Have you ever been reading a story, not really completely drawn in but the chapter endings are cleverly cliffhanged that you can\u2019t seem to put it down? That is excellent planning, my friend. A rousing bit of conflict cropping up from nowhere to snag your attention and keep your eyes planted on the page. Ideally your story would hold readers throughout, and I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve all read something that is grabby from beginning to end. Today though, we are focusing on cliffhangers. The way I see it, there are four types:<\/p>\n
The Conflict<\/strong>: Ending on a note of danger or tension, the character(s) must face a dilemma that threatens them in some manner.<\/p>\n The Secret<\/strong>: Something springs up into the story that informs the readers, someone is keeping a secret!<\/p>\n The Suggestion<\/strong>: An in-between of the secret and the reveal, this type of ending leaves the reader with an implication of odd going\u2019s on.<\/p>\n The Reveal<\/strong>: Remember that thing you were wondering about a few pages earlier? Here it is- clear as day and what a shock!<\/p>\n In a perfect world, the end of every chapter you write will employ one of these cliffhangers. However, the overuse of them can sometimes feel convoluted so plan carefully, choose wisely and keep that reader hanging on!<\/p>\n With that said, I have to inform you that I\u2019ll be away on vacation for the next several days, so until I return, there won\u2019t be any new blog posts. I know, devastating isn\u2019t it? Never fear, there is plenty to read from in the blog archive. Enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Have you ever been reading a story, not really completely drawn in but the chapter endings are cleverly cliffhanged that you can\u2019t seem to put it down? That is excellent planning, my friend. A rousing bit of conflict cropping up from nowhere to snag your attention and keep your eyes planted on the page. Ideally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"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":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46,35,58,62,42,52,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action","category-discovery","category-ending","category-planning","category-plot","category-structure","category-writing-tips"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2YHlB-5y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":346,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions\/346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}