#2 Write the Last Page 1st
This is not about knowing your ending.
This post is a reverse banquet.
Eat your dessert first because there are quite a few “courses.”
Please sample what resonates and discard the rest.
Did you write your last page 1st, or do you just know your ending?
Before you eat the icing on the cake, know what type of story ending you will have. Knowing how your story will end AND what type of ending it will be is directly tied to your character's journey, the story's tone, genre stakes, and major theme.
Famous story endings are:
happily-ever-after,
a twist,
or a cliffhanger ending.
Other endings are ambiguous, or an ending sets up the next story. It could be heartbreaking and tragic, not to mention an unresolved ending. Your ending could be a combination of any of the above.
You must know your story’s ending if you want to take your audience on a wild ride and elicit a certain emotion.
So, know your story's ending and then write your last page first.
The story's last page vs. the story's ending
You know the type of story ending.
Now write your last page.
Writing your last page first is a storytelling technique that forces you to make choices about the character and the story’s resolution.
Everything you must resolve on the last page:
character arc
moral arc
character goal
(inner/outer) genre stakes
character’s new equilibrium
But more importantly, writing your last page first gives you a framework for your opening and setup, preparing your story with a solid place to start because you know where you’re headed.
Three reasons you should write your last page first
The best reason to write your last page first is because it informs you how to craft your story's beginning, especially page 1. That’s what people will read first.
Writing your last page first instructs you how to craft your opening and setup by reverse engineering your story’s ending and resolution. Know your dramatic resolution, then write an opening and setup with stark contrast to or the opposite of your last page (ending + resolution).
In BARBIE (2023), the character Barbie Margot is played by Margot Robbie. In the opening of the BARBIE script, written by wife and husband Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach and Oscar-nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, Helen Mirren (OS) narrates the first spoken words over a description of Barbie Land:
“Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been dolls. But the dolls were always and forever baby dolls. The girls who played with them could only ever play at being MOTHERS. Which can be fun, at least for a while anyway... Ask your mother.”
Zoom to the last page of the BARBIE script.
Barbie Margot has the last line: “I’m here to see my gynecologist.”
Barbie Margot’s last line of dialogue connects the story’s thematic arc to Mirren’s first line of dialogue using “the arc of opposites.” The story starts with Helen talking about baby dolls at the beginning of time in a barren desert before Barbie Land. The story ends with a grown Barbie Margot woman excited for her first visit to a baby doctor in the Real World.
The BARBIE script connects the first and last pages using dialogue to express the story’s thematic arc: a baby doll who chooses to be like a real woman.
Beyond writing your last page first to help pinpoint the story’s arc, it establishes the outcome of your genre stakes. Barbie’s story arc is accomplished through the genres of romance and adventure—made apparent on the last page.
Romance outcome: Barbie rejects Ken.
Adventure outcome: Barbie chooses a new life as a grown woman in the real world.
Writing the last page first is a gamble you must bet all your money on, or you'll lose the catharsis and emotional impact you intend your audience to feel and experience.
Write your last page first, so you'll have a strong chance at winning the hearts and minds of your readers and creating fans.
Overview - Write your last page first so that you know the following:
Main Character's Arc
Character's Moral Arc/Revelation and New Equilibrium
Outcome of Genre Stakes and Character's Goal (force of opponent and narrative drive)
Write the last page to know the character arc
Diving deeper into the character arc, if you write your last page first, start by defining your character’s arc with two words.
Like Scrooge in Disney's A CHRISTMAS CAROL (2009), will your character transform from negative to positive? If so, define Scrooge’s transformation further:
selfish to selfless
or greedy to giving
This exercise gives you a roadmap for your character’s arc to show on your last page.
In the film BARBIE (2023), Barbie arcs from being a blindly disempowered doll to an awakened and empowered “female.”
