by Becca Puglisi

Escalation is an important element of story structure. The opening pages are often quiet as key players are introduced, the setting is established, and readers are given a glimpse of what's wrong in the protagonist's world. The catalyst then provides a choice, where the hero leaves their ordinary world and steps into a new one. In the next half of the story, they work their way toward the goal that will fulfill them, facing many conflict scenarios that challenge their methods and way of thinking. In those story moments, the stakes get higher, the consequences more drastic, and the clashes more incendiary until everything culminates in a final confrontation that will determine if the hero achieves their goal or not.

This confrontation is the climax of the story. The reader has known from the beginning that this moment would occur. It's what they've been looking forward to, why they've stuck with the protagonist for so many pages. A successful climax will help determine how satisfied the reader is with the story, so it's vital that we get it right.

What Is the Climax, Really?

The climax is the final showdown between the hero and their nemesis.

The two may have butted heads already—multiple times, possibly—or this might be the long-awaited battle they’ve been working toward. Different structure models position this pillar at various places, but it's generally agreed that it works best in the last half of Act Three. This allows for the proper build-up to the climax while leaving enough time for events to resolve afterward.

The purpose of the climax is to give the protagonist a final chance to succeed and achieve the story goal.

Numerous conflict scenarios have tested the hero’s resolve and abilities so far. They haven’t always succeeded, but as the struggles have gotten bigger and the stakes have grown, they have moved steadily toward their outer (and inner, if they’re working a change arc) goals. And now comes the biggest test of all: the final meet-up with the nemesis. It's the protagonist’s last chance to prove themselves. If they fail here, they fail for good. As a result, the climax should definitively determine who wins.

It also allows the hero to display what they’ve learned on their journey.

Whether they’ve acquired skills, identified a strength they thought was a weakness, rejected a long-believed lie, or adopted a new mindset, what they’ve learned should tip the scales in their favor during the climax. This is often where the inner and outer journeys merge because the changes they’ve undergone and the lessons they have learned about themselves are exactly what they need to achieve the outer goal. When it's done artfully, that synchronicity creates a satisfying resolution for readers as the pieces click into place.

Lastly, the climax should mirror the catalyst.

As Michael Hauge says in Writing Screenplays That Sell: “Just as the aftermath contrasts with the setup at the beginning of a screenplay, the climax of the story mirrors the opportunity (catalyst). While the opportunity begins the forward movement of the story—begins the hero's visible journey by taking him to a new situation—the climax ends that journey by resolving the hero's outer motivation (story goal).”

In a story with a three-act structure, there's an invisible hinge at the midpoint that divides the story into two halves. James Scott Bell likens the midpoint to a mirror because the events on one side reflect the other. In this way, the climax relates back to the beginning, closing out the journey that started in your first pages.

What Are the Elements Of A Successful Story Climax?

To recap: a successful story climax should tick the following boxes:

1. It’s the final showdown between the protagonist and the antagonist.
2. It mirrors the catalyst/opportunity.
3. A definitive winner emerges.
4. If the protagonist wins, they do so by using the lessons they learned during their journey.
5. The victor (whomever it may be) achieves their goal.

To illustrate how these elements can be used to craft a perfect climax, let’s use Star Wars: A New Hope as an example. In a nutshell, here’s what happens in this important scene:

Luke Skywalker uses his Jedi training to destroy the Death Star, crippling the Empire and sending the enemy packing. Peace and safety are restored to the galaxy.

It’s the final showdown between the protagonist and the antagonist.

Luke’s fight to destroy the Death Star is the last confrontation between him and his enemy in this story. It should be noted that the true villain here isn’t a tangible one that Luke can face off against; it’s the empire. But every protagonist needs a physical adversary to battle. That’s provided in the form of Darth Vader, and Luke’s defeat of the empire is also a defeat for him. It’s a good reminder that if your hero is going up against an antagonistic force rather than an actual person, you’ll want to introduce a physical antagonist for them to fight against.

It mirrors the catalyst/opportunity.

