Writing with AI: From the End to the Beginning
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| And this is how it ends |
Nevermind, it's pointless
This Is the End. I’ll Explain the Beginning in a Minute.
This is how it ends.
I know this part right from the start.
The powers that be will tell you a story needs a clean beginning, a clearly defined inciting incident, and a firm climax that grows logically from that first spark. That’s the diagram. That’s the advice. That’s the version that fits neatly into a textbook.
But writing—any kind of writing—doesn’t always behave that politely.
Sometimes the ending arrives first. Fully formed. Confident. Uninterested in justifying itself. In fiction, that means figuring out how to get there. In communication, it means showing why and how you reached the conclusion you already trust. In formal writing, it means knowing the conclusion in advance and then framing your premises so they lead there cleanly.
I’ve always written that way.
When the conclusion is clear, the premises reveal themselves. The thesis statement doesn’t come first—it almost writes itself once the path is established. The ending defines the constraints of the beginning.
So yes, I’m starting this post from the punchline.
From the climax.
From the conclusion.
From The End.
Everything else has to earn its way back here.
Broken Pencil, Who?
The Trouble With Knowing the Ending
Just knowing the punchline doesn’t tell the joke.
Knowing how something ends can fool you into thinking the path there must be simple. You’re already standing at the finish line, after all. So you look back and think, Okay… what got me here?
That’s where the trouble starts.
You begin testing ideas, one after another, moving steadily through explanations that seem like they should lead you to this point. You lean on one—and it collapses under its own weight. Oops. That happens.
Don’t worry. That part is normal.
You still have your goal post. You still trust the ending. So you keep testing assumptions. But here’s the trap: if an idea exists only to move you from point A to point B, it will almost certainly fail. Or worse, it will technically work while falling completely flat.
Those explanations don’t carry any load. They connect dots without supporting the structure.
When you’re working backward from a conclusion, it’s not enough to explain what happened to get you there. You can make almost anything connect if you’re determined enough. What matters more is understanding why this path leads to the ending—and why any other path wouldn’t.
If an explanation can be swapped out without changing the conclusion, it was never doing the real work.
And that’s usually the moment you realize the ending isn’t the problem.
It’s the middle that’s lying to you.
I said Broken Pencil
Where I Usually Blame the Wrong Thing
You’ve got a trajectory. A path. You’ve even mapped out the bumps and twists so the journey feels lived in.
Then you move one thing.
It’s never the big thing. Just a couch. Slide it to a different wall. Suddenly the pictures don’t balance. You shift those. Now they sit too high. The curtains look short. The couch used to hide that. Now it doesn’t. So you buy longer curtains.
They arrive. You hang them. Stand back.
The rug looks wrong.
You replace it. The new one pulls a color you hadn’t noticed before. Now the walls clash.
Nothing is technically broken. But nothing sits right either.
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| It almost made sense. |
You add one moment for tension. A sharper line. A dramatic turn. It feels justified. Necessary, even. And suddenly something else sags. A character’s reaction doesn’t ring true. A previous scene feels lighter than it should. The logic holds—but only barely.
That’s usually when I blame the obvious thing.
A bold decision.
A risky choice.
A moment where everything “changed.”
It feels satisfying to point at the big moment. It gives the story weight. It makes the ending feel earned.
But it’s almost never the culprit.
The big moment only works because something smaller slipped through earlier. Something quiet. Something slightly off, but not off enough to stop the process.
That’s where stories actually begin.
Long before anyone realizes one is happening.
I’m sorry I’m hard of hearing — could you speak up?
A Familiar Pattern (That Took Me Too Long to Notice)
I’ve seen this outside of creative writing more times than I can count.
A client asks for something impossible.
Not because they want the impossible thing — but because they’re describing the ending they imagine.
They don’t actually want a head table suspended in midair.
They want the feeling of floating in clouds.
But they don’t say “I want it to feel ethereal.”
They say, “Can we hang the head table?”
So you go back and forth. Email threads stretch longer than the aisle they’re walking down. You chip away at the literal version of the request, not to deny it, but to translate it.
