Cliffhangers

Visualising your Book

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Paul Whybrow

Full Member
Jun 20, 2015
Cornwall, UK
I'm coming towards the end of writing my fifth Cornish Detective novel, casting around for ways to pull the rug out from the feet of my characters and my readers.

With any genre of writing, there has to be a form of clickbait, to use a computer term, to entice a reader to read on.

This morning, I came across an intriguing article about how to generate excitement with cliffhangers, which focuses on horror writer R.L. Stine's technique of torturing the reader, by closing a chapter at a crucial moment. Stine plainly knows what he's talking about with sales of 400 million copies of hundreds of titles.

Why over 60% of your readers will never finish your story— and 3 ways to fix it

Writing guru David Gaughran is quoted in the article, with startling statistics about how few readers will make it all of the way through to the end of your book:

Kobo released some very interesting figures some time ago, showing that 40% was actually a good readthrough rate and 50% was generally considered to be exceptional.” 

(From: Strangers To Superfans: A Marketing Guide to the Reader Journey)

Gaughran blames the ever-present distractions of reading an eBook for people's impatience and lack of perseverance. Somehow, I'm not exactly outraged by their failure to complete reading a story, at least from a commercial point of view, for surely the crucial thing is that the author made a sale by doing something right to attract a reader's attention in the first place. Also, without statistics about traditional printed book readthrough rates, the 40% figure exists in cyber isolation. Would improving on the aimed-for target of 60% help an author's name to be more memorable...or excite readers so much, that their word of mouth raving catapulted the book into the bestseller lists?

Incidentally, Gaughran's website is a useful resource for writers, and signing up for his newsletter gets you a free download of his book Amazon Decoded, should you be thinking of going the self-publishing route.

With my own reading of fiction, I get through about 225 novels a year, mostly borrowed from my local library. Halfway though 2018, I've given up on about ten, mainly because of not being able to gel with the author's style and also because the story was unrelentingly tedious. I've never read a novel in eBook format.

I previously posted about whether reading as a writer spoils the enjoyment. Certainly, I can't stop myself from noting the author's technique. About half of the novels I read are in my chosen writing genre of crime, and having read thousands and written five of them, it's unusual for me to be surprised by whodunnit!

My own Cornish Detective stories are more howcatchems, in which the reader knows who killed the victim or committed the robbery, long before my protagonist detective does, hopefully making them want to see how he tracks them down. I still lay red herrings, and in one story completely hoodwinked the reader by misdirection, only revealing there was a second murderer operating in the closing chapters.

Creating cliffhangers, at the end of a chapter or section break, can look heavy-handed and become predictable. I read one formulaic thriller, in which each and every chapter ended with a question mark...it soon got to the point where I didn't care what the answer to the question was.

One hundred years ago, there was a cinema series called The Perils of Pauline, featuring Pearl White as the title character. Each episode ended on an exciting incident, with the heroine facing what looked like an insurmountable threat. In those pre-television days, millions of folk attended movie theatres. It cost pennies to get in, and with a dozen shows daily so many bums on seats gave large profits. Audiences were hooked, and sometimes Pauline would literally be hanging off a cliff.

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The tradition of cliffhanger endings in literature goes back to One Thousand And One Nights, the tales compiled in the Islamic Golden Age, from the 8th-14th centuries, and which were first translated into English at the beginning of the 18th-century. The trick is, to get the readers or listeners to care what happens to the main character next. They'll suspend their disbelief, if the air of tension crackles enough to make it look like the hero is doomed.

Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy both published their novels in serial form, which forced them to write in a climax at the end of each episode. They were known as sensation novels. Indeed, Thomas Hardy is credited with inventing the term 'cliffhanger', as Henry Knight, the hero of A Pair of Blue Eyes, is left dangling off a Cornish cliff at the end of one episode.

(He knew what he was talking about, as from living here, I reckon twenty people a year die falling off Cornish cliffs—usually holidaymakers.)

With my own Cornish Detective novels, I sometimes use cliffhangers to close a chapter or section break. Last night, I wrote a scene where one of the detectives, who's lesbian, combative and has a black belt in karate, finally caught a break on a case, identifying the perpetrators. She was practically emitting steam as she went to arrest the twin brothers who've been stealing car park ticket machines, accompanied by a man mountain colleague. That made for a suitable section break. The next section of the chapter described a car chase and fight with the brothers, before they were arrested.

Instead of overt cliffhangers, I often close a chapter with my protagonist or antagonist thinking exactly the wrong thing about what will happen next, something the reader knows from being privy to what other characters have been up to. This may well create "Don't do that, you idiot" tension, encouraging them to read on.

I'm going to end my WIP The Dead Need Nobody on a colossal cliffhanger, with my hero copper at death's door after massive blood loss from being repeatedly stabbed. Any readers I attract will have to read the next book to see if he survives.

Do you use cliffhangers in your writing?

Do you mind sharing some of your good ones?

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Do you use cliffhangers in your writing?
I sure do. In the last novel, I rounded off the story, tied all lose ends etc so that it could stand as it is, finished, done and dusted, then restarted it (so to speak) with a cliffhanger by having an enemy who was believed to be gone, catch up with the protagonists. I ended the novel on that particular note which would enable me to write a sequel should I ever be so lucky to publish the first / find a readership / find the time to write the next sequel.