Luke’s catalyst occurs back on Tatooine, when he’s invited to learn the ways of the Jedi and help the Rebellion defeat the empire. The climax mirrors this as the journey he began culminates in him destroying the Death Star. It’s also a nice touch that the person who offered Luke his catalyst opportunity (Obi-Wan) shows up unexpectedly in the climax to remind his protégé that he must use his Jedi training if he wants to succeed.

A definitive winner emerges.

This is made clear in the rout of the empire and the medal ceremony that follows.

If the protagonist wins, they do so by using what they’ve learned.

Luke is unsuccessful in destroying the Death Star until he embraces the lessons he learned from Yoda—mainly, his knowledge of and connection with the Force.

The victor (whomever it may be) achieves their goal.

Luke’s goal was twofold: learn the ways of the Jedi and defeat the empire. Thanks to Yoda, he has begun his journey to becoming a Jedi and has completed the first part of his objective. With the destruction of the empire, he achieves the second.

A Few Caveats

The protagonist won’t always win.

If you’re writing a tragedy, such as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Into the Wild, or Up in the Air, the hero will fail to defeat their adversary and/or achieve fulfillment and improve themselves.

Maybe they’re unsuccessful because they didn’t learn what they needed to learn, or they weren’t able to fully embrace those lessons during the final confrontation. Sometimes, their internal conflict remains unresolved, and they allow self-doubt, fear, pride, or another habit or hang-up to rule the day. It’s also possible that they achieve their goal only to discover that it was a false goal—one that made things worse or ended up ruining them.

If your protagonist is doomed for failure, element #4 becomes inverted: they don’t succeed precisely because they haven’t gained the knowledge they needed or they failed to utilize it when it mattered. The rest of the key ingredients remain the same, regardless of who wins.

Quiet climaxes can be just as effective.

While many thrillers, suspense, and action movies require a gargantuan clash at the end, other kinds of stories don’t necessarily need this. The climax of Pride and Prejudice, for example, happens with Lizzy and Mr. Darcy going for a simple walk. They don't even argue at this point. Instead, they admit their past failings, express their love for each other, and decide to get married.

It's a quiet climax that still achieves its purpose. It is their final confrontation as antagonists and happens at the right point in the third act. Lizzy's recognition of pride as her fatal flaw allows her to overcome it and find true happiness with Mr. Darcy. And her choosing him for a husband reflects the catalyst (her determination when she first met him to have nothing to do with him).

This is something to keep in mind if you’re writing the kind of story that calls for a low-key resolution. A quiet climax can work as long as it does what it’s supposed to do.

As you can see, the climax is important, both for your characters and readers. And the necessary elements for this moment can be applied to all kinds of stories, giving you a blueprint for success when writing this vital scene.

Do you have any questions for Becca? What are some of your favorite climax moments in books or movies? Please share them with us down in the comments!

About Becca

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and other resources for writers. Her books have sold over 500,000 copies and are available in multiple languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.

Julie Glover

I’ve got more than 10 full manuscripts under my belt and several short stories as well. While none has been a breeze, some have come easier than others. I recently got to wondering which book was the hardest to write.

Let me share my top three contenders, why they were so hard, and what I learned from them. Maybe by reading about my journey, you can avoid those bumps and jolts in the road that can frustrate or slow a writer down.

3^rd Place

Coming into third place is the only novel that won me a NaNoWriMo badge one year. It’s not that the writing itself was a struggle—I found my 50,000 words to put down—but rather the result was messier than an unsupervised pizza party of preschoolers. When I read back through the manuscript, I realized that I got the story down quickly, but editing this baby was going to empty the red ink from all my pens.

Now, some do great with writing fast! If that’s you, keep up what works for you. But too many writers tell others they must churn out stories quickly to blow past that pesky self-critic that wants to question every word choice or to avoid getting stuck revising, revising, revising on chapter two.

Some call it the “vomit” method, meaning you vomit the words on the page, then clean it all up later to make it a beautiful story you can present to the world. And again, if that works for you, knock yourself out!

