Backwards is Better

So my new favorite trick is the backwards write.

I've done this before with other scripts, usually to make sure scenes worked in isolation and to read them with a fresh eye. (You'll be amazed what jumps out at you when you start from the back of the script where your eye usually tires.) I'd also done this to check for excess flab and to make sure every scene had a story purpose, moving the action forward.

But it's only within the last couple of weeks that I used the backwards write to solve an ending that was just not working.

The backwards write is a method that story consultant Jeffrey Kitchen advocates. I like it because it focuses so exclusively on cause and effect.

It all starts with the ending of the movie. What is the image that dramatizes the object of the story? This question makes you zero in on the "moral" of the tale. Then working from the dramatization of that final object, you go back through the chain of cause and effect for each action until you arrive at your beginning.

What I find is that this really focuses the story. The question becomes less what preceded an event in the story, but more specifically, what happens in your script that causes the subsequent event to happen. For me, the backwards-write method took actions that arose to facilitate the plot and put them in the hands of the protagonist or the antagonist. I can't tell you how much more satisfying these new drafts feel.

Check out Kitchen's method here...