2.9 – Outcome
The outcome is the last act of the three acts. It is time for things to come to a conclusion and reap the fruits we have sown during the previous acts.
The outcome of a story usually has three elements, usually in this order: First we have a Climax, which is the moment of greatest tension, the peak of history, and that gives rise to the Resolution of the main conflict, which is finally followed by the Return to Calm that ends the story.
Climax
The climax is... well, the climax. It is the scene or scenes with the most narrative or plot tension, the decisive scenes of the story. They are usually the most important moments in history, and in them the main conflicts are resolved. The escalation that has been done during the knot has to end here, so everything we have built usually explodes at this moment: The tension, the characters, the conflict.
It is time to drop the big bombs, to make difficult decisions, to risk everything and to win or lose. If the risk is great and authentic (remember that there may be false tension, as we saw in point 2.6 – Tension and conflict; but in the climax false tension is something that can explode in your face), it is difficult to make a bad climax, but it is possible so let's see what we should avoid:
Deus ex Machina
Simplifying a lot, a Deus ex Machina is when the conflict is resolved in a way that has nothing to do with what we have seen unfold in the novel. For example, that our protagonist in economic hardships gets the lottery. Or that the villain dies from a heart attack.
The resolution of the conflict is not a direct consequence of the main characters (protas and antagonists) but of unpredictable and/or uncontrollable events. The clearest example that gives name to the resource, is when the gods appear out of nowhere to put order and solve the problem with their miracles. This is something that now spoils the story because we feel that the characters have not influenced the final outcome of the conflict.
A lot of people write endings like that because they run out of options and get cornered in an ending that they can't solve so they have to save the story in some way. If that's the case, the solution is not to patch the ending, but to go back to the structure of the story and rewrite it.
You can use the Deus ex Machina as tools of a story, but as it is something a little more advanced for today we are going to pass it over. But if you are interested, you can see an example of Deus well done in Neimhaim, by Aranzazu Serrano, more or less in the middle of the book and literally (a goddess appears out of nowhere who pulls one of the protas out of a hurry).
Anticlimax
Anticlimax is the opposite of climax. If the climax is the balloon of tension exploding, the anticlimax is that balloon deflating making pedorets. For example, when they reach the tower, they discover that the guardian of infinity is dead and there is no need to face him, so without facing any obstacle, the heroines recover the artifact and return home, after half a novel preparing them for the encounter with the guardian.
Most anticlimax is involuntary, resolving the climax too quickly or too easily. An example of unintentional anticlimax would be the end of digimon adventure 2, in which the villain is at his peak and the fate of two universes at stake, with the ground prepared for an epic fight, and in the end it is solved a little in part thanks to the power of love, without fight or anything.
This brings us to an important part of the anticlimax: The destruction of expectations. If you have prepared the ground for a specific type of ending, giving another type of ending is usually unsatisfactory. If you're going to end the power of love, then make the power of love the core of the story, rather than the fights, and vice versa.
Unimportant
There are stories that believe they need a final fight, a race to the airport, or any end-story cliché as a climax instead of considering what kind of climax the story requires.
And sometimes it happens that those climaxes that do not have much to do spoil the end. There are stories that don't need a final battle that have it for some strange reason.
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