I remember reading many years ago that James Cameron, who came up for the Terminator franchise, wrote the first film based on the last scene. The story goes – according to Wikipedia– that Cameron fell ill and had a dream about a metallic torso holding kitchen knives dragging itself from an explosion. From this powerful and unique image, he developed the story, which ends in the final scene he dreamt of, where Sarah Connor has a showdown with the damaged cyborg from the future. From this single dream, he produced a whole series of films and TV shows. The rest, as they say, is history (excuse the time travel pun).
Learning this was a massive eureka moment for me. The reason was that I had a scene gathering dust in my head for many years. I did nothing with this imagery because I had no backstory.
After reading about Cameron, I realised I could work back from that scene, to build a structure. This revolution immediately led me to fill in the scene’s backstory, which resulted in an outline for a three-part book series; which I’m planning to release. I find it amazing that this one scene could spawn an entire world and series of books.
That big scene you’ve always wanted to develop can have a structure before and after, or it can be a conclusion of your narrative. It doesn’t matter where the scene it’s in your timeline.
For me, the whole concept that story scenes and ideas don’t have to be in chronological order was a huge eye-opener. As I write this blog post and think back to that revelation, it seems obvious now, but it wasn’t back then. So if anyone is struggling with the same conundrum, I hope this helps.
Keep writing.
Take care,
– Scrib
PJ Scribbans Author 