One technique for increasing tension and quickening pace in a work of fiction is to end chapters with a "cliffhanger." Taken from movie scenes in which the viewer sees the hero or heroine dangling over the edge of cliff and then that same viewer is suddenly taken away to another scene, cliffhangers help keep readers' attention focused on what will happen next, and keep them turning pages to find out.
What are the essential elements of a cliffhanger? First, some body. That is, an individual person important to the story, preferably a lead character (hero, heroine, or villain) or sympathetic character. The focus here is on an individual person, not a thing or masses (although animals work too).
Second, a near-future action, with consequences, that may or may not happen. There must be an element of uncertainty to this action, it must affect the character in some significant way, and the reader must feel like the action will happen just-about-almost-any-second-now.
Third, the action is interrupted. The reader sees the setup. The reader infers or understands the potential consequences. The reader understands the sense of urgency and immediacy. The reader anticipates an answer, but the writer does not give it to them-immediately, anyway. The reader must go to the next chapter, or even the chapter after that, to find out what happens.
So how do you hang your readers off a cliff? There are many techniques, but authors may find these three especially useful.
First, change the way you think about scenes or chapters. We like to think of chapters as a story of cause and effect--starting with a setup and ending with a payoff. Instead, begin your chapters or scenes with the payoff from the previous chapter or scene, and end it with a setup for the next chapter or scene. This can be as simple as cutting and pasting a paragraph or a page, or may require significant rewriting. Note that you can always leverage the power of the word processor to draft one way and then revise another (copy, cut, and paste has its merits).
Second, don't be afraid to move your scenes around to make the reader wait for the payoff. Let's say John must see Susan before 5 to save the farm from foreclosure. We end the chapter with protagonist John looking at his watch. It's 4:55, and Susan is across town. Turning the page to the next chapter, the reader expects to see John racing to find Susan. However, as a wily author, you have a chapter/scene about something else-subplot, back story, different point of view-anything but John finding Susan.
Third, consider editing the sentences at the end of your scene or chapter so that they are shorter, simpler, and move faster. This picks up the pace of the reading, and as that pace gets faster and faster the reader will anticipate a payoff. They'll turn the page to find it.
Novices often attempt to induce a cliffhanger by asking, or having their characters ask, rhetorical questions. "Would John find Susan in time?" or "Will I find her in time to save the farm?" As a generally rule, a writer should avoid these. If the writer must ask such a question, have a character ask it of another character, then do not answer!
Chapter or scene-end cliffhangers improve tension, increase suspense, and quicken pace. They are useful tools that experienced writers in any genre can employ to keep readers turning pages.
Don't be a blockhead: how to relieve composition congestion
By T.A. (Todd) Stone
There are two schools of thought on writer's block. One says that sometimes
creativity fails and you have to take a break. The other says that writer's
block is an excuse not to work. No other profession has to deal with being "blocked."
Ever hear of firefighter's block? "Sorry, I can't extinguish that blaze
today, I'm blocked." I don't think so.
But every writer knows that there are times when not only do you not feel like writing, but that it's torture to get out not just a sentence, but a word. Everything sounds wooden and trite, and you'll do anything--even housework-- to avoid confronting the blank page.
For most of us, writer's block comes when we're drafting-when we're trying to create something out of nothing. The key is starting-getting something to work with that you can revise later.
My own experience is that solid planning is a good tonic for writer's block-it gives you something to start with. If you have not an outline, but rather a detailed "scene list" (a technique taken from screenwriting) that you have grown from first a one paragraph, then one page, then four page, then ten or twenty page treatment of your story, you are much less likely to suffer writer's block. My presentation "Making it Move: three things screenwriting can teach fiction writers" covers this in more detail. I took the technique from my screenwriting training and experience, and for me it has made those awful times when the words won't come fewer, farther between, and less empty.
I don't believe in creativity exercises to break a block. Who has time for those and for writing? I believe in going back to your work. If you're blocked, go back to your plan. What happens next? Simply write that out (tell it), and in the present tense. And next? And next? Now take those "telling" sentence and be more detailed, but still tell. When you have "Marsha arrives late back at the farm, only to find the barn ablaze and the animals trapped inside. She risks her life and is burned rescuing them," you have the basis for a powerful scene.
