On my writing 1: Cliffhangers

So writing about my thoughts on writing has been something I've been thinking about doing for a while, and finally decided this would be the best place for it. Hopefully you find it interesting. If not, well it was helpful to organize my thoughts.

So, cliffhangers. As I see it, there are three functions of cliffhangers. The first is the one we all think of, being to entice the audience to come back for more. I would say that a cliffhanger of this type is bad unless it also fulfills one of the other two functions, but is still usually acceptable if used sparingly. What can make this type of cliffhanger unacceptable is if the cliffhanger is easily resolved, or has little relevance to the plot.

The second function is to connect the two chapters/episodes together. By which I mean that whatever preceded the cliffhanger was significant enough to take up most of a chapter, and that the cliffhanger problem is also big enough to require most of a chapter to resolve, but they have some sort of temporal or thematic link that the author wants to make clear. In this case, the function isn’t to build tension or drama, but to avoid breaking up scenes in an unsatisfactory and emersion breaking way. It could be said that cliffhangers of this sort are just natural chapter breaks that are a bit more dramatic than most.

The last function is to increase the impact of an event by manipulating the perception of time. This is the one that’s most interesting to me, and is the main one I wanted to talk about. The important thing to note about in this function is that it isn’t about what comes in the next episode, but is entirely about the cliffhanger qua cliffhanging.

The main thing of note is what emotions are trying to be evoked. With the typical cliffhanger, the goal is a vicarious thrill, often from witnessing the character in mortal fear. Emotions that this latter type of cliffhanger attempts to evoke are more in line of anxiety, embarrassment, cringe or a comedic beat.

Hence the manipulation of the perception of time. When one is embarrassed or anxious, one feels like the moment is never going to end. So, if a character feels this way, then the goal is to enhance that feeling in the reader by making them feel like the moment is never going to end too. The difference being that for the character the moment only feels like it’s protracted, while for the reader it literally is. This is contrasted with the standard cliffhanger whose use takes us out of the mindset of the characters, rather than put us further into them.

This also lends itself to comedy, as mentioned above. This is of course linked to the embarrassment evocation, as one can obviously respond to a character’s embarrassment by feeling it with them, or by laughing at them (inclusive or). Of course, other emotions besides embarrassment, anxiety or humour can be enhanced by being forced to linger on it, but these are the emotions I was going for in my recent chapters.

In particular, I am of course talking about the end of chapter 67, and to a lesser extent 68, which is what got me thinking about this in the first place. The idea was to have a chapter that was mostly mundane slice of life with some character interaction and minor setting exposition suddenly rocked to a halt by an unexpected event that.

If I was successful the reader shouldn’t have taken a vicarious thrill from the turn of events whose conclusion they were looking forwards towards, but humour at the mishap or empathetic embarrassment. Well, vicarious thrill and anticipation aren’t wholly unwelcomed, but it wasn’t the goal.

Well anyways, that’s mostly my thoughts on the matter. I think the last function is sort of a reversal of how most typically think about cliffhangers, but you might disagree. Perhaps you think this was all obvious, or that it’s all wrong. Feel free to comment and discuss.

The next one of these will be on why I write in the first person, and maybe also why I write in present tense. I don’t know yet whether it’ll be best to do those separately. Regardless, I think this has been a success already, since normally it’s a struggle to force myself to write the day after releasing a chapter. Hopefully, I can use this to get myself to get back to writing the next the chapter sooner than usual. I don’t know when the next one of these will be. Maybe next Tuesday, probably later. I’ll let you know on the preceding chapter if I plan to do one.