Envoy of the End

Which is more important for a story, the beginning, or the ending.


For a long time there has been debate over which carries more weight in storytelling; how you start or how you finish. In general the tendency is towards a strong start. In our everyday lives there are numerous clichés that prescribe to that rationale. The early bird gets the worm, getting off to a running start, you never get a second chance at a good first impression, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

This thought process has some supporting basis to it. You need to be able to grab your audience's attention so they will pay attention to your story first and foremost. Sometimes this can be done merely by telegraphing the story early on, gripping people from the outset over what is to come. But to really pull them in and catch them, usually you want to start off very strong so that there is an immediate immersion and fascination with the story to make the audience want to keep going with it.

Structurally this was important in the time before the printing press, or when the majority of people couldn't read. Being able to pick up a book at your leisure and read it whenever you like diminishes, somewhat, the need for a strong start. Even if the story isn't completely gripping, you can get back to it whenever you have the time or are in the mood. In this way the start may not even matter all that much. In modern times with the advent of television, more specifically with syndication and reruns, even the beginning of an episode, or of a series itself, holds less significance since one can fairly easily catch up whenever that cycle comes back around. With the internet now it is even easier to see a show on-line well after it's started. A show can be several seasons, several years, old before one decides to see it. In which case focusing too much effort at the outset for those first few episodes would ultimately have been a wasted effort if equal or greater effort wasn't ascribed later on.

Due to the way things work institutionally, however, it's difficult to operate on such a thesis. TV networks don't give new shows very long to prove their mettle, so if a show doesn't grip a sizeable audience quickly, the show will be canned and the story will never get anywhere in the first place. The basic thesis works better for movies and books since they are more or less consumed as a "whole" therefore the audience is aware of how the story starts, continues, and finishes. Furthermore, even if a novel or a movie doesn't immediately grab attention because of a slow start, word of how it progresses later on can spread very quickly. For a movie or novel this then merely becomes a matter of increasing the production run (keep the movie in theaters longer, print more books). In this way the question of a strong start is not answered uniformly, but based on the medium for which you're talking about.

Given this, it would seem a strong start is most appropriate for television predominantly, but more broadly speaking any storytelling medium that is episodic in nature and susceptible to threats of cancellation (a manga for instance). But even a story that has only a marginal beginning can still survive until its conclusion. If that were to happen, then other portions of the story would suddenly take on greater import. In terms of posterity that raises the importance of the end to a much higher level, arguably greater than the beginning.

Think for a moment of the most memorable stories, your favorite stories, of all time. Chances are you have limited recollection or affection for the way it started, and instead hold greater memory of some mid to late story event, or of the ending itself. Game of Thrones is one of the most successful series airing in the US right now, but it isn't the first episode that has so many hooked, but the events late in that first season, and in particular the most recent season finale. School Days is one of the most noted series in anime, but what most people recall is its finale (as unspeakable as many still find it). Similarly Madoka Magica started out as a rather conventional series. It wasn't until they got near the end of the season that people started to take notice and now the series is poised to become a modern classic. Conversely, while most shows that start poorly are treated with indifference, a series that starts off well but ends poorly is remembered as itself being bad. The last impression a story leaves us with tends to stick more than the one that it came to us with.

For my personal view there is nothing I hate more than a story that is not complete and doesn't end as a well written story. It can start bad, but if it develops well I can ignore or forgive earlier errors. No matter how well a story starts, if the ending is rubbish, it tarnishes the whole endeavor. Much like in life itself, I don't think where you start matters as much as where you finish and the path you take getting there.