When you can tell your whole story, you'll find it easier to write moving sentences, paragraphs, and scenes that show a reader what's happening. So if a writer finds she doesn't know what to write next to get where she's going, maybe she should revisit-and take a closer look at--her roadmap.
About
T.A. (Todd) Stone
From a tour de force through wealthy suburbia's wholesome appearances and sordid realities to tanks and infantry, from mystery to military, Award-winning Author and screenwriter T.A. (Todd) Stone has made his mark on the print and e-book worlds. Stone is the author of the "profiling procedural" and 2002 Digital Literature Institute Best of Fiction Winner, 2002 INDIE Mystery Winner, and 2002 EPPIE finalist CLOSE TO HOME (Hard Shell Word Factory) and the NY Times Review of Books acclaimed military techno thriller KRIEGSPIEL (Lyford Books/Presidio Press). His second military thriller THE BEST DEFENSE is due for publication in 2003 (NBI). He is a member of the Author's Guild, Mystery Writers of America, EPIC (the Electronically Published Internet Connection), the National Writers' Union, the Crime Writers' Guild, and is a graduate of his local Citizens Police Academy.
When not writing fiction, Stone writes marketing communications materials for
a major telecommunications manufacturer, teaches copywriting at a local community
college, and presents at writers' conferences throughout the Midwest.
An avid motorcyclist, Stone is a former Army Airborne/Ranger Infantry officer whose military assignments included duty as an Assistant Professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He has his undergraduate degree from Indiana University and his MA in English from Northwestern University. He lives with his family in a perfectly normal suburb outside Chicago, IL. He can be reached through his web sites www.closetohome.org or www.tntstone.com, or by e-mail at TAStone@aol.com
About CLOSE TO HOME :
In CLOSE TO HOME, a brutal killer with a bloody sense of revenge terrorizes the affluent Chicago suburb of Ravensburg. First the well-scrubbed teenage "girl next door" is found dead, her corpse provocatively posed alongside a busy thoroughfare. The body count climbs as the town's young and handsome activist minister and his older, married, minivan- mom lover are found mutilated in her locked suburban home.
In this tour de force through the wholesome appearances and sordid realities of a town voted "the best place in America to raise a family," emotionally battered PI Jonathan Kraag ties together cases hot and cold, racing to get inside a murderer's mind before the killer adds the town's children to his growing extended family of victims. Find out more about the book, the characters, and the author at www.closetohome.org.
CLOSE TO HOME is available from:
Borders Books, Rte 59, Naperville, IL.
Andersons Books in Chicagoland
Centuries & Sleuths Mystery Bookstore, Forest Park, IL
www.amazon.com
www.barnesandnoble.com
www.borders.com
www.powells.com
www.target.com
www.walmart.com
Hard Shell Word Factory www.hardshell.com
˜˜˜˜-1/2, Affaire de Coeur
5 Daggers, All About Murder Reviews
Winner - 2002 Digital Literature Institute Best of Fiction Award
Winner - 2002 INDIE Award, Mystery/Suspense
2002 EPPIE Mystery Finalist
About KRIEGSPIEL:
Like military action/adventure and technothrillers? Smell the cordite and gun smoke of modern armored war in the NY Times Review of Books acclaimed KRIEGSPIEL by former Army Ranger Todd Stone. Outnumbered and outgunned, US soldiers face off against the armored forces of a new Fourth Reich. Available signed from the author: send email to tvmstone@yahoo.com
Coming soon: THE BEST DEFENSE--Think: "Tom Clancy for Women!"Major Val Macintyre and her rag-tag band of wannabes are all that stand between a remote nuclear weapons depot and a legion of biotech-enhanced super terrorists.
"This ain't no girlie book!"--KG McAbee, Award-winning author of "A Fine Impersonation" and "Escape the Past"
Reserve yours-email tvmstone@yahoo.com or pre-order at www.novelbooksinc.com
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