: A climax where the goal is instantly achieved - Is it satisfying? I wasn't entirely sure how to phrase the title, so if a better way to put it occurs to anyone, please feel free to edit

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Without knowing te specifics of the plot and the character development I have to say I'd find that climax personally disappointing.

The whole concept of character development is for them to get wherever they're going by themselves. The fact that the main character is being told what to do, in effect, negates the whole journey.

Note that I don't disagree with death being the trigger but with the dying character stating the action. I'd much rather have the character die in the way you've imagined and the protagonist decision of standing up being a result of his own internal dialog. In that way, death of a friend triggers the last step to happen as opposed to telling the protagonist what it should do.

"For a short moment he seemed to possess the strength of old times and then the illusion broke and he was gone. And finally he understood. Finally, when it was to late, when nothing could bring him back he saw it all clear...

For me, that kind of realisation is much more powerful than actually telling the character what to do.

Note from my point of view the final battle is NOT the climax and whether you chose to describe it in depth or not is secondary. The climax is Steve deciding to actually take a stand and fight and, specifically, how he takes that final step.

In my view the battle is not important. What happens after, though, is. You've made the point of evolving the character to "take a stand" (climax), you then have described the internal thoughts and processes that produce that change. For me, from a reader perspective, what I want is an epilogue. What is his life after? What path is he going to take after that? Even if the story doesn't continue it feeds the reader need for closure.

Just my thoughts (Note English is not my mother tongue so the text above is just an example I hope illustrates what I mean).

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For me, it all comes down to emotional reality, which can have very little to do with the externals of the scene. When I watch a big Hollywood blockbuster where the lone hero takes on an enormous CGI army with just his trusty sword, it leaves me completely cold, because nothing makes that big army feel emotionally real to me.

On the other hand, to use one of my favorite examples, the key moment in Nabakov's Lolita is when the otherwise unrepentant narrator experiences a brief moment of clarity and unselfish remorse. It doesn't matter that it's entirely internal, or that his awareness of what he has done wrong is so dim and incomplete, the emotional reality of this character as utterly self-indulgent has been so well established that this little breakthrough comes across as a major event. Similarly, in Remains of the Day, the story of a missed love affair between an emotionally repressed butler and a housekeeper, the tiniest expressions of affection feel earthshaking, because of the emotional realism of their context.

In your story, it doesn't matter what the actual obstacles are to Steve, they must feel real and decisive to him, and possess emotional reality for the reader. His overcoming of those barriers must involve some price with real emotional weight.

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It depends largely on how you've lead up to it over the course of the novel, not just in the final scene. The reader won't be disappointed about not knowing the outcome of the battle if Steve's decision is sufficiently important to the reader, and sufficiently unsure up to that moment. We have to be seriously worried that he won't do it, and someone (maybe him, maybe the dead person, maybe someone else) has to work hard and sacrifice to get him to the point where he does.

What sounds most disappointing in what you've described is that "right before the climax, someone tells him (with their dying breath) to take a stand. Steve then does so." Is that all it took? Why didn't they tell him this before? Doesn't he have to wrestle with himself at all? What finally propels him? (Maybe Steve's great love for this person compelled him to do whatever he could to defend their now-dead body from enemy mutilation. Whatever--you probably have something in mind that's not in your question.) The point is that the reader will be disappointed if the goal is achieved in one conversation. It's not enough for Steve's conversion to be important to the reader--it also has to be hard-won.

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