Anyone who has ever experienced anticipation knows the joy of climax. Waiting for Christmas as a child, saving to buy a car or a house, searching for a job after college.
What happens if that car you saved up for turns out to be a lemon? Or if that job turns into a dead-end scapegoat position? Or if you got socks for Christmas instead of the toy you really wanted?
The last thing you want your audience to feel is let-down. They've invested in your story for exactly this reason. All the breadcrumbs you laid in rising action lead a trail to this moment. The audience knows what they're expecting.
Your job is to give them what they're expecting without giving them what they're expecting.
If the audience can guess the climax beforehand, they'll feel let-down. They'll feel like you didn't do your job as a writer.
Your climax needs top satisfy in a way that's difficult to quantify. It must answer questions raised throughout the story. It must present the protagonist with a formidable challenge. It must abide by the rules of the world you've created.
The climax must be a moment where there is no possible alternative action. This is a moment when the outcome of the story is in serious doubt. Everything must lead up to this moment. The lit fuse burns into the dynamite casing. There is no going back.
A well-crafted climax catches the audience by surprise, but it can never come out of left field. It must be a logical extension of the story--this can't be stressed enough. Too often, writers succumb to temptation to create a climax out of left-field just to surprise the audience.
The best writers build their story around the climax. Some even start with the climax so that they can weave just the right amount of foreshadowing into the opening and rising action of the story in order to make the climax more satisfying overall.
How does one create the best climax for the story? It starts with the character development of the protagonist. What inherent weakness does the protagonist struggle against? What weakness creeps up again and again, causing setbacks? The best climax forces the protagonist to overcome their weakness and rise above themselves.
One of the hardest things about writing a climax is creating a true battle between protagonist and antagonist. Common wisdom says the antagonist has to be equal to the protagonist or even stronger. How, then, can this be scripted in such a way as to create a sense of tension?
Both the protagonist and the antagonist must be written in ways that they each have realistic strengths and weaknesses. I mentioned earlier that the protagonist and antagonist should have opposite traits. For example, if the protagonist is patient and methodical, the antagonist should be quick-tempered and reckless. Therein lies your climactic confrontation—you must create a scenario by which the protagonist seems doomed to fail, yet succeeds ONLY because of a trait the antagonist lacks. Bonus points if that trait is developed over the story, and would not have exist had the protagonist not experienced a life-altering event.
If your story does not have a personified antagonist, then consider giving the protagonist a frustrated goal throughout the story and then allowing them to finally attain that goal but only at great cost. You might also consider giving the protagonist a goal throughout the story and then forcing them to choose between achieving that goal and some NEW goal, be it love or saving the universe or whatever—as long as it is something meaningful to the protagonist, something even more meaningful than the original goal, it will create a compelling climax.
Another powerful climax may be having your protagonist give up. This sounds stupid, but in the right story, it can resonate well. Let's say you have a protagonist trying to escape their life in a small town or in some big city where they're anonymous. Maybe they spend the ENTIRE STORY trying to escape, dreaming up ways to leave town only to be drawn back to where they started. Finally, they get their big break, but they realize how much they really do belong in the place they've been trying to leave. Or maybe you have a protagonist who has spent his entire life searching for a mystical object, destroying marriages, screwing up his kids, steamrolling everything in life to get that one mythical object. And once they have it within their grasp, they realize it wasn't what they wanted after all. It wasn't worth near the cost they paid to get there.
The point is, your climax doesn't have to be a fight between a good and a bad guy. It can be more subtle than that, but also more powerful. The key is to make sure your climax is some moment that brings about inalterable change. This is a point-of-no-return, things can never be the same again moment.
Do that, and your audience will leave quite satisfied.
-The Illiterate Writer
One of the hardest things about writing a climax is creating a true battle between protagonist and antagonist. Common wisdom says the antagonist has to be equal to the protagonist or even stronger. How, then, can this be scripted in such a way as to create a sense of tension?
Both the protagonist and the antagonist must be written in ways that they each have realistic strengths and weaknesses. I mentioned earlier that the protagonist and antagonist should have opposite traits. For example, if the protagonist is patient and methodical, the antagonist should be quick-tempered and reckless. Therein lies your climactic confrontation—you must create a scenario by which the protagonist seems doomed to fail, yet succeeds ONLY because of a trait the antagonist lacks. Bonus points if that trait is developed over the story, and would not have exist had the protagonist not experienced a life-altering event.
If your story does not have a personified antagonist, then consider giving the protagonist a frustrated goal throughout the story and then allowing them to finally attain that goal but only at great cost. You might also consider giving the protagonist a goal throughout the story and then forcing them to choose between achieving that goal and some NEW goal, be it love or saving the universe or whatever—as long as it is something meaningful to the protagonist, something even more meaningful than the original goal, it will create a compelling climax.
Another powerful climax may be having your protagonist give up. This sounds stupid, but in the right story, it can resonate well. Let's say you have a protagonist trying to escape their life in a small town or in some big city where they're anonymous. Maybe they spend the ENTIRE STORY trying to escape, dreaming up ways to leave town only to be drawn back to where they started. Finally, they get their big break, but they realize how much they really do belong in the place they've been trying to leave. Or maybe you have a protagonist who has spent his entire life searching for a mystical object, destroying marriages, screwing up his kids, steamrolling everything in life to get that one mythical object. And once they have it within their grasp, they realize it wasn't what they wanted after all. It wasn't worth near the cost they paid to get there.
The point is, your climax doesn't have to be a fight between a good and a bad guy. It can be more subtle than that, but also more powerful. The key is to make sure your climax is some moment that brings about inalterable change. This is a point-of-no-return, things can never be the same again moment.
Do that, and your audience will leave quite satisfied.
-The Illiterate Writer
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