Of John Gardner, Writing and The Worm Hole Experience…

“Any event that seems to the given writer startling, curious, or interest-laden can form the climax of a possible story.”

–John Gardner in The Art of Fiction

Climax is that place in the story or novel where the protagonist, the main character, reveals in action, that she or he has integrated knowledge gained through the experience of the journey.

Through thought, word, and deed, the central character shows she or he has been changed, transformed. It follows crisis.

And whereas the protagonist makes a choice during Crisis, she or he acts upon that choice at the climax.

In this way the scene of climax displays the human embodiment of transformation on which the story swivels in reaching the mountain top experience, or the low valley of acceptance.

The major character at this point becomes a living organism evidencing the transformation undergone at the arc of the story.

Thus Climax begs the question: What is Crisis?

The outcome of events comprising the middle of a well-written story requires the protagonist to makes a choice.

These possibilities consist of a collection of things highly desired, each delivering their own unique equally gratifying reward, or a string options, none satisfying and miserably abhorrent. The decision is and should not be easy.

Thus the major character must dig deep within her or his person, their soul and personality, thus revealing to the reader who they were, and ultimately the person they are becoming and will be in making this difficult choice and seeing it through to the Climax.

Crisis is not so much a dark night of the soul because of the difficulty of events that the protagonist has endured and survived, rather the person that the events has forged in achieving the survival.

And it is this worm hole experience, most particularly that of squeezing through the tiny knot of the of the hour glass that reveals the mettle of which that character for whom we have been cheering and praying that delivers the intensity of human experience that we call crisis.

In this way it is a rebirth. In the most idea of circumstances, the reader too, feels resurrected.

How do you feel when the protagonist of a novel you are reading reaches the crisis?

How do you craft the scene of climax in your stories?