Startings and Endings Writing Exercise

Check out the below list of starting lines and ending lines, and pick a prompt from each category.

Now, write everything that you think goes in between. The idea here is to find a way to link the starting of your story to the ending, no matter how random it seems. Your goal is find a way to make the story flow from the start and meet its organic end. You may need to change some words here or there to suit the context of your story, but try to keep it as close to the same as possible. It’s a challenge because these things wouldn’t ordinarily line up, but give it a shot!

You’d be surprised at just how well our brains work at finding sense and completion in things, even if it seems completely random and nonsensical!

STORY STARTERS:
- This adventure was a fine New Year’s Gift.
-The universe is so vast that intelligent life must surely have arisen many times.
-There we many paths that led up into those mountains.
-No one’s birth is inevitable.
-Long before daybreak, the people were up.
-The stars were coming out in a pale sky barred with black.

STORY ENDINGS:
- “Well that,” said the lady, “Was the worst insult of all.”
- It cheers me to imagine that the air the once powered me could power others
- Inside the hall, it is now quite dark.
- The message is this: ‘You be good. I love you.’
- But let him lie there still; he is close to his destiny.
-So they laughed and sang in the trees.

Want to share how you went with this exercise, or even the story idea you managed to get out of it? Why not leave a comment?

*Lines are summarised from:
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Unknown Author