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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/20794
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Kurt Vonnegut advised that writers “start as close to the ending as possible.”

I recommend you decide what is the best ending you have right now, and then write that book. After that book is done, you can start a new book and write the best ending you can come up with for that book.

One thing that movies are suffering from right now is they try to make 2 or 3 at once, and actually end up making just one movie that is stretched out to 3 and ends up being 3 bad movies. One is missing a beginning, another is missing an end, another is a jumbled mess. They split one of The Hunger Games books into 2 really weak movies that ended up doing much worse both critically and financially than if they have made just 1 good movie.

If you are going to jump around in the timeline, I think you should have a really, really good reason for that. Don’t do it arbitrarily. For example, do it to hide the true identity of a character that will later be revealed and cast a whole new light on the entire story. Or to hide some important event so that when it is revealed, the reader will understand the true significance of that event. You really put a burden on the reader and if that ends up being for nothing, I think a lot of readers resent it, whether consciously or subconsciously.

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