Discovering what happens

Once I start writing things down, I feel like I'm nailing the story in place.

Ann Patchett, These Precious Days

Ann Patchett

Some writers say they write a story to discover how it will end. Ann Patchett says she needs to know how her story will end before she even begins writing it. I can understand both approaches. I don't write stories, but sometimes when I'm writing I know exactly where I'm going before I start. Other times I haven't a clue. I just start writing and see what develops. I can have good results — or bad ones — either way, although I will admit that knowing where I'm going usually makes for easier writing.

Yet Patchett must not just know the ending before she writes the beginning, but apparently she must know everything else in her story. I wonder, how is this even possible?

In her essay "These Precious Days" in her book with the same title, the novelist writes, "When I'm putting together a novel, I leave all the doors and windows open so the characters can come in and just as easily leave." And this is before she begins the actual writing.

"When I rely on my imperfect memory, the pieces are free to move," she says. But with an imperfect memory, how does she remember where they move to? There is too much coming and going in a novel for anyone to remember where everyone is, I would think.

And yet I am left wondering if Ann Patchett is really so differently from those writers who write in order to discover what happens. She goes through the same exciting process of discovery, except she does it before she starts writing.