Story Climaxes to Shock or Delight

Can you feel the foreboding? 

3 short story climaxes that will inspire your own plot twist

The climax of a story can be a moment of retribution or chaos. It’s the summit of the mountain that the writer has produced with their words. Literary climaxes are the ‘ah-ha’ moment in a ‘who-dunnit’ or the marriage (or divorce) in a romance. They should satisfy the reader with a plot conclusion, or even better… a plot twist.

The perfect story climax is a difficult thing to pull off, but the rewards are enormous. A great climax can even encourage a reader to share and discuss the work at great length, becoming an ambassador of your writing. If you tank your climax, you risk turning off your reader and making them think that you’ve wasted their time, so the stakes are high.

So how do you nail the perfect short story climax?

We have a couple of tips:

• Start with the climax and build outwards

3 Short Story Climaxes That Shock & Delight

When creating your plot plan and writing your first draft, start with the climax. Starting at the summit of your story will allow you to plant a breadcrumb trail for the reader in the lead up, signposting the action that is about to happen. Conversely, you could lay a trail of red-herrings to throw them off the scent and lead to a more surprising result.

• Use form to amplify tension

Structure can amplify your words in incredible ways. Focusing on the structure of your scenes and their chapter breaks can increase suspense. For example, if you have multiple character arcs, try alternating between those characters’ points of view to break up the narrative. Think of your story like your favourite TV drama, remember how the video editing and regular scene cuts help to build the suspense in the story? Writers can use that same principle. You can also create shorter and shorter scenes as you move towards the climax to increase reading pace and heart-rate. This adds momentum - a key ingredient to a great climax.

Now for the excellent examples. Onto our 3 favourite short story climaxes…

Adventure:
‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ by Flannery O'Connor is a tale about an ill-fated journey, fraught family-dynamics and a murderer on the loose.

The story begins when a father wants to take his family to Florida for a holiday, but his mother wants him to drive to East Tennessee, where her friends live. She argues that his children have never been to Tennessee and, to emphasise her point, shows him a news article about an escaped murderer, "The Misfit", that was last seen in Florida. He begrudgingly agrees.

She then asks him to make a detour on the way to a house she once knew, and herein lies the story’s first climax:

“"It's not much farther," the grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible thought came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Bailey's shoulder.

The children were thrown to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby, was thrown out the door onto the ground; the old lady was thrown into the front seat. The car turned over once and landed right-side-up in a gulch off the side of the road. Bailey remained in the driver's seat with the cat-gray-striped with a broad white face and an orange nose-clinging to his neck like a caterpillar.

...The grandmother was curled up under the dashboard, hoping she was injured so that Bailey's wrath would not come down on her all at once. The horrible thought she had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee.”

After getting what she wanted and making the detour, the grandma suddenly realised that the house was not where she thought it was, and the detour was in fact pointless. It is at this moment that the car crashes, leading to a series of very unfortunate events and culminating in them meeting ‘The MIsfit’ murderer they were trying to avoid.

In this piece we love the fact that it is a grandma and her cat that causes the chain of chaos. It’s so unexpected and makes the car crash even more surprising and abrupt. O'Connor also seems to be conveying the message that if you ask for too much, everything can come tumbling down like dominoes - a climax with a message can be incredibly hard-hitting.

⭐ Do you have a hard-hitting moral message to portray? ⭐

Are you sitting on a short story with the perfect climax moment?

...you just might be the overall winner of the 

Hi2020.co.uk Short Story Competition!

But HURRY! COUNT DOWN just 17 days to get your story entered

So don’t wait!

20 lucky winners get published in a beautifully illustrated coffee-table book that will be available to purchase in renowned London bookstores. 

And that’s not all! We’ll also create a professionally read podcast of the winning stories! Winners will also receive extensive coverage across our social media channels with a combined following of over 2000 engaged readers and writers and radio air time - the perfect package to kickstart your writing career.

Log onto Hi2020.co.uk and enter your best story for a chance to win this incredible literary prize bundle!

Your story should be original and between 1000 and 1500 words, written in English 

from among the following given topics：

Adventure/travel

Thriller/Dark

Romance

Science/Fantasy

Here are the three location categories:

Three County Challenge (Bucks, Herts & London)

 UK Challenge (British Isles and Northern Ireland)

 11yrs - 18 yrs Challenge (UK- British isles and Northern Ireland)

Grab that inspiration and kick-start your writing career!

