How to Write Your Novel's Climax | Fourth Quarter Story Structure

hey guys it's ellen brock novel editor today we are going to be talking about the fourth quarter or the third act if you prefer 3x structure it's also sometimes called the climactic sequence so we have finally reached the end of story structure today we will be wrapping up the main story structure series um i will be revisiting story structure down the road to talk about things like multiple points of view um creating series things like that so we will be revisiting structure in the future but this is going to wrap up the main structural series

for now if you are worried about spoilers for examples i will again be using films for the examples as i have throughout this series so i will be spoiling completely harry potter and the sorcerer's stone the sixth sense uh toy story shrek oculus the woman in black juno liar liar and 127 hours this quarter the fourth quarter in most cases it's going to be the shortest quarter in your novel for some novels it might take up that full 25 percent and and um be a full quarter of the book but in most cases it's going

to be closer to 20 maybe even a little bit under 20 uh it's not super common for it to take up that full 25 but it could so just keep in mind that you should do what makes sense for your specific story in the previous video we talked about the second plot point so at the second plot point the protagonists got the sort of last piece of information or a final realization that they needed to sort of kick them out of that dark night of the soul and into this active climactic sequence so at this

point the protagonist knows roughly what they need to do um they have a pretty good gist of what's needed to succeed although they might not have everything exactly right they have a pretty good idea and pretty much the best idea they're going to have moving into that into the climax so usually but not always the main emphasis is going to be on pursuing and confronting the antagonistic force so that's the main element of the fourth quarter however the emphasis on the various elements depends a lot on the type of story so we're going to get

into that a lot more drama type stories uh internal antagonists um that that type of thing is going to play out a lot different from your more classic villain or external antagonist type story so we will be getting into the details there but just know that i'm going to go over the various sections uh in the fourth quarter but they may play out with a lot more emphasis on one part or a different part depending on the type of story that you're writing and what makes sense for you so the very first thing that happens

in the fourth quarter is preparation so the protagonist they're ready to confront the antagonistic force they want to start moving towards their goal they want to solve their problem whatever the big picture main thing is that they're trying to do they're getting ready to to do that thing but first they need to prepare so this could be um gathering up the people that they need friends or assistants um any kind of person that might help them on their journey it could be gathering up supplies so maybe they need to get certain items or certain materials

or maps or keys or things like that they need to acquire certain materials in order to move forward they may they might also just need to make a game plan or a plan of attack or discuss with uh the people involved how things are gonna go so for an example in toy story buzz and woody are of course trying to get back to andy before the moving van they want to move with him to the new house and not get left behind because they're trapped in sid's house at this point during the preparation phase a

buzz has been taken by sid he has a rocket strapped to his back and buzz is planning on shooting him into space and exploding him and so in this preparation phase woody gets the toys in sid's rooms in sid's room together and they talk about the plan of attack how are they going to escape how are they going to get buzzed out and how are they going to sort of teach sit a lesson so we see woody sort of planning that and that is this preparation phase it's not very long but in other films and

books it can be even shorter or really just implied or almost entirely skipped over so for example in harry potter and the sorcerer's stone the trio sort of discusses or what are we going to do now that we know that you know snape is trying to steal the sorcerer's stone dumbledore is out of the castle he's not around he can't stop him what are we going to do and harry says we're going to go down the trap door that's really all the preparation we get we can assume that they had additional conversation or they they

made additional plans um you know maybe they planned when they were going to meet what time they were going to meet or they planned getting the invisibility cloak or something like that but we don't see that play out it's really just we're going to go down the trap door and that's really like the whole of the preparation phase another example is shrek so in shrek uh shrek of course wants to stop fiona from getting married to farquaad so shrek and donkey sort of um gather the dragon so the sort of gathering friends they get the

dragon to help them to fly to the wedding and again it's not really a scene it's not even really a moment it's sort of just skipped over but there isn't really a big preparation phase other than saying let's stop the wedding and gathering the dragon so often it's just going to be a short sort of statement of what the intention is not necessarily a full scene of genuine preparation sometimes though there will be a lot of time spent on this preparation phase especially in situations where the protagonist needs to acquire a piece of information or

maybe overcome a fear or they may need to battle something internally in order to get what they need to kick off their journey so for example um in the sixth sense malcolm uh cole's therapist a little boy's therapist tells him maybe you should try asking the ghosts what they need maybe they're just coming to you for help and if you help them maybe they'll leave you alone so that's what happens at the second plot point so in the preparation phase cole asks a ghost girl that's haunting him what she wants and what she needs and

