You can - but there's some important factors to consider here. For a book where there may be a significant delay until publication of the next installment, this is not acceptable to readers. You can get away with a "will they survive" cliffhanger for something like a TV series where you only have a week to wait until the next installment. These examples are very different to the pulp-fiction cliffhanger of "tune in next time to find out whether they survive". Lando and Chewbacca are leaving on a mission to rescue Han. All the major characters are at least still alive and safe. The evacuation of Hoth was a success, and the Rebels have regrouped. There has been no resolution to events in the film.Īnd yet the situation is stable. Luke has been comprehensively beaten by Darth Vader, and has also discovered that what he's been told by his Jedi mentors about the father he's been trying to emulate was a lie. The major obstacles presented in the book have been resolved, and whilst the characters are not safe, their situation is at least stable.Īlso consider The Empire Strikes Back. The book does not end on a cliffhanger in the sense of "they are immediately about to die", but in the sense of "the story continues". They have also had a showdown with Blaine to earn the right to this contest. To get there, the characters have fought their way through the city, overcoming a number of obstacles. (And until King decided to continue writing the series - with, for some fans, questionable results - this was the ending.) The characters are facing trial by riddle with Blaine the Mono, who may kill them at any time. It depends on the cliffhanger, has to be the answer.īook 3 of Stephen King's Dark Tower series finishes on a cliffhanger. There's no ending I love more than of the movie Children of Men, and that one is a complete cliffhanger. I don't even mind a cliffhanger as a final ending (no sequel), if it makes good artistic sense (which is to say, if ambiguity is playing an actual role, and isn't just an easy out). making decisions for commercial reasons, not artistic ones). I don't think any reader loves a cliffhanger, but I really only hate them, as a reader, when it feels like the author is cheating us by a) deliberately withholding the real ending, b) disguising the fact that they just don't have a satisfying ending or c) cynically trying to sell more books (i.e. That shows the reader that you're not just stringing them along indefinitely. Bring some story arcs to a close, answer some unanswered questions. My advice would be to to provide some closure in your book, either before the cliffhanger or as a part of it. Roger Zelazny ended every single book in his long running, popular Amber series on a cliffhanger, including the last one. For this reason, I don't recommend cliffhangers as endings.Īs much as readers claim to hate this, it can definitely drive future sales. You want your reader to walk away satisfied and glad they read your book, not angry and unfulfilled. Don't leave the characters in a spot where they're about to die and the reader angrily closes the book and says, "I read that whole book and fell in love with this guy and now he's just going to die at the end? What the hell kind of ending is that?" and then have an epilogue scene where the villain plots his revenge or is about to capture the characters, to set up the sequel. Have the fight scene, have the heroes come out victorious and develop the full ending. Maybe your climax is the big fight scene with the villain. ![]() The main thing is to have the cliffhanger come after the climax and falling action, not disrupt or replace the climax and leave it unfulfilled. However, that is a big challenge to do right, especially for first-time authors. You can still have a cliffhanger while also making it feel like an ending. That being said, I think there are some ways to do this right. Spending a whole book building up to the climax and confrontation with the villain, only to yank it away from your reader without any satisfaction, would definitely anger your reader, who expected a conclusion to all the things they've been building up their anticipation for. Leaving things unfinished after a large period of buildup and hype is a huge mental itch in people's brains and almost always a letdown for your reader, and this is especially the case with books, where the whole story is expected to be contained within the book. First of all, not giving a satisfying ending to a story is almost always very, very irritating to readers.
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