: Re: How important is it to know the end before the writing the beginning? One of the Rules of writing indicates that knowing the end before the beginning is critical to writing. Which I find odd,

@Murray165

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I think it was Abe Lincoln who said the last part of any book written is the beginning.

Okay, so you do not know how your story will end and this helps you write. Fair enough, but your story will have an end, won't it? Now that you know the end, know your whole story, I would think this could well affect your beginning. I recently wrote a novel and put it away for a few years. When I read it again, I realised the beginning has to be my best writing. It has to pull the reader in. I found I rewrote entirely 20 chapters of the novel and it became a trilogy.

There are no hard and fast rules except the book has to be readable and the reader must want to read the book through to the end. But most writers I know, including myself, agree on one thing: have at least a brief plot and an idea of how the story might end AND write the novel. THEN think about how to best rewrite it to maximise entertainment (publication).

Of course some authors simply write one chapter at a time and see where it leads. This can work if you are a good writer and each chapter encourages the reader to desperately want to read the next. But it is worth remembering that a book is a contract between author and reader. The reader will be expecting a satisfying end. I recently read A Thousands Suns by Alex Scarrow. Although I found I wanted to read each chapter I was disappointed that the climax was poor (at least for me). I won't be reading his other books as a result. Yes the beginning is the most important part of a book because it is the bait to catch the fish. But the ending is the bait for whether a reader will ever read another book by that author. If the said fish was not netted and released properly it will not bother to bite a similar bait again (poor metaphor, I know, but...)

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