Writing Yourself Off the Cliff

This post isn’t, thankfully, about that movie.

I picked up a novel in the airport last week. I’m not going to name that novel because I’m going to tank on it, and because I suspect that the author was coerced into the stylistic egregiousness I’m going to tank on him for, but it’s an eco-thriller of the type I usually enjoy.

What I didn’t enjoy were the cliffhangers. The author would stick the characters in a position of unresolved peril and then say:

Someone had to find the solution, and they had to find it fast.

They weren’t at the end of every chapter, but they were tossed in often enough (and in almost the exact same phrasing by at least two different characters) that by a hundred and fifty pages in, I’d counted half-a-dozen and they bothered me enough to put down the book.

Probably not what the author intended.

Why use cliffhangers? They build suspense and tension. They’re used in serials to get the audience to read or watch the next installment. Fair enough, if you’re putting out an eight episode TV series like True Detective. But using them over and over in a 500+ page novel is a red flag. If the story isn’t pulling the reader along into the next chapter, then there is a problem with plot and pacing. A cliffhanger is not going to salvage those shortcomings. Rework the plot and pacing. Let the story speak for itself.

Sadly, that novel did. The cliffhangers were unnecessary. I was engaged by two of the point-of-view characters and concerned enough about their peril that I would have read the whole novel to find out what happened to them. I didn’t need the author to put up a neon sign at the end of every other chapter that said “Characters in Danger! Can they be Saved? Read on to See What Happens.”

Having read other novels by this author, which did not contain this stylistic sleight-of-hand, but were shorter, I have to wonder if the author was coerced into throwing the cliffhangers in there due to editorial concerns about the novel’s length. They were glaring. They’re a departure from the author’s normal style. And they felt tacked on. They also frequently occurred at the end of chapters written from the two female character points-of-view. Without going into a feminist rant, I found myself wondering if either the author or the editor perceived those perspectives as weak? Undermining your own point-of-view characters is never a good idea.

So as a learning point for me, in the long uphill climb that is figuring out the craft of novel-writing, this novel was instructive. Use cliffhangers sparingly. Avoid repetitive cliffhangers – they quickly catch the reader’s eye (not in a good way). Particularly avoid associating cliffhangers with chapters or characters that feel weak – rework the plot or pacing instead.

And, above all, avoid any cliffhanger that involves Sylvester Stallone.

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