Ultimate Guide to Writing a Climax that Satisfies Your Readers 😏

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Transcript

And I went, so brother and sister boning. And she was like what? The Author. She was like what, what? No. What? And everybody's like, my God, I'm so glad you said that. That's exactly what I thought they were doing.

And like, yeah, look at like, this is going to make every single person who reads this think, or at least the majority of them think that these two are boning.

And she's like, No, no, she was mortified. And I'm like. Whether you meant to do it or not. That is what that.

That's what I know. Yeah. And that's, that's what I, that's what I call the, the, the unintended theme.

Yeah.

You do need to be cognizant.

Well you wont be. You might not mean to put this in the book.

Releasing your inner dragon.

Should be golden. All right. I think it's me this time. Yep.

And let me get my things so I have my list. All right, Marie. So let's start off with the big question. What is a climax?

Well, it's when a boy author and a girl or. No I'm kidding.

No, no, Keep going. I really don't know. I have no idea what this is.

A climax is when your protagonists overcome the theme. And by overcoming the theme, they also overcome the. They are then able to overcome the conflict. Beat the bad guy and achieve victory in the in their endeavors. In this novel.

That's a very high brow answer moment. I mean, it's 100% you know, we talk about theme a lot and that is what it is. It's your character starting on the wrong side of the theme and then finally realizing that they're on the wrong side of theme and shifting to the right side to beat it. But can we expand upon that?

How do we break it down for us laymen, people who aren't, you know, quite as high brow as you literary types are?

Sure. So basically, let's take an example from Tolkien Let's talk about Tolkien. So in Lord of the Rings, Frodo has carried this ring all the way into the cabin. And the climax there is when he doesn't throw it. And then there's the fight with golem. And then I can't remember how it goes in the book. Exactly. But in the movie.

It's funny that you pick this one. You're going to get me in trouble. And no, we did not plan this.

There's two endings. There's two climaxes to the two most moneymaking things ever that I think are the dumbest, worst endings ever. And that is Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, the trilogy, the original trilogy.

Because you're going to you're going to have to hear me out on The Lord of the Rings one. But let me let me finish the thing.

Okay. Go ahead.

In my head and I mean, it's been a while since I've watched the movie and even longer since I've read the book. So bear with me if I get this wrong. You know, you can correct me in the comments, but in my head, Sam does something in that moment where Gollum and Frodo are struggling, and it is by Sam's actions that Gollum gets thrown over.

Now, I don't think I think Frodo goes into the cavern alone. In both the book and the movie, But I definitely know in the movie he goes in alone. But I'm 99.9% sure he goes in alone in the book as well that Sam is out of the picture. So here's the problem that I have with it. So in the first Star Wars movie in New Hope, because this is how the Star Wars trilogy ends and Law of the Rings ends.

So this thing about Star Wars, a new hope. So Luke Skywalker's In the Trenches. He is supposed to launch his torpedo down the the air chute and blow up the Death Star. But Darth Vader is on his tail and Darth Vader is going to kill him. There's nothing he can do about it. And then the rescue from without Han Solo comes in and shoots Darth Vader in the butt and sends him on the way.

And then Han Solo says, Get out of my way, kid. And pushes Luke out of the way. And then he uses the Millennium Falcon to shoot a torpedo into the air shaft and blows up the Death Star and says, Great, let's go home now. That's the rescue from without actually overcoming the story. That is bad. But because it didn't happen that way, obviously.

But that is what they did in Lord of the Rings and in the full trilogy. So in Lord of the Rings, Frodo goes to the edge of the cliff. He takes the ring and he's going to throw it in, and then he fails. He goes, You know what? This is a lot of power. I'm keeping it for myself.

And he starts to leave. And then Gollum attacks him because goblins, like, I want the ring. And then Gollum bites the ring off and his finger and falls into the lava. Frodo doesn't push him in the lava. He just falls in the lava. So that's the rescue from now. Had they had Gollum attack. And then either Frodo pushes him into the lava or just beats him down.

Either way, it's fine. And then had Frodo go, crap, I almost let the ring beat me. And then had Frodo decide to throw the ring in. That would have been Frodo overcoming the plot. But in both the book and the movie, Gollum takes that decision away from Luke and Gollum. The rescue from without overcomes the story. Same thing in Star Wars.

Luke Skywalker goes through this entire trilogy. He gets to the end. You know, he's there with the Emperor. He says, I'm not going to fight you. You know, I'm going to change my father. The emperor starts killing him. Great. That's fine. But then Darth Vader kills the emperor. Darth Vader should have been the rescue from now. Darth Vader should have stepped in the way of the lightning, just like he did.

Gotten his butt fried. Given Luke enough time to recover, chop off the emperor's head. And then they could have had the moment with Darth Vader. And him would take off my helmet. And I'm dying. And I want to see you with my own eyes and all that. But no, they had Darth Vader, the rescue from without due to store.

So, like, I think those are bad climaxes. I think I mean, we were going to say bad climaxes for later. But it was going out. Lord of the Rings out of the out of the jump. And it's going to get I know when we get a lot of heat for that and that's fine. Go ahead and fill up the comments with hate and like, Lord Reigns, you're just you're just jealous and you're like, No, it's still the rescue.

Like the facts don't change. Gollum should have been rescued from without. It would have made the story so much stronger. Frodo had made the climax, had done the decision to do it. Same thing with Star Wars. Luke should have beat the Emperor. He was the hero. He's the guy I've been following the whole time. Not Darth Vader. And I'm not following Gollum.

So.

So I will speak in defense of Star Wars because I actually think that I'm not sure that they entirely pulled it off. But I think what they were going for with our boy Luke is that his overcome is when he won't. I think that is the the decision not to fight is him.

Choosing.

The Jedi way. I think that is what Lucas was trying for.

So that's interesting. I thought you were. So I've had this discussion with many a Star Wars fan, and you started the argument exactly the way they all do. And I think it's the dumbest argument ever. But as always, you impress me and then come out of nowhere with something completely different, which is one of the reasons why I love hanging out with you so much.

So normally the argument is in This is where I thought you were going. No, no, no, no, no. That was that was that was the end of Darth Vader story where he started off good and then went to the dark side and then came up. And this is him being good and him he's the real story. I'm like, The reason why I think that's so stupid is Luke.

