Don’t Impose your Ending. Discover It.
Don’t decide what your story must say and reverse‑engineer the plot to get there. Embark on a genuine open-ended journey of discovery.
Start with a question, not an answer
It’s often said that, for a strong story, you need to have something to say. But this is a dead end, and leads to contrived writing.
Passion, yes. Sermons, no. Yes to meaning, no to preaching.
Don’t start your story with a pre-approved answer, start it with a challenging question, then explore it honestly.
Let the second act argue both sides of that question, without cheating. Then let the ending and the premise emerge honestly from the character’s choices – not yours. Strong stories reach strong conclusions with a powerful, often surprising, moral and philosophical position – but not by knowing where they’re going from the beginning.
Start your first act with a question, not an answer. A question that you care about, without an easy answer. Then let the second act tempt your protagonist with real alternatives. Finally, have the third act resolve the argument honestly—even if it surprises you, your peers, or your identity.
Even if the answer is ‘learn to live with the uncertainty.’
What is a Premise?
People use the word premise to stand in for several other one-sentence summaries of a story. I’m a classicist, and I use premise to mean the story’s ultimate meaning – the conclusion of the dramatic argument that the characters pursue through the plot.
For me, a premise is not:
- A Package line: eg ‘Schwarzenegger, De Vito, Twins.’
- A Tagline: ‘In space, no one can hear you scream.’
- A Logline (sometimes called the elevator pitch): ‘A rookie FBI trainee must win the help of a brilliant cannibal to catch a serial killer before he murders again.’
- A Hollywood premise – aka the initial dramatic situation. ‘A Nazi commandant’s family pursues the perfect domestic life within the grounds of Auschwitz.’
The premise is not where the story begins, but where it ends.
It’s not the opening question, ‘Can you compartmentalise morality?’ (ZONE OF INTEREST, Glazer, 2023), but the conclusion, which is something like, ‘No, morality isn’t only about the big decisions you make; it’s also about the everyday ones. Systems dissipate guilt through process, but that doesn’t take away personal responsibility. Barbarity in one area of your life seeps into all areas of your life.’
The real premise flows from the Hollywood premise, but it isn’t the Hollywood premise.
See: A Conflict Layer Cake: worked EXAMPLE for a worked-through example of a how a premise arises through action from an open question: a mother in an oppressive society trying to encourage independence of thought in her daughters, and at the same time protect them.
What is a workable opening question?
The opening question needs to set up a genuine debate that is relevant to everyone’s life. It needs to be:
- Two-sided – a reasonable person could make a good case for either side.
- Have a moral core – the answer should challenge how we live and behave.
- Have substance – different situations and events bring out different aspects of the argument. The story will not spend the second act revisiting the same two arguments. With the same conclusion.
Some tests
Two-sided: There is no point in a story that asks, ‘Is it better to live a short, lonely and brutish life, or a long, loving and fulfilled one?’ It’s not an even-handed question.
‘Err, can I have a bit of time to decide?’
Substance: Can I find at least three different story beats for each side of the question? If not, it doesn’t have enough substance.
The exception that proves the rule… Your story leads you to challenge common wisdom, in which case the test is whether everyone you know would be surprised by your conclusion.
One example: ‘Is it better to die a young hero, or live a long life as a coward?’
Many stories ask this question, though in a hypocritical way: 99% of stories conclude with ‘die a hero’, but I suspect that 99% of people would choose ‘live a long life.’ So make an argument for that.
Moral: Is there a universal moral dimension to the question? You can often put a moral question as an ‘Is it better…?’ or a ‘Should you…?’ question.
This is not an argument for moralistic answers. For a deeper dive into the moral question, See: Morality, not Moralism.
Some Quick Examples
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, (Gondry, 2004):
Question: If you could erase a painful love, should you?
Act II argues both: Erasing seems like relief and freedom; remembering preserves connection. But there’s a wild card…
Ending/Premise: Desire (including sexual desire, but not only sexual desire) is what really matters. Memory is no more than crystallised desire. Desire lives in the present, and looks forward. Memory lives in the past. Even if you eliminate every good memory, and are only left with the worst memories, desire, honestly acknowledged, wins out.
CASABLANCA, (Curtis, 1942)
Question: Should you take the opportunity to reclaim a love whose loss hurt you deeply, or sacrifice that second chance for happiness for the greater good?
Act II argues both: You still love her, she still loves you. You can heal the pain in your heart. But what value does personal love have in a world of subjugation and oppression?
Ending/Premise: Rick sacrifices his chance of happiness with Ilsa for her safety, and turns his pain into purpose against the regime that threatens her.
Duelling aphorisms
You can often find a workable initial question by joining two conflicting aphorisms and putting them in a situation that pivots on the contradiction.
‘Be true to yourself’ vs ‘Adapt or die’ in a dictatorship.
‘Look before you leap’ and ‘He who hesitates is lost’ into a situation where other people’s lives, not just your protagonist’s, are at stake.
Finding the Meaning
If you’re wrestling with meaning in your story, here are the choices:
1. We can pretend stories are ‘just entertainment’ without meaning. Write what excites us, or we think will excite others, and leave any meaning to take care of itself.
The problem: It reinforces the unquestioned dominant social narrative. In behaving as if we have nothing to say, we are simply lining up behind the biggest army.
2. We can nudge the story to say what we believe, or what our peer group believes.
The problem: preaching to the choir. And skewing your story to do so.
It’s almost impossible to write to a predetermined ending without fudging the story at key points to get there. All too often, you end up using clichés and forced moments to get around obstacles blocking the path to your pre-determined conclusion, instead of letting the process lead you down unexplored paths to surprising discoveries.
3. We can genuinely explore the possible meanings through the story, accepting that the outcome may surprise us, and disappoint our peers.
The problem: It’s harder, and scarier.
- It’s scary to start a journey not knowing the precise destination, only that you are looking for one.
- It’s scary to allow yourself to find an ending that challenges your belief system or challenges the belief system of your peer group.
(Not to mention the fear that you’ll never find an ending and have to abandon the whole enterprise.)
But it gives your story power and substance. Starting with a tough question and searching for a strong premise helps you focus the second act immensely. You know what to leave out, because you know whether the events address the question. Or repeat themselves.
And you know what you’re missing, because you can see that you haven’t addressed key aspects of the question.
Plus, it gives your story memorability. It’s not just another ho-hum colour-by-numbers series of events leading to a predictable outcome. Your story will have a philosophical hook that’s bigger than explosions and car crashes.
