Is it okay to end a novel with a cliffhanger?
First thing you should know: I'm writing the first book in a trilogy and I'm at that beautiful moment where I'm ending it. I know exactly how I want to end it BUT there's one problem. I've been reading a lot of comments where people say they absolutely hate cliffhangers. They say that it's only a ploy that authors use to get you to buy the next novel. My book ends on a cliffhanger and honestly, there's no other way I feel I can end it. Is it really that bad to end your novel with a cliffhanger? Am I a bad author if I do end it with a cliffhanger?
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Unless readers know they've picked up a trilogy or a book in a story arc, most will find a cliffhanger ending unsatisfying and wonder why the author didn't finish the story. As most television show episodes, motion pictures, novels and short stories have a clear beginning-middle-end, readers have become accustomed to tales that follow such a plot line.
If you wish to open the way for a sequel, consider structuring your novel so it completes one story that is part of a larger tale. For example, a trilogy might be about an unlikely band of characters going on a quest. To complete the first part of the journey, they must overcome some major obstacle that cements them together as a team. This leaves an opening for them to pick up their quest in progress in the next novel, which has them overcome a specific goal necessary for them to continue their journey (Perhaps to reach a specific spot they must solve some large puzzle). The third novel would follow this pattern by following another specific adventure in the quest. Indeed, most of the original King Arthur stories about the quest for the Holy Grail were written using this structure – as self-contained stories that each bring the characters a little closer to achieving their overall goal.
One possibility for including the cliffhanger in a novel is to add as an epilogue. Once the segment of the heroes’ adventure has been completed in the novel’s chapters, the epilogue is an extra that doesn’t feel tacked on but opens the ways for a sequel.
To get a novel with a cliffhanger to not end that way, you’ll likely need to add the solution to the cliffhanger in one last chapter. That may require editing some sections out of the story to prevent it from being too long. In a worst-case scenario, you may need to revisit the story’s plot and revise it so it contains a self-contained story.
Rob Bignell
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12393. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Write it the way you feel it should be written.
However, I would then finish the entire trilogy before finding an agent and shopping it to publishers or publishing it yourself. That way you can either promise your self-pub readers that the next two books are coming, or let your agent pitch that it's a finished trilogy. (I can't see a publisher taking on something so obviously ending in a cliffhanger if the other two books aren't completed.)
I remember at least one book in David Eddings's Belgariad series ending on an absolute cliffhanger, so it's not like it can't ever be done. But the Belgariad was sold as a trilogy and re-broken into five books, so the publisher bought the entire series at a shot.
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