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constructing a story, it is a good idea to know your destination.
Where are you going, what are you aiming for? It's the first thing
your audience wants to know. We are going to Mordor to destroy this
Ring. She is going to marry Mr. D Arcy. There is a giant man-eating
lizard on this spaceship. Once you've got that, how you get there
is up to you. What you usually do is go the long way round, by the
scenic route, with all sorts of twists and turns, taking in all sorts
of places and events that they don't see coming. Stop in the middle,
and what's the question everyone always asks? What happens in the
end? Do they get there? Does she marry him? Does it eat the crew?
Sometimes they don't make it to the destination. Sometimes they get
all the way there, only for the result to be a surprise. It's fine
for the result to be unexpected. As long as it makes sense it will
be satisfactory - happy ending (Pride and Prejudice) or pile of corpses
(Hamlet). What it cannot be is a cheat. Pride and Prejudice ends in
a wedding that at one point seemed destined never to happen, however
much you wanted it to - and it's a better, more satisfying wedding
for that. The wedding is not interrupted by a giant man-eating lizard.
These are some of the basic rules: your audience wants to be fooled,
and thwarted, and surprised, and relieved, and, ultimately, satisfied.
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