um we don't um we don't actually get much here in terms of what she actually says but it's it's implied that she gives them this information you might have heard previously that you should not introduce new information in the fourth quarter and that's generally a good rule but sometimes in this preparation phase there will be and sometimes in other parts of the fourth quarter as well potentially um there will be something that the protagonist hasn't acquired because of their own flaw or fear or false belief or or something along those lines so it's not that

uh there's this sun reveal of information that you know there's no way cole could have known he he could have asked the ghosts any of the ghosts at any point how he could help them but it's not something that he um knew to do and it really wasn't something he was willing to do because he was afraid so because he conquers his fear here to ask the ghost how can i help you what are you looking for you know what you need from me because that involves conquering a fear it still feels like a fair

win that he gets this information he needs it doesn't feel like sort of cheating by throwing in new information in the fourth quarter so you will sometimes see that in the preparation phase when it's longer there will sometimes be sort of a need to overcome a fear or something along those lines in order to get the information for example maybe you have someone who is previously very prideful and they refuse to ask for help and maybe they ask they sort of swallow their pride and they ask someone you know can you please give me the

key to this door i really need to to go to this place and i can't get there without this key you know can you please give it to me and because it represents a swallowing of pride and growth for that character it still feels earned so sometimes there will be information gathered in the preparation phase that sort of gives you um gives you that sense that it was still a win for the character the character still deserved to have that new information it wasn't just thrown in willy-nilly or something along those lines hopefully that makes

sense what you don't want to do in the preparation phase is have a long explicitly drawn out plan unless that plan doesn't go off according to how it was prepared for so for example if the characters say we're going to do x and then y and then z and it plays out exactly like that and you don't subvert that generally that's when you want to just skip over the preparation phase and say there was a plan or sort of glass it over because it can be pretty boring or tedious for the reader if you set

out a plan and then the characters execute the plan and it sort of just goes off according to how it was expected so in most cases the preparation is going to be short it's going to be just gathering up the things people and the plan needed in order to move forward but sometimes that will involve overcoming some sort of internal obstacle in order to get that information or get that person's help or something along those lines so the next step after the preparation is the approach so this is uh where the protagonist has what they

need they may be their friends maybe allies of various types are going to move towards the antagonists and towards that big confrontation but they're probably going to meet some obstacles or some barriers along the way this is going to vary a lot depending on the type of story again some stories this is not going to be significant other stories it's going to play a huge role so a really good sort of classic example of this is harry potter and the sorcerer's stone the trio go through the trap door and they face a sequence of obstacles

before they get to confronting voldemort this is also a really good demonstration of how you can use this section to give your side character sort of a moment to shine you might also show growth in the side characters based on how they react or what they do in this section so we see that with ron playing the wizards chess we see that with hermione knowing how to conquer the devil's snare it gives them a little moment to be the important one and this can be really helpful especially when those side characters do play a prominent

role throughout the story and you want to give them a little bit extra moment to shine in the end you don't want to give all the glory to the protagonist so this is a good moment to do that and it's a good moment for side characters to have their arc or to face obstacles that are relevant to their particular fears and their particular problems aside from the protagonist it's also very common and again we see this in harry potter where the side characters are left behind during the approach sometimes they may be injured they may

even die sometimes there's just some obstacle that requires them to stay behind and this forces the protagonist to face the antagonist alone which is often integral to creating enough tension and anxiety around that confrontation again it's not a requirement but often it's just more effective for the protagonist to face the antagonist alone and so this is a good section to come up with reasons why your side characters might get left behind it might not make it to that big confrontation so as i said this section is sometimes very brief in shrek for example shrek and

donkey fly on the dragon to the wedding there's not really any obstacles that they face on the way they just sort of fly straight there there's a moment of um confusion about what how to time objecting to the wedding but it's not this grueling series of obstacles like we see in harry potter sometimes the only significant obstacle during the approach is going to be emotional often this is going to be nervousness or fear very commonly in dramas that's going to be the main source of tension for this section so for example malcolm and cole in

the sixth sense they go to the ghost girl's house her wake is happening her family is gathered there and really the only thing of significance that occurs is cold being nervous so he's worried he's anxious you can kind of see that he's a little bit uncertain about the situation but that's really it there's no obvious external obstacle so while the approach can often be relatively quick or more drama focused it may also take up a tremendous amount of the fourth quarter it may be where the bulk of the obstacles in the fourth quarter are situated

