Welcome back, writers! To both you and to me! If you’ve missed it, that’s because I’ve been emmeshed in a move for the last few weeks, and today is the first post I’ve been able to make on a normal schedule again.

It feels good. It also feels good to be getting Axtara – Magic and Mischief so much closer to publication. There’s a post on that, though. So I don’t need to reiterate things here. You can just check that post out and get all the info you need.

Which means we can today dive right off the cliff, seconds away from the explosion, from three hundred feet up, into the ocean right as the chapter ends. Because today, we’re talking about cliffhangers!

Yeah, this should be a fun topic. Which is why we have covered it before. But … as long-running as this series has been, that really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Besides, sometimes when covering a topic once more, we do so in a very different manner than the first time. And if this one doesn’t land for you, well .. there’s always that first one.

Either way, wind up and hit that jump. Why? Because that cute little kitten just activated the bomb timer, and we’ve only got seconds to run. Will we make it?

Hit the jump and find out.

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Oh good! You made it! I’m glad, that explosion was pretty big. But it was a natural setup for what we’re talking about today. Well, I suppose an even more natural discussion could have come from the narrative instead leaving us hanging from a cliff, hoping to survive, but that felt really on the nose.

Anyway, as said above, we’re talking about cliffhangers today. Which is an element of storytelling that goes so far back its roots are lost in time. It was probably one of the first framing elements of some of the first stories ever told, actually, because we as storyteller gravitate towards the cliffhanger naturally. They’re one of the earliest pacing elements many of us can recall hearing or reading as a children.

Okay, but what is a cliffhanger. I know, I know, most of us are probably asking “Who doesn’t know?” But even if someone has seen cliffhangers and recognized the element of them for what they are, not everyone is involved in writing to the point where they know terms and terminology for a lot of this stuff. So let’s define a cliffhanger.

It’s pretty straightforward: A cliffhanger is a narrative beat given at a break in a tale—temporary or long—framed in a way to leave the audience in suspense, wondering what will happen next.

With that said, it’s fairly easy to see where it gets its name. IE, the final moment of a chapter or a serial story, perhaps a radio drama or even a monthly story published in a magazine—or today, on the web—which ends with the protagonist dangling from a cliff, the antagonist getting away, and the audience wondering “How will they get out of this!”

Right, so that’s what it is. So what about usage? Is there a time and place to use the cliffhanger? Well, yes! And there are times and places to not use one as well.

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But let’s talk about the former first. Let’s talk about why we use it, and then where we can make use of cliffhangers in our stories.

We’ve spoken a lot about pacing on this site, because it’s an extremely vital part of writing (storytelling in general, to be more specific). Well, a cliffhanger is a tool to control and extend pacing.

Let’s look again at what a cliffhanger is. In the classic sense. Imagine we’re writing a story, and story with a protagonist and an antagonist. Now, we’ve just had the protagonist engage the antagonist, but it’s not the big, final battle. After all, we’re only halfway through the story, and this will be the lead-in to the lull before the big climax.

But we don’t want our reader to acknowledge that in a way that makes this engagement feel any less exciting. And we want them to keep reading. So when the protagonist and antagonist meet, we have it end on a literal cliffhanger. The protagonist has been knocked out a window by the antagonist, and is dangling, the antagonist taunting him. Their fingers start to slip, the fall below is fatal, and … the chapter ends!

What happens to the protagonist? The audience won’t know until they turn the page, committing themselves at least to the opening of the next chapter (but then, probably, continuing to read).

Another way of looking at a cliffhanger then, is a tool to control inertia with our pacing.

See, suppose we’re writing a serial story. One of the challenges of serial stories is making sure that once the audience has put the story down for a brief period, they come back later for the next part of the story.

A cliffhanger then can be a tool to take a climactic moment and stretch it during that wait for later. We leave the reader “hanging” narratively as we do the characters, with no resolution and peril of some sort before them. The narrative isn’t “closed,” and so the reader who is invested can’t just dismiss it. There was no ending, no resolution. So they return to see what occurs next.

