The climax of a story is one of the most essential parts, leaving either a good or bad taste in the audience’s mouth. If it’s good, it could lead to the audience crying tears of joy (or sadness, depending on how your story goes). Or it could lead the reader to long for the proper ending if it’s terrible. Making sure you stick your landing at the climax is vital to making sure your audience leaves remembering your story fondly.
One of the questions you need to ask yourself is whether your climax should be a spectacular, colossal finale or a smaller, more intimate scene. It would typically be the latter for a mystery, resolving the central conflict through a small, intimate scene void of extravagant action and spectacle. However, I have seen some mysteries end with a bang, such as “Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone” and Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes.” Choosing which one you use is not an easy decision to make. Especially in a market that demands massive, tense, action-packed finales.
One movie that I think went the wrong direction for its finale was “The Batman.” Don’t get me wrong, though. It’s a fantastic film with very intimate and personal moments with all the characters. But, instead of the ending being a quick one-on-one with the Riddler, where the thematic conflict is resolved through words and the outer conflict is resolved through fists, director Matt Reeves went with a large-scale battle, where Batman fights off a group of Riddler’s followers. It looks fantastic, and the underwater Gotham adds high stakes to the story, but it isn’t the climax the movie needs. It should be much more personal than it is.
When writing your story’s climax, it is very important to stick to your themes, even if it means writing an ending that some people don’t like. For instance, many people don’t like when the lead character dies, when the lead character’s love interest dies, or the lead character and the love interest don’t get together. I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who didn’t enjoy “La La Land” after the two leads didn’t end up together. I’m sure plenty of others walked out of “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” feeling disappointed at Gwen Stacy’s death (among other things). But the writers knew to write those endings anyways because they contributed to the themes of their respective stories. They didn’t back down. They wrote the endings that their stories needed.
Pay off any setups you have left. If you set up a relationship, a joke, a rivalry, or anything, make sure to pay it off in the climax. There won’t be much room for payoffs, especially if the conflict ends, so make sure to get those out of the way before it’s too late.
Since we’re talking about mystery stories, one of the setups will be the mystery. Ensure all the information is revealed in the climax, or at least most of it. You can hold off on maybe one or two specific details later if you wish for the drama of it or if there are people in the room that can’t know the true nature of the crime or motive. But, for the most part, make sure the puzzle pieces fit together during the climax.
The ending of your story is where everything that you’ve been building throughout the story is at the height of its tension, bursting at the seams, begging to be released. If everything isn’t released correctly, you risk losing your audience.
Thank you for reading my series on how to write a murder mystery! I’ll be doing more series like this, so make sure you check them out. Have a fantastic day.