so for example in toy story the majority of the obstacles are in the approach and when you think about the the plot of toy story this starts to make a lot of sense because the goal at this point after they've escaped sid's yard the goal is to get to the moving van so they've escaped they want to get to the moving van that's been their goal pretty much the entire time they don't want andy to move without them so their goal is to get to a location so once we get them to that location their

goal is pretty much achieved so it makes sense that the vast majority of the obstacles are going to be in this approach phase and so we see the um we see them get chased by a dog we see their they them um woody goes into the van and the toys kick him out because they think that he killed buzz we see the rc car that they were they're driving on run out of batteries we just see obstacle after obstacle during this approach phase another example where the approach phase is the the majority of the obstacles

is in liar liar and again the goal is to get to a specific location fletcher the main character wants to get to the airport to stop his ex-wife from moving to boston with his son because he wants them to stay living there and he doesn't want to lose them so he faces a variety of obstacles on the way trying to rush to the airport so after this approach whether it's short or long we will get to the confrontation so this section will look tremendously different depending on the type of story that you're writing if your

story has an antagonist or a a villain something a person that is actively attempting to go against the protagonist in some way they will have a face-to-face confrontation here in this section that confrontation should in some way be more extreme or more dramatic or more intense than their previous confrontations this is usually achieved by having it be either the first time they've ever had a confrontation the first time there's been a confrontation since the protagonist has known the identity of the antagonist it may be the first time the protagonist has faced the antagonist just entirely

by themselves or alone there are many different ways that you can make this confrontation different from previous confrontations but there needs to be an element of increased intensity if the protagonist has already faced off against the antagonist in one earlier in the book and those circumstances aren't different here we're not really going to get why this is a big deal or why this moment is the biggest moment so to make this confrontation this biggest moment of the story it's important that there be some sort of novel element to how this confrontation goes so for example

in harry potter and the sorcerer's stone there are a few different novel elements to this confrontation this is the first time harry realizes that it's not snape after the stone that is professor quirrell so this is the first time he's ever confronted cruel um previously when he confronted he didn't really confront baltimore but when he he saw voldemort in the woods eating the unicorn drinking the unicorn blood uh forens the centaur came and saved him from that so he didn't really confront him by himself he had help in that situation this situation he knows his

plan he knows he's after the stone he's confronting him directly he's all alone all his friends are left behind so there's a tremendous increase in intensity in this confrontation versus any other uh interactions which really was only one interaction um with voldemort which was uh when he was drinking the unicorn blood so some type of increase in stakes is going to be extremely helpful in this section to create a big sense of intensity that aloneness that knowing what the plan is knowing who the identity is we need something that makes it more serious than than

previous interactions many stories however will not have a villain so in that case this confrontation is a little bit trickier because we're not going to have that face-to-face confrontation with the villain because there isn't one in that case what we typically see is that the antagonist of the story is usually something within the character themself uh even if their main obstacle is is fighting with another character that's usually going to be built on something wrong with them a flaw that they have some issue that they need to work uh towards overcoming so in this this

confrontation this big moment it's not going to look quite as um scary intense confrontation e as it's going to look if there's a villain so for example in liar liar the confrontation is fletcher you know um just basically arriving at the airport in this big dramatic fashion and apologizing to a son and saying you know i've changed i don't want to be a liar anymore i want to be here for my family and that's really what the confrontation is so to replace that um big fight or that intense action sequence that we would see if

there was a villain to replace that we usually will replace that with a big reconciliatory gesture so the the protagonists will do something to make amends and to reconcile and this will be some sort of big display usually there'll be some kind of risk involved even if the risk is just putting themselves out there there'll be some level of risk or intensity uh to this gesture and then that's usually followed up by a heart to heart a meaningful conversation where the protagonist explains how they've grown and how they've changed in some stories we'll see a

mix of both writing and wrong and a face-to-face confrontation for example in shrek shrek objects to the wedding he sort of confesses his feelings to um fiona and this sort of big gesture there's some risk for him because he's in a situation where he's going to most likely be arrested by farquaad so there's some risk involved he does also have a confrontation with farquaad who tries to stop him so we do see a mix of that writing a wrong reconciliatory gesture and a confrontation with an antagonist if the story has an antagonist it that antagonist

does need to be involved in the confrontation it's somewhat common in amateur writing to see an attempt to write a confrontation where the antagonist and the protagonist do not have a showdown or don't have a face-to-face confrontation this is almost never going to work it's going to be really difficult to create a nice rounded feel to the story it's going to feel like you sort of just chopped it off and ended it early i will talk about this more in the in future videos because i do want to make a video on writing a series

