A story is often building towards one or more key moments. These moments are not necessarily the climax of the plot or character arc (and often are not) but are part of the promise inherent in the story's premise and opening.

It is often the (implicit) promise of these scenes which keeps a reader turning the page, and keeps the author writing. From a writing perspective, I am increasingly trying to think of what peak moments the story is promising to the reader, to keep the reader eagerly anticipating the next stage of the story - and if there aren't at least a few things the reader is looking forward to, then that's a sign you're doing something wrong.

But let's be specific. What are peak moments?

An example would be in a Peggy Sue time travel story, the reader is looking forward to the moment where the MC is revealed to be far more powerful than anyone else is aware, given that they have all their future skills and knowledge. This is often a progressive reveal where the character shows some limited skills and you have the other characters react, and then in stages the character's power is shown, before finally the character lets loose without limitation to reveal a whole new level of unanticipated power.

To illustrate the point, consider my story The One He Feared where Harry inherits Dumbledore's memories (not exactly a Peggy Sue, but similar). Harry progressively showed unexpected skills, and then when Voldemort attacked the Ministry, Harry's full power was revealed in his duel with Voldemort.

All good and well - but with that peak moment "expended", it became clear that the story had already fulfilled the main promise it made to the reader, even though the plot still had a long way to go. But that plot no longer would have had that feeling of looking forward to a peak moment. It was just going through the motions. And thus, the story was discontinued. It needed more promises.

Further examples of possible peak moments:

• Moment when a peer and rival accepts the MC as their equal
• Moment where an honourable enemy becomes an ally
• Power up - moment where the MC gains access to a new power, or increases the potency of an existing power.
  
• Betrayal: moment when a trusted character is revealed as a traitor
  
• Disaster: moment where a villain's plans all come together and things go very badly for the MC all at once.
• Discovery: moment the protagonist finds out a piece of long-withheld information which changes how they see themselves or the world or another character.
• Brilliance: main character does something unexpected and brilliant, changing the paradigm on the enemy.
• Team-up: moment where protagonist must team up with an antagonist in pursuit of a common goal.
• Bully's comeuppance: a bully character like Umbridge or Draco gets what is coming to them after a period of having the upper hand.
• Rags to riches: a character who has struggled financially finally becomes financially secure / wealthy
• Riches to rags: moment where an entitled and privileged character is placed out of their comfort zone and has to confront their privilege.
• Moral compromise: moment a morally upstanding character has to commit to an immoral act in pursuit of a goal.
• Sex: in a romance, after a period of mounting and unresolved sexual tension, when the characters finally have sex.

So - what other "peak moments" can you think of, and what types of story are they associated with?

 

One of the best bits of peggy sue is the reveal of knowledge. It's as satisfying as being more powerful I think. Oh no all your carefully concealed knowledge is revealed without any induction as to how. It dovetails nicely into 'all a part of the plan' where the protagonist was one step ahead the whole time.

Harry Potter in particular is great at the epic sacrifice. And then at the sacrifice somehow being nullified. "I did not come here to win," Lan whispered, smiling. "I came here to kill you."

There's the moment where a side character steps up. Neville killing Nagini.

The fall from grace where the protagonist loses the support of their own people.

The moment of forgiveness when all is well.

A call to action by inpiring others to a cause.

Being captured/imprisoned.

Prison Break

A triumphant return after presumed dead. Gandalf the White

The timely arrival. "Look to my coming at first light on the fifth day"

Epic speech. My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius,

 

My favorite moments in a story aren't necessarily the peaks; I actually like all the times leading up to the peaks. In a competence porn (a story where it's all about watching an expert at work like Jason Bourne) it's throughout, but usually it will have a hardest challenge for the main character to overcome. A mystery will have a summation at the end where the detective reveals everything, but I like watching the process that leads up to that. I like it when a plan comes together, but also the planning phase. I don't know if anyone else would agree, but I happen to like ambiguous endings and I think they could be peak moments as well, ending with a question rather than an answer.

 

I don't have a great direct answer, but I just read Prince of Slytherin and noticed it does a good job of this. The writing itself is bad but it keeps setting up new plot threads and mysteries that keep the reader engaged even as the story goes long.

To your original question, I'd be interested to see great original stories (ex. canon itself) and fics plotted on graphs in terms of these peak scenes - their rising and falling action (exposition, inciting incident, ... climax, denouement). Especially if the y-axis were the level of tension (aka how much it mattered to the story) associated with each motion. That is, the smaller rising and falling actions that make up the broader rising and falling action should be represented as smaller.

The obvious answer for peggy-sue fics is they need to be about more than the reveal or prior knowledge. It's comedy, but A Black Comedy did this well.

Another basic formula is setting up additional mysteries as you go. I mentioned Prince of Slytherin above; Renegade Cause did a good job of this.

You could also think of it in terms of concurrent subplots where each sustains interest with its own rising/falling action sequence(s) and the corresponding peak moment. I like this typed up version of JKR's plot planning table for OotP: https://writelikerowling.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/transcribed-rowling-outline.png

 

Getting mastery over a flawed/not fully developed power.

Is often used in Shonen or Superhero stories. Best example would probably be Ben 10 who got the Omnitrix a device that lets him transform into aliens, he starts out with 10 aliens that he can transform into for 10 minutes at a time before the Omnitrix needs to recharge and he often just transforms into the wrong alien than the one he chooses and he is stuck that way. But it is known that at its full power the omnitrix got over a million aliens to choose from, can allow you to stay an alien as long as you want, can let you mentally perfectly decide which alien you want to transform into and change when you already are an alien. And as the show goes on we see hints/examples of that like when Ben accidentally unlocks the feature, or when he meets future selves or when the creator of the Omnitrix temporarily gives him access to its full power, and as the series goes on he does increase his mastery over it, getting more aliens over time(by the last season he had like 70-80) being able to change midawy through and transforming a lot more reliably, but sadly we do never actually reach the peak moment, as in the last episode when Ben gets a new perfected Omnitrix he's told restrictions will still apply until he turns 18 next year. Ben 10 also has a different example with the Alien transformation called Alien X which is Omnipotent but Ben has to argue with 2 other personalities whenver he wants to get anything done as Alien X can only act if they all agree, and each use has Ben struggle with even convincing the personalities to let him return to human form. He does eventually convince them though to give him full control over to him when he was on trial for his life, and kept it from there.

 

I agree with all of the above, but I think they are perhaps focusing primarily on the individual characters versus perhaps what it is that the author is promising the reader.

I'll use Lord of the Rings for example. Tolkien essentially promises his readers new lore. The journey is great, but it is the lore that continues to fulfill that promise. This is one thing that Rowling I think did fairly well. She continued to unveil and promise her readers not just the story of Harry, but also the lore of the wizarding world.

All that to say I think this hits the nail on the head. A broken promise leads to a bad story.

Which, I think this is perhaps one reason there was so much hatred towards the Last Jedi among long time star wars fans. They felt, rightly or wrongly, they had been promised to see the heroes of their childhood in their prime and being awesome, many felt that Rian Johnson broke that promise.

 

One of my favourites: A reckoning - character is forced to face the consequences of their past actions, whether moral failings, betrayals, or unresolved guilt.

We're drawn to justice and comeuppance, as a standard. It's why Lee Child has sold over a 100 million books.