Lucas had no idea of any of that. He hadn't even thought about those first three movies. They weren't written. They weren't he might have had some concepts or some ideas, but no, he did not know where that was going. He just screwed up. So that's a dumb argument. But what what you just said Now, that's not a dumb argument.

That is actually that is actually, you know, kind of interesting. The other thing they say that they argue is they go they go, well, he's the hero because he saved the sun and like Hitler would have saved his son. That doesn't make you a good person.

I, I don't. One Darth Vader is not the hero right out of four or five, right? He is the antagonist. And yes, the fact that he switches at the end is supposed to be a redemption arc of sorts. I will argue high and low that it is not a redemption.

Saves his child out of selfishness.

Yes and no. So. So I don't like I feel that there was a hint of redemption or that and it might have been fine if we never got movies one, two and three.

But in movie three, he killed the kids. Yeah, like, yeah, that's it.

That needs a lot of redeem that.

And to me you can't redeem that. You slaughter an orphan, you know, an entire school of children. There's no redeeming you. You're never going to be a hero to me. You are garbage.

Yeah, I. I would struggle with that one as well.

Yeah, so. But no, the way you went. That's, that's interesting. And that actually is the first argument that I've been given on this. And you're right, he failed miserably because you're stretching to to put that into that context.

What though? Because he does he does say, I won't fight you, father. And he puts the sword down and it it is there.

Well, the counter argument, the reason.

Why it's not there in blazing neon lights for all to see is because.

The Jedi.

Code is not sufficiently explored.

Right. That's Here's my counter argument, because here's what I actually think they were trying to do. Like I said, what you said was interesting, but what I think they were trying to do was he was there to save his father from the dark side, and therefore, that's how he could defeat the dark side. So when he said, I'm not going to fight you, and he allowed himself to be attacked by the emperor, I think he's allowing his father to switch sides.

Once he's accomplished that, I don't think he had a problem killing the emperor. And I don't I mean, he killed bunches of other people. So I don't think it's that. I think it was more for. Let me show you. Let me. Father, Father, look at me and let me show you what you should have done. Let me show you the person you should have been.

And then he displayed that sacrificed himself. The father realized this. He switches sides, but again, he should have gotten the crap shocked out of him. And then Luke chops the emperor's head off and saves his father and then says, See? See, you did it. You did what you should have done. You switched sides. You now understand. And it's so sad, because now I get to watch you die.

But at least you die understanding where you should have been as opposed to just being this soulless. You know, creature.

So the reason the reason why I and I hear you and I can see where you're coming from, but the reason why I feel that it is more about, like him rejecting that kind of moment of violence is also because the emperor gets him to fail by threatening his sister. And then suddenly Luke produces the lightsaber and turns to violence.

Yeah.

Right. And I think it's meant like I think that in that conflict, in order to.

Succeed, Luke.

Had to reject violence in that.

Yeah, no, I agree with all that. The difference is all the elements of him saving his father in the way I'm talking about are there in the story for your way to work, which actually would have been just as good. We would have had to add we would had to definitely beef up the GI code and there's things that they completely missed to make that story.

Elements work. At the end, everything you need, if you change nothing in that movie except for let Darth Vader just get shocked and almost die and then Luke kill, you know, chop the emperor's head off and save him and you're changed. You have to change nothing in that movie. Nothing. It's all there. And then I think the audience consumes.

I see what he was doing. He was there trying to, at least at the end of his life, give his father the opportunity to redeem himself. Yeah. Does it make up for everything his father did? No. Which is why he deserves to die. Which he does. Yes, but at least his. His son was like, no, I want I don't want my father to die.

Because if I fight him, I'm going to kill him, and he's just going to die a piece of garbage. I want to I want to make him not die a complete villain. All those elements are there. They're all already in the story. And so that's why I think they failed miserably when they let Darth Vader kill the emperor, because he's the rescue from without for Luke's story.

But anyway, it's just funny that you think Lord of the Rings is again, I feel the same way about the Gollum thing. Yeah. How powerful would it have been if he shakes Gollum off and again, either throws him in the lava or beats him down? He doesn't have to kill anything. You just beat him down and then go, Holy crap,

I was just Daumier did. I almost fell to the ring just like Boromir did.

I can't do that. No, no, no. Let's get rid of this. Like. And then he has made the decision to overcome the story. He has. He's fought off the power of the ring, the evil of the ring, and shucked it away.

Even though he's shucking away fame and power and glory and all of that, he understands what that life is going to bring him. And he almost fell to it. I just think that's so much more powerful than to have the rescue from without come in. And because, again, to me, it's exactly as if Han Solo had then said, Get out of the way kid.

I got there.

I go. I will tell you up. I think that The Lord of the Rings is still a powerful ending.

it is. I mean, it's a great story.

No, but I'll tell you what, I think it's still a powerful ending in the context of Tolkien's automatic elements. Right. So in Talk, talk, and ultimately was an optimist, despite the wars, despite everything he'd been through, he was an optimist to him and he was a deeply religious person to him. There was a thread of optimism. There was always hope.

And so when Frodo outright fails out there, the world steps in and remember it's written in Not the world slips in and helps him over the finish line.

Right? But that's where we differ, because I don't think it helped him over the finish line. I think it took the baton from him and then ran across the finish line itself and it left him. But flying to right.

no he had failed.

Exactly. Well, let's let's let's use this as a great thought exercise to talk about, like the difference being a tragedy and a vivid story. So we can differ on this. And, you know, other people can talk about in the comments and say, I agree or disagree or whatever, or come up with your own whatevers. But so if we're writing a tragedy, if we want to show that that, then I would take it a step further.

I would have Frodo fail, keep the ring and then show the badness that happened because of that.

But he wasn't writing a tragedy.

No, I know, I'm saying. But then the audience could understand. They would consume. yeah, No, you don't want to fall to power. Having power accidentally taken from you to save you from its evil. I just don't think it has a good impact as a climax. And again, that's what we're talking about here is climaxes. So I think it's a weak it's a weaker version of what you could have done.

Either have him make the realization that he almost fell and destroyed or have him really fail. I mean, we have the whole trip back to the shire. That whole thing could be used to show that Frodo screwed up. Frodo got the ring, He comes back, he's a dick, he enslaves his people like. And then somebody poisons him, you know, some little hobbit.

