Cliffhanger

3 Key excerpts on "Cliffhanger"

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  The Story Maker Motivator

  • Frances Dickens(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  © Frances Dickens P Writing Cliffhangers Cliffhangers are a great way to end chapters, or even a whole story. The word means exactly what it says: it is as if you are left hanging on the edge of a cliff wondering what will happen next; you can’t move until something else happens. ‘I’ve got something important to tell you,’ she murmured. ‘What a surprise! Thought you’d been avoiding me. I believe we have some unfinished business to attend to?’ ‘Come on Jamie! I know you’re trying to scare me!’ screamed Vanessa. ‘Stop fooling around!’ But Jamie didn’t appear to be hearing too well! Task: Choose an image from the above and write a Cliffhanger for a story that really grabs the reader’s attention. Or Write a Cliffhanger paragraph of your own. Beginnings, Cliffhangers, suspense hooks and endings – Worksheet 2 Worksheet 2 13 The Story Maker Motivator This page may be photocopied for instructional use only. © Frances Dickens P Constructing suspense hooks Suspense hooks are more complicated than Cliffhangers. For example, in his novel SilverFin , the author Charlie Higson leaves his introduction hanging on a suspense hook, and in Chapter 1 a new storyline is introduced. This keeps his readers really in suspense. However, remember that too many storylines could lose the reader’s attention. Simplicity is the key word, and careful planning. It is a good method for some types of stories. Chapter 1 – sample plan background information: Stevie is a regular guy. Works hard and legitimately. He runs into an old friend, who he hasn’t seen for years and to whom he owes a favour. ‘What a surprise! Thought you’d been avoiding me. I believe we have some unfinished business to attend to?’ Hang this chapter on a suspense hook. Keep the reader in suspense. Chapter 2 – background information: His girlfriend Vanessa comes home from work and goes to the house. She finds a man floating face down in the pool. ‘She pushed open the swing doors to the pool and froze in horror.

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  Matinee Melodrama

  • Scott Higgins(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Rutgers University Press

    (Publisher)

  4 Cliffhanging Cliffhangers are the sound serial’s central and most distinctive feature. They are test departments for generating suspense and offer insight into the nature of cinematic storytelling. But Cliffhangers also merge suspense with the seemingly antithetical appeals of spectacular catastrophe and puzzle solving. Each week, viewers could witness the hero’s demise and yet be assured of his or her survival; each week they could anxiously anticipate imminent disaster and ponder the narrative deceptions that would reverse it. Serials inherit and repurpose the basic techniques of one-reel melodrama and break situations in two, which complicates our engagement with them. Cliffhangers could simultaneously absorb viewers into tautly drawn situations and promote awareness of narration, a dynamic consonant with make-believe. This chapter explores Cliffhangers by first considering the rudiments of the race to the rescue as it was refined in early narrative cinema, and then looking at how serials reconceive the formula around the contradictory mandates to deliver a climax and continue the story. We will bring forward issues of anomalous suspense and levels of film narration in order to pin down the peculiarities of serial storytelling. Finally, we review the lexicon of perils and chart cliffhanging’s major variables, which lay the groundwork for artistic achievement within the bounds of formula. According to Ben Singer, Cliffhangers “with the protagonists precariously near some sort of graphic death” had become standard in silent serials by late 1914 or early 1915. This convention had a clear profit motive, encouraging, as Singer notes, “a steady volume of return customers, tantalized and eager for the fix of narrative closure withheld in the previous installment.” 1 Cliffhangers were particularly valuable at a time when serials and early features vied for dominance

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  Complete Writing For Children Course

  Develop your childrens writing from idea to publication

  • Clémentine Beauvais(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Teach Yourself

    (Publisher)

  Cliffhangers, in comics and in films, are moments when the main character is literally or symbolically hanging off a cliff when the episode finishes. In serialized comics or webcomics in particular, it isn’t uncommon to find, at the end of the page, a panel in which the character is put in a very tricky situation – which will be solved next week. This recipe is used, of course, abundantly in TV series.

  When you’re writing your synopsis, make the most of the moments at the end of your chapters, or towards the comfy middle of the story, when you can strategically introduce Cliffhangers. These are, famously, those moments that simply require the reader to keep reading; try as they may, they will not be able to put the book down. They are generally of the following type:

  •   The character has been engaged in some kind of extenuating action, and you leave them ‘hanging’ there without telling the reader what happens next (until they turn the page).

  •   The character is relieved: she’s won something or found success in one aspect of the plot, and she now thinks all is well in the world. But suddenly she realizes something … or a new plot element is introduced … and it changes everything …

  •   The character has decided to do something very important for the plot that sounds extremely exciting. But before you show the reader what that is, you’re going to have a whole chapter of Something Else (flashback, flash-forward, other scene, etc.).

  Of course, there can be many other types of Cliffhanger. Try to see where you can include scenes like these; they speed up the pace and keep the reader hooked. Generally, a good place to start is by identifying the times when your story takes a new turn: a new element is revealed, your character makes an important decision, or the villain suddenly returns from the dead. These are strategic places which you shouldn’t waste on lukewarm dialogue, and which you should work on pushing towards the end of chapters. Many people think: ‘Oh, I’ll read just another chapter and then turn off the light and sleep.’ You don’t want them to turn off the light – ever. Well, not until they’ve finished your book, at least.

  Cliffhangers can be overused and hackneyed, so don’t do it all the time. In particular, avoid Cliffhangers that are completely meaningless. The reader will feel cheated if the menacing ‘knock knock’ at the door was actually a woodpecker (unless you’re doing it for comic effect), and won’t ‘believe’ in the next Cliffhanger. (‘Oh, it’s probably just another bird. I’ll turn the light off and continue reading tomorrow.’ Failure.)

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