Eventually, they see what they meant all along.
And once you understand that, the problem stops being impossible and starts being technical.
You don’t argue with the ending.
You work backward until the illusion becomes achievable.
That’s when I started noticing the pattern.
Writing behaves the same way.
Stories make big demands. Characters want suspended tables. Plots ask for miracles. The first explanation is almost always literal — and almost always wrong.
But once you understand the feeling behind the demand, the rest becomes constraint work.
The ending defines the limits of the beginning.
Comedy works this way. So does formal writing. So does persuasion. So does problem solving.
The punchline, the thesis conclusion, the call to action, the final line of an email — they’re all endings that quietly dictate what must have been misunderstood earlier for them to exist.
Sometimes we aren’t missing the message.
We’re just hearing it too literally.
Broken Pencil
Where Cg Shows Up (Without Telling Me Where to Go)
The path is built. The jumps, the bumps, the dramatic triggers are all in place. You’ve even repainted the living room to match the rug and curtains.
It should feel right.
But something is still off.
Not broken. Not obviously wrong. Just… heavier than it should be. Or lighter than it deserves to be.
This is usually the point where I loop Cg in.
Not to ask what should happen next. Not to generate a twist. But to ask why something I’ve already written feels slightly misaligned.
Cg doesn’t offer new plot points. It doesn’t invent clever turns. It asks questions about lines I thought were incidental.
Sometimes it’s as direct as:
“Glenn needs solitary confinement for the astral tuning to make sense.”
Or:
“If Rob’s hatred alone drives this, it becomes vengeance. That’s not the story you’re building.”
Cg isn’t writing for me in those moments.
It’s holding up a sign.
Pay attention here.
This part matters.
And what usually matters isn’t the big dramatic beat. It’s the small assumption underneath it. The unnoticed weight shift. The quiet imbalance that was there before I painted the walls.
That’s often when I realize I’m not missing the story at all.
I’m standing at the end, looking backward, trying to remember which small mistake made this inevitable — or which one I was about to make that would have sent it somewhere else entirely.
Who's there
The Inciting Incident (Almost Always Smaller Than Expected)
In humor, they call it the misinterpreted incident or the set-up. The moment where someone believes the wrong thing and has no reason to correct it.
If that moment isn’t clean, the punchline collapses. The joke doesn't land. The audence/reader didn't follow where the misdirection led.
The same rule applies everywhere else.
In formal writing, I always knew my conclusion. Knowing it allowed me to choose premises that led there cleanly. The thesis statement didn’t come first—it revealed itself once the path was clear.
I can remember in second year university we were given an assignment for a reaserch paper that we had two weeks to complete, but the professor wanted our thesis statement by next class for approval. When I came time to hand in our thesis statements, I handed in my conclusion. He looked at me funny and said this isn't a thesis statement. I responded by saying "I know, but I needed to know where I'm going first." He smiled, but in a sarcatic way then said, "You'd better go to the Shell station and buy a roadmap then." -- Yes, it was way before google.
Looking back, I realize I’ve almost always worked this way.
I just didn’t call it backward thinking. I called it experience.
Knock, Knock
The Bottom of the Well
The beginning isn’t loud.
It never is.
It’s a casual assumption.
An unchallenged interpretation.
Not “It was a dark and stormy night…” — even though it once was.
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| No one noticed the open curtain |
It’s a thought that didn’t feel important enough to question.
That’s the bottom of the well. That’s where the water is still clean.
Everything above it — the logic, the structure, the punchline — depends on that moment staying unnoticed just long enough to do its work.
Which is probably why I didn’t recognize it at the time.
So Yes, This Is the End
And now you know why it had to be.
Without it, you’d never reach the beginning.
That flashing cursor would still be there.
Blinking.
Waiting.
Daring you to start in the wrong place.
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Thanks for reading!
⚠ Side Effect Warning: If you enjoy building stories from the punchline down, you may accidentally enjoy Writing With AI: The Messy Human Guide. Symptoms include asking better questions and blaming fewer dramatic moments.
TTFN
Frank
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