Climax

The climax of a narrative work "is its point of highest tension and drama, or it is the time when the action starts during which the solution is given." The word comes from the Greek klîmax, "staircase, ladder," and the article treats the climax as the story's turning point. Structure sources disagree about its address: one reading makes it the second of Act II's two parts, the peak the rising action climbs toward; another places it at the head of Act III, where it leads into the falling action and resolution. Aristotle is cited for the requirement that a climax be both "inevitable and unexpected." The named failure mode is the anticlimax, "a disappointing event after events that were full of excitement," which dissipates the tension the story has stored.

In three-act structure the climax is the payoff the first two acts borrow against: a novel's final movement and a serial's arc finale both live or die by whether the peak was built and then landed.