The Climax

Everything in a good story builds to the climax. That’s my opinion anyway. Some people don’t mind where a story goes as long as they get to meet fun characters and events along the way. I wish I were so open, but alas.

Imagine you climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, and you want to tell the story. You could just say, “I climbed to the top of Kilimanjaro,” but that’s not a story; that’s just a fact. A fact has no weight, no emotion. To make it a story, you need to build up to the fact. You need to say why you wanted to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. You need to say how nervous you were, how unprepared, how cold. You need to say you almost gave up and explain why you did not.

And then, when your audience cares about your struggle, say the fact, and it will matter to them. “And then, finally, I climbed to the top of Kilimanjaro.” Fireworks! Relief! Wow!

And that’s what a climax is: it’s the fact that everything builds to. So of course it determines how the audience feels about your story. It’s the reason you started telling the story in the first place. And if it’s not, then shut up; you’re boring us.