If I see an ending, I can work backward.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Knowing the outcome allows the author to structure the work leading up to that point.
- In plain terms
- If I know where the story ends, I can plan how to get there.
- What can you take from it?
- Starting with the end helps structure the path to get there.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- How do you plan your work?
- Does knowing the end limit creativity?
Another view
Some creative processes benefit from discovering the ending along the way.
More from Arthur Miller
In the theater, while you recognized that you were looking at a house, it was a house in quotation marks ... on screen, the quotation marks tend to be blotted …
Permalink to quote #26 A playwright lives in an occupied country: And if you can't live that way you don't stay.
Permalink to quote #28 The number of elements that have to go into a hit would break a computer down:. the right season for that play, the right historical moment, the right tonality.
Permalink to quote #25
Related quotes
A whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end. (1450b26)
AristotleAristotle quote #67 This book is an agglomeration of lean-tos and annexes and there is no knowing how big the next addition will be, or where it will be put. At any point, I can c…
Alexander SolzhenitsynAlexander Solzhenitsyn quote #70 I don't see myself as experimenting in any conscious way, it's perhaps that certain books require different densities of language.
John ScottJohn Scott quote #1