How to Write a Character-driven Climax

The Importance of a Crisis Decision

Update (6/16/24):

Hi friends,

I just started a new day job. We had a work emergency, and I’ll be working overtime this weekend and next. That said, I need a little more time to finish up this month’s craft lesson. Since this month’s lesson is on Act III and endings, I recommend reading (or re-reading!) this post to get the most out of our next lesson.

You can expect our next lesson on June 30th. This month’s AMA drops next week on June 23rd. If you have any questions for the AMA, leave them in a comment below!

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Learning Objective: By the end of this post, you will know how to create a climax for your story using a crisis decision.

Today, we’re diving into the mechanics of a character-driven climax. As we discussed in our character goals lesson, a character-driven story is a story in which the protagonist’s choices dramatically impact the direction of the narrative. If you’re interested in publishing in a western market, you will likely see more success if your stories have active protagonists who pursue a concrete external goal while trying to avoid their internal fears.

In our last craft lesson, we discussed how to develop antagonists that challenge your protagonist’s character growth. These kinds of antagonists are most effective in western markets because they create situations that put the protagonist’s external goals in opposition with their internal needs. Ideally, every scene in an effective story forces the protagonist to make small decisions between their external want and internal need. All of these individual choices eventually lead up to a final crisis decision where the protagonist must choose between what they want and what they need once and for all. In effective crisis decisions, the protagonist cannot have both, and the consequence of either choice is severe and life-changing. This final decision often occurs around the climax of the story.

Not every story has a crisis decision, but a crisis decision will always make your story more effective for the western market. Today, we’ll look at:

1. The reasons to use a crisis decision

2. The steps to create a crisis decision

3. An example of an effective crisis decision

As always, take what’s useful and leave what’s not.

How Crisis Decisions Improve Storytelling

Crisis decisions make a story more effective because they (1) keep the protagonist active, (2) demonstrate the protagonist’s emotional transformation, and (3) determine the tone of the story’s ending.

1. Active Protagonist

Over the years, I have worked as a fiction editor for several literary magazines. In my experience, pacing issues are the number one reason why I rejected a story. As we discussed in our lesson on character goals, pacing is the progress that the protagonist makes toward their external goal. Crisis decisions are important because they give you a concrete, final milestone to write toward. Outlining your character’s goals will help you discover the crisis decision they will face at the end of the story. This crisis decision gives you both macroscopic and scene-level direction for the story. Once you have this direction, you can put your protagonist in situations that force them to make active choices toward their goals from the beginning of the story all the way to the end. These active choices help ensure that your novel’s pacing is strong and effective for a western market.

2. The Protagonist’s Transformation

In his book, The Story Solution, Eric Edson defines “story” as a protagonist’s journey from emotional adolescence to emotional maturity. This journey is often broken down into three acts. Act I establishes the protagonist’s external goal, their fear, and their misbelief. Act II follows the protagonist as they actively pursue their goal while avoiding the thing that their misbelief tells them to be afraid of. But little do they know, the only way for them to mature and survive the story (literally or metaphorically) is to face their fear and abandon their misbelief. That’s why Act III typically contains a crisis decision where the protagonist must choose between holding onto their misbelief to obtain their external goal or letting go of their misbelief to fulfill their internal need. All in all, the crisis decision serves as a final test to determine whether or not the protagonist has completely transformed into their emotionally mature self.

Our next craft lesson will do a deep dive into three-act story structure. If you’re interested in learning more now, check out this YouTube playlist from Abbie Emmons’ channel.

3. Crisis Decision and Endings

We read stories because we want to experience a great emotional journey alongside the protagonist. The ending represents our final emotional moment with the protagonist, and that moment leaves a lasting impression on us as readers. This final impression is why I love Everything Everywhere All at Once, and why I hate Game of Thrones. I adored so many of the protagonists in Game of Thrones, but the atrocious ending left me with a spoiled impression of the series. That said, as writers, we can steer this final impression by controlling the ending’s tone with a crisis decision.

In this video series, StudioBinder examines the four types of endings in western cinema and how those endings affect a story’s tone:

1. Sweet: Character gets both what they want and what they need (Back to the Future).

2. Bittersweet: Character gets what they want but not what they need (The Social Network).

3. Semi-sweet: Character gets what they need but not what they want (Up).

4. Bitter: Character doesn’t get what they want or what they need (The Godfather).

While outlining your story, decide what tone you want your ending to have. This tone will determine the type of crisis decision your protagonist will have to make.

How to Write a Crisis Decision