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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23482
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Lots of writers start writing with no idea where it will go, much less how it will end. Dean Wesley Smith has a book about that, called _[Writing Into the Dark](http://amzn.to/28JO1jK)._

On the other hand, I once heard Richard North Patterson claim that "Any mystery writer who starts without knowing the end is committing authorial malpractice." (The next time I read one of his books, I knew the ending about 25% of the way in. And the one after that, I figured out on page 8. So go figure.)

If you have some way of progressively moving in the direction of a climax, that will help. You don't even have to know the climax. You just have to know that you are moving toward one.

A pretty good way to do that: Start with a character with a problem. Then write _try/fail cycles_. The character tries the smartest thing they can think of. But it fails. Not only that, it leaves things worse than they were before. So they try the next thing, which is more difficult in some way.

This progresses (more or less) in the direction of a climax because eventually the character runs out of easy ideas, and has to try harder ones, or ones they are more and more reluctant to try.

If you keep that up, you get to a point where the only way forward is to do something the character has sworn all along that they would never do. And you have _discovered_ a climax.

My advice: Whichever way gets you writing is the right way (for now).

Even if you end up throwing stuff out, everything you write is practice. It's learning. That's worth a lot.

Original score: 9