What is the real story structure concerning the climax?

[Jtolj]

It goes that there are two camps. There is the: "Half the story is building action, then you climax, then the next is the falling action". Then there is the: "Most of the story builds up to the climax, followed by a short falling action and then the end".


I for one believe that the climax is at the end most of the time, and that the other view is ridiculous except in perhaps a 1/7 of stories. If I look at most works of storytelling, it is clear that the story is building up to a point near the end, in which everything gets resolved. What is your belief?

[Shannanigan]

I was originally taught with the symmetrical idea, with the climax basically in the middle. That kind of works for children's stories, but as I got into high school it changed to the version with less falling action...and that worked for the stories I was reading then...

Now I'm in college, and one of my professors pointed out that there sometimes is no falling action at all, and the climax is the end of the story in some modern writing, and again...it applies to some of the short stories we read, lol...

so I think each story has its own length of rising action, climax, and falling...like each story has its own fingerprint :)