Bossfights

To tell the truth, for my stories, I sort of wrote them without thinking consciously about the structure. Probably they would be better if I did, but I seem to have a grasp of the idea anyway. Frequently it's the climax of the story that comes to me first, and I sort of work backwards from there and figure out how I got there. Other times, I come up with the story elements first and then work out what sort of climax naturally flows from the setup.

The nature of the climax depends heavily on the nature of the story. For example, my story "Objet d'Art" [link] would very definitely *not* benefit from, say, a pitched space battle, because it's a story about two guys discussing ideas. In this case, the climax is the formation of a new idea. On the other hand, "The Runaway Bride" [link] includes a 'boss battle' at the end, which works for it as it's a fantasy story modeled mostly after a role-playing game.

However, note that the boss battle in the latter story is a turning point both for the action of the story (the external story) and the emotional state of the characters (the internal story). Without the support of the characters' emotional states, the battle would be flat and uninteresting. You can throw in all the fireworks you want, but without information on how this plays into the characters' emotional states, it's all "sound and fury, signifying nothing", as Shakespeare put it. There's an article on dA here [link] that puts the difference between external and internal story better than I can.

And yes, there are plenty of examples of climaxes I haven't been happy with. But nobody's going to read those if I have a say in it.