but i i would recommend in 99 of cases if there's an antagonist there needs to be a showdown with an antagonist during the confrontation it's a vital part of the ending and it's really important to give the reader that satisfaction if you do want to leave it open-ended so you want it to be clear that the the antagonist isn't permanently defeated you can definitely leave that open-ended but there should still be a confrontation so for example in harry potter and the sorcerer's stone harry has a confrontation with voldemort voldemort is defeated for the time being

but when harry talks to dumbledore he says you know does this mean voldemort can't return and dumbledore says there are ways that he can come back so we we see very clearly that this is in a situation where he's permanently defeated him and that's really going to be your best bet for leaving it open-ended rather than not including a showdown with the antagonist at all so while we have a reconciliatory gesture that can happen at the same time as a confrontation with the antagonist we do sometimes have stories where a single confrontation isn't sufficient those

two things cannot be addressed in the same scene there may be multiple confrontations this can happen for a variety of reasons it could be because there are multiple protagonists multiple antagonists multiple issues sometimes internal and external issues that are not as closely linked as perhaps in other stories so they they require two different moments of confrontation so a good example of this would be the sixth sense we might actually consider that to have three confrontations so we like we talked about previous cole goes to the the um the family's house he confronts his fear of

the ghosts he helps the ghost that sort of solves his external problem of being afraid of these ghosts and having to deal with that but that's not really cole's only problem or even necessarily his main problem because we see that his relationship with his mom is also a significant issue in the story and that he's very concerned that she may think that he's a freak that she might not like him if she knew that he saw dead people so we do see another confrontation where through conquering his fear of the ghost he's then able to

tell his mom he sort of gains some strength and growth and he's able to tell her that he sees ghosts and they're able to sort of reconcile their relationship likewise malcolm his his external issue was really wanting but it was really an internal issue as well he sort of has two internal issues um but his more externally focused issue was wanting to help coal to sort of make peace uh regarding this similar client he had victor who he did not help and he wasn't able to help that that boy and so he sort of wanted

to help coal as sort of a way to make up for that previous failing so he does that by helping coal with the ghost however that's not his only issue malcolm's other issue is that he's sort of distant and estranged from his wife and so confronting that issue is also important and so we need to see that happen as well and again conquering that sort of external issue sort of gave him the strength and ability to conquer his internal issue and um confront his wife and tell her how he really feels and sort of apologize

and so we again we get these sort of two-prong confrontation with both the more externally focused obstacle as well as then a more internally focused reconciliatory gesture but in this case uh they're all separate from each other so we end up with three different confrontation moments another example of a two-part confrontation is in juno so juno has two different issues she is she's finding it difficult to express her feelings about bleeker her love interest and so she has a confrontation where she tells him how he how she really feels about him um but then that

doesn't address the more externally focused issue of her pregnancy so we then of course also have a confrontation where she gives birth and she gives her child to vanessa the adoptive parent so that sort of solves that more external issue but those two things don't happen at the same time so once that happens that confrontation occurs at some point during or after the confrontation there will be a surprise so this is sometimes called a twist the reason that i wouldn't call it a twist is because a twist can occur any time in a book or

in a film the twist a twist doesn't inherently mean in the fourth quarter a lot of stories have a midpoint twist so it doesn't really depend on the time the other the other reason is that most of the time this is going to seem more like a surprise than a twist it's not really going to in most cases not it's not totally changing our interpretation of the story which is what a traditional twist would do is it would give information that changes how you would interpret the events of the story in most cases that's not

going to happen in the fourth quarter something's going to happen that's just a surprise and that surprise could come from anywhere as long as it feels rooted in in the story so you set it up in some way so let's start by looking at a more traditional twist so in the sixth sense malcolm realizes that he's been dead the entire time that's the surprise in the fourth quarter and that follows your more traditional concept of a twist where it sort of subverts uh our expectations and changes the meaning of the entire story or or it

changes our interpretation of the events of the story but normally the point of this surprise is not so much to subvert everything that's come before or to change our interpretation it's just to make things a little bit trickier the protagonist has prepared for this confrontation they've approached the antagonist or the antagonistic force they've done the confrontation we just want things to not go quite so easy and tidy we don't want things to go exactly according to plan so this is just a way to make things a little bit trickier and so that surprise can come

from anywhere and it doesn't have to be a twist necessarily so for example in shrek when shrek confesses his love to fiona fiona believes and the audience believes that fiona will be in her human form forever she'll be beautiful as a human but that's not what happens when she confesses her love she actually stays permanently in her ogre form so that's a big surprise for the reader it's a big surpr for the viewer rather and it's a big surprise for for fiona because it's not what she expected either but this highlights an important element of