Write the last page to know the moral arc
The best stories have moral arcs because they provide emotional satisfaction to the audience. When I talk about moral arcs, I am referring to the internal genres that transform a character's inner POV from:
self-serving to serving others, like Scrooge
or where a character seeks status and recognition at any cost
or a story where the main character's desire leads them to "grow up," seeing the world from a wiser place, like Barbie
Universal stories with moral arcs are often prescriptive or cautionary and can be popular with a broad audience. Audiences want to root for what's right and wrong, just and unjust. These types of stories will have commercial appeal. If you aim to add commercial appeal to your story, know your ending, and write your last page first by clearly defining a character's moral arc.
Reverse engineer your last page
Crafting the last page forces you to deconstruct your story and character’s arch and your main character's moral code.
On the last page, show the goal they should want to achieve.
In the opening and setup, show the goal they desperately want to achieve to fulfill their weakness/need.
Knowing how “good” your character becomes allows you to construct an initially corrupt moral code in the opening and setup. Then you can entertain the audience by showing your character’s poor decision-making process and how it changes throughout their journey.
Focus on plotting the protagonist's reactions to failure (on all levels: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual) throughout the story.
How will your main character react to failure on the first page as contrasted with the last?
The screenplay of TOP GUN: MAVERICK (2022) portrays Maverick’s moral arc (a combo of status and world view) in the line: "It's not the plane, it's the pilot."
The line: "It's not the plane, it's the pilot" is strategically placed throughout the script. As Maverick's moral arc progresses, the literal translation of that line also changes meaning. It's one of the many reasons the screenplay was nominated for an Oscar for Best Screenplay in 2022.
There’s a strong connection between the opening and ending in TOP GUN: MAVERICK. Fast-forward to the last page of the screenplay. A boyishly confident and cocksure Maverick sits inside the cockpit of an “ancient” P-51 plane. He instructs Penny—his love interest—how to jump out if he has to crash land.
Maverick's moral theme of being true to himself as a pilot is visceral. He will always be a pilot, no matter how old he is. That's why he got the girl; it’s his new equilibrium.
It's not the “old” plane; it's the "forever" pilot.
Character's Revelation and New Equilibrium
The last page must physically and emotionally show the main character’s new equilibrium. In the case of Maverick, being born to be a fighter pilot is a revelation Maverick always knew of himself. This is a story twist on the new equilibrium beat.
Still, Maverick’s inner knowing had to be physically tested in combat with lives at stake in an “ancient” aircraft under impossible conditions to fully embody his truth and finally open his heart and mind to love, his final sacrifece. His new equilibrium is love, Penny, a love he lost and found at last.
Writing the last page defines genre stakes and character goals
Your story’s genres define what's at stake. Action, horror, and thriller stories are about "life and death" being at stake. Writing your last page first helps to define the outcomes of your genre's stakes—your main character's goals and whether they live or die.
If you're writing horror, like in the film version here of the script, GET OUT (2017), you must decide if the protagonist defeats the monster at the end.
Conversely, if the protagonist dies in the end, like in the film THE SIXTH SENSE (1999), loss of life is shown in the context of the psychological thriller and the loss of love within the love story genre is shown on the last page with the line: "Anna Crowe… I am in love. In love I am."
Writing challenge: Read the first and last pages of three scripts you love. Watch the endings or last scenes on YouTube. Do you see the thematic connections in images or dialogue? Do you recognize the resolution clearly defined on the last page or scene?
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Happy writing,
Kelly E. Keough
You are welcome, Jeanne! Thank you for the comments. I agree. The ending and last page of a memoir will show all the same things a great movie or novel will. Memoir storytelling is so much about structure, and yet, memoir structure is a bit different than fiction structure. Still, the Desire line is good and necessary, that's what will infuse the enthusiasm to plot the events.
This is so helpful! For more than screenplays, it seems to me. Thank you for very motivating guidance on how to develop a compelling internal moral arc. I have been laboring on a memoir, and have come to realize I need to look at story structure, if I’m going to find my way through to a satisfying ending. This piece fits in well with the Desire Line “blueprint” I’ve recently tried out. Thank you. Story is story.