Plotting a novel is an exhilarating endeavour filled with creativity, passion, and endless possibilities.
That said, one of the most challenging aspects is crafting a satisfying final act that resonates with readers.
In this episode of The Writing Coach podcast, writing coach Kevin T. Johns delves into the intricacies of crafting a final act, exploring essential elements and effective techniques that can help bring your story to a compelling conclusion. He discusses key milestones, character arcs, plot twists, and the crucial role of the denouement in delivering a fulfilling resolution to your book.
Learn how to plot a final act that will leave a lasting impact on your readers.
Listen to the episode or read the transcript below:
The Writing Coach Episode #196 Show Notes
Download the FREE Scene Alchemy Essentials Checklist Now!
The Writing Coach Episode #196 Transcript
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Something I wanted to dig into because several of you—and it makes perfect sense, it’s totally normal—several of you are still a little lean in figuring out what the final act of your book is going to be like or what’s going to happen specifically in different scenes. I want to show you how we can use some different story structure ideas to have a big chunk of that final act figured out for you or at least to kind of send you in the right direction.
I mentioned it to several of you in the homework: we want the moment leading into the final act to be the all-is-lost moment.
Let’s go back to our midpoint shift, which is the middle of the book, right? Our character said to themselves, “Can I do this? I’ll give it a shot.”
Dorothy said to herself, can I get the witch’s broom? Well, I guess I’ll give it a shot. It’s my only chance. And what happens by the end of Dorothy’s adventure, trying to get the witch’s broom? She has been captured; she’s now a prisoner. And our all is lost moment is our character, who has spent the first half of the extraordinary world exploring learning and has become active, but in doing so has failed because they’re not yet able to achieve their goal. They haven’t yet developed the skills or come to the full understanding of how the world really works or who they really are or the skill or the weapon they need to acquire the knowledge they need to get. They’re almost there, but they’re not there yet. And they fail.
And this all is last moment, at the end of act of the middle of the book, is when our character is furthest from achieving their story goal. And furthest from their community. often over the course of our book our character has or characters have met friends or fallen in love. For romance writers, the all-is-lost moment is the misunderstanding in the mid to later section of the middle of the book where the couple splits up, something’s happened, and the couple has split up and this is why our protagonist is sitting at the window in her pajamas eating ice cream. The acoustic guitar is playing, and the rain is going right because it’s the last moment.
Okay, knowing that we’re going into this final act from a low point in the story. We can do a couple of things here. We could say the final act probably starts with a dark night of the soul. Dark Night of the Soul is what the couple’s broken up. The heroes have given up on the mission, the group has broken up, the the team has lost whatever we were trying to achieve. We’ve failed and everyone’s alone now or at least our protagonist is alone. And they’re sad, and they’re feeling down. That’s where we normally start this final act. there’s a beat right off the top that you can start building a scene around right what does it look like when my character is alone and brokenhearted?
Then what happens is basically a pep talk. And this pep talk can be our character talking to themselves, or it can be a mentor figure, or it can be a best friend or it can be an ally or a sidekick. Sometimes it’s even the villain. But someone says to our hero, you’re not going to give up, are you? You’re better than this. You can do this. You love him. You know he loves you don’t let the world pull you apart. someone says to our hero, you can do this and convinces them to give it another shot.
All right, now that giving it another shot almost always involves getting the gang back together. Because at the end of this act, our character has now been pushed away from all their allies or their loved ones or their friends.
Okay, getting the gang back together. If this is a romance, that might just be going back to the love interest or the love interest going back to the protagonist. And this can often involve a grand gesture or proof of love. Proof of love is normally already done, but this is this is what’s that John Cusack movie where he holds the ghetto blaster over his head? Say Anything. This is Say Anything, right? I can guarantee you that’s about like, you know, 80% of the way through that movie because they broke it up. He’s at a dark night of the soul. Someone’s probably giving him a pep talk. And now he’s gone back to her. He’s doing the grand gesture.
Okay, now we have our gang back together, or we have a couple back together. And now we have a plan of attack. We’ve been trying to accomplish something throughout this whole book. We’re going to give it one last shot. what’s our plan? We then execute the plan. We end the adventure story this is like we attack the bad guy, or the bad guys arrive attacking us, and we’ve been preparing or if it’s maybe like a heist, This is us trying the heist and now what happens here is something goes wrong.
