The Hierarchy of Climaxes

As I’ve been wrapping up eleventy billion plot lines in Book 3 of The Invoker Trilogy, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about the order in which that wrapping up needs to happen.

I feel like there’s a bit of a hierarchy of plot climax when a story has multiple things going on, and I’ve spent the last few weeks moving around the final scenes in Book 3 so that none of the resolutions feel anticlimactic and everything is (hopefully) given the space and weight it needs. I do resist the idea that a story has to have one shape, particularly as different cultures have different storytelling conventions. I also love stories that play with structure and subvert expectation. But I want every part of this ending to land for readers.

I keep thinking about the final season of Game of Thrones, which so many people found unsatisfying. I remember hearing someone say it was because what felt like the big climax - the battle with the Night King - did not happen at the end. I have a LOT of thoughts about that season (eg, actually, the big bad wasn’t the Night King, it was the throne itself, which WAS destroyed at the end, and a lot of why that season didn’t work for many is because it was all so rushed. Also Daenerys, much as I enjoyed that character, was always a bad guy, read the books man, and her arc was consistent with that. Soz.) But that’s a post for another day!

I currently have steadily rising climaxes based on increasing levels of threat. But notice that I didn’t say what constitutes threat, or to whom? That is my get-out-of-jail-free card, because it’s all subjective!