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Help is at hand with this downloadable supportive guide:

‘How To Write Short Stories’ Bookazine 

...including writers’ aids to help you unravel the plot intricacies and character development.

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Thriller/Dark:
‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ by Roald Dahl is next on our list. This short story expresses Dahl's fascination for dark tales and black comedy and is a great example of a short story climax. It’s one of those ‘I should have seen it coming!’ moments for the reader and yet it is so ridiculous that we didn’t expect it!

The climax comes when the distant husband broaches the subject of divorce to his doting wife...

“Her first instinct was not to believe any of it, to reject it all. It occurred to her that perhaps he hadn’t even spoken, that she herself had imagined the whole thing. Maybe, if she went about her business and acted as though she hadn’t been listening, then later, when she sort of woke up again, she might find none of it had ever happened.

“I’ll get the supper,” she managed to whisper, and this time he didn’t stop her. When she walked across the room she couldn’t feel her feet touching the floor. She couldn’t feel anything at all except a slight nausea and a desire to vomit.

Everything was automatic now-down the steps to the cellar, the light switch, the deep
freeze, the hand inside the cabinet taking hold of the first object it met. She lifted it out,
and looked at it. It was wrapped in paper, so she took off the paper and looked at it
again.

A leg of lamb.

All right then, they would have lamb for supper. She carried it upstairs, holding the thin bone-end of it with both her hands, and as she went through the living-room, she saw him standing over by the window with his back to her, and she stopped.

“For God’s sake,” he said, hearing her, but not turning round. “Don’t make supper for me. I’m going out.”

At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she
could on the back of his head.”

Dahl uses foreshadowing from the very beginning of the text, mentioning the lamb supper every few lines of speech. This hints at the wife’s obsession with being the perfect housewife and catering extensively for the husband. After the divorce is brought up by the husband, her neurotic desire to brush it under the carpet and carry on as normal lulls the reader into a false sense of security. We start to think that she is in denial rather than actively angry.

… and then she hits him with the very leg of lamb that she was going to cook for him. We are left so shocked we almost let out a sort of laugh-gasp as it is so awful and bizarre that is almost comical. Everything you want from a short story climax.

Science-Fiction:
Last but by no means least, we’ve chosen Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Veldt’: a tale about a futuristic house, ungrateful children and a warning against technology taking over our lives.

There is a nursery in this AI house in which the room reflects the childrens’ thoughts and desires. It was developed by psychologists to help them play out scenarios in a healthy way. The problem is that the lines of technology and reality started to blur in both directions…

““Daddy, Mommy, come quick — quick!”
They went downstairs in the air flue and ran down the hall. The children were
nowhere in sight. “Wendy? Peter!”
They ran into the nursery. The veldtland was empty save for the lions waiting,
looking at them. “Peter, Wendy?”
The door slammed.
“Wendy, Peter!”
George Hadley and his wife whirled and ran back to the door.
“Open the door!” cried George Hadley, trying the knob. “Why, they’ve locked it
from the outside! Peter!” He beat at the door. “Open up!”
He heard Peter’s voice outside, against the door.
“Don’t let them switch off the nursery and the house,” he was saying.
Mr. and Mrs. George Hadley beat at the door. “Now, don’t be ridiculous, children.
It’s time to go. Mr. McClean’ll be here in a minute and...”
And then they heard the sounds.
The lions on three sides of them, in the yellow veldt grass, padding through the
dry straw, rumbling and roaring in their throats.
The lions. 
Mr. Hadley looked at his wife and they turned and looked back at the beasts
edging slowly forward crouching, tails stiff.
Mr. and Mrs. Hadley screamed.
And suddenly they realized why those other screams had sounded familiar.”"

This daunting short story is another great example of foreshadowing. The beginning of the text starts with the parents observing the lions in the futuristic nursery and saying how uneasy they made them. Then throughout the story Bradbury drops physical hints, like the father’s wallet found covered in drool and blood. This leaves the reader suspecting that something awful is going to happen which intensifies the pace leading up to the climax.

The last line here is quite meta - a moment of realisation for both the protagonist and the reader at the same time. We understand that the earlier noises they heard in their sleep were actually themselves being torn apart by lions - a wonderful time and mind bending moment.

So what have we learnt from these famous works?

• Use foreshadowing to increase anticipation and reading speed towards the climactic moment
• Throw the reader off the scent by using villains (and weapons) that are unusual, unexpected or down-right bizarre! You can even venture into comedy here
• Portray a moral message if possible

And so concludes our incredible climax round-up!

We hope you have fun penning your own…

Happy writing!

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