This week, I reviewed every newsletter I’ve sent you over the last 18 months. The one I’ve found the most helpful surprised me, in part because it’s based on a 7-word quote from a 20th century poet and in part because it’s an idea I’ve gotten quite a bit of pushback on.

It’s short, about 500 words total, and a reminder I needed. I’ll let you decide for yourself. Hopefully it’s the same for you.

TS Eliot wrote: “The end is where we start from.“

The overarching goal of a storyteller is to get your audience from beginning to end. Nobody starts a book to get to the middle. And at the end, your reader should feel their time has not been wasted.

So simple, yeah?

Story rewards people who can take not necessarily the shortest path from Beginning to End, but the most compelling. The path that keeps the reader asking, “What happens next?”

I’m no expert, but I’ve found the biggest unlock for me has been to write the end of my story first.

Why?

The end of your story has a mass to it. An element of gravity. It’s like a magnet pulling your story forward or the sun holding the planets in orbit.

Your ending should reflect the beginning of your story. The closer the two are to each other, the more interesting they become. View your story as a circle. At what point is your ending the reflection of your beginning? Often, that’s where you want to end.

Great endings often resonate because they echo a word, scene, or convo that came before, but do so in such a way that the reader’s forced to dig deeper.

Five of my favorite examples:

• The top wobbling at the end of Inception.

• The pigs in Animal Farm start to resemble humans.

• The buildings collapsing at the end of Fight Club.

• Red traveling to Zihuatanejo, fulfilling the promise made to Andy earlier in Shawshank Redemption.

• The last line of the great Gatsby, “borne back ceaselessly into the past,” echoes Gatsby’s fixation on the past from early in the story.

If you’ve read this letter for a while, you know I’m a Harry Potter nerd. Remember the line Dumbledore left for Harry in book 7?

“I open at the close.”

Stories are like that, too. The end drives the beginning and middle, not the other way around.

Write the end first.

That way you know what you need to achieve, what you need to mention, and what matters throughout your story.

Have an awesome weekend,

Nathan

PS. Two weeks ago, this newsletter got trapped in the dreaded spam inbox purgatory. It’s 17 of my go-to storytelling resources broken down by book, podcast, video, etc.

Trivia — A Sentence I Wish I Wrote

Here’s a line I can’t get out of my head. What classic novel does it come from? Tap your best guess.