Thinking Backwards

I find myself writing a play, not something I ever thought about doing. However, I wrote a series of short stories - short fictional anecdotes really - that had the same speaker, an old retired farmer who is keenly observant and has a wry, gentle wit. I didn't know what to do with them until one evening I was at a fund raiser for the region's land trust and the MC was a local actor, a man with considerable talent, especially a keen sense of comic timing. Part way through the evening, I realized he would make a marvelous speaker in my stories, and maybe I should turn them into a play.

However, it evolved totally differently from my usual pattern. I always talk about 'thinking backwards', by which I mean when you have the general idea for a story, think about how it ends, then work backwards, thinking about what you have to include to make the ending make sense. Then think about what needs to come before that, both events and characters, etc. Eventually, you have a plan and you can 'write forwards', based on the detailed outline from 'thinking backwards'.

However, that isn't what I did here. When I began, I had no idea how it would end, so now that I have written the ending, I need to re-write earlier scenes, so the ending doesn't come out of the blue. The things that happen, the ways the characters act, the dialogue, etc. all need to fit realistically.