Girl at the bar poisons them and he dies choking on his own vomit. Like, okay, yeah, that was. That's what you get. You evil twerp for falling to the ring.

So I, I hear you, but I'm just. I'm speaking from the perspective of Tolkien, the writer. Tolkien who loved fairy tales.

Right. It is a.

Very fairy tale kind of thing for the world.

It is the.

World to step in and help you over the line. I think it is also one of the reasons that Tolkien famously did not like dune write so by saying to do for him to read.

Oh dune.

And and he was like, no, he was like, no.

I, I literally I, and the reason why I was just kind of stunned because I didn't understand. I thought you said, well, like Tolkien famously didn't like, you.

No, No.

It's like I never met the man. And he was dead like, what? That’s why I had that stunned look on my face. I was like, Where are you going with this why does Tolkien famously hate me? What I ever do to him other than trash is ending just now.

So Tolkien, Tolkien famously didn't like dune write and I think the reason why he didn't like Dune, besides the fact besides dunes like take on religion, which is that it's manipulative use to control people and not real, which obviously clashed with Tolkien's faith is I think that.

Dune.

Is a tragedy. And if you've only ever read the first book, you don't know that.

Because the fir, the first.

Book feels like a normal.

Story. It's a bait and switch.

And the problem is that when Herbert got the feedback that people were like taking this is a normal story with Paul Atreides as the hero he was like, okay, you guys missed the point. Let me make it blatant for you and wrote Dune Messiah.

Yeah.

And there you realize that Paul has done exactly that. He fell in.

Full. He is the villain.

It's a tragedy.

And but it's also why I never finished Dune Messiah one.

Hundred percent that I understand that. But I'm saying like, you know that is what Herbert was write. And I guess it also very clearly for me illustrates the difference between these two writers and their approaches. Right. Tolkien optimistically, thematically believed in a good world. Tolkien believed the

world

would help you over the end.

Herbert did not.

Herbert believed the world was manmade and everybody in power is a douche nozzle.

And

the truth is, somewhere between those two. Yeah, that's why that's why Tolkien and Lewis hung out together. And I don't know if Golding and Herbert ever hung out together, but they definitely should have. They were definitely of like, minds.

Soulmates.

Those two. They should have. They should have been at a, you know, some goth bar just hating on the life in the world and everything else. So, yeah, but like I said, that's we've, we've actually kind of covered a lot of the different topics with, with this. But basically to, to finish up this first topic, just like you said, the climax, and it also depends on what you're trying to do.

There's external story arcs, there's internal story arcs, there's different ways to do it in different genres and stuff like that, which we're talking about here in a second. But if you're telling a true story where you're a thematically driven story, then it is your character starting on the wrong side of the theme. Going through this trial and tribulation where the story is trying to show them you're on the wrong side of the theme.

You're making wrong decisions. This is not how to live, you know. You know, maybe we're proving that racism is bad to the characters racist. Maybe we’re proving that being an overprotective parent is bad so the characters an overprotective parent. Maybe we're trying to prove that you're Jesus Christ and he's just doesn't believe he's Jesus Christ. Whatever. Whatever we're trying to prove, they always start on the opposite side.

They go through the adventure of trying, the stories, trying to show them. Dude look, all these problems are happening because you're not thinking right. You're just looking at the world wrong. And so that at the end, when we do finally have the actual climax, not the faux climax which happens before it, which we'll talk about in a second, but the actual climax, they go, if I just wasn't that way and I was this way instead, you know, at the end of Star Wars, a new Hope. The question is should you rely on technology to save you or should you rely on faith to save you?

And so we have all these scenes where sometimes faith, sometimes technology, you know, we have Obi-Wan, it's faith and and Han Solo's technology and Darth Vader, whose faith and the empire whose technology and we have all this conflict back and forth. And at the end of the day, he's in the trench and obi-wan's like, use the force, use faith, believe in a power greater than yourself and Princess Leia going use your targeting computer.

And then he has to make a decision. And that's that climax. He goes, crap, we've been using technology to fight this Death Star and everyone is dead. Everyone with me is dead. Who's been using technology? Obviously, technology is not the answer. I need to believe in a greater power. I need to believe in something bigger than myself.

And so he turns the targeting computer off trust in a power that he cannot see, that he just has to have faith that exists. And he blows up the Death Star. It saves his life. So that's really the quintessential definition of a climax. It's that's when the audience stands up and cheers. That's when the character is taking all the lessons that they've learned on this journey, that what they had before the journey started and combine it with what they learned during the journey of it.

And they've done it and the audience is like, yay, and standard. This is when you know Leo, after he gets killed and shot six times in the chest and he's dead, he realizes, wait, I guess I am Jesus Christ. And he comes back to life. And it's just that moment that they switched. And it's one of the reasons why and I've said this before, I have spent my entire career trying to figure out every story I write.

I've tried to figure out how to make the climax long, make it last, because it always is just like it's just there. It's at the end, sorta like sex. You spent 30 minutes dealing with it and then like, 30 seconds, it's like it's over. It's like time to go to sleep. So I've looked for that. How do you extend?

And you just really I've never figured out, you know, maybe I'm just not smart enough, but because it's that moment, it's the moment where the character moves from the wrong side of the theme to the right sort of thing. And that movement, that transformation is what makes the audience go, Yeah, yeah, if you just had that way of thinking, if you had just done that to begin with, none of this stuff would have happened to you.

And so, yeah, that's the climax. So when should it happen? It's kind of an obvious question, but.

Close to the end of your book.

Ideally.

Ideally, Although that being said, like I had two points within my book, within the first book and Hidden Blade, because I had a moment of conflict where it's it looks like the climax because this is what the character has been working towards and he achieves his goal and then fails. And then the actual climax is somewhat later, but like substantially later.

then I would

argue that that first one isn't really a climax. It's just him getting his goals and realizing that's not what his story was about. More than that, because there and it's like, what is it about this episode that I'm just going to be Debbie Downer the entire frickin thing? Because there is one. I'm going to trash another author and another story that pisses me off because of the ending.

and that's Joe Abercrombie's first Law series. So the whole book series had come out before I read it because it just didn't seem like my thing, I'm... The F-bomb in fantasy

just doesn't scream fantasy to me. And there's like the F-bomb and every third sentence in that book and I don't know, there are just some things about it. This didn't attract me, but my friends kept talking to me about it and they would go, my goodness, there's no climax in this trilogy. Like, I can't believe it. Like, it's so I'm like, There's no way.

