A good practice when writing or editing your work is to look at the beginning and ending of every chapter. Today, we’ll begin at the end and talk about ways to end (or not end) a chapter.
A writing instructor of mine many years ago said to end every chapter on a “thrust,” an ending that pushes the reader to turn the page and start the next chapter. “Never end a chapter at a good place to close the book and go to sleep,” he said. “Your goal is to make your readers stay up all night long, unable to put it down until the end, and then they oversleep and get fired for being late to work again.”
Okay, you don’t really want someone to lose a job. Then they can’t afford to buy more books.
But your goal for chapter endings is to thrust your readers forward to the next chapter.
If a scene ends on a flat note, it’s a good place to put the book down, turn off the light, and go to sleep. And maybe not pick it up again if there wasn't anything to drive the reader forward. The only thing worse than a one-star review is a DNF (did not finish).
A flat ending can be a scene that fizzles out. Maybe it’s a scene that doesn’t raise the tension, increase or introduce new conflict, doesn’t raise a new story question, doesn’t drive the story forward, or doesn’t seem to have a point. Every scene must have a purpose, and that purpose is to push the story forward and raise the reader’s interest in some way.
So how do you end a chapter on a thrust? Probably infinite ways, but we’ll group them into a few methods.
Cliffhanger
We’ll start with the old standby: the cliffhanger. A cliffhanger is when a chapter ends at a tense, suspenseful moment that leaves the reader hanging.
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