ending a story at the climax?

F

Fahad

Veteran
so how can you tastefully end your story at the climax.

if a plot generally has this flow:

introduction => rising action => conflict => climax => falling action => resolution

how would you go about changing and omitting elements of this flow without putting off your audience?

for example , i know there are stories which begin at the climax, then go back to introduction.

pulp fiction and memento are prime examples of mixing this flow.

also, there are a number of stories that don't have a resolution, but still work.

my question is, could you end a story at the moment of climax without falling action nor resolution? could you end it without angering your audience?

please comment!
 
Peter Weir has done this a couple times. Fearless and The Truman Show end right as the climax ends without any falling action. If you mean ending it as a cliffhanger, with the climactic moment unresolved then I'd say you'd piss off the audience something terrible.
 
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Batutta said:
If you mean ending it as a cliffhanger, with the climactic moment unresolved then I'd say you'd piss off the audience something terrible.
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yep, this is what i mean. and, i do agree.

but do you think it's impossible. i guess what i'm asking is: do you think that no matter how compelling the build up was, you won't be forgiven by shafting your audience at the end?
 
Fahad said:
yep, this is what i mean. and, i do agree.

but do you think it's impossible. i guess what i'm asking is: do you think that no matter how compelling the build up was, you won't be forgiven by shafting your audience at the end?
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Well...just about everyone was pissed about the end of The Sopranos, and that had 6 years of compelling build up.
 
...& they always start with the end of the last week. And there was Rocketman; tryin' to get out...and here comes the cliff...& just before the car went off the cliff, he jumped free! And all the kids cheered! But I didn't cheer. I stood right up & started shouting, "This isn't what happened last week!! Have you all got amnesia??! They just cheated us!! This isn't fair!! HE DID'NT GET OUT OF THE COCK-A-DOODIE CAR!!!!"
 
No.

He either has a quick resolution (which, I guess is better than a quick climax :wink:) or he dances the narrative shuffle...
 
I've seen a lot of more recent action / horror movies that have pretty much trimmed out all of the falling action and ended immediately following the climax, but I don't think I've seen one that has ended directly at the climax.

I don't think I have ever seen a movie that begins with the climax. There are lots of movies that begin in medias res, or in the middle of action, and then flash back to what brought the characters to that point, but the story has always caught up to the beginning of the film and continued past it to the real climax of the story.

The climax is by definition the culmination of a story.

If a movie really began with the climax, it would mean that it would have to begin with the most exciting part of the story, and then the rest would have to be less interesting or falling in excitement.


The climax of Memento is the final scene between Teddy and Leonard, where Teddy reveals the truth to Leonard, and Leonard decides to plant the clues for himself.

The climax of Pulp Fiction is the confrontation between Jules and the Ringo during the coffee shop hold-up.


Both of those movies actually don't have much falling action. In Pulp Fiction the falling action is just Jules and Vincent walking out of the coffee shop. In Memento the falling action and resolution is just Leonard driving away from Teddy at the end and stopping at the tattoo shop.
 
if the story is big enough and you made a trilogy, the end of the first movie will have all the elements while the story as a whole will not have been completed.
 
that's a great analysis, agcohn.

how about in stories wherein the hero dies, would that be in the falling action part?
 
Amr Rahmy said:
if the story is big enough and you made a trilogy, the end of the first movie will have all the elements while the story as a whole will not have been completed.
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Na-ah.

A successful trilogy will have each film stand on its own feet first and foremost...and serve the greater good as a distant second (ala Star Wars or first 3 Indiana Jones).
 
yeah i think each film in a trilogy is a mini flow of the same elements that, all together, make the bigger flow of the greater story.
 
The story always ends with the climax for me... then it's a quick cigarette and off to sleep!

Oh, wait....that's something completely different. :happy:
 
thanks for the clarification, agcohn.

zaza, now THAT's a climax ; )

very good replies here.. good discussion.

the reason why i asked initially, aside from general interest, is that i just finished up a script for a short, the feedback here helped me shape it toward the end. I posted it in this section.

i would appreciate any feedback on it.

it's called "divided line"
 
You having to fully deal with the obstacle, or find out that there is nothing that can be done about it. Mamet said something along those lines. That is when a movie, scene, sequence end.
 
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