There's no way a major publisher would put out a book with no climax. Actually, I'm going to let me go ahead and trash another one. And then I read Abraham Lincoln Vampire Slayer. Anyway, like, there's no way. There's no way they would do a trilogy and did not have a climax. And so I read it, and it does have a climax.

It has a climax at the end, about one third of the way into the the third book we finish, Adventure's finished. They move to the right side of the theme. They learn their lessons. It's a happy ending and that's it. The book ends, It's over. The trilogy ends one third of the way through book three and where he failed, because that's the thing they said, not only is there no climax, every character is just ruined at the end.

Every character is a tragedy. And that's where he failed, in my opinion, because then he does, just like Tolkien did a long return with going back to the shire and all that other stuff. The rest of his book is The Return and he goes back and the love interest that we were hoping to get together, they do get together and it's like so good.

And then in a fit of rage she murders him and goes to jail and is then, you know, hung for murder. And the king, you know, the guy that was trying to become the king becomes the king. And it's a happy ending. But then we find out that he has no power and he's literally just a puppet to the state.

And they force him to do all sorts of things that he doesn't want to do. And I don't remember what happen to everyone else, but everyone had a tragic ending like that. But it's not a tragedy. So a tragedy is where something bad happens, but the audience gets that. They shouldn't have done that. So like the Pied Piper, everyone knows if you just met your promises and not been greedy, your kids wouldn't have died.

The, you know, King Midas, everyone understands that if you, you know, just be satisfied with the wealth that you have and you wouldn't have murdered your daughter. We get that. It's a tragedy, but we get why we still consume the message. There's nothing to consume in those tragedies. It's just watching characters that you love just be reamed and it was bad.

It was just bad. And even though it has a huge fan base, I know most of the people that I know, that's why they were telling me to read it, because they were so I mean, it was definitely the my God, that's horribly tasting taste that I that's literally what it was. It was like, this is one of the worst books I've ever read.

You need to read it. So I don't know why I read it, but it was it was very sad that that they allowed that to be the book that they produced to go out there.

So I don't know. So I I have never past the Blade itself. I read the first book this, and for whatever reason I never picked up book two, I think I think I picked up the blade itself and then I couldn't get hold of book two or the series hadn't completed yet or whatever. And then by the time Book two came out, I was busy with other stuff and I couldn't remember book one.

And I just so I have never actually read Blade before. And now I kind of like because I've heard a lot about, you know, the first Law trilogy and they classify Abercrombie as Grim Doll. And I've come to the realization that while I enjoyed Dark Fantasy.

I'm not huge on Grimm done, right? Yeah, that's why I consider myself a dark fantasy writer or tragic fantasy writer. But I don't consider myself a Grimm dark.

Yeah.

And that's why I said it's is not my cup of tea.

And it's about grittiness and reality and. And I like a little bit more. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. A little bit more fantasy in my fantasy. Fantasy. If the whole series hadn't been out already, I would have probably done the same thing. I would have read the first book and then was like, Man, but I actually bought because again, this was a huge discussion in my circle. And so I just went to the bookstore and I just bought all three.

So because I'm like, well, I got to read it because I'm not going to know knocked me out of this discussion with my peeps until I get to the end. So why would just buy one book? I'm just going to they're all here. Just buy them all and just go, Yeah, I was back way before Amazon, way before Amazon existed.

But, but yeah, it was, it. That to me is the quintessential cautionary tale of not having your climax toward the end. I mean, yes, you can have a return and I think the longest you can do is like, wait, Hulk ended with his return where we do the climax and then we go all the way back to Shire.

But that's still ends in a good way as opposed to not.

To, but at the end of it.

Yeah, that was the funny thing to me. I could when I was watching the final movie and in the theaters, you could tell who was had read the novels and who hadn't because the movie ends fade to black, it's over, and half the audience stood up and then the movie comes back on and they all sit back. Now and then we have another thing, and then it ends and fade to Black Movie's Over Credits director Or half the audience stands up, and then the movie comes back on and everybody sits back.

Now and again it happens. The phase of movie is over. Everything's all fade to black. Everyone's saying, you know, half the people stand up and then they're like, Nope, we're not done. So I thought that was hilarious that they, you know, they had to have done Peter Jackson had to have thought about that. Like, you know what we're going to do?

We're going to fade to black like the credits are about to roll. Like, is it going to be ended, this story? And then we're going to give it a count of two and then we're going to just come back on with the next story. You know, he had to think about it like that. He had to be like, you know, be so funny, but you can't do that.

Exactly what he did. Let's be honest.

It is exactly what he did. But I picked up on it because I saw it in the theater, you know, the weekend that it opened up. So it was hilarious to me. That was one of the things I was laughing about when I walked out. I was like, You could tell who didn't read the novels, but yeah, it was great.

So

does genre affect your climax? What do you think?

Yes or no? No. In the way of In my mind, there's only two real ways to have a climax. Either a tragedy or a feel good. Yes. In the kind of what we're doing. And and actually, I probably should have asked this question to you because I think you were the one who gave me the vast majority of this, you know, answer because I was when I read the question, I was like, well, no, but technically it does a little bit because you have something like, you know, the things that we've been talking about here where you have a villain, you have an actual conflict that we're trying to overcome.

But then you look at, you know, a story like romance, where, sure, there's some romances out there where there's a the third party that's trying to do whatever, but For the most part, it's about the romance. You know, it's the it's still has the climax. It still has the look, they got together and they overcame all of these things that should keep them apart.

But you look at, like, Miss Congeniality. Yeah. Okay. There's somebody trying to blow up a beauty pageant with a bomb. Okay, great. We're going to we're going to thwart that. And that is an overcome. But the overcome is her getting in touch with her feminine side and not being 100% dude and understanding that her loneliness and her unhappiness stems from the fact that she's 100% dude at the beginning of that movie and that she shouldn't be you know, it's okay to also have some feminine side, you know, every man and every woman should have both masculine sides and feminine sides.

It makes us well-rounded people. And so that's the thing that was kind of shown. So that's the real overcome is her then realizing that and they don't I remember correctly, they don't actually have a hookup in that movie. It's been a while since I've seen it. But you know that she's now understanding that this is what she does want to eventually do.

