When you’re trying to write a short story with an important and engaging climax, you want to make sure your exposition is placed at the beginning and that it introduces the characters and the setting. The wants and needs of your characters will move the plot forward by creating drive and urgency, so the more pronounced your character’s wants and needs are the better. Even though the setting provides a home for your characters, it can be dangerous, beautiful, safe or any other attribute you believe will enthrall your reader. A great climax relies heavily on the quality of your characters and their setting, so the exposition serves as the foundation for your climax, and lays the framework for how intense the climax eventually can become.
Before the climax occurs, introduce rising action that establishes a central conflict that becomes amplified. A fundamental want or need of one of your characters can plague them or force them to confront another character, and it is within this conflict that the tension, drive and urgency of the plot will build, rise and broaden. This contributes to how abrasive your climax can be. The higher the rising action climbs, the more engaged your reader potentially will be by your climax.
Once your characters and setting have been created, and the central conflict has been introduced, developed and heightened, you can hit your reader with the climax. The climax is the boiling point of your central conflict and is the moment your reader has been anticipating. For example, your climax can be the epic karate fight between your hero and your villain. It is at this point when your reader knows only one of the two characters will make it out alive. An engaging and powerful climax should be surprising and intense.
Even though the climax has subsided, the denouement still is an important element of the story as a whole. It also is an essential piece that adds to the power of the climax. The denouement is the aftermath and shows your reader the ramifications of the central conflict -- the climax -- and the way your essential characters responded to their wants, needs and issues. It also displays what is left before the story ends.