Now, I mentioned above that this can control inertia with our pacing. What I mean by that is that a cliffhanger is a good way for our reader to “bookmark” the pace of our story themselves, so that we don’t have to bring them back into it.

Let us look for a moment, at a serial story that comes out weekly, but has had a recent resolution. Maybe a long-time love interest finally blossomed, or perhaps the characters solved some important mystery. As noted above, this is a resolution. The serial takes a break at a calm, resolved moment.

The reader feels resolved as a result. So when the next chapter of the story starts, pacing inertia will have to begin at that lower point.

Cliffhangers, however, are a way to end with the tension being cranked up, something fast-paced happening, or the like, and have the reader keep that state in their head due to the tension until they can see the resolution.

Now a lot of you are probably noting that I’m dancing around the big usage here of cliffhangers, which is to keep people hooked on a chapter or serial story so that they don’t put the book down or stop tuning in each week. And yes, that’s probably the most well-known usage of the cliffhanger: A tool to maintain inertia (and therefore interest) across chapters or a serial story. Worried that listeners might stop listening to your weekly radio drama, or put your book down during a quiet part? Throw in a cliffhanger to encourage them to stick around!

Yes, this is the classic usage. And we’ll talk about it in a moment. But there’s one other thing I want to talk about usage of a cliffhanger for first.

See, a cliffhanger can stretch out inertia and pacing across a chapter, but it can also be a high-octane start of the next “chapter’s” adrenaline rush. In other words, a cliffhanger doesn’t have to happen at or near the climax of an action scene, or even partway through it (though these are generally smaller in terms of peril just so the cliffhanger doesn’t overwhelm the action still coming). A cliffhanger can start an action sequence or moment of peril too, to shock an audience and then leave them wondering “Wait, what happens next?”

This is still a pacing tool. Let me give you an example from Shadow of an Empire. In one of the bigger twists in the book, there’s a chapter where four characters that have been traveling together for some time have almost caught up to their quarry. The chase has been grueling, but there’s a slow sense of “Now what?” as the characters near their quarry. One of the four asks what they plan to do now. The protagonist answers.

“Oh, the other character says, and then turns and shoots the other protagonist in the chest.

End chapter.

That is a cliffhanger. All the reader needs to do to find out what was going to happen is turn the page, and then they are rewarded with that opening shot blasting forth into a high-stakes action sequence, followed by a lot of revelations.

You’ll often see this kind of cliffhanger in books, shows, or films that are trying for a sequel (often overlapping with a stinger), but it happens during books too. It’s a way to capitalize on a sudden, unexpected acceleration by putting the audience in control of whether or not they continue. And if they choose not to, you’re leaving them with burning questions they want answered.

Now, I’m sure we can continue to talk about cliffhangers in various spaces for some time, but I’d rather move from identifying them and into the expected second portion of these articles. Let’s talk about how you use them. Both well and poorly. Because yes, they can be poorly used.

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Okay, let’s talk about good use first. How should you use a cliffhanger? Where is it appropriate to use a cliffhanger?

Well, here’s a good rule to follow. Above we spoke about how a cliffhanger is a tool of inertia. If you leave a character hanging, you leave a reader hanging. While the character suffers physical cost (assuming a direct cliffhanger), when a reader is left on a cliffhanger, it can be mental cost.

If a character is given too many cliffhangers in too short a succession, their body won’t be able to take it anymore, and eventually they’ll fall (unless they’re just perfect). But in a like manner, a reader given too many cliffhangers will suffer mental fatigue. But they don’t fall. They put the story down.

Yes, even if they really want to know what happens. They might flip to the end to find out. But they stop reading because they are tired of being left hanging.

In other words, don’t abuse your inertia tools. Cliffhanger overuse is a real problem, and I’ve read stories where every chapter ends with a cliffhanger, no matter how nonsensical or rug-pulling. It gets tiring. Just as nothing but endless action can become tiring. We have to use our cliffhangers carefully.

