How to write a climax

For months (actually years at this point) I have been building toward a climax I wasn’t sure how to write. My draft is over 20 chapters at this point. June has been traveling through a corrupted forest to rescue three young brothers from a villain. The obvious endpoint was some kind of confrontation with that villain and the corrupting machinery she represented.

During Thanksgiving weekend, amid a good deal of self-doubt, I headed to the library to write. Three hours later, I had finished the scene. But it wasn't what I'd expected to write. June didn't face down the political regime I'd been building toward. Instead, she confronted something internal that had been haunting her the whole story.

I left it alone for a day, and when I came back and reread it, I didn’t feel the need to make major edits. And I realized I'd been writing a different story than I thought. Not an outward adventure story about confronting corruption, but an internal story about confronting self-doubt.

What I thought vs what happened

I've spent the majority of the book peeling back the layers of this corrupted world — how people are controlled and manipulated through different means to uphold and reinforce a system that is not in their own interests. The natural climax of this story seemed obvious: confront the villain, defeat the system, rescue the captives.

I'd been thinking about this scene for months. As the main villain was inspired in part by the White Witch (see this blog post for details), I had imagined perhaps a trade or sacrifice, or a battle between the Feltoners (Narnians) and the Korrupolitans (White Witch and company).

However, when I put one word after another, something different emerged. 

June reaches the compound, but instead of the villain, she encounters an entity that embodies the voice she's been hearing her whole life. The creature tells her she's nothing, that she doesn't belong, that she ruins everything she touches. June can't defeat it through external action or heroism. She has to go into the darkness itself, face what she's been running from and find something inside herself that proves the voice wrong.

What it means

A few months ago I wrote about the feedback a writing consultant gave me that June's arc was about worldview change. In the beginning, she believes she can't connect, can't be heard, can't improve her life. Writing the climax, this worldview change became the central driving force of the story.

The Korrupolitans aren't the real enemy, they're simply the external manifestation; the real enemy is the voice telling June she's nothing. 

Throughout the story, I'd been showing how the corrupting machinery made people doubt themselves. They isolated families, made neighbors suspicious of each other, convinced parents they couldn't trust their instincts about their children. They made people feel like they couldn't rely on their own judgment, like speaking up would only make things worse, like they were too weak or foolish to resist.

The system worked because it found the self-doubt that was already there and fed it. Made it grow and turned it into paralysis.

When June confronts the entity, she's confronting the source of that voice — the thing behind the villain and Korrupolitans, what their efforts serve. The political oppression is just the outward form. The internal voice of worthlessness is the real power behind it.

I didn't plan any of this consciously. But writing the climax made me see what I'd been building toward all along. June's journey isn't about defeating an external enemy. It’s about proving to herself that she can act, that she matters, that her life has meaning.

What I Learned

I was feeling a lot of anxiety about writing the right ending, but when I actually just went for it, what was meant to happen happened. I learned I don’t need to try and consciously control these things — that what is supposed to happen will appear.