Chapter Cliffhangers
Too Short for an Episode: Orient the Reader
We stopped going This Week in Critiques a while back, and I’m not bringing it back, but there are things from time to time that are important, but too short to do a full episode.
Recently I was working through two different manuscripts by two different authors and I was confused by both opening.
In the first, it opened with a line of dialogue by a character identified in the second line as “Pirate Dave.” - The story was about a family traveling the U.S. and living in their RV.
In the second the story opened with a man taking care of his horse, and tending his fire. The story was a commentary zombie apocalypse.
My suggestion to both writers was the same. Orient the reader in that opening paragraph. Readers are multidimensional time travelers, they need to be oriented when they arrive.
Pirate Dave should be moved down from the opening paragraph until it’s clear this is a contemporary story about a family, and Pirate Dave is just a nickname, not a real pirate.
The horse and campfire give hints of the 1800s, and the old west, insert something in the opening, like a flashlight, or cellphone, tennis shoes, that tells us it’s contemporary and this man is just camping and likes horses.
Source Material for Episode:
Lost: episodes 1-3
We chose lost because it is famous for its cliffhangers and power to keep fans coming back.
Dealing with TV, so we will point out cliffhanger breaks that won’t come up with streaming, because they would have been cliffhangers for commercials breaks.
A new way to support the show; Click on links for the source material on the article/podcast page of the website.
What is a Cliffhanger?
When a character is put in peril or a new narrative element is introduced that erases all audience expectations and predictions. For more details and descriptions see our episode on The End with Cliffhangers.
Why use them at the end of chapters?
To keep readers turning the page.
When Not to Use them
If you need some exposition, then you want the previous chapter to end in resolution. This is about memory slots, and the amount of focus/brain energy a person needs to consume new information. By providing resolution, you clear the memory slots. A free mind can easily consume some exposition without it feeling like work.
The different types, and how each works:
As far as the official types go, there is no official list, this is just how we tried to categorize them based on the examples and how they impacted the story.
Two basic types:
The character encounters a life-threatening situation
As James Scott Bell puts it, life must be at stake in every story: social life, work life, romantic life, family life, living life.
Mid-action stop: similar to this group is a the mid-action stop. It doesn’t necessarily mean that a character is in peril, but they are in the middle of a struggle.
By stopping the chapter in the middle of a fight you create tension and the urge to turn the page.
A simple application can be moving the last paragraph or two of a chapter to the next chapter.
The revelation can or does completely change the direction of the narrative, or our understanding of the characters.
It erases all our expectations and predictions, leaving us with the daunting question: what happens next?
Life-Threatening Situation
Example: Peril
Episode 1: Jack has just found himself on an island. His plane has crashed and people are injured and struggling everywhere. He finds a pregnant woman who is having contractions. He gives her some advice and then has someone watch her while he goes to help another person.
He sees the wing of the plane is breaking and about to fall on the pregnant woman he runs to help and...cliffhanger.
Episode 2: When a group hikes up into the mountains and something charges at them. It sounds like the smoke monster. Everyone runes except Sawyer.
Example: Mid-Action Cut
This is very similar to a peril cliffhanger but it has a few caveats. The character doesn’t need to be in peril, just mid-action.
In Lost, the pilot is killed by the smoke monster. Jack, Kate, and Charlie are running through the rain away from the monster...and cut.
The actual cliffhanger here is when Charlie falls and the monster is closing in on him. Jack goes back to save him and...commercial break. (But that is a peril cliffhanger, not mid-action)
Revelation:
Example: New Narrative Element
Episode 1: The first day has come to an end and the survivors of the plane crash are gathered around campfires. Jack is talking to take about finding the cockpit to see if the transmission gear is still working. At this point this is looking like a plane crash survival show, then a strange mechanical sound comes from deep on the island (the smoke monster). The sound gets closer, and trees are torn down. And...commercial break or as we are discussing...cliffhanger.
