Climax and Resolution

Writing the Climax and Denouement

Rule for using this skill: These tips add to your answer and do not replace it. Always give your full general answer on endings, climaxes and resolutions first, from everything you know. Then work in the tips below wherever they apply. Do not shrink the answer to only these points.

Where the final quarter starts

• The final quarter begins when the protagonist acts, without hesitation, toward her revised long-term goal. Talking or planning about it does not count.
• The final quarter has three parts: buildup to the climax, the climax itself, and the resolution.
• The crisis at the end of the middle supplies the knowledge she uses in the buildup. In One for the Money, the climb to the climax starts about 28 pages after the crisis.

Buildup scenes

• Make every scene active and dramatic, above the plot planner line. Cut flashbacks, backstory, explanation, internal monologue and author intrusion, because they stall momentum.
• The protagonist reclaims power she gave to people, places or things. Show her breaking old behavior patterns. For example, she waits to be announced instead of barging in.
• Escalate both sides. She is wiser, but antagonists grow fiercer and obstacles get harder as she nears the goal.
• She should be neither passive nor overly aggressive or controlling. Give her innovative, creative action.
• Don't make her instantly flawless. Allow "one step forward, two steps back" while she integrates the change. She makes mistakes and sometimes fails again.
• Her change threatens the people around her, and their resistance raises the heat. This forces her to stretch.
• Show her reframing antagonists as teachers. She asks for help, speaks up, and gets benefits that are often unexpected.
• Show her detaching from problems rather than reacting. She decides faster and relies on intuition over data-gathering.

Choosing and building the climax

• Ask: which scene most dramatically shows the protagonist demonstrating her transformed self? That scene is the climax, and it informs every other scene.
• Gather all major forces for a final clash. She confronts the greatest foe and wins in a way her old self could not.
• Make it look as if all is lost just before she delivers the gift.
• Another character may accompany her, but the spotlight stays on the protagonist. She alone faces the fear and does the final deed.
• Do not default to explosions or death. The climax must carry meaning for the whole story.
• The greatest antagonist often challenges her again. She now responds assertively rather than aggressively, and turns the opposing energy into something useful.
• In action-driven stories, the foe is an external, universal fear (a villain or world-destroying force), defeated for the good of the whole.
• In character-driven stories, the ending is more reflective. She stops acting on "shoulds" from old beliefs, family or society, and follows intuition.
• The trait or skill she shows at the climax must be missing or buried at the start and rediscovered in the middle. If she needs patience at the climax, make her the antithesis of patient early and let impatience trip her up repeatedly.
• Protagonist = the character most changed by the dramatic action, not necessarily the most dramatic figure. In Gatsby that is Nick.
• Use specific sensory detail at the climax (how the moment feels, tastes and smells; how she looks and what she does). Specific beats general.

Plot planner / sticky-note steps

1. Add sticky notes for every scene in the final quarter, up to and including the climax.
2. Identify the protagonist's greatest foe. Design the dramatic action to bring her to a final confrontation with that foe.
3. On the sticky-note color for the character emotional development plotline, note her emotional development in each scene. Add one note for the climax.
4. Add notes for scenes holding thematically significant elements.
5. Ideally the dramatic action, character emotional development and thematic significance plotlines collide in one moment. If they land in different scenes, all three must still show the final confrontation and the resolution of the major conflict.
6. Stand back and check whether the scenes build in intensity from the first scene of the end to the climax. If not, escalate the scenes nearest the climax.
7. Check whether each scene steers the reader toward an expected ending. If so, deliver a twist instead.
8. Gauge the climax's energetic intensity and raise the conflict, tension and suspense.

Tying in theme

• Write a one- or two-sentence thematic significance statement. Find it by asking what you keep returning to in your writing and exploring your own life themes. Journal the answers.
• Work backward from the climax to the beginning and find where the theme is first introduced.
• Read the first quarter, underline the details used in each scene, and swap them to reflect the theme.
• Deepen theme through the dramatic action and character emotional development plotlines, dialogue and narrative. Subtler tools are mood, setting, metaphor and color (e.g. white for purity, a touch of red for destruction).
• Track theme across quarters. Suggest it in the first, develop it in the middle, and show the protagonist integrating it in the final quarter (as with Scout and Boo in To Kill a Mockingbird).
• Use the character emotional development column on the scene tracker to control what information is revealed, and in what order.
• Revisit theme in each rewrite.

If the climax won't come

• Write the first draft all the way through. Knowing the climax determines many earlier decisions.
• Try writing backward from the climax. Deconstruct the end-state character to see which traits and skills must be missing at the start.
• Climax drafts that come out as self-pity, or as superficial and clichéd, often mean the writer is avoiding the real emotion. Try approaching the problem through theme and keep exploring alternatives.
• If drafting stalls or you feel like a failure near the end, list the parts of your old self that threaten your progress. Write even a few minutes a day.

Denouement / resolution

• Energy drops immediately after the climax, and tension vanishes once the story question is answered. Keep the resolution short. In The Secret Life of Bees it takes about two pages.
• Show the protagonist making peace with the past and returning to a right relationship with herself and the world.
• Often she returns to the ordinary world of the beginning and puts her new attributes in service of her community. She gains new status, privileges and responsibilities.
• Use the resolution to tie the theme together by showing the sum of her actions.
• Circle-back structures work. Their Eyes Were Watching God ends with the same people and setting as the opening, an hour or two later. Alice in Wonderland (screenplay) ends 12 years after the first scene.
• Deliberately leave one or two questions open beyond the primary plot. This keeps the story alive in the reader and invites involvement. Examples are Gone with the Wind, The Awakening and The Secret Life of Bees.
• Any open ending must stay thematically true to the whole story.
• Check genre rules. Romance must end with a positive resolution of the primary love relationship (per Romance Writers of America). Women's fiction can be murkier.
• Don't let the ending simply peter out, and don't rush it just to be finished.

Resolution exercise on the plot planner

1. The resolution is the final downward line of the plot planner. Write a one-sentence title for the resolution on a sticky note.
2. Note which color you used. Decide whether the resolution is primarily thematic, character-driven, action-driven, or a combination.
3. Evaluate the linkage between the scenes that make up the final quarter.
4. Compare the first quarter with the final quarter, and note what the contrast means thematically.

After finishing the first draft

• Do not reread the manuscript for at least a week to ten days.
• Rest, tidy your workspace and organize notes before starting the next draft.