Mastering Act Three: How to Craft a Final Showdown That Delivers

You’ve built your story beat by beat. Your characters are in place. The stakes are high. But now you’ve hit the final stretch—Act Three—and suddenly, it’s not clear how to land the plane.
 This is where even seasoned writers stumble.

In this episode, Zena tackles the storytelling tension of bringing everything together in a satisfying, powerful way—without falling into cliché or chaos. If you're unsure how to pace your climax, resolve subplots, or create that unforgettable moment of truth, this conversation will light the path.

Spoiler: The final act doesn’t need to be long—it just needs to be right.

✨ Plus: This episode is pulled from Zena’s private Office Hours, available to anyone who’s purchased one of her courses. Want direct access like this? You can! Learn more at The Storyteller’s Mission.

Seven Deadly Plot Points FREE TRAINING VIDEO

#amwriting #authorproblems #faithwriters #screenplayformat #writingtips #writersconnection #christianscreenwriter #StoryStructure #WritingTips #PlotDevelopment #ActThree #ScreenwritingLife 

Transcript

[00:00:00] and so then the question becomes when you're in act three and you get to part two and part three of Act three and we hit the climax, how do you bring it all together?

[00:00:10] Hello and welcome to the Storytellers Mission with Zena Del Lo, a podcast for artists and storytellers about changing the world for the better Through story.

[00:00:19] Usually I find that where most people get lost in their story is act two. Act two is where it's just not as clear what's supposed to be happening in the story, and you have more leeway, but therefore you also have more chances of getting lost. But then when you turn the corner into Act three, what has to happen is you have to bring it all together.

[00:00:40] Now everything has to culminate. Everything has to end up a place. That allows everything that's happened before to seem like it was relevant and worth it. 

[00:00:50] we gotta find ways to actually bring the story together in a way that ultimately satisfies the audience.

[00:00:58] Because really that's the key to satisfy them. And part of satisfaction is surprise, meaning they shouldn't be able to predict how it's going to end. And of course, part of the problem is that it also can't come so far out of left field that they're like, huh? Like it needs to make sense. It has to ring true.

[00:01:22] They have to believe that this thing would happen. So the surprise has to also make us feel like, oh, of course. Of course. And that's a very tricky thing to accomplish. 

[00:01:34] and so then the question becomes when you're in act three and you get to part two and part three of Act three and we hit the climax, how do you bring it all together?

[00:01:45] I think that's really what's being asked. In order to answer that question, I have to start with act three part one. So this is the moment. Right after the dark night of the soul or the point of no return, right? That's the act two turning point, and I like the term the point of no return because it doesn't have to necessarily be that all hope is lost.

[00:02:09] I think I say that in the course All hope is lost, but I don't think that that's actually accurate. Sometimes it might not be that all hope is lost, it's just that whatever has happened makes it impossible for the character to not now face whatever it is they ultimately have to face. I. So they're forced to now reengage in whatever the main goal was from the beginning.

[00:02:32] So that's when you know you're in act three. It's inevitable now. The showdown is coming. You feel it coming. It's impossible to delay any longer. It has to happen. So as we build towards that, so this is where the fever pitch starts happening, and what I mean by that is this is where things start speeding up.

[00:02:51] Things start happening very quickly now because we're moving to the climax. It's that it's a feeling of inevitability. It has to happen, and so we feel it. It's a quickened pace. The urgency is all there. The character is all in. There are no more distractions and no more delays. So that means one of the main things that has to happen then once we get in act three, is that you kind of need to set aside for the moment any subplots, anything that doesn't have to do with the main thing.

[00:03:27] I've seen it happen where people have disrupted the pace of their Act three because they stick in a scene about the, you know, the love story, which just totally then sucks all the momentum out, right? You wanna build on the momentum of the inevitability of the climax. So that love scene or the relationship building scene probably needed to happen already in act two.

[00:03:52] Now, I have said that this is also the moment where when you get in this, where if there's anything that they have to repent from, they go make it right, but you don't spend a lot of time on that. Like, let's say you're in Act three, part one, and your character at the end of Act two has realized what a stupid idiot they were the whole time because they thought that this person had betrayed him, but in reality, that person had been tortured for the information and was not actually a spy.

[00:04:26] So now your character realizes that they have treated that other character really unfairly. And they have to be repentant, right? We've talked about this. So now the character's repentant and they have to take immediate corrective action, so they go do that. But that's part of the momentum then. And ultimately it should actually, and this is where it gets tricky, if possible, if it can, it should work its way into part of the paying off of the resources, right?

[00:04:55] Now that this person knows that that other person, that other spy wasn't a spy for the bad guys, but actually had been tortured for the information, and now our character goes to make amends. He can also recruit them and call that resource into play. And now I need your help. And what's beautiful about it is when you get into act three, however, before we get there, did you know that there are seven crucial plot points that every story must hit in order to satisfy the audience?

