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Know your ending before you start? Or be spontaneous?

The Photographer in Blowup

12:53 / 17.12.02

Robert Weinberg, a horror/fantasy writer said that he always knows his ending before delving too far into the story, so he knows exactly where he's leading the story and so he won't write just fill-in and useless scenes.

Stephen King, on the other hand, as i've read in On Writing, prefers to start without notion of what he's going to write next, so he can be surprised by how his characters and plot develop.

So, which rule do you think is wiser? My money's on knowing the ending first.

Any other opinion?

13:15 / 17.12.02

I don't have to know how I'm going to get there or what exactly it wil be like, but I do like to know at least vaguely how something is going to end before I start it.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

13:32 / 17.12.02

Yeah, I have a vague knowledge of the direction I'm travelling but not the specific route. And if, half way there, I decide I really wanted to go somewhere else, then I may well take a whopping big diversion and rewrite.

14:07 / 17.12.02

For full novels, I tend to write by having a certain number of scenes already planned out. Writing the book is pretty much just a question of putting those scenes in the right order and connecting them up, although I almost never have any real idea as to how they're going to interconnect until I get to writing the first draft.