There is a lot of advice on how to write a story’s climax. While many sources state you must have an internal change in the protagonist right before or during the external plot’s climax, very few focus on how to create that change. It’s essentially the climax for the internal arc (otherwise called the character arc), and it has to hit right to pull off the story’s ending.
I did a post on what I called the Snap Moment, when a protagonist shakes off the dark moment and chooses to continue into the climax. The Snap Moment is not part of the climax but an important step toward it. It’s the character choosing to be proactive even in the depths of despair. In this post though, I want to talk about the moment when the protagonist actually accepts the lesson of the book and acts on it.
The Concept Of Priming
In order for the protagonist to embrace the lesson at the climax, you have to prep him for the change. He can’t believe one thing the whole book and then have a change of heart at the end for no reason. It isn’t just about putting him through the paces and making him learn all the things he needs to know to make the change. Someone can learn how to kill, but it takes something else inside a person to actually be able to do it when the moment comes. The same is true of your protagonist. He may learn he needs to change, but something has to give him the extra push to actually accept and act on it.
What you need is a trigger that makes him act differently than he did in his past so he embodies the change. So, how do you make your character take that step? In psychology, it’s called priming.
Priming is a game of association. You condition someone to respond a certain way to a specific stimulus based on what he’s experienced. If you’ve ever heard of Pavlov’s dog, that’s priming. Pavlov conducted an experiment where he rang a bell and then gave dogs food. Soon the dogs started associating the bell with food, and they’d salivate when they heard the sound, even if there was no food. Pavlov primed the dogs to salivate (response) at the sound of the bell (stimulus) based on their association that the bell always rang when there was food (past experience).
Now, Pavlov’s experiment was aimed at eliciting a specific behavior, but it can also affect a person’s thinking and emotions. People who spend their time reading negative words are more likely to think and feel negative, while someone who focuses on positive words will think and feel more positive. Essentially, priming is exposing someone to a stimulus to elicit a specific thought, feeling, or behavior.
Priming A Protagonist
Priming can help authors write their climax and make the protagonist’s internal change realistic for readers. There are a few professional authors who suggest this concept to pull off the climax, but they call it different things.
The Q Factor
James Scott Bell in Super Structure calls it the Q Factor. He named it after the quartermaster character in James Bond whose job is to supply Bond with special gadgets for his missions. The idea is that you need to introduce a key item at the beginning of the story so that when the character pulls it out at the end to save the day, it’s realistic. You don’t want the audience screaming that the tool came out of nowhere. That will make the ending feel cheap. If, however, you set up the key moment, the audience will gladly accept the character’s success as good planning and preparation.
Now James isn’t talking about just gadgets. He says the Q Factor can be an object, but it needs to have an emotional tie to it. It must be something that can inspire the protagonist to act, and act in a way that is different from his normal reaction. It has to be something that will inspire change.
The Gimmick
Dwight Swain in Techniques of the Selling Writer suggests a similar technique, but he calls it a gimmick. Within your story, show your protagonist reacting a specific way to a certain stimulus. Then, when it shows up in the climax, the reader is already aware that he will react a certain way when faced with that stimulus. Even if logic states he’d never act a specific way, if the stimulus is present and does elicit that response, no one will argue the action is unbelievable. The gimmick sets up the change that makes the internal arc’s climax.
Internal Arc Climax
In a book, the climax is the accumulation of everything. The external arc must come to a closure, the internal arc must show a change, and the story must end. In order for the external plot to succeed, the character has to embrace the book’s lesson. Only once this lesson is taken to heart can the protagonist do what needs to be done to achieve his goal. But after a whole book of the character showing he doesn’t accept the lesson, why would he switch at the last moment? Because something has clicked inside him. Because you, as the author, have put him through various events that have primed him to react a new way to the stimulus.
For reasons of simplicity, we are going to call the stimulus a token. A token must be something outside your character that has an internal trigger. It can be a song, a smell, an object, someone’s words, or a person in particular. It can be anything, as long as it has an emotional connection to the protagonist.
Example
Let’s say we have a protagonist who is a coward. Any time there is a confrontation, he walks away. All throughout the book, we see him turn tail and run when things get hard. His sister, on the other hand, is strong-willed and won’t back down when she believes in something. They have a close relationship, but they spend the book arguing about his passiveness and her aggressiveness. Still, whenever she gets in trouble, he sticks around. He won’t fight, but he won’t leave her either.
At the climax, the protagonist is facing a confrontation alone. He has no allies. His sister is missing. It’s either he stands up and stops it or the antagonist wins. He’s spent the whole book walking away. It’s natural he’ll do it again now. The readers have learned to expect it.
But then enters the token. The antagonist brings out his beaten and weak sister. All the sudden, the protagonist can’t leave. If his sister is there, he’ll stay. Yet she isn’t strong enough to win the fight for them. It has to be the protagonist. Pulling from all the plot points he’s been through already, the protagonist finds the strength to stand up for what’s right. He fights.
Do you see how a token helps the character take that last step to change? It’s the little push he needed to embrace the lesson and win. It’s the trigger for the internal arc’s climax.
Final Thoughts
When you’re thinking about what token you can place in your story to prime your protagonist for the climax, ask where he pulls strength from. What gives the protagonist hope and strength? That is where your token should lie. It doesn’t have to be a person. It can be an object that reminds him of something greater. A necklace that ties him to his military buddy. The scent of lavender that reminds him of his loyal wife. A cracked pot that pulls up the memory of his childhood village being burned down. The token is a connection to a strong memory that triggers a deep emotion that leads to a specific behavior. Once you have that, it’ll be easy to flip the switch in your protagonist’s internal arc and make him change at the climax.
Thanks for reading!
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