Most of all, we need to use cliffhangers in a way that doesn’t degrade the reader’s trust. Overuse degrades a reader’s trust because not only is it exhausting, but when a cliffhanger is dangled so often, many of them end up being “false” cliffhangers, designed clearly just to fool the reader. Or, in the event that they don’t, they tend to make the characters themselves feel less than competent at what they do, since no matter what they always end up peril.

We don’t want either of those things. We want our peril and our tension to feel real, and we want our audience to trust that our characters are skilled enough to not fall into every pit placed before them.

Let me give you an example of a cliffhanger that broke trust in a book. In the book Seveneves, there’s a chapter end after a lot of chapters with very little happening where the protagonist finds the hatch slammed shut behind her, an act of ultimate betrayal!

Most readers, hitting that, think “Finally, something happening! A little bit of tension!” They would flip to the next chapter to find … Nothing.

No betrayal. No action. No see, it was all an accident caused by a pressure differential. Which the character new about, but in the moment overlooked until it was explained to both them and the reader.

The book then goes back to the same lackluster tension of before.

I was so frustrated I almost put the book down. It was a fake cliffhanger. Just so that something could happen before the book went back to a whole lot of not much happening. I felt cheated. And my trust of everything in the book after that dropped like a rock.

Yeah, do not make fake cliffhangers unless you really know what you’re doing. Especially to shore up the lack of any activity and tension in your story. A fake cliffhanger will only make things worse, not better. Do a real cliffhanger, or better yet reexamine your pacing.

Okay, so we’ve given some back examples and ways of how to not use a cliffhanger. But what about ways to use one?

Well again, we come back to that concept of pacing and keeping inertia. Constant cliffhangers mess with inertia and pacing, so think about your story. When would it be appropriate to end a chapter with a cliffhanger? To carry inertia of a combat scene over? To kick off a dangerous new high-energy sequence?

Don’t just drop cliffhangers in because you feel like it. Think of a cliffhanger like a literal cliff of pacing in your story. They signify either a sudden jump in the tension, or a “bridge” to span the tension that was already there for the reader to cross (either to the next chapter, or a few days later).

Where can you use such a tool? Does your narrative have a place for it? Near a twist? A reveal? Or is it going to truly come out of nowhere?

One of the reasons the “cheap, constant” cliffhangers don’t work as well is because of what we’ve noted above about making them fit into your story. The best cliffhangers are ones that the book has been laying the path toward even if the reader didn’t realize it. Like … a waterfall at the end of a river. Without the river and the path it followed, there is no waterfall. So it is with our books.

If you want cliffhangers, in other words, plan for them. Yes, they might seem sudden to our readers, but for us the seeds should have been carefully sown some time ago to maximum effect. Even if that was just at the start of the chapter when someone notes “Wow, that dilapidated structure looks unstable” so that the reader knows it’s dangerous in advance when the character is forced back into it.

A cliffhanger then is not a band-aid to pacing problems, but the result of us planning to escalate or carry over our pacing from one portion of a story to another. Like a storyteller around a campfire who knows where that night’s tale is going to end, leaving the audience wanting to hear how it will conclude the next day, we anticipate where in our story a cliffhanger will work best, and then we take steps to make sure that cliffhanger happens. Not just to exist, but to amplify and elevate our tale.

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So, let’s recap: A cliffhanger is a narrative beat at a break in our tale—short or long—framed in such a way as to put the audience in suspense.

This can be used a number of ways, from amping up our pacing and tension, to “bridging” that tension to the next time a reader enters our story. However, we need to make sure we’re delivering on that tension we’ve crafted, and that we’re not overusing it either. A story that constantly escalates and bridges, or worse delivers “fake” cliffhangers that end up being nothing at all, wears the reader down. When we set out to craft our story, we need to be aware that the tool of a cliffhanger is in our toolbox, but we cannot make it our only tool. Like many others, we need to apply it carefully, at specific moments in our story that are suited for the effect they will have on pacing.

Think about your pacing. Think about where a cliffhanger will serve the story best. At a low point? During your climax? Early on, establishing a mystery that will carry the reader halfway through the book?

When will you dangle your reader over the cliff? You certainly should. Just make sure you’re doing so at the right time.

Good luck. Now get writing.

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