{"id":6567,"date":"2017-04-28T08:00:15","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T12:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6567"},"modified":"2017-05-01T07:09:51","modified_gmt":"2017-05-01T11:09:51","slug":"cliff-hangers-making-them-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6567","title":{"rendered":"Cliff-Hangers: Making Them Work"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_6568\" style=\"width: 319px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6568\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6568\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Harold-Lloyd-2.jpg?resize=309%2C371\" alt=\"Harold Lloyd, clock, cliff-hanger\" width=\"309\" height=\"371\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Harold-Lloyd-2.jpg?w=309&amp;ssl=1 309w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Harold-Lloyd-2.jpg?resize=125%2C150&amp;ssl=1 125w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Harold-Lloyd-2.jpg?resize=250%2C300&amp;ssl=1 250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 309px) 100vw, 309px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6568\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">photo: Insomnia Cured Here, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Mystery and thriller writers are often advised to end chapters with a cliff-hanger to propel the reader forward through the narrative, to create those page-turners, to make them read \u201cjust one more chapter.\u201d Writing cliff-hangers sounds like one of the easier bits of lore to follow, but it can be deceptively difficult to write good ones.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong>Simple Guidelines<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Don\u2019t repeat the same formula too often, like asking a question\u2014<em>Would the police arrive in time?<\/em>\u00a0 (I\u2019d advise almost <em>never<\/em> using a question, but that\u2019s me.)<\/li>\n<li>Remember that something that sounds compelling to you, embroiled as you are in the fates of your characters, can come across as ho-hum obvious to the reader. In a new thriller about the search for a serial killer, one chapter ends with the head police investigator saying, <em>\u201cWe have to find him.\u201d<\/em> Well, duh.<\/li>\n<li>Include a hint of what\u2019s to come. This can be done well or, in this case, badly:<em> \u201cAs she stood alone on the once tranquil country lane, she had the distinct feeling that this peace was about to be brutally shattered.\u201d<\/em> That\u2019s the author strolling into the scene and explaining. Reader responds, \u201cI hope so. This is a thriller!\u201d<\/li>\n<li>A good general rule to write on a post-it and stick it to your computer screen is this, then: never be cheesy. If you find you\u2019ve written a cliffhanger that\u2019s no more than a transparent attempt to ramp up the tension, better to delete it. I\u2019ve jettisoned plenty of them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #800000;\">Origins<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Although the movie <em>The Perks of Being a Wallflower<\/em> would have you think differently, Dickens did not invent the term cliff-hanger (though he certainly used the technique). That honor goes to Thomas Hardy, whose serialized novel <em>A Pair of Blue Eyes<\/em> left protagonist Henry Knight hanging off a cliff, from whence he reviewed the history of the world.<\/p>\n<p>Because Charles Dickens also serialized his novels, with people in England mobbing the newsstands and Americans clamoring for arriving ships to unload the publications containing the next chapters, I figure he knew a thing or two about writing an effective cliff-hanger, one that would kindle enough interest in readers to last a week or even longer. If you have any Dickens lying around, check him out or wait until my next post (There, a cliff-hanger with a hint of what\u2019s to come).<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong>Monday<\/strong><\/span>: <a href=\"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6570\">Examples of effective cliff-hangers, past and present.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mystery and thriller writers are often advised to end chapters with a cliff-hanger to propel the reader forward through the narrative, to create those page-turners, to make them read \u201cjust one more chapter.\u201d Writing cliff-hangers sounds like one of the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6567\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Cliff-Hangers: Making Them Work - when they're good they keep Reader turning pages","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[174,66,29],"tags":[13,990,28],"class_list":["post-6567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-suspense","category-writing","tag-charles-dickens","tag-cliff-hanger","tag-writers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1HV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6567"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6573,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6567\/revisions\/6573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}