It’s been a hectic week, and I’ve had a long day, but I’m determined to write to you tonight and have a long, restful weekend starting tomorrow. Full disclosure: I’d planned to apologise for not writing to you tonight, then write to you about the tender storytelling in Akwaeke Emezi’s The Death of Vivek Oji and ‘Our Theresa’ by Lucia Edafioka tomorrow. I’ll share my thoughts on these next week instead.
Random: In titling this letter, I remembered a song my primary school teacher sang for a boy who always turned his book upside down to write his notes. We were in primary one, so it strikes me as unfair that she teased him that way. Now he lives in my memory as ‘Upside Down Obinna.’
Hello, friend!
In this letter, I’ll share a simple writing technique called ‘working backwards’ or inversion. I don’t know if it’s an actual writing technique. It’s a mental model my manager emphasises for problem-solving and project management. When you work backwards, you don’t tackle the problem from its head. Instead, you begin from the opposite end, asking: what is the solution that I want?
Storytellers can write their stories from different points in the timeline; that’s a given. My recommendation is to approach the story from the end. It’s not the most liberal interpretation of the mental model; I’m merely borrowing the framework. Instead of asking: where is this story taking me to? Ask how does this story end? Or what is the ending I want? What things might stop my characters from getting to this end? Storytelling isn’t supposed to be mathematical, but only liars say there are no formulas.
Perhaps, I’m thinking about endings because, in The Death of Vivek Oji, we already know that Vivek Oji is dead even without reading the synopsis. It’s as true as daylight. What if the author had confined the story exclusively to the consequence of Vivek Oji’s death, i.e. the story starts with Vivek Oji and cascades to several events that lead to a brand new ending. Maybe Vivek’s mother give birth to a girl who turns out to be a reincarnation of Vivek and has come back to avenge Vivek’s death. It would have been remarkably different. In reality, the novel (with an erratic timeline) retraces the how, why, when, where, (who), etc., of the protagonist’s death.
Knowing your ending gives you more power over your story than simply knowing the plot of your story. It allows you to build and elegantly dash expectations, like pulling the carpet under your reader’s feet. It’s a power readers should be afraid of. Ironically, as a Christian, I’m comforted that God knows my end from the beginning. And if writers are gods, shouldn’t we show off the knowledge of the end from the beginning?
My most challenging stories to write are the ones where I have no ending in mind. I arrive at a point where I think the story should naturally come to a close and ask, now what? On the flip side, my favourite kind of story to read is one where, on the second read, you can already tell that the writer had the end in mind as she wrote. Take Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ for example. I read it for the first time a few weeks ago and was somewhat surprised by that ending [I recommend that you read it]. There’s a lottery and a prize to be won, but we don’t know what the prize is throughout the story. The truth is, Shirley Jackson left hints about the prize from the beginning, and the ending isn’t totally out of the blue. Hint: why was Bobby Martin filling his pocket with stones? Why were the other boys following his example?
Sometimes you know and think proactively about the ending, only because you’re supposed to kill it.
There’s so much you can do with a story’s ending, and I’m learning this the more I read. As in Flannery O’Connor’s ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’, a familiar story about a family trip can mean a lot more if done the right way. And anyway, why should it be done the right way if it’s just a story and nothing more? What’s so important? My favourite is how life plays tricks on us and isn’t straightforward. Knowing the end allows you to play realistic tricks (depending on the genre) on your readers and characters. You know the old saying, art imitates life or is it the other way round.
PS: As I researched this letter, I discovered that inversion as a mental model is not new to storytelling. I’m not a genius after all.
Have a good weekend. As usual, errors here are a reminder that this is my small labour of love. 💖