the surprise which is that it has to be a surprise to the viewer or to the reader it can't only be a surprise to the characters so this is a really good demonstration shrek is a really good demonstration because they could have had the surprise be that shrek realizes that fiona turns into an ogre at night because that's not something that shrek knew but because that was something that we as the viewer already knew shrek finding that out wouldn't have counted as a surprise because it wouldn't be a surprise to us as the viewers so

they then have to take that an extra step further and add another element of surprise which is that she stays in her ogre form it wouldn't have been enough just for shrek to find out because it wouldn't have been a surprise uh to the viewer as well so um sometimes the surprise is that the entire premise of the confrontation is not correct so for example in the woman in black arthur um he reunites the corpse son of the of the woman in black of the ghost so her son passed away he finds the body and

reunites the ghost with the body of of um her son and he leaves that confrontation believing that he succeeded that that was what he was supposed to do but the surprise is that uh the woman in black the ghost she's not at peace at all and she shows up to lure arthur's son off of a trained platform to his death so the surprise is actually that he was completely wrong um in thinking that he succeeded and he just didn't succeed at all the surprise will be an unexpected solution and um a good example of this

sort of unexpected solution is in toy story so um woody and buzz they get stranded the rc car that they're driving on trying to chase after the moving van it runs out of batteries so they're stranded they don't have a way to get to andy and they sort of think this is this is it this is the end you know there's not really any way to succeed now um but they end up lighting the rocket and buzz uh like deploys his wings and sort of flies them to the moving van so we didn't think that

he'd be able to fly and though he still isn't flying he does use his wings to solve the problem which is uh that sort of surprise element if you're having a hard time understanding why uh why that qualifies as a surprise or why any moment qualifies as the surprise or if you're trying to figure out what surprise would make sense for your specific story look for something that resolves a misunderstanding or a failure that occurred around the midpoint because almost always this surprise is going to reference something that happened around the midpoint for example in

toy story around the midpoint was when buzz attempted to fly he sees a tv commercial realizes he's a toy he attempts to fly he falls and he breaks and then here at the surprise he is able to fly fly them to safety so it it references back to that event um in shrek fiona at the midpoint is disappointed to see that she was rescued by an ogre because she feels like a princess and an ogre they don't go together and then uh here in the surprise we see that fiona is actually an over herself now

permanently so we see that reference back to that midpoint failure or mistake or misunderstanding in the sixth sense it is at the midpoint that cole tells malcolm you know i see dead people they don't know that they're dead malcolm doesn't know that he's dead he realizes as a surprise that he's been dead the whole time in the woman in black arthur actually reads a letter at the midpoint in which the woman in black ghost says you know i'll never forget what happened to my son you know i'm never going to get over this and the

surprise is that she in fact doesn't ever get over it and so when arthur attend attempted to make um to give her peace with her son with the corpse of her son it failed so the surprise is that it failed but it references back to this letter uh where that information was already given so you can use that as a sort of trick if you're struggling to figure out what the surprise is in a book or a film or if you're struggling with your own story you're trying to figure out what would make a good

surprise you can also use this in reverse if you know what the surprise is going to be you can use it to add depth to the midpoint and reference it then and sort of build backwards in that way so after the surprise next comes the sacrifice so the sacrifice is the moment where we really see how the character has grown so the sacrifice will be required for them to succeed but it may or may not be a literal sacrifice a good example of a more literal sacrifice is in the sixth sense so malcolm realizes sort

of that he's dead but he also realizes that his presence is sort of holding his wife back from moving forward so he has to let go of his wife and move on to the afterlife another good example of that is in harry potter and the sorcerer's stone and here we see another really common element of the sacrifice which is temptation so often the antagonists will sort of try to tempt the protagonist to not make the sacrifice so they'll sort of tempt them with something that they really want and they'll have to sacrifice that thing so

for example in harry potter voldemort tells harry if he joins him they can bring back his parents he'll be able to be reunited with his parents which we know is something that harry really wants and then harry has to make that choice to sacrifice uh his parents uh reuniting with his parents for the greater good so he he refuses that because he knows that voldemort coming to power would be a very bad thing so you often have this temptation element sometimes intentionals like the antagonist purposefully trying and sometimes that temptation is just because it's something

