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Craft Chat What do you think of cliffhanger chapters?

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Brian Clegg

Brian Clegg

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I've just published my latest Stephen Capel murder mystery and I’ve a query. Do you agree with my thoughts in this blog post on tagging on a bonus ‘cliffhanger’ chapter?

A_Twisted_Harmony_Cover_for_Kindle.jpg
 
It might work, encouraging those readers who've followed Stephen Capel from the start and have got 'into' him. Bait.
I'm a faithless sort of reader myself, I like books rather than writers, but plenty of readers follow writers and want to know about the next book.
 
I've read several novels by Harlan Coben, and Jeffery Deaver, that do this. I know what you mean about it being misleading of the length of a book, and it certainly indicates a production line mentality to writing. This can feel like the book is a disposable consumer item...like a toilet roll! :p

Reading the beginning of their next thriller is a salutary lesson in how crucial the first five pages need to be, so it's worth doing for tips.

The drawback, for me anyway, is that I sometimes think that 'I've read this book' should I look at the title whose cliffhanger I sampled some years before.

I try to make the end of each chapter a cliffhanger in my own crime novels. Yet another 'hook' to keep the reader interested. It needn't be overly-dramatic, just something to tease or give the reader an insight into what's going on in my protagonist's head.
 
I do it and have seen numerous examples of it. Caveat: I write and mostly read mysteries where this seems to be popular, I don't know about other genres, but you write mysteries too. So why not?

I guess it could be an issue if you drastically rewrite that first chapter when you finish the book, but couldn't you go back and revise the previous teaser?
 
Patricia D said:
I guess it could be an issue if you drastically rewrite that first chapter when you finish the book, but couldn't you go back and revise the previous teaser?
Click to expand...

That's an interesting point - mind you, I've noticed with TV that they do this - the 'next time' trailers aren't necessarily exactly what's in the next episode. As it happens, in this case the first chapter if the next book feels so solid that I don't think it'll be any more than minor tweaking.
 
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