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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/18121
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Why should Steve make a stand? His decision must have some kind of effect for him. If it doesn't, he's not living his own life, and his decision will leave him and the reader feel empty.

Translate your structure to everyday life. John grows up the son of a carpenter. But he is interested in writing and wants to become a writer. There's lots of conflict and back and forth, and finally John's father tells him to man up and decide to become a carpenter. So John makes that decision and becomes a carpenter. Huh? Not very satsifying. Or only satisfying, if John finds that he was mistaken about his aspirations as a writer and you show how his life as a carpenter is a happy life. So there is something _after_ the climax, that makes the climax satisfying.

Of imagine that finally John's best friend tells him to man up and take a stand against his father and become a writer. Is that the end of the tale? No. You'll continue how he falls out with his family, how he suffers from that, but finds happiness as a writer, and how finally, maybe with the success of his first publication, his father comes back to him and tells him that he is proud of him and loves him and was only trying to force a safe job on him, because he believed that John would not be able to make a living as a writer, but is now glad that John did not listen to him, because in his youth he wanted to be a writer as well and did not dare etc. Again the story does not end with the climax. In fact, the climax is far from the end (temporally; the aftermath might be summarized in a short epilogue).

Returning to your tale, what is it that Steve is conflicted about? It is certainly not the taking a stand itself, but what he should take a stand about and who against. And there is a reason why he found this so difficult, and an effect that his decision will have. An effect, that Steve was afraid of or desiring. This – what comes after Steve taking a stand – is Steve's goal. (It can be a double goal: a negative goal, something that Steve wants to avoid, e.g. death, and a positive goal, something that Steve wants, e.g. glory, both of which are inseparable. I don't know your story nor characters, so can only guess.)

If your story ends with Steve taking a stand, then you don't tell it to its end, and that is certainly not satisfactory.

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