Writing Workshop— Achieving the Climax

Berty and friends continue to adventure in the world in-between the portals.  I can feel myself reaching the climax of the sixth book in the World In-between series.  Exhilaration rushes through my veins while dread weighs my hand.  It’s a weird feeling knowing that your time with your friends is coming to an end.  Perhaps that is why so many authors write series.

In my head, I know what should happen.  I have planned the moment.  With every word, every sentence, every paragraph, it advances.  My heart races as my pen scribbles on the page.  Rawness flows through a rough draft that will never be felt again.  In the rawness, the best of plans change.

After a good number of books with the same characters, I wonder how much new can be left.  What else can these characters face or experience?  As an author, the terror of having nothing else to write creeps into your mind at times.  Those fears have to be combatted or the ink will cease to flow.

No matter how much I plan, my characters rule the page.  They tell me where they will go, what they will do.  Now, I know they are simply figments of my imagination.  But I trust them.  As long as I stay true to their character, they will lead me through the climax.  What I intend to happen, may not happen.  And, I cannot force it to happen.

Many authors talk about how their characters run the show.  It’s as if the characters have sentience.  What occurs in the mind is logic and rationalization.  The author knows the characters so well that the author cannot go against what a character would do in that situation.  If we want our stories to flow so that the reader feels satisfied at the end, we do not allow our characters to do anything out of character.

For example, I recently watched a movie where I said to my boyfriend afterwards, “That character wouldn’t do to that.”  A war hardened person would know better than to stand out in the open to easily get shot.  The character could have died, could have gotten shot in the same place in the story, but it could have been done in character.  What the writers made happen completely removed the suspension of disbelief.  During the climax of the movie, ruining the rest of the movie for me.  I left the theater with a sense of meh.

To eliminate the sense of meh or any feeling that isn’t satisfaction in the reader, character integrity needs to stay consistent until the final word.  The tension that has been building on each page culminates at the apex and may break the character(s) in order to be resolved.  If staying true to character, those breaks feel real.

The goal of an author is not merely tell a story.  The goal is to make the audience feel the story.  The audience lives in the story alongside the main characters.  They experience the ups and downs from plot point to plot point, the twists and turns that carry them to that climax.  In that moment, the rushing adrenaline finally releases them.  The rewarding resolution carries them to the end.

Berty will do what he needs to do for his home.  I trust that he will guide me to what feels right for this book.  Beside him, his friends will be true to themselves.  Some will grow.  Some may lose.  Some will never change.  Some may never be the same.  However, they will all live on, one way or another, in the World In-between.