But after my experience, I know that isn’t what works for me. In fact, after I read that draft and realized how much effort would go into editing it to something good enough, I shoved the novel away and didn’t look at it for years. I’ll get back to it (because it’s a great story), but what I got out of NaNoWriMo was not a finished book but a lesson learned.

Give yourself permission to write the way you write, whether or not it works for someone else.

2^nd Place

A cozy mystery idea came to me in 2017—the sort of sweet story fodder that sparks your excitement and makes you reach for a pen just to jot down the idea before you lose it. Then, I began writing.

But before I got too far, I was talked into plotting the novel scene by scene by a well-meaning mentor. After I finished that multi-page endeavor, I went back to the manuscript…and nothing came. For me, the story was out, done, not all that intriguing anymore.

Have you ever lost interest in a story that previously excited you? What snuffed out that spark?

While it might seem the lesson learned is the same as before—follow your own writing process—that’s not the full conclusion I drew. Rather, I think a writer should know what keeps them going. What spurs you on to finish a story?

Is it a deadline? A reward you’ve promised yourself? Hanging out with your characters? The sheer joy of word-by-word, scene-by-scene writing a novel? The sense of accomplishment when you see the final product? Or like me, learning whodunnit no sooner than two-thirds of the way through your own story? That is, I write in part to discover. If the discovery is already done, I’m a whole lot less interested.

Figure out why you write to The End, and lean into that motivation.

1^st Place

In On Writing, Stephen King confessed to being a three-draft writer—the first rough draft, an edited second draft, and a polished third draft. Meanwhile, my YA contemporary novel Sharing Hunter took about 14 drafts. It’s a wonder I didn’t throw my hands in the air at some point and shout, “I give up!”

Or maybe I did. But I kept coming back, rethinking character arcs, reworking scenes, editing and polishing prose, until the product two drafts before the final one was nominated for an RWA Golden Heart* and landed me my dream agent. In 2019, I self-published that novel, and I am peacock-proud of how it came out.

Have you ever loved a story but gotten so frustrated that you wanted to chuck it?

Maybe you should chuck it. Some stories aren’t meant to be written. But other stories are worth the time and effort. Mind you, I could have cut down on a few of those drafts if I’d known sooner some of the wonderful things you can learn here on Writers in the Storm. If you can spare yourself some heartache, do so! But don’t give up just because it’s frustrating.

Former WITS host Laura Drake is the poster child for not giving up. She learned her craft, wrote and wrote until her manuscript shined, and sent out over 400 queries to agents to get her first book published. (And it’s a fantastic read!) As she has pointed out many times, if this writing stuff was easy, everyone would do it. They don’t, but we do.

Writing my hardest book taught me that it’s okay to move on from a project if you no longer want to do it, but…

If you love your story, keep writing and editing until you’re eager to put your name on the cover and get it out to readers.

I hope my lessons learned help you as well:

1. Give yourself permission to write the way you write, whether or not it works for someone else.
2. Figure out why you write to The End, and lean into that motivation.
3. If you love your story, keep writing and editing until you’re eager to put your name on the cover and get it out to readers.

What’s the hardest book you’ve ever written and why? What lesson(s) did you learn from that process?

About Julie

Julie Glover is an award-winning author of mysteries and young adult fiction. She also writes supernatural suspense under the pen name Jules Lynn.

She's currently working on book five in the Muse Island series, an honorable mention in the difficulty category due to scheduling issues. But it's her own fault for going to France this summer.

Start the Muse Island series with book one, Mark of the Gods!

Image by Wavebreak Media at Deposit Photos

*Golden Heart was a Romance Writers of America contest for unpublished manuscripts that was discontinued after 2019.

by Ellen Buikema

How do I start to write a story? Does it have start at the beginning? Should I have a separate writing space? If I stare at the cursor blinking at the screen long enough, will ideas magically pop into my mind?

There is no one best way to start your story because there are too many variables to consider. But there are many ways to begin.

