From the Beginning of the End to the End and Then Backwards From There

I'm planning my next screenplay. Like, really planning it. Outlines, notes, beat sheets, the works. Months of work go into it and when I finally sit back to survey my wonders I realize something. Act one, solid. Act two, pretty good; there's some definite good stuff in there. Act three...act three is...complicated - well, incredibly simple at this point since I only have a few sentences in that section. I'm sure it will come to me by the time I sit down to actually write the thing.

Wrong.

You really think that what you can't outline in the broadest, most diluted sense is going to magically materialize by the time you get to page 75 of your first draft? Do you, self? Because you're wrong. It's going to be just as hard then as it is now, and even if you do manage to eek out some semblance of a maybe-not-half-bad ending, what was it all worth anyway? The end is what it's about; it's what the entire thing is building toward. The end is the whole thing.

The end is so hard. It's the big payoff - it's all your payoffs, really. Virtually any beginner can manage to pull together a good first act, a surprising inciting incident or an attention-grabbing opening scene, but having a good, memorable, meaningful ending takes such an incredible amount of work that few ever really get it. I want to get it.

So, for this script, no more wimping out. No more putting off the hard work until some arbitrary date in the future; no more buying into the idea that inspiration is something that exists externally, just hovering above my head somewhere waiting for the ideal moment to land in my brain. Good ideas, great ideas are created by those who put in the time and effort and are disciplined enough to pull those ideas out of the mess of unrelated, unfocused and ultimately unimportant thoughts that dominate our brain activity.

The brain is a thoughts dumpster and your great ideas are the uneaten bear claws still in that pink pastry box. Get digging.

And don't just knock out the easy stuff and then start writing because it feels good. Do it the hard way; start from the beginning of the end, go all the way to the end of the end, then you can work your way backwards until you have a complete outline. Be thorough; no cop outs. None of this "I'll figure it out later" stuff. You'll figure it out now, because it's what your whole story is about. It's why you're writing this thing in the first place.

It's why you're writing this thing in the first place!

There's another reason to do it this way, a really important reason. If you sit down to write your ending and nothing really happens, if you can't think of a single awesome thing to put in there then why are you building an entire story around nothing? You may have a series of events, but unless you can pull them all together into something spectacular, whether that's a quiet thoughtful spectacular or a loud with explosions and motorcycle racing spectacular, it has to be great.

Just make something great!