How Pros Write to Climaxes

A fundamental skill that creatives use to produce riveting, suspenseful stories is to write to climaxes.

A climax is the highest point of a story conflict and its resolution. A screenplay has three main types of climaxes -- for acts, sequences, and scenes. Each is vital to creating a dramatic screen story.

First the climactic climax. The biggest climax in a plot is the final one that resolves the main conflict at the end of a script. Once a writer has set up the main conflict of a screenplay, he must then drive it relentlessly towards the act three climax.

Think of driving a story towards its main climax as being in a car race. You know the destination but must overcome great opposition to get there first. That is, the protagonist and antagonist will clash in a series of conflicts driving towards the final resolution of who will win the race!

Let’s now focus on sequence climaxes.

Simply, a sequence is a group of scenes joined together by one idea. Think of the opening sequence of The Godfather as The Wedding Sequence because everything in it is joined by that idea.

More complexly, a sequence is often structured on a character struggling to resolve one mini-conflict with an inciting incident, crisis point, and climax.

Let’s briefly analyse how this works in a sequence of Die Hard. Let’s call this sequence the McClane Wants Help Sequence. The protagonist John McClane hopes that his sequence goal/plan to get outside help will help him attain his main goal -- to rescue his wife so he can regain his marriage/family.

To get help, McClane first calls his chauffer Argyle, parked in his limo in the basement of the now locked down Nakatomi Plaza. Listening to loud music, Argyle misses John’s call. Scratch that potential helper. McClane next has a cleverer but harder to attain plan to attain his purpose. He sets off a fire alarm to alert the fire brigade to rush to the building. The firefighters come charging towards Nakatomi Plaza but are deflected by lies from the terrorists. Another failure, as the stakes and suspense are rocketing. The villains are now aware of McClane. He better solve this soon. The clock is ticking.

Now plan C. Via a CB radio, McClane struggles to get the cops to come to the building. They finally send a single patrol car to do a drive by. The cop, Al, enters the building, believes the lies of the terrorist pretending to be a security guard and ambles away. CRISIS POINT.

What final thing can McClane do to fulfill his sequence goal of getting outside help? McClane hurls a chair from a high floor of the building onto the cop car. Attention gained! McClane alerts Al of terrorists in the building but the cops don’t charge in to save the day. McClane must now go to his next mini-goal and its consequent sequence. As he is now being hunted.

See how everything in this McClane Wants Help Sequence flows from a motivated character acting on a main goal and a related mini goal that drives to a riveting and consequential climax.

Scenes have the same structure as a sequence and always drive towards a climax.

In a scene, a character has an objective, which leads to conflict, that hits a crisis point, and finally reaches a climax and resolution. For example, consider the final scene in the McClane Wants Help Sequence discussed above. McClane is failing in his sequence goal to get outside help. In the final scene, McClane is watching Al leave. McClane swears, rushes around, looks for something. Nothing. He then sees the chair. He hurls it through the window and gets Al’s attention. Scene climax. Sequence climax.

An act also always drives towards a climax. 

An act is made up of sequences that drive towards the act climax. To stress the obvious: The act 1 climax is called Plot Point One. The act 2 climax is the Crisis Point/Plot Point Two. And in act 3, it’s called the Climax. If you look at Die Hard, McClane’s goal for act two is to rescue his wife. At plot point two, that goal fails when McClane’s wife is exposed to the terrorists as his wife and will now be the bait to capture and kill him. If McClane dies so does the wife and many hostages.

Imagine if the acts, sequences, and scenes of Die Hard didn’t have the structure of strong character goals and conflicts that escalate to climaxes.

It is a climax, as the logical end point of a story unit, that ties that unit together and gives the characters and writer a target to drive towards. Omit these climaxes and there is no structure, no logic, no suspense. Instead, there would be a meandering contrivance of shoehorned unconvincing events. Tepid writing, at best.

A story well-structured to drive towards climaxes will rocket the conflict and suspense of the story.

Actionable Writing Tip

The key to writing to climaxes is to devise them when outlining your story beats. Consciously plan your climaxes!

First work out explicitly the protagonist’s main goal and conflict. Do the same for your villain and/or antagonist.

After outlining your plot, then work out the climaxes for the acts. That is, your:

--Plot Point 1.

--Plot Point 2.

--Main Climax.

Then work out the climaxes of every sequence, especially the climax for the first sequence, the Inciting Incident.

Then work out the character objective, conflict, crisis point, climax for every scene.

Don’t shrug off this vital creative work! It is hard but incredibly rewarding. It will give your story spine and drama.

Pro writers work out their characters’ purposes, conflicts, and climaxes.

If you want help with your climaxes reply with CLIMAX.

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