Great Ways to Start the Writing Journey

1. Start in the middle.

If you can’t think of a beginning, start deeper into the story. Author, James Scott Bell’s book Write Your Novel From the Middle suggests that the middle is where the protagonist tries to reach their story goal, where they transform. These changes cause conflict between the protagonist and the other characters, particularly the antagonist.2

2. Write like a patchwork quilt.

Write what you “see” in your mind and then put the pieces together. This is the method used by author Diana Gabaldon, who said, “I write just about everything piecemeal, including nonfiction articles, book reviews and essays. It’s effective because it works; I’m never held up stewing about What Comes Next— I don’t care what comes next, I just care about something I can see happening. The order of the happening has a logic to it (often, more than one), and that will become clear to me as I work.”

3. Start your story at the end.

John Irving writes backwards. He starts writing a book with the last sentence and then works back to where the story starts. This process can take a year or more. He’s written the majority of his novels this way.

In A Prayer For Owen Meany, Irving’s last line is, “O God-please give him back! I shall keep asking You.”

The first line. “I AM DOOMED to remember a boy with a wrecked voice-not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.”

Beginning and ending, beautifully tied together.

4. Introduce the lead character.

Starting your story by introducing your main character is a great way to hook your readers emotionally—especially when written in first person, showing their worldview.

Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, uses this type of beginning. “I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.”

When readers care about a character, they want to know what’s happening to them next and will keep reading.

5. Entice your readers with action.

Start with something that immediately grabs the reader, like an action scene that lets your readers know right away what kind of story this is.

Here is an example from the opening scene of the dystopian fantasy Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: 

“It was a pleasure to burn.

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black.”

6. Use an outline.

Some writers prefer to make a detailed outline, which helps keep them organized. This is a plotting technique. Jim Butcher, who writes contemporary fantasy and steampunk, gives a detailed description of his method for setting up a story in his live journal. titled, Putting It All Together: How to Get Your Story Started or Organizing This Frickin' Mess

Jim Butcher is a big believer in the BIC (butt in chair) method. If you decide to enter NaNoWriMo, this is the method you will use.

7. Start with a mystery.

Begin with a mystery on the first page that keeps your readers intrigued until it’s solved. Mystery can be within any genre. Start with a question, problem, or strange event, and they’ll need to know what happens next.

“People’s lives—their real lives, as opposed to their simple physical existences—begin at different times. The real life of Thad Beaumont, a young boy who was born and raised in the Ridgeway section of Bergenfield, New Jersey, began in 1960. Two things happened to him that year. The first shaped his life; the second almost ended it.” The Dark Half, Stephen King

8. Create a Synopsis.

• Decide the genre you want to write.
• Flesh out your main characters.
• Think about the desires of your characters, their motivations, and what kinds of conflicts those desires might cause.

9. Let yourself write badly.

For me, this is not easy to do. I write a page and want to go back and “fix” any errors I’ve made. There are always errors.

One of the suggestions from NaNoWriMo was to sit and write without going back to change anything. Don’t rethink. Go with the flow. I didn’t believe that I could do this, but I tried anyway. It worked! I was a lot more productive. Granted, much was edited after the 50,000 words, but not stopping to edit after every paragraph or page allowed for better flow and more content.

10. Make up the story as you go.

Sometimes you have a basic idea of where the story starts, where it ends, a vague idea of what might happen in between but details are lacking. Write whatever pops into your head and make sense of it later. You never know what gems you’ll mine amongst the winding words.

Spending the time and effort to create a fantastic opening for your story is a great goal. However, worrying over it can stop your progress cold. The stress from worry will stifle your creative mind, so use your favorite method of relaxation, and then keep on with your writing journey.

Here are more ideas for ways to start a story.  

How do you like to start your stories? What methods have you tried?

* * * * * *

About Ellen

Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written non-fiction for parents and a series of chapter books for children with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Works In Progress are The Hobo Code, YA historical fiction and Crystal Memories, YA paranormal fantasy.

Find her at https://ellenbuikema.com or on Amazon.

Image by Paul Mears from Pixabay