I’m writing a tragedy about a man that has his epiphany moment after he’s made a decision to give up that he can’t come back from. I want it to feel like his story is abruptly cut short to leave my reader wishing he hadn’t given up and knowing his life/outlook was about to improve if he had just waited a little longer.
My question is this: will cutting the story right after the epiphany (which would solve my driving little world philosophical conflict) make my reader mad at my main character, or leave them unsatisfied with the work itself? Because I want my main character to be a terrible warning to the reader, but I don’t want to lose them by making the story fall flat.
Thanks!
Hey Katelyn. That’s a great question.
One of the advantages of learning typical story structure models is that once we master them, we can begin to break them on purpose in order to achieve a specific emotional response in the reader.
So could what you’re describing be done? Definitely. But it takes a lot of mastery to do it well. Even when done well, American audiences are hard to sell on it.
Typically, for a tragedy, I recommend using the three-act structure. What’s important is that in the climax the driving conflict is resolved (like you said), even if the protagonist is destroyed in the solution.
My recommendation would be to make what you see as your Epiphany your Climax, then rework the story to fill in the gap where the Epiphany was.
This is pretty common in both published flash fiction and short stories. The smaller your expected word count, the more flexibility you have with this specific choice.
However, if you’re submitting for a particular magazine or contest, you’d be best served to read what’s typically published in that venue to see how often the judges/editors seem to agree that you have that flexibility.
I want to update my answer, I misread your question. I missed that you had said that this was for a short story. For a short story, yes, absoutely, plain and simple, go for it.