Or do they have a hook up moment in that movie? It's a bit too long for me, for Miss Congeniality.

It's been years.

Yeah. I think at the end of it, she's just like, you just know she's open because I think maybe they even say, like, we should go on a date sometime or something like that. Yeah, but I don't think it actually ends with them like.

But she's ready for.

Right, Right. She's the type of person that we hope that she would become a complete human being as opposed to a one sided, lopsided human being. And so, yeah, I mean that's so genre. It doesn't affect it as in you're still either going to have a tragedy where the audience is going to consume the message because they're going to go, you shouldn't have done that.

I think if that was there, I'd do the exact opposite of that because that that's bad or you have the feel good ending where it's like, Yeah, that's what I was hoping you do. You looked up that star, you got the guy, you got the girl, you whatever. And so I think those are genre, you know, exempt. But it goes down to that.

Yeah. When it comes down to the I'm a comedy thing that that I was just talking about that doesn't happen we get the good feel ending but then we have two thirds of a novel that isn't it's tragic but it's not a tragedy. There's nothing at the end of that where I go, okay, yeah, no, if I would have if, if I, if the character would have just chosen this other thing, it would have been better for them.

So it's the other thing that the story is trying to prove, but that isn't there. It's just it's just 400 pages of.

So I'll tell you what fans of a fan I tell you what fans of First Law say, because this is sometimes sort of bite the topic in in some of the some of the reddit forums and stuff that I blog and I'll tell you what they say they say that but that just shows like the gritty harshness of real life takes me so deep and I'm like, okay, hundred percent.

If you love that in the genre, you are a grim, dark fan. Go for.

It. There's a reason why there's Anonymous for everything.

But that's not.

Me, right? Right. And that's not the mass majority of people you're there's a bunch of there there are hundreds of first lore series out there that you will never read and never hear about and never exist because they it's harder for that to find an audience.

So I see running I've been running a massive survey for the past two weeks and I've gotten a thousand responses to because I posted on Facebook and paid for some advertising to get it in front of like fantasy readers and stuff and all of these genres. I put both Grimm dog and dog feathers onto it. Over 60% of people said yes to Dark Fantasy and no to Grimm.

Dark Grimm Dark is down at 30%. So to say it, there is nothing wrong with writing for Grimm. Don't but understand that it is a niche.

Yeah, I mean dino porn has fans. It's not many. It's a small it's a tiny little league Louisiana. It has, you know, I'm sure a very loyal community. Yeah. But so there's not that we're not dogging on them. We're not saying don't do these things. We're just saying from a business standpoint, just understand where you're going to sit.

And obviously Abercrombie has been massively successful in the criminal arena, but for every Abercrombie, there are like a hundred authors who will never be anyway close.

Know.

Because he will. He is actually a competent writer.

He's a solid writer, like I will never saying his writing was great. Yeah, it's the it's the story that, you know, get me.

The story didn't work for me, but he he writes.

Good.

Prose and character and everything else.

Like, Right. And this this, you know, the whole size of the fish and the size of the pond analogy does work. So, yes, if you're a larger fish in a smaller pond, you can actually do much better than being, you know, not so large of a fish out in the ocean. But the flipside of that is if there is a whale in the pond, then they're going to eat everything.

And so it is much harder to, you know, So, yes, grim dark is a much more niche market. And you go, well then that means there's so much, yeah, but there's whales in that market and Abercrombie is not the only one. Yeah. So it's when you're just starting out, I don't know if that's the right business decision to go, I'm going to go after this niche market because you know, whatever because you are, I mean, that's the crappy thing from a business standpoint.

I'm competing against the Iliad for readership and books, thousands of years old, and I'm still competing against it because you compete against everything because people can only read so much. And we have, what, 800,000 new books hitting the market every year right now? Yeah, there's is a lot of competition that you have to cut through. Now, I do want to say this is off the topic of climax, but I do hate that writers hate on other writers because they think of the competition side of it.

Yes, we are competing for attention from readers. However, we're not competing with other authors. If just because someone's a fan of mine doesn't mean they're not a fan worries. Like it's it's not that there's a set pie. It's the noise. It's cutting through the noise. Everything is name recognition. So, you know, why did me and Marie start this podcast four years ago?

One, because we enjoy hanging out together and we like talking and writing and that's really fun. But to I, it's one more avenue to cut through the white noise. So it's just another way to hopefully get our names recognized so that people are like, I've heard this person before, let me check out their stuff. Yeah, So that's what you're competing against.

You're not competing. It's me that's that's.

I really I really there's there's been a couple of scandals recently in the in the author world of like authors trashing other authors and like not not like this where we've now been going like I don't like this ending or that, but like trash and that's not.

Now I mean, there's now in some markets, you know, because I do dabble in the like the tie end market, there are only so many jobs. And so yeah, in those instances I am more competing directly with another author, but it's more as an employee. We're both hunting for the same position, but for fans it isn't a pie, it's an unlimited pie.

And just because they eat a piece of my store, you know, my pie doesn't mean they can't eat a piece of your pie and and their pie and like, no one buys one book. Like, yes, there is a limit. I mean, I know a guy who reads a book a day. I don't think he actually remembers any of it.

I don't think it impacts him. I don't think anything like that. But he reads the book a day, and I'm not a fiction book, but that's the same number. Most are, you know, ten, 15, 20 books a year, 30 books or whatever. And so that's the pie that's there. But it's it's almost unlimited. So I just want to say that even though we are competing, it's the white noise of stuff that's out there.

We're not competing against each other.

But let's let's get back to Climax. What do you think? The I think it's going to be an interesting discussion. What do you think the breaking point is or the all hope is lost moment? And how does it affect the climax.

Though? For me, and this is one of the differences between me and you, you kind of both see the breaking point and the all hope position is kind of the same, and I think they could be very different. They are often also the same. So I don't know. So I think I think that we should discuss this in a I don't think there is a defined definition that anybody really knows.

It's just there's a bunch of ways to kind of think about this topic. So the character breaking point to me and this is one way to look at it, is what is the moment where the character just can no longer not go against a climax like that? It's done so much damage to them. They've lost so much, they've either lost friends or they've lost things or they've lost, you know, hope or whatever.

And they, you know, it sometimes referred to as the dark, the dark night of the Soul or whatever. So it's that moment where they just can't go. So like, let's use the matrix. I think this would be a great because you can show a different way to look at this. And again, it's just, you look at this topic.

