It's Going to Take all Your Strength & Your Protagonist's, too, to Lift Your Novel, Memoir, Screenplay to a Climax

A writer who readily admits she struggles with plot and feels pulled to write about characters and relationships did the heavy lifting. She wove together character emotional development with exciting dramatic action and thematic significance.

Trouble arrives after the climax. The story continues... for quite awhile, many scenes, in some of which the protagonist is downright passive. Finally, comes the resolution and true end.

When the writer complains how her subplots carry the same weight as the main plot, she reveals the solution to her problem. Rather than compete with the through-line of the story, subplots serve the primary plot. What is the primary plot? The protagonist's core conflict.

In this instance, the core conflict centers around accepting and understanding the gift the protagonist is born with and has denied her entire life. Yes, finding and facing her father is key to the protagonist's successful completion to her goal. The true climax, however, shows the protagonist using her gift consciously. She doesn't have to be successful. Sometimes, failure reveals the true gift is a nice plot twist. Or, as the writer says: sometimes when you look for one thing, you find something else you truly need instead. The protagonist does have to take action showing her embracing her gift.

For more support about the Climax and ending of your story:

1) Chapter 11 and 12 of: The Plot Whisperer: Secrets of Story Structure Any Writer Can Master 

AND
Chapter 15 of: The Plot Whisperer Workbook: Step by Step Exercises to Help You Create Compelling Stories 

2) Watch:

• How to Create a Climax
• The Climax using in Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult

For more about the Universal Story and writing the end of a novel, memoir or screenplay, visit Plot Series: How Do I Plot a Novel, Memoir, Screenplay? on YouTube.

3) Begin writing now to complete an entire draft of your novel, memoir, screenplay in time for PLOTWRIMO, beginning December 1st.

For more tips about how to use plot and the Universal Story in your novel, memoir or screenplay, visit:

Blockbuster Plots for Writers
Plot Whisperer on Facebook (we hope you "like" it)

Plot Whisperer on Twitter

Plot Whisperer on Pinterest

Moves a Character Makes at the Climax

Interesting dilemma in a recent plot consultation -- the protagonist (a 12 year-old in a middle grade fantasy novel) kills the evil queen, her mother, at the Climax. 

Now, before you react, let me explain. Turns out in the Resolution the woman she kills is not actually her mother. Whew! Still, the reveal comes too late to justify the killing as the story is written now. 

This age-group, heck, any age group, for the protagonist to do such a deed, the mother must be evil incarnate -- which the queen is though not necessarily shown enough throughout the story as it's written now -- and even then, I believe it is a tough sell for middle-grads readers, or at least their gatekeeper -- parents, teacher, etc.

Not even Luke Skywalker is able in the end to kill his own father -- Darth Vader -- in the Star Wars films.

The archetype of the Mother needs to stay pure. The woman she has become can be hated -- yes? -- but...

The Climax is the crowning glory of the story. The reader has been reading for pages and pages. This is the scene they will likely remember. To have such controversy at that moment can work in adult fiction, but in middle grade fiction...