Writing The Climax

So you’ve reached the final (metaphorical or literal) battle at the end of the book. All the groundwork has been laid and it all leads to this. Sounds sort of terrifying doesn’t it? 

Well, it doesn’t need to! As with everything in writing, there are structures that can be used and things to keep in mind. 

The Structure

Step 1: Make the Plan - Whether your MC is inciting the climax or whether it comes to them, they still need to think of a plan. Before entering act 3, your MC will likely have had an ‘all is lost’ moment where everything went wrong and they had a huge breakdown. They might have some apologising to do, they might need to gather a team, or they simply find the courage in themselves to continue alone. Either way, they need a plan for what to do next. 

Step 2: Execute the Plan - This is exactly what it says on the tin. However, any team members who come should slowly be picked off, killed or separated to ensure the hero can face their struggle alone. These sacrifices will strengthen the hero’s resolve to make that difficult decision or face that challenge coming up. 

Step 3: Expect the Plan to Go off the Rails - This is novel writing, did you really expect the plan to work? Of course it doesn’t! The villain isn’t stupid, they aren’t going to make this easy. They had some surprises in store, surprises that will ruin your heroes plans and require them to finally accept the change and embrace the character development they have been experiencing over the book. 

Step 4: Throw Away the Plan - With the plan in pieces, the hero must think on their feet. This is where every subplot, every foreshadowing scene, every challenge has come to. They must learn the theme, fight against their flaws and take a leap of faith to resolve the problems they face. The reason we have the team fall away is that the hero must make this leap of faith alone, or the reader might feel cheated out of a satisfying ending. 

Step 5: New Plan - No one wants a hero who’s all talk, no action, so let’s see their final stage of new character development put to the test. This can end in success or failure, but if it’s failure, the character development is even more key. It shows that this wasn’t all for nothing; that even though the quest failed, the hero had won in their own way. 

Things to Consider

• Does the climax tie the whole book together in a pretty bow? (though perhaps with some frayed edges) 
• Is your main character the one who had to change for the goal to finally be achieved? If not you might want to think about who your main character should be. 
• What is the price the hero paid?
• Was it too easy?
• Did you end the book right after the climax with no falling action? (Please don’t do this, it’s very unsatisfying) 

[If reposting to instagram, please tag @Isabellestonebooks]

Kiss of the Sun
Mary Ruefle

If, as they say, poetry is a sign of something
among people, then let this be prearranged now,
between us, while we are still peoples: that
at the end of time, which is also the end of poetry
(and wheat and evil and insects and love),
when the entire human race gathers in the flesh,
reconstituted down to the infant’s tiniest fold
and littlest nail, I will be standing at the edge
of that fathomless crowd with an orange for you,
reconstituted down to its innermost seed protected
by white thread, in case you are thirsty, which
does not at this time seem like such a wild guess,
and though there will be no poetry between us then,
at the end of time, the geese all gone with the seas,
I hope you will take it, and remember on earth
I did not know how to touch it it was all so raw,
and if by chance there is no edge to the crowd
or anything else so that I am of it,
I will take the orange and toss it as high as I can.

==

Today on:

2020: Teaching English from an Old Composition Book, Gary Soto
2019:Easter, Jill Alexander Essbaum
2018:Annunciation, Marie Howe
2017:The Promise, Marie Howe
2016:In the Woods, Kathryn Simmonds
2015:Heat, Jane Hirshfield
2014:What Remains, Ellery Akers
2013:30th Birthday, Alice Notley
2012:Untitled [I closed the book and changed my life], Bruce Smith
2011:The Forties, Franz Wright
2010:Prayer of the Backhanded, Jericho Brown
2009:A Primer, Bob Hicok
2008:Because You Asked about the Line between Prose and Poetry, Howard Nemerov
2007:Open Letter to the Muse, Kristy Bowen
2006:A Sad Child, Margaret Atwood
2005:The Crunch, Charles Bukowski

forget me

i’m frozen

winter’s cheek rests on mine

like a familiar pillow-friend

forgive me

he whispers

for where you wrote our beginning,

i must call our end

writing tip #3441:

crowdfund your novel with stretch goals, each with a slightly more satisfying ending the more money you make

writing tip #3439:

yeah sure some readers will remember a good ending but nothing will stick with them like an ending so bad it makes them want to throw up

brightwanderer:

I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.

Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.

The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.

I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.

Also, IDK specificallyhow, but it feels relevant in this context to point out how people basically pretend that The Simpsons ended after Season 8 and Spongebob ended after the movie…

soc-ck:

The King and Queen of Elfhame (pt. 2)

Part 1 here

no no bc u don’t understand…..it’s been years and i’m still a wreck like i could go on about how the ending of tqon subverts tropes in popular ya novels and how it was even more successful bc of it..anyway i love this art and it’s bringing back the feels

Some thoughts from my Twitter. Sad endings are, of course, perfectly valid, but this is why they dont get me personally.

Life

Never about the pretty endings. Nor the happy songs, Life happens, One heart break at a time.

nyamadermont:

Endings (Angstpril 2022, Day 30)

Pema,

Thank you for your recent letter. It was gracious of you to bring our relationship out into the light, so that we could examine it more clearly.

Thank you for your apology.

Keep reading