So for me, the breaking point for Neo is after after he gets back, after the fight with Agent Smith in the subway and he gets back and he has to come to terms with the fact that Morpheus has now been captured and is going to die. And he can't take the fact that Morpheus is going to die believing that Neo is Jesus Christ when Neo.

No, he's not, because the Oracle told him he's not. And so to me, the breaking point of that moment is then it's like, I can't, I can't. I'm worthless. Like, I guess I'm going to die going to save him. But he has to be saved. He's important. I'm not. And so he's just broken at that point. And then the hope is lost moment for me is when he's saved you know, he rescued Morpheus.

He's trying to get out. He makes it back to the phone and Agent Smith is waiting on him and shoots him six times in the chest and he dies. So now hope is lost, but I don't feel to me, that is the breaking point of the character, although you see it differently and it's just a different way to look at it.

So I think that Neo's breaking point is in that moment when Agent Smith shoots. I think it is in the realization as he is staring down the barrel, that he is going to die everything. Up until then, he could still have been the one. Even when he's going like, I've got to rescue Morpheus, he's wrong. I'm not the one there is still doubt, right?

He could still be the one. And then staring at the barrel of a gun and a bullet coming toward him. And he's not fast enough to dodge. And it hits him in the chest and he is dying. And that, I think, is the point where he goes, I am not the one. And he gives up and dies. He literally in that moment.

And then Trinity says, I know that I'm the one because the Oracle said, I fall in love with you and that would make me the one. So she Jackson in The Matrix, she kills the agents and then she releases the world from control of the Androids.

So Trinity's breaking point is also in that moment, because she in that moment realizes that she should have told Neo about her prophecy. She should have told him that she loves him. And because she loves him, he is the one because she would fall in love. But then she tells that to his corpse and he resurrects and kills Edwards.

Yeah. And she's that the joke was is that in the end, neo story trinity is the rescue from without. She's the Han Solo. The I shot Darth Vader off your tail. So that's her rescue from without, which is the you have to be like I know you think you're dead. I know. I get it. But you're not because you're Jesus.

Because I love you. And I was told I would love Jesus. So you're it. You're up. Get my favorite rescue, even without combo is in Finding Nemo and the Marlin story arc because the movie's called Finding Nemo. And he never Nemo, but he doesn't rescue any so the rescue from without. So the all hope is lost moment is when Marlin gets a city and goes right, I'm a fish.

I can't do this. And the rescue from without is Nemo swimming out and going, Hey, Dad, to rescue myself because he has to because his story is a coming of age story. So if Marlin had rescued, it would have ruined a coming of age story. So Nemo to rescue himself and then he comes out. And why is that a rescue without because that's not the conflict.

Marlin's conflict is not rescuing Nemo. Marlin's conflict is that he's the wrong type of parent. And so we need Nemo back in the story. So that then Dory can get caught in the net near Nemo and say, look, I know you're an overprotective idiot, but I am not really in danger. If I go save your friend, I can do it.

I made this stuff and I now know, like it's safe for me to do this. You just have to stop being an overprotective parent. And so we need Nemo in Marlin story for him to have is overcome. But Nemo, the person he's supposed to be rescuing, is actually his rescue from without, which I think is frickin hilarious from a structural standpoint because you think the whole time.

No. The overcoming Saving Nemo now, that's not the overcome. So I love Finding Nemo so much from a structural standpoint and from a just a craft writing craft or writing standpoint. It's Braille yet in so many different ways. But yeah, so that's it depends on how you want to look at what is the character breaking moment. It it to me it all goes back to.

So I'm actually producing a new YouTube show called Idea, the novel and everything in between where me and a friend of mine who's never really written is we're going to spend like two years writing a novel and we're going through every step of the way. So I've got all these exercises and we haven't launched again. I don't know when we're going to like this to be months before we actually launch this, but we're hoarding every week and we're at the stage now where I'm doing tent polling with him.

So I, you know, talked about the everyman moment, the the inciting incident, the point of no return and blah, blah. And so the inciting incident point of no return, I talk about and I go through and I say, look, a lot of times you do the same. So like in Finding Nemo, the inciting incident is Nemo gets kidnaped.

The point of no return is Nemo was kidnaped like you can't not go after him. That's it. Yeah, that's the way it is. But in the Matrix, they're not together. The inciting incident is follow the White Rabbit, go talk to Trinity. Morpheus is real, but you can go back to work if you want. And he does. Just like in Star Wars, the inciting incident is meeting old Ben and getting the magic sword.

But he goes back home, and then the point of no return in the matrix is do you want the red pill or the blue pill? Yeah. And the point of no return in Star Wars is the next scene, which is, yeah, no, the Empire killed your family and they're going to kill you. Now you need to run like there is no turning back now.

So in story structure, you can combine them and think of them as one thing, but also having the ability to separate them can be pretty powerful. And that's the reason why to to bring it back to here. That's one of the reason why I like to think of the character breaking point and the all hope is lost moment separately, even though a lot of times they're stacked on top of each other the same moment.

I because with Trinity I 100% agree with you Trinity's breaking moment and her all hope is lost moment is Neo's death period. That is it. But again, I think if you don't just assume they're always the same and, you know, think that they can be separate. I feel like it might lead lead to some opportunities to have some storytelling that you wouldn't have expected if you just go, no, that's they're the same thing.

So that's the only reason why when we prep this and.

I agree, I agree that they can very definitely be two separate things, like I don't disagree with you there. I just think that Neo's is just as he gets shot. I think that that moment is is all of this lost love.

And this is a great example of why arguing about stories is so dumb, because the reality is, at the end of the day, all stories are subjective. Yeah, I'm 100% right on the matrix. 100%. There's no there's no doubt that I'm right. And I also know that you are 100% right on The Matrix because that's how you see it.

And it's.

Every reader takes out of a story what they take out of.

Story.

And that is it is what they take out. You call or you call down. They take something else out of the story. They're not like, you can argue about this thing to talk about this thing, so maybe I'll go. That's interesting. I could take that out of the story too. But then I've taken it on the story because you've taken it out of the story.

And I'm like, That's an interesting point. Then, you know, I can incorporate and so on, but it's still like what I've taken out of the story is what I've taken out of the story.

