The Curse of the Cliffhanger

The cliffhanger is a hallmark literary device. When employed correctly, it spurs the reader on to the next section of book. When used incorrectly, it buffers the reader into a corner of frustration. I have read books that swing both ways. Let's talk about avoiding your books leaving your readers' hands at high velocities by proper application of the cliffhanger.

Writing is an art, and as such it uses themes. Any theme in any artform can be overdone. Let's take the example of the band After the Burial. They had a fantastic debut album with sweeping guitars and complex polyrythms. More recently, perhaps in an attempt to be more brutal, they have somewhat dumbed down their song structure. In this cover video, the parodist shows that although the original musicians performed the number on 8-stringed instruments, he can pull off the entire song on one string.

You may think of cliffhangers as an exciting element to utilize in your book, but make you think about it more than once. After a while of chapter after chapter being strung up on some inhospitable cliff, the reader is tired and perturbed. Good job, writer. 

Where It's Particularly Painful

Now, the effect isn't that bad if you have the events immediately after the break, or if you have a short sequence in between. Much of the time you can get away with entire interloping chapters. But don't string your readers up over three or four chapters on a cliffhanger, particularly if all the intervening chapters end in cliffhangers of their own. If you want an example of this, read the Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flammel series. It's well constructed, but it becomes splintered at the end and—you guessed it—he makes every chapter a cliffhanger.

It goes something like this: Kendric is flying in a plane. Suddenly there's a big boom. An engine has exploded. End chapter. Alfie is walking down the street. A car pulls up, window rolls down, and a gun is pointed at him. End chapter. Pamela is awoken by the sound of scratching at her door. The door bursts open. End chapter.

The plane is heading to the ground. It hits. End chapter. Alfie tries to soothe his attackers. They roll down the back window. His sister is bound and gagged. End chapter. Pamela rolls off then under her bed, grabs her pistol, then listens to footsteps walk up to the bed. A masked face peaks down and says, "Hello, lovie." End chapter.

Kendric survived and is in the forest. A snarl. Wild beasts attack. End chapter. Alfie gets instructions to place a package where the people want it by a certain time. They drive away. He opens it up. It's a live bomb. End chapter. Pamela draws upon years of training and shoots. The bullet bounces off the mask. Something grabs her leg from behind and starts dragging her. End chapter.

Now imagine that all of those were fully flushed out chapters and you had to go through 2000-6000 more words before you could find out what happens next, every single time. It's torture. Ways to avoid agitation against you, the author, is to reduce time between stop and go, reduce cliffhanger usage, or use a light cliffhanger. 

Obviously don't let this scare you away from using the cliffhanger, just become more conscientious of the frequency, intensity, and execution. It's a beautiful device, but it reacts like makeup when you cake too much on. And most importantly...actually, I'll leave that for my next post :)