Save the Cat is a Hollywood structure story structure, but then Jessica Brody adapted it into a novel format in a great book called Save the Cat Writes a Novel. And what we’re now going to pull from here is what she calls the five-point finale. And I just love it. I think it’s excellent.
But what happens is, something has to go wrong if our good guys make a plan to fight the bad guy and it just goes off and works. There’s no drama in that. And in Save the Cat, they call this and it’s kind of a fun, fun title so I’m going to use it, the high tower surprise. It basically just means something goes wrong.
Our characters now need to develop a new plan of attack. Normally, this involves digging down deep, which is kind of like, I’ve got nothing left. Our last attempt, you know, has failed, but I have one last desperate thing within me. And I’m going to do it. The pep talk is often externalized with another character and sometimes internal.
The dig down deep is often internal it’s often the character saying can I do this? And are not saying can I do this thing you can do this or this is the moment where they realize they need to sacrifice themselves where they’re like, Oh, I’m not going to come out of this. Okay, I’m going to die and that’s okay because it’s for the better. Keep in mind here that the language I’m using is very much kind of the language of adventure action stories, but death does not have to be literal physical death; death can be the death of a dream, death could be the death of a relationship, death of a career.
Death of naivete or idealism. Stories are all about deaths, but it’s not always, or actually, it’s rarely physical death unless we’re in kind of an exterior action focus story. After dig down deep, we have victory, basically. Okay, we defeat the bad guy. We attained the prize. We get the knowledge, whoever was standing in the way of the couple getting together has been resolved. And then we get into the denouement.
What is the denouement?
Folks, I’m going to use a sexual metaphor here. Trigger warning, heads up. But what do we call the climb? What do we call that the most exciting part of the movie? The climax. What do we call an orgasm? A climax. There’s a parallel here. And what happens after sex at least in my opinion, ideally, if you have some cuddle time, you and your lover enjoy each other’s company. Something would feel off if you made love, and then someone walked out the door, and it was over.
That’s what happens when we end our book too soon. It’s like, oh my god, we just had sex, and now and now the person’s gone. The books are over. We need a denouement, which is the one time in the book where you don’t have to worry about seeing goals where you don’t have to worry about conflict, or you don’t have to worry about objects of desire. You’re really just writing one or two or three scenes to hang out with the author after the client I’m sorry with the reader after the climax and just give them a hug and say thanks for being with me on this journey. And really, what we’re doing here is tying up any final loose ends, right you probably, you know, had a bunch of different subplots or whatnot going in the story, and you’re just showing that everything’s going to be okay in.
In the romance world, this is called what wholehearted looks like. Our characters started the book single with a hole in their heart. They found their true love. Now their true love and them are together so their hole has become whole, and the other person has filled something missing in them. And we need to see that or we want to see that right the reverse. Like I just spent 60,000 words with this couple. I want to see them happy. we give them a couple of scenes where we showed them being happy and kind of wrapping things up and the bad guys getting there do in all of that.
What am I trying to get at here? What I’m trying to get at is here are ten beats that you can base your final act around. Maybe executing the plan and the high tower surprise is one scene as our characters rushing into the evil boss’s office, but it’s not really him. It’s this secretary who’s been making the trouble the whole time. Maybe that’s kind of like one scene. I’m not saying each of these is absolutely one scene. But I mean, there’s probably half a dozen scenes in here, at least especially if you look at the denouement and say this is maybe two or three scenes.
A lot of the time, because obviously, it’s the last thing we think about, and it’s the thing we’re kind of the least sure about because it’s Hertha, the furthest down the road, that final act, and it can feel really vague and fuzzy.
I encourage you to just look at this structure here.
And again, maybe this isn’t how your book plays out. But it’s a pretty great starting point, or it’s a good thing to turn to if you’re like, I really don’t know how what needs to happen at the end of this book, or if you’re not sure the order in which things might happen or could happen and what you know what I hope you take away from this is don’t be intimidated by that final act. A lot of things need to happen, and even if you’re not using this terminology, there needs to be a climax of some kind and if it’s a positive change arc, the character needs to defeat the villain.
Often, our characters don’t get what they actually want. But we give them what they need, or they realize what they want isn’t what they need, and they get what they need. Then we need a couple of scenes of things tying up and people being happy and whatnot. Don’t be intimidated.
Here’s a great little structure that you can use to base your final act around.