Right? And why this is important for writers to understand is because it's hard to grasp that you're not in control. If writers think they're in control of what we're doing to our readers. And for a large extent, we are how we construct our sentences, the verb choices we use, you know, how we disseminate information through the scene, all of that.

We're very much in control of that. What this is a reason why testing with beta readers is so important because you need to get that type of feedback. So like, let's say I'm writing the The Pied Piper story and you know, we all know the Pied Piper village overrun by rats. Magic shows up with Fluke, says, Pay me money and I'll get Rudy.

Rats. They say, okay, he plays his flute, takes him to the ocean, they drown, he comes back, they won't pay him. So he plays his flute and he takes all their children to the ocean. He drowns them. Yeah. Now you can. If I ask. And I use that in my classes, that's one of the things that I use in my classes.

And I'll say, What is the theme? Some people will go, the theme is, is a you shouldn't be greedy. And they're right. But other people will go. The theme is you shouldn't break your promises. And they're right.

Yeah.

To me I fall on you don't break your promises. I don't feel like it has anything to do with greed. It doesn't make any sense to me. They promised they were going to do something. They didn't keep the money out of greed. They keep kept it because they promised to do something. And then they were just like, But I'm not going to have any consequences for not following through with this.

Yes, I'm going to keep my money and not do it again. Neither way is wrong. But here's why it's important for writers. What you have to do is when you get that feedback, you have to go on my cue with both. Is it cool with me that you take the greed is bad and you take that breaking your promises about or start over and or that.

And if the answer is yes, then you're good. Now, if you write that story, if you write the Pied Piper and you go give it to beta readers, and people are like, yeah, no, I think, you know, half the people are like, I think it has to do with greed. It's just don't be greedy. And the other half is child prostitution is bad.

And then you're like, I hate that. That's when you're like, How did you get that? Well, this section made me feel that. And so maybe you wrote those sections wrong. Like you didn't think that you were doing that. But sure, they are not wrong. If they if half the people were like, yeah, no, definitely. It's a story about the perils of child prostitution.

It's evil and bad and wrong that's what you were trying to convey then. That's what your story conveys, whether you meant it to or not. That is fact. And so now you have to either go, okay, you know what I'm cool with that. I'm cool with that is a moral lesson. Or you go, Ooh, yeah. And that thing to do with what I'm talking about, let me change that.

Let me figure out what, what were the lines, what were the paragraphs? What were the scenes that made you feel that? And then adjust those. My favorite story was from kind of in this light, one of the very first groups that I did in my house years and years and years ago. One of the girls read it was is opening chapter a fantasy piece.

And I go last in my critique groups. I lay everybody go first, and then I kind of been the cleanup man to try and catch anything that they missed. And so it went around the room. Everybody critiqued your piece and it got to me and I was like, and it was a scene where it was a brother and sister on a farm and they're just doing farm choice.

It was just kind of a setup chapter.

And I went, so brother and sister boning. And she was like what? The Author. She was like what, what? No. What? And everybody's like, my God, I'm so glad you said that. That's exactly what I thought they were doing.

And like, yeah, look at like, this is going to make every single person who reads this think, or at least the majority of them think that these two are boning.

And she's like, No, no, she was mortified. And I'm like. Whether you meant to do it or not. That is what that.

That's what I know. Yeah. And that's, that's what I, that's what I call the, the, the unintended theme.

Yeah.

You do need to be cognizant.

Well you wont be. You might not mean to put this in the book.

But it can feel like that to some percentage of readers myself, percentage of readers is small. Then you can be like, So be it. Those people have their own baggage and they're going to get that out of the book and it's fine. Or if it's just like 50 to 60%.

If it's if it's 20%, yes, 20%. You're if are sorry, 25% because at 25%, you're at a 3.5 out of five stars. Yeah. So 25%, three out of a three out of ten feel something that is wrong that I'm trying not that they're wrong. That it's opposite of or different from what I was hoping they would feel. I'm going to adjust it.

But here's the thing. Even if it's only one out of ten, I will still look at that and go can I tweak it just enough? That's not going to affect anyone who got what I was doing. But then correct this one little thing like because a lot of times it's well, you use this one verb in this one paragraph, and that's why I felt that way.

And it's like, what about this verb? Because it means the same thing, you know, as far as the painting of the picture that I'm trying to do. And they're like, yeah, no, no, I get it. I understand on that one. Then I'll just change the verb. I and then I don't have to worry about losing that percentage of the people.

So yeah, it depends on what you're doing. Yeah, but you're right. Sometimes I go, Yeah, I don't care about you like you're such a small percentage of, you know, whatever or and you get this a lot in writers groups because it's like, you know, I'll have a, a romance writer or a Western writer go, yeah, I know.

I didn't understand this whole thing because of this. And I'm like, anyone who reads fantasy, like, I had my the story that I use a lot is I had one one of my first critiques was this woman, and she said, I don't understand why all the guards in the city are wearing chain mail. That sounds stupid to me.

And I was like, You know how cops wear bulletproof vests? And she's like, Yeah, they need to. I'm like, Yeah, chain mail is there bulletproof vest back then? They're cops. I didn't know that. Yeah, that's because you know, your fantasy. It's good. I just ignore you. I don't care.

I've had one or two people critique me that are like, I don't. I don't. I don't get this magic thing. And I'm like, What's fantasy? Do you read a lot of. I have never read any of that.

Yeah. My star review on I.

I appreciate your your commentary but.

My only two star review on good reads is a long review. I mean, because he actually made a fan base trashing everything he reads. Yeah he's one of those people. Yeah. But the first line and I haven't memorized the rest of it, but I memorized the first line. I don't like fantasy, but I'm like, Well, then you have no opinion that matters to me at all.

Like, why are you reviewing a fantasy book anyway?

You're getting way, way, way off.

Well, that's why I was bringing it over here. All right, So anything else about the breaking point that you want to say or do? I think we got that? All right, So how can we make our climax when I finish on here, we make this the climax of this podcast. What do you think are some things to think about that would make your climax more powerful.

The lower you take the character in the All Hope is lost moment, the fire, the climax. If you can make them this big, it's a roller coaster ride. The the higher the, the more dramatic the drop, the more epic the raw everything. It's about gradients.

Yeah. The way I like to describe it is your story is you know the center of your stories a line. And so if you have little cool moments and little drastic you know bad moments and little good moments and little drastic moves, really your story is this has this much range. Whereas if your highs are just like really amazing and then your lows are like, my God, we're all going to die.