that the protagonist really wants even if there's not someone there purposefully trying to tempt them with it and then you do typically see that the reason that the sacrifice is made is because it's for the greater good so they're able to let go of something that they want to benefit other people their friends their family society as a whole there's some reason that letting this go is going to be beneficial for others so it's it's often a very selfless sacrifice this should tie back to all the work you've done throughout the story to create the

internal conflict so for example in the sixth sense it's it's referenced frequently that malcolm wants to make peace regarding um this previous client victor who he feels like he failed and because he was because he was able to make peace by helping coal to solve his problem with the ghosts that allowed him to be able to have that growth and sort of move on and harry potter harry sort of finds a home in hogwarts which helps him to be able to let go of that need to be with his family so it's definitely something that

you need to have built throughout the whole story so that it has the right impact if you simply just take something and say um something that was never a a relevant internal conflict throughout the the story but you just hold that thing hostage and say i won't give you this thing unless you sacrifice something it's not going to have the same impact if you haven't built it through the whole story so this should be built from the internal conflict that you have been working on throughout the story so it should be fairly obvious what the

sacrifice should be sometimes the sacrifice is not going to be literal really in any sense it's going to be the sacrifice of a perspective an opinion a belief they're going to be letting go of something that was previously important to them but internally it's just a thought that was really important or a feeling that was really important to believe something along those lines for example back to toy story again in that moment when buzz flies them to to the to the van and into andy's car um buzz well first woody says you're flying um very

happy triumphant and we see that as major growth for woody who's been very jealous and sort of stingy with andy's attention wants to be the best one doesn't you know doesn't want buzz to think he's like all that he wants to sort of bring buzz down a peg so his ability to just sort of triumphantly say like you're flying like with a very positive genuine attitude is letting go of that issue that he has with buzz and buzz in turn says i'm not flying i'm falling with style which is um referencing back to something that

uh woody said to buzz in a mean way but buzz is sort of accepting that as his identity so buzz is sort of grown here and we see that because buzz is saying i can't fly i know i'm not even now i'm not deluding myself i'm not i don't think that i'm really flying and that's major growth for buzz so in that moment we see major growth for both characters and it's a sacrifice of perspective or viewpoint um it's not it's not really a literal sacrifice of anything it is often just going to be something

a moment that demonstrates that the protagonist has definitely let go of their flaw their false belief or an unhealthy longing or an unhealthy desire in some way so the final section of the entire story is the aftermath the aftermath is a final moment that demonstrates where the protagonist is now sort of the effects of the story how it has impacted their life what's changed where they're at now that all the events of the story are over a really clean and simple example of that is in juno so at the end of june we see her

um playing guitar with bleeker her love interest and there are a couple she kisses them on the cheek and it's just a very simple things are back to normal plus now she has a boyfriend with bleaker things are happy we also see vanessa with her baby which is what she wanted so we see her happy having the thing that she wants so it's just a quick little moment in most cases we will see that though the protagonist didn't get the thing that they originally wanted they're better and happier for it so for example in toy

story at the end we see woody dancing with his friends at christmas away from the walkie-talkie so in the beginning opening scene of the film we saw him really hanging on the walkie-talkie wanting to know what new toys were coming in for andy's birthday now it's christmas new toys are coming in but because he's grown we see him dancing having fun not obsessing about the walkie-talkie so though he didn't get the thing he wanted to be the best toy the favorite toy what he got is something more meaningful deeper and he's ultimately better for it

and shrek we see a sort of similar type ending where he's sort of partying with his friends in the swamp the swamp was something he previously defended as his own personal sanctuary he didn't want anyone to be there but we see that he's grown here and he's happier even though he doesn't have the thing he originally wanted which was privacy he has friends and he sort of feels more accepted and so he is happier sometimes the aftermath is worse so sometimes the character will be worse off than before for example in oculus tim the brother

character was taken away by the police screaming that you know it was the mirror it wasn't him that killed his sister it was the mirror and we could kind of assume that he's going to be institutionalized he was institutionalized at the beginning of the film because of an interaction with the mirror in his childhood we can assume here again he's kind of going to go back to the institution things didn't really get better for him this didn't this wasn't a positive ending for him this is not uncommon in horror it's sort of part of horror

often is the sort of insurmountable odds you you don't typically get the idea that they're likely to succeed it's very common and horror for everybody to fail um so it's not it doesn't stand out as particularly odd in most stories even most horror though you will typically have more of a bittersweet ending rather than a full loss or a full negative aftermath for example in the sixth sense malcolm tells his wife that she was never second but he he does still leave her to cross over into the afterlife so you feel like he's grown he