I generally like endings which tether on cliffs.

In my current WIP, I try to end chapters with cliffhangers, if poss. I feel cliffhangers might make people read on, but I don't really know. This novel though won't end on a cliff. I'm currently planning on an open ending where we don't know it the protagonist lives or dies. Not sure this is a good idea. So while I'm here, does anyone have any thoughts on that particular matter? Open endings like this?
 
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I'm against end-of-book cliffhangers but I like the occasional end-of-chapter ones. But that's just me - one of my authors wrote a cliffhanger ending and I disagreed with that approach. When the book was accepted by Dell, she received a three book deal - because of the end-of-book cliffhanger.

Now that's just one author - don't go changing things to get multi-book deals - lol.

Bob
 
I certainly mean to end each chapter with something hanging in the balance that entices the reader to turn that page. "The Perils of Pauline" is in my head when I do it. I write mysteries, so books and stories end with a solution of some kind, but in the books, I've started leaving a bit of unfinished personal business.

I read a lot and finish most books but a smaller percent as time goes by. Still, I'm stunned to learn readers finish fewer than half the books they start.
 
I sure do. In the last novel, I rounded off the story, tied all lose ends etc so that it could stand as it is, finished, done and dusted, then restarted it (so to speak) with a cliffhanger by having an enemy who was believed to be gone, catch up with the protagonists. I ended the novel on that particular note which would enable me to write a sequel should I ever be so lucky to publish the first / find a readership / find the time to write the next sequel.

I generally like endings which tether on cliffs.

In my current WIP, I try to end chapters with cliffhangers, if poss. I feel cliffhangers might make people read on, but I don't really know. This novel though won't end on a cliff. I'm currently planning on an open ending where we don't know it the protagonist lives or dies. Not sure this is a good idea. So while I'm here, does anyone have any thoughts on that particular matter? Open endings like this?

Even if the ending of a story is open, there needs to be an emotional investment by the reader in the eventual outcome. If too much is left up in the air, why should they care what happens next? As writers, we lay hooks to get the reader into the story in the first place, placing enticing lures throughout the narrative to lead them by the nose. Telling any tale implies that they'll be some form of resolution by the end.

All the same, an author can challenge their readers while honouring their intelligence, if the ending is unexpected. That happened with Jason Webster's Fatal Sunset, which I mentioned in an old thread. He totally shocks the reader, by having his hero detective shot by a colleague, and he's seemingly laying dead in the street on the final page. I really didn't see it coming! I must have read 50 crime novels since that one, but the author's name has lodged in my mind more than if there'd been a conventional ending, and I'm looking forward to the next episode in the series.

Inspired by Jason Webster's boldness, I'm going to write a shock ending to my WIP, which I'll leave open-ended with my protagonist hooked up to blood transfusion in intensive care, after being stabbed several times with a sword. I think that his gory fate will be all the more shocking, as in the previous chapter he looked bound for happiness after falling in love and lust, following eight years of widowhood.

I'm so cruel! :rolleyes:
 
Even if the ending of a story is open, there needs to be an emotional investment by the reader in the eventual outcome. If too much is left up in the air, why should they care what happens next? As writers, we lay hooks to get the reader into the story in the first place, placing enticing lures throughout the narrative to lead them by the nose. Telling any tale implies that they'll be some form of resolution by the end.
Hmm. You've given me some stuff to think about. I shall ponder that one this afternoon. In my current WIP, I do have a resolution to the story which hopefully provides the reader with a satisfying ending (the protagonist repents / understands the wrongs of his ways /sees the light). He has changed, and because of it he will be ok with dying, but the reader won't see it, hence not know. I guess until I finished the thing, I shall cross my fingers that an open ending like this will work.

Interesting thread, Paul.
 
I have cliffhangers at the end of each chapter. But the ending of the story ties all loose ends including a plot twist that hopefully makes the reader go back and reread to work out how they may have spotted some subtle clues through both dialogue and crumbs scattered throughout some of the scenes.
 
Kobo released some very interesting figures some time ago, showing that 40% was actually a good readthrough rate and 50% was generally considered to be exceptional.”

(From: Strangers To Superfans: A Marketing Guide to the Reader Journey)

Reminds me of an apt quote I read this morning on Writer's Digest:

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Even though this quote is likely over 30 years old, I think it is even more relevant today!

I'm currently planning on an open ending where we don't know it the protagonist lives or dies. Not sure this is a good idea. So while I'm here, does anyone have any thoughts on that particular matter? Open endings like this?

Open endings can work well I think. Unfortunately, the best examples I can think of off the top of my heads are the movies Inception and Pan's Labyrinth. I remember humming and ahhing over those endings for hours, even days, afterward! It can leave quite a striking impression when done right, and I remember being very eager to talk to others about their interpretation of the ending later.
 
I don't mind an open ending, like the one in, say, A Face Like Glass, where the protagonist escapes her city underground to a new and presumably exciting life aboveground. But cliffhangers at the end of books, like Peter Brett uses in his Painted Man series (One of the books ends, literally, with the main protagonist and antagonist locked in combat and plunging off a cliff--a cliffplunger) irritate me, particularly if the next book in the series still hasn't been published. I think the idea of ending a book with the indication that there are still adventures to come is great, but I like to see a complete story arc.
 
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