[00:05:25] And if you miss even one of those crucial plot points, you risk losing your audience's attention forever. This is why I've created a free training video for you where I break down exactly what these seven deadly plot points are. These are the essential plot moments that you need to hit in order to deliver a powerful, compelling page turning story.

[00:05:49] So. Be sure to check out my free training video on the seven Deadly plot points. It's going to transform your writing. Just click on the link provided in the notes, or head over to the storytellers mission.com and you can start watching this free training video right away. You can leave room for mystery.

[00:06:07] And what I mean by that is have you ever noticed anybody here ever read like the Dresden files? And he had the books in the Dresden series. I really love him. They're really interesting in it. He does this really lovely thing where he'll talk about, like, it's about to happen. We know we're going into the climax.

[00:06:24] And he'll, you know, it's first person narration, so it'd be like, and there was just one more phone call I had to make, or there was just one more stop I had to make, you know? So I took a breath and I walked out the door. Then he jumps to something else and we're like, wait, what was that? But we move on so fast, we forget about that.

[00:06:42] So there's this degree of mystery, but actually then it totally plays into the climax. And we realized he set it up all along, but we forgot. So again, the point is. If you have a character who's like making amends or something, that should happen quickly so that you don't disrupt the momentum and somehow then it's the freeing up of his conscience or whatever, it's what allows him to continue to the climax.

[00:07:08] It doesn't break the momentum. You've gotta keep that momentum going, make it part of the momentum, and then. As we've talked about in the course, once you get into act three, part two, so this is the middle part of Act three, you start the climax. You think about it like storming a castle because you have the, all the minions, you have to deal with the moat, you know all that stuff first, like the lower challengers.

[00:07:38] Right that they have to overcome. Then they scale the castle walls, and now they get to fight the inner circle of the king. And then once they defeat those characters, then they finally come face to face with the king himself. So you know, three steps, if you will. And every climax is sort of that way.

[00:07:57] There's the general big things over here that have to be dealt with. And then it just narrows its way down. The middle section of Act three is structured that way so that they deal with the lowest stuff first and then the next tier, and then the next tier, which is the ultimate tier, which helps you to know how to structure it.

[00:08:16] I once read, she used to be my agent. I. She had written a novel and had me read it, and in it she had two villains, which is fine, but one of 'em was clearly the big bad, and then there was also like a group of thugs or something. What she did is she had the character take on the big bad villain, and then the character took on the group of thugs, and that was the climax.

[00:08:42] And I told her, you've got it in the wrong order. She has to take on the thugs first and you save the one-on-one stuff. That's the moment of truth, and that's true. Even if it's a romance, it's like, okay, maybe the character is being sold off to work in the minds. S and has to, you know, deal with the magistrate and get rid of him and escape the minds.

[00:09:09] But ultimately the climax is always gonna be relational and one-on-one, whatever relationship has the most stakes. So that's the trajectory or the order that you're going to address them if you can. And then really act three, part three, the very end is you have that one-on-one confrontation. Whatever it is, it's the moment of truth where they either win or they lose.

[00:09:33] And then after that you get out pretty fast. So it's just about making sure you're addressing things in the right order. To get to the moment of truth question, Doug, I saw your hand. Yeah. So in Act three, part three, you have the moment of truth before you get out, but all that's in the same act. You don't take care of that in act, I mean, part two.

[00:09:54] No. The moment of truth is the showdown. It's the climax. Climax. Okay. Why it's the moment of truth, it's because it's the moment where they either win or they lose. They either get the thing that they were always after to begin with or they don't. And so it's the moment of truth because now we get to see what they're actually made of.

[00:10:13] Now we get to see if they have what it takes. Okay. So, yeah, I'm struggling stretching this out. So I wanted to write 50,000 words, 12 chapters of basically breaking these down per act and per part. And then that makes some, some like 4,000 words per chapter, which gives me a really long. Act three, part three?

[00:10:34] Yeah. Usually Act three isn't as long and it should move faster. So I wouldn't feel like it has to be equal time. It can be a moment for crying out loud. It can be a moment. So again, it depends on the, it isn't scientific. I wouldn't try to make sure that every beat gets the same amount of time addressed to it.

[00:10:54] That helps. I wouldn't stretch it out, I would cut it. so I've said, okay, generally speaking, you know, you've got act one and that's, you know, a quarter of your story. Then you've got act two, which is half of your story, and then you've got Act three, which is a quarter of your story.

[00:11:12] But in actuality. Okay. There are many times when Act three is like 15% of your story because it's happening so fast and it's all truncated. Especially in a screenplay, it's the shortest in a lot of ways. And so you cut whatever you don't need and you don't wanna stretch it out. You wanna get to it, get to it, get to it.

[00:11:34] 'cause it should feel like it's speeding up. No, that makes a lot of sense because that's more natural for me to do that. Do it that way. Good. Good. Thank you for listening to the Storyteller's mission with Zena Del Lo. May you go forth inspired to change the world for the better. Your story.