And then you're has now your story has this range. And so if you can keep that level of ups and downs through your story and your all hope, this last moment is the lowest of those, then your climax, which should be the highest of those, that emotional range is going to be amazing. And it really is that simple.

It has to start from the beginning. Now, of course, in the beginning, our highs and lows are going to be smaller, but as we go through, they're going to get higher and lower and higher and lower and higher and lower. And we're going to build that up so that it has this massive impact on it.

There's one other thing there's awesome for not only do you have to have that emotional range, you have to make the reader care about the character from Jump. If the reader doesn't care about the character, if it doesn't care about what the character loves, what the character hates, what the character's motivations are, then it doesn't matter about your emotional range.

They're never going to care.

The reader has to care about the characters so that they care about the stakes because the stakes are communicated through the character, the stakes. The climax matters because it matters to the character, right? This world doesn't exist. It doesn't matter if it comes to it. It matters to the character. And because the character cares, it matters to the reader.

And it's why one of the things that I teach is it's not about the how or the what. It's about the why and the effect. You have to write the how and the what you have to write. How did I open the door and what did I do when I went into the room? You have to. The story doesn't exist without the hows and the whats.

Nobody cares. Nobody cares how I open the door. Even if it might have been cool. Nobody cares what I did in the room, even though it might be cool. They care. Why am I opening that door? What effect does it? Does it have? Does going in that room have upon me? It's always the whys and the effects. You must thread that in from the very beginning, because that's the motivation.

That is the the desire of your character. And you connect that to the reader and now the reader cares as they go through it. So as the stakes rise and fall and rise and fall and rise and fall, that emotional range, I actually give a crap. So I feel great when we're high and I feel horrible when we're low.

So when we do get to that, all hope is lost moment. I actually it is actual all hope is lost for me because I'm actually like, no, this is terrible. But if I don't care, it's like, yeah, whatever. Let them die. I don't care. Not that they'll ever get to that point because again, we just talked about 800,000 books hitting the market every single.

Little.

Girl. Yeah, there's a book down. There's so much out there that if you cannot keep them, you're not keeping it. They're just not coming back. And that's what you're competing. It's you're competing. Is that white noise? You're not competing. It's other authors.

actually. I want to ask you one last question.

Okay.

I'm interested what is the impact of the climax on your protagonist?

okay. So this was this is on our list. For those who don't know, we have picked up this year, this season, you might have noticed a change in format and and I and what are they called thumbnails and all of that. We picked up a producer and she's doing a fabulous job of just keeping us organized and giving us topics and, you know, setting everything up.

And literally we were always improving every single month. But starting in January, we are improving like never before. So she gives us a list of questions we kind of go over to ahead of time and we read this question. It's like, what is the impact of the climax on your protagonist? We both just kind of look at each other.

It's like every thing, like it's the story like.

So if you can't figure that out, you haven't written the climax.

If you can't figure that out, maybe a career in acting where you just say what other people have written and make it look good. I mean, I definitely have a face for radio, so I'm not going to be an actor anytime soon. But yeah, all actors have to do is look really pretty and cool as they deliver lines that someone else wrote.

You say that, but I'm going to push back. As I watch, they will watch A Devil Wears Prada with Meryl Streep. And I. I know for a fact that her monologue to Andy where she goes like, you wear that blue sweater that you picked out of that whole monologue, if I know for a fact that in the script it was supposed to be angry because in the book it's written as angry.

But Meryl Streep was like, No, no, no. And she delivered it in this flat, deadpan. That was just.

Yeah, again, she pretty and cool delivering what somebody else wrote.

Yeah, yeah. But she changed the way it was.

Delivered because it was not written like. Right. And I love picking on actors. I'm friends with a lot of actors and there are some brilliant, right? I mean, Ben Browder, the guy from Farscape and SD one, he took over after Richard Anderson left. He's a friend of mine and he's a writer. He wrote several episodes of Farscape. Brilliant guy.

I love hanging out with him. He's also, you know, now these older in his career. He's doing a lot more directing. That takes a lot of mental capacity as opposed to just standing there. But he also looked cool and pretty delivering lines that other people wrote or just, man, I think Meryl Streep.

Meryl Streep looks fantastic delivering it. I know she does.

But so I like some actors.

Some actors do make a material difference to the.

Work, certainly. yeah, 100%. But that comes down to, you know, the writers do the best they can and we think like this really has impact and maybe it does, and then somebody else can look at it with fresh eyes and go, okay, yeah, this does. But man, if it was delivered this other way. And then also there is a difference in painting on a reader's imagination versus actually showing them.

The thing so, you know, something written is never going to have the same impact. Not that it's better or worse because it definitely be better impact or worse impact. I'm never saying it's just going to be different than watching a person on screen. I mean, we just talked about in the last couple of episodes that line from Randy from my name is Earl.

You read that and you're like, This guy can't write, This is horrible. And then you watch Randy do it on screen. You're like, my God, that's hilarious. It's just it's everything that it should be. So, yeah, but yeah, so we're picking on our producer here and in this last line.

Like, she's

fantastic. She's 100%.

That last question was just funny.

And we both just kind of deadpan looked at each other like, What do we do with that? So, yes, Now you guys got a little inside, back, back office chatter about what's going on behind the scenes at releasing your inner Dragon.

And I think that that is a great note on which to end this episode by

Greetings, Enchanting Wordsmiths and Dream Weavers. It's Marie Maloney, your companion, on this fantastical journey of creation. If our podcast has been a guiding star in your literary sky, please like and subscribe and share our episodes with your fellow creators

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Your support is the magic that keeps our world turning.

for a deeper understanding of the topics we've discussed. Head over to Justin Calm Worlds on YouTube. It is a treasure trove with fantasy meets history and science. Every Tuesday, you'll find new videos that delve into the intricacies of worldbuilding,

drawing from our rich real world history.

Whether you're a writer, a role player, or just a fantasy enthusiast.

Just in Time Worlds offers unique insights that will enrich your perspective.

Check it out and join the journey of crafting incredible worlds

if you are ready to take your writing to the next level and work with a group of highly motivated, dedicated writers who are all working to not only improve their writing, but improve your writing. Plus, you get to work with me on a weekly basis.

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