, switching cause-and-effect, so it’s effect, then cause… effect, then cause.

So if you’re stuck in the plotting process and aren’t moving forward…

Go BACKWARD!

Start at the end… and end at the beginning!

This has been another edition of Dumb Little Writing Tricks That Work.

For more articles in the series, go here.