made peace with his wife that's a nice moment he still has to leave which is sad so there's a bittersweet element to that and that's a little bit more common we also see that in the woman in black um arthur jumps off the train platform to save his son ends up that uh he it ends up that they both are killed and uh he and his son are reunited with his wife who passed away during childbirth so even though they're all dead they're also all reunited which is sort of a positive thing so you do

typically see more of a bittersweet uh ending rather than a full negative ending but probably the most likely ending is the is the full positive or the mostly full positive because there will be something protagonists wanted that they didn't get but typically we will see that as a good thing as if um you know they're better off for it it is a good idea to foreshadow if the protagonist is going to have a less than positive aftermath typically this is going to be foreshadowed throughout the story for example we see that in the sixth sense

we see coal tell malcolm that the dead people don't know they're dead we actually see malcolm die in the opening scene we don't realize but it does look like he he more or less died in the opening scene we just assumed that he got better but we didn't actually see it so it's not that we were misled in a way that felt unfair so it is important to make sure if the aftermath is going to be negative that there's some implication we see that in oculus as well we get the impression there's no way anyone's

really going to win against this mirror when um kaylee the sister character tells tim the brother character about the mirror she tells him all these people who died and basically says you know no one's ever beat this mirror before uh so we don't really have high expectations that that either of them are going to be able to defeat the mirror and um and the woman in black again at the midpoint we we saw arthur read a letter where the woman said she's never going to forgive what happened to her son so we don't really expect

that he's going to necessarily solve it maybe we kind of hope that he will but it's not totally out of the blue in these cases when the aftermath is less than positive sometimes the full aftermath is more implied so the protagonist might simply emerge from a bad situation and sort of look at the sunrise and that might just be the end it might just be that feeling of escape from a negative situation it's common for the aftermath to be sort of uh skimmed over skipped over etc in a situation where it would be structurally weird

to play it out so for example it would take many steps say you're stranded somewhere a good example of this would be 127 hours so in that aaron escapes from having his arm crushed under the boulder he he leaves it would be very uh lengthy and odd with the pacing if we then play that out and it's even he gets airlifted he goes to the hospital he recovers at the hospital you know he reunites with his family he becomes famous for his story we see instead just a sort of quick montage and film you can

do that in novel writing we don't have the same benefits of the of the quick montage so most likely in that type of case you would not necessarily but often you you might just skip over that that sequence and sort of just imply how it's going to play out because it would be structurally very odd to not do so in most cases the aftermath is going to be short but occasionally you will need a longer aftermath for example in harry potter and the sorcerer's stone there are some extra loose ends and things that need to

be tied up so after the confrontation there is a longer aftermath period so harry talks to dumbledore they sort of tie up some loose ends we also see the house cup awarded which it's important because the house cup was referenced throughout the story so we couldn't just skip over that we sort of felt like you know we needed to see how that played out so it's sort of important to include um and then we see harry board the train which is more of your classic aftermath moment where we see how he has grown so hermione

says um you know it feels strange to be going home and harry says i'm not going home not really which shows that he doesn't really view the dursleys as his home anymore he views hogwarts as his home so that's sort of how he's grown connecting to him letting go of the longing to reunite with his parents so sometimes you will need a few extra scenes but make sure that you genuinely need them you don't want to linger unnecessarily long this could have some negative consequences it could seem excessively sugary sweet so if you play everything

out and you're sort of going through you know their life ended up so great everything went exactly you know they got married and had babies and it was this beautiful you know ending you can draw it out too long and it can be a little bit too sweet a little cloying you can also close the door too firmly on the character so sometimes uh readers or viewers they sort of like to imagine the future of that character sort of imagine other things they get up to and if you play things out too far and you

really close the door on their whole life sometimes you can kind of take away that experience of you know imagining what they get up to after the course of the story so that might be another reason not to extend the aftermath excessively long so those are the steps of the fourth quarter so you have the preparation the approach the confrontation the surprise the sacrifice and the aftermath but before we wrap up the fourth quarter there's another important element that i want to go over and that is the importance of creating meaningful obstacles and meaningful solutions

to those obstacles so depending on your particular story the bulk of your obstacles might be in the preparation phase the approach phase or the confrontation phase maybe evenly across all of them but no matter where those obstacles uh occur it's important that they feel meaningful a very common problem in amateur writing is that these fourth quarter obstacles will feel like a random sequence of events that don't really have anything to do with anything with random solutions that couldn't have been predicted in advance and it just doesn't feel well integrated into the rest of the story

