2021-3 Storytelling - The Punchline - Discussion Thread

A critical element of storytelling is the punchline, otherwise known as the climax. This is where you deliver on your promises. All the tension that's been built up over the course of your story comes crashing home. I use the term punchline because joke telling is a microcosm of storytelling. To be funny, you need to create interest, show a conflict, give us a punchline, and deliver a satisfying resolution, usually in only a few sentences. This discussion thread is meant to cover what makes a satisfying climax.

I will posit that the punchline needs three things"

1. A promise to deliver on
2. Something both known, but perhaps not obvious
3. Closure

When you start telling a story, you make a promise to your reader that they will get to see something happen. Maybe it's that your protagonist finds the love of their life. It could be an orgasm. It could be a horrible crash, but it's something. In order for a climax to make sense, the reader needs to feel the pressure building toward some sort of release - your climax - the punchline.

For a punchline to feel good, it needs to use things that you have fed your reader. They need to have all the elements of the climax or they will feel cheated. This means that all the elements that play into the climax have to either be a) obvious or b) given to them at some point prior to reading it. This is the problem with a Deus ex Machina, God in the Machine, which is to say the problem was solved by something we didn't know about. You can say that someone drowns in water because that's the normal course of things, but you cannot say that someone did not drown when you have not established that they can stay submerged and breathe water. This is the opposite side of the coin in Chekov's Gun. He states that you cannot show a gun in act one if someone doesn't get shot by act three. I am stating that you can't shoot someone in act three if you haven't introduced a gun.

As for closure, the punchline needs to actually solve the problem made in the promise. It doesn't have to be a happy closure, but it does have to deal with the tension. For what we are writing, this is normally a sexual release, but it could be just as effective if you love interest rejects you and leaves you with an unsated lust. We just need to know that it will or will not happen. Any climax that does not satisfactorily deal with the tension created is a false climax.

What do you think?

I can support that, and by the way, anyone interested should definitely look up Brandon Sanderson's lecture series on YouTube. It was the best college writing course I've taken, and I've paid good money for those. Watch it, you'll probably enjoy it.

I've been thinking on this for this week's practice. It seems the trick is to set up a need or want that the reader believes and wants to see through, then to give them an answer. It doesn't matter if it works out for the character, but rather that the reader gets to feel it with them.