Why cliffhangers are rubbish (and what to do instead)

The term cliffhanger derives from a famous scene in a Thomas Hardy novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes.

Now, I should probably say upfront that I think the novel is bad, the scene in question is worse, and that Hardy himself is monstrously overrated as a writer. If those thoughts mark me down as a Literary Infidel, then by all means print off this email, so you can tear it to shreds with your teeth, and shriek around your local shopping centre denouncing me and mine to everyone you meet. [Statutory warning: actually doing this may cause you some difficulty with your local mental health services. You do it at your own risk.]

Here’s what happens. (Because Hardy is extremely verbose, I’ve edited sharply to stop your eyes boiling in your head.) The hero is Mr Knight, and he’s at the tippy-top edge of a cliff, along with the lovely (but really quite useless) Elfride.

By an ill fate, the force downwards of her bound, added to [Knight’s] own weight, had been too much for the block of quartz upon which his feet depended …

It moved. Knight seized a tuft of sea-pink with each hand.

The quartz rock which had been his salvation was worse than useless now. It rolled over, out of sight …

One of the tufts by which he held came out at the root, and Knight began to follow the quartz. It was a terrible moment. Elfride uttered a low wild wail of agony, bowed her head, and covered her face with her hands.

Between the turf-covered slope and the gigantic perpendicular rock intervened a weather-worn series of jagged edges, forming a face yet steeper than the former slope. As he slowly slid inch by inch upon these, Knight made a last desperate dash at the lowest tuft of vegetation–the last outlying knot of starved herbage ere the rock appeared in all its bareness. It arrested his further descent. Knight was now literally suspended by his arms.

You’d think that Elfride’s job was now rather obvious: help her buddy from an obvious death. But she’s useless and Knight isn’t much better. Here’s Hardy in action again:

A minute–perhaps more time–was passed in mute thought by both. On a sudden the blank and helpless agony left her face. She vanished over the bank from his sight.

Quite why any pair of idiots would be so clownish as to pass a minute or more doing nothing and formulating no plan is left unclear. Perhaps the best thing would have been for the two of them to jump off the cliff together and save the world from some quite questionable DNA.

However, that’s not what happens.

The next chapter opens with over two thousand words (Two! Thousand! Words!) of reflection of trilobites and much else. Then it turns out that Elfride has taken her greatly-skirted underthings off and is proposing to knot it into a rope. There follows the normal unhurried discussion of these things. (‘Now,’ said Knight …, ‘I can hold three minutes longer yet. And do you use the time in testing the strength of the knots, one by one.’)

Then the rescue is effected.

A glorious narrative technique propelling the reader further and faster through the book?

Or a horrible mess?

I don’t, in all honesty, think there’s any real defence of the writing. I think, even taking period into account, it’s just bad prose. (You’re welcome to disagree.) But on the cliffhanger technique, I think:

• It was a good ploy for Hardy,
• And a terrible ploy for you.

Hardy, remember, was writing this book in serial form. So he needed a powerful way to keep his readers – and buying – from month to month. The cliffhanger technique certainly delivers a reason to make that additional purchase.

You’re not writing that way. A reader has paid their money and can, in principle, put the book down any time they want. Now, assuming that you are half-decent at your job, no reader will want to stop reading when your character is hanging by his fingertips from a cliff. So they’ll read on until your character has either plunged to his death, or been rescued via a string of knotted underwear.

So your chapter breaks need to reflect the natural beats of your reader. They’re a way for you to say:

“Now look, old buddy, in a way I’d prefer you to read my book at a sitting, then race around telling all your friends to buy a copy for themselves. But I know life isn’t always like that. Maybe you’ve reached your train stop and need to get off – or it is past midnight and you need to get up early in the morning – or perhaps one of your more beloved children is on fire and calling for help.

Whatever the case may be, there are times when you want to put the book down and would like a gentle hint from me – the author – as to when a break would feel most natural. I call those hints ‘chapters’ and I have marked them typographically, so you really can’t miss them when they arise.”

A cliffhanger is the absolute opposite of a natural break and I almost can’t think of a good reason why you should ever have one.

That doesn’t mean you can’t do a little bit of foreshadowing – effectively a ‘tune in next time, because …’ sort of message. Those things might show up as little closing snippets – this sort of thing:

‘She tried to sleep, but the moon flew high in the ragged clouds, and an owl screeched nearby, and her dreams were full of fighting.’

‘He stood up. He knew what he had to do. Now he – somehow – had to find a way to do it.’

Those things are not cliffhangers. They don’t stop the novel in the middle of a narrative beat. They are just a way of closing the beat, while at the same time making a promise that what follows will be worth reading.

That’s it from me. If you have written a cliffhanger worse than Thomas Hardy’s please send it in to me direct, and I shall buy you a cake as big as your head. The downside is that I’ll publish it.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / Showing emotion

Again, there are two FF options this week. One for those taking the Plan Your Romance Novel video course, one not.

Plot Your Romance Novel video course task: Write a short romantic moment between two characters in two different ways:  One version with minimal spice. One version with a higher level of spice (don’t force yourself to write anything you feel uncomfortable with). Reflect on which approach feels most natural for your story (and for you) and share in the forum. Make sure to include trigger warnings where applicable. 

General task: Let’s do the same thing – pick a scene where two characters are becoming emotionally close. That could be a classic romantic scene. Or it could be a different sort of love manifesting – a mother greeting a long lost child, a son at his father’s deathbed.

Think about how you show emotion. What mixture do you make of: (a) straightforward emotional statements, (b) bodily sensations, (c) dialogue, (d) action, (e) more oblique suggestions of mood (e.g.: weather, atmosphere, surroundings.) And please make my day: let’s not just have a long list of body parts! When you’re ready, upload your stuff here.

Til soon. 

Harry