a great fourth quarter is going to use obstacles and solutions that pull together loose threads mysteries um characters that were previously met um skills that were previously acquired it's going to build on the rest of the story so the whole uh story up to this point should be supporting this fourth quarter we shouldn't be getting totally random events and random solutions now when i say that i'm not trying to say that there can't be unexpected obstacles or unexpected solutions but rather that the the element of the solution and the obstacle should in some way have

been built on things that already existed in the story for example in harry potter in the sorcerer's stone harry didn't know what obstacles were going to be in the dungeon we didn't know what obstacles were going to be in the dungeon but we knew that there were going to be obstacles in the dungeon so it's not a surprise that was already mentioned and the solutions were acquired earlier in in this story so harry didn't know that he was going to have to write a broom to catch the specific key to open the door for example

but he already knew how to fly we saw him learn how to fight we saw him be very good at flying so when flying is the solution it's not as if he picks up a broom for the first time in the fourth quarter and he suddenly you know he's able to complete this task it's just easy for for um no reason in terms of we didn't see it built on anything uh previous in the story if you do that the reader will feel cheated they'll feel it'll feel just too easy it'll feel like a cop

out like just an excessively simple solution if you just picked up a broom and he could fly perfectly and he could catch this key it had not been built from what already occurred in the story the protagonists might not even be aware that they have acquired a skill so for example in toy story when buzz and woody are stranded with the rc car they have the rocket woody lights the rocket by using buzz's helmet as a magnifying glass so he lights the the rocket with the sun which references back to when sid used a magnifying

glass to burn woody's forehead this was not something woody actively tried to learn it was just some information that he acquired over the course of the story so these can reference back to things that weren't purposeful lessons or things or skills that were intentionally acquired and toy story is a great example of referencing back to previous events and information given throughout the story because there are many many many payoffs in the fourth quarter so for example um woody uses this sid's scary toys to scare sid the dog escapes um through the door and that helps

them to escape from the house so they follow the dog or rather they use the dog as a diversion and then leave out of sid's house later the dog also chases them um when they're on the rc car they use the rc car which was a character introduced earlier in the story um they used the rocket that said strap to buzz's back to um send them into space we have the reference back to of course buzz's wings and being able to to fly ish with them so there's a ton of payoff there's tons and tons

of references back to things that already occurred you could also have the protagonists use solutions that they previously wouldn't use due to their flaw so for example perhaps the protagonist was afraid of heights so previously they never would have been able to cross a bridge but they're able to because they overcame their fear they're able to cross that bridge now because they've grown and they're able to overcome this fear so that's another thing you can reference back to just so that these obstacles feel rooted in something and the solutions feel rooted in something totally random

events do not play out that well you might also have characters who were previously helped come back in the story to help the protagonist for example um donkey was sort of nice to the dragon when they were saving fiona and that dragon character comes back in because the dragon loves donkey and helps them with the and actually eats farquaad in the end so helps them defeat the antagonist so that's a payoff for something that already occurred it's if the dragon had just shown up at even farquaad and we hadn't based that on the fact that

the dragon uh loved donkey it would feel very odd and very random so try to make sure to integrate uh the the fourth quarter into the rest of the novel it should be very referential to two things already occurring even if we don't know flying keys exist before we see them in the dungeon we know flying exists and we know the obstacles will exist we we aren't completely blindsided by these just completely random events and of course the the solution will always be something that the protagonist already knows how to do they will not acquire

a new skill a new skill in the fourth quarter they will not acquire information required to succeed in the fourth quarter that will all be things that they acquired and learned earlier in the novel so that is it that is story structure in a nutshell it's really an endless topic we could talk about it forever and ever and of course there's exceptions there's ways to sort of fudge it a little bit so it sort of gets it hits the gist of plot points but not exactly in the way necessarily that i've outlined i have been

as broad as i can with this series while also being as specific as i think will be helpful um but there's a lot more that we could talk about so i will make more videos in the future but for now i think i'm going to move on to some other topics for a little while if you do have some topics suggestions or ideas or things you're really itching to know about let me know in the comments if you want to help support the channel i do have a patreon i have a story structure beat sheet

with sort of the breakdown of everything we've talked about a little bit perhaps better organized even than in these videos and as well as a worksheet that you can use to plot your novel or edit your novel um both of those are available at the five dollar and up tier if you want to help support the channel i will be back with a new video i am working on several several different ones right now so i'm not sure which will get out first but i will be back hopefully within a few weeks and in the

meantime happy writing guys you