Even though it is still early on, our predictions about the story wiped clean. This is not just about a plane crash anymore. Suddenly we don’t’ know enough to guess what will come next, so we have to keep going to find out.
In episode 2: we see this again, when the polar bear shows up.
After Siedhe fixes the radio and group hike up into the mountains to try and get a better signal. They get a few bars, but again it doesn’t work, only this time it is because someone else is transmitting.
Example: Attempt Success/Fail
In this format the character attempt to do something and it either works or it doesn’t, but regardless the audience isn’t sure what comes next.
In Lost on day two Jack and Kate attempt to find the cockpit in hopes of finding the transceiver. They find both, but the transceiver doesn’t work. This is an attempt success (they found it) however; the next step is the plan is unclear. Before it was to use it to contact someone for help now its??? And that’s what makes it a cliffhanger.
This type of cliffhanger is a little trickier but as long as the audience doesn’t know what comes next because of the success/failure it works as a cliffhanger.
Example: Mystery/Question:
Here a longer mystery is introduced, a question the audience wants to be answered. It is so key and common that there is an entire genre dedicated to it.
And the end of episode end of Lost Jack, Kate and Charlie find the pilot. A bloody mess way up in the tops of the trees. Charlie points and asks, “How does something like that happen?”
This is not a sharp mystery, something that demands an immediate answer. It’s a long one, but a mystery all the same.
Example: Character Reveal
We learn something about a character that changes how see them and their role in the story...so that we have our expectation and predictions erased.
At the beginning of episode 2, the boy Walt is looking for his dog and finds a pair of handcuffs on the ground. We learn that someone had been wearing them on the flight and slipped out of them after the crash...and cliffhanger.
This is a weaker of their many cliffhangers, but it’s building. Sawyer is a difficult character and it is clear he has had many runs with the law. He has the gun the U.S. had, and the man’s badge. The assumption is that the handcuffs are Sawyers; however, in a much stronger character reveal we learn they are Kate’s. That is a good cliffhanger.
Plot Reveal:
This doesn’t just change the audience’s expectations and predictions, it changes the characters as well.
In episode 2: They identify the new transmission and translate it into English. It is a mayday call for help coming from the island, and it has been playing for sixteen years. The idea of someone coming to save it gone now. The story has changed for both the audience and the characters.
Dilemma/Choice
A character must make a key choice that will have a dramatic impact on the plot, or the character. And it can’t be one that the audience can predict.
Will Harry Potter perform a mercy killing on his best friend Ron? No. - Not a cliffhanger
Will Arya Stark perform a mercy killing. Probably. -Not a cliffhanger
In Episode 3: of Lost Kate must decide if she will perform a mercy killing on U.S. Marshall that arrested her and was bring her back to face trial in the United States. Will she do it? We don’t know... Cliffhanger...stayed tune for after the commercials to see what she decides.
Physical Cliffhangers:
These are the most common, and if they are the only ones they use they can become tiresome and predictable. The TV show 24 was famous for its cliffhangers, but by season 2, the dire hard fans were saying, “I saw that coming.”
Non-physical cliffhangers:
Above we mentioned Bell’s life threating list: social life, work-life, romantic life etc… each of these can be put into temporary instead of the physical life, thus creating a different type of cliffhanger and avoiding becoming predictable.
What Comes After the Cliffhanger
The cliffhanger is essentially a hook, but if you don’t have a sinker on the other side, you will lose that reader just as if you had no cliffhanger at all.
What the cliffhanger buys you is one more page, or sometimes one more paragraph beyond the chapter ending. Something just beyond where the reader planned to stop for the day. Once you get that you still have to work to suck them into the next chapter. If it’s just the continuation of a fight scene that’s pretty easy, but if you move forward in time, or change PoV it can be more challenging to get the reader to recommit, particularly since they know the cliffhanger won’t be answered in this new chapter.
Source Material for the Next Episode: Leviathan Wakes (Book 1 of the Expanse).
We will be talking about exposition, so it will be the text specifically that we are talking about, not the Amazon Prime Show, but I’ll give you a link for that as well.
