Cliff Hanging

So I thought I'd begin with one of my favorite aspects of writing, the ever love/hated cliff hanger. To be honest, nothing hits me harder or makes me love a story more then a good cliff hanger, however, there are some limits to dropping those drama bombs on the last page of your story.

In my opinion, I would define a good cliff hanger as a sudden fact that is revealed during the resolution that changes how the reader thinks or opens up new ideas for the reader at the last moment. I have to say, nothing is better then getting to the last page of a story thinking you know exactly what that story was about, only to have your whole conception of the story changed at the end! It's personally my favorite experience as a reader, and although not every good book has one of these, many books that have a good cliff ending are automatically a win to me.

If you're still confused on what makes a cliff hanger good, let me explain in a different way; by showing what a bad cliff hanger is.

"What happened next changed his life forever."

"The man looked up, at long last seeing the horrid creature for what it is."

These endings are, well cliche for one, but that's a different topic for a different day, but very much the definition of bad endings. These authors probably believe that ending in the middle of the climax or at a random suspenseful scene creates drama and shock to the reader, but really it's just rather annoying in my opinion. If your ending has no point but to create drama, then chances are you should probably rethink your ending. Your ending should create shock and emotion in the reader, don't get me wrong, but it should be because you revealed something through your choice of timing.

Being the nerdy essayist I am, I know it's probably best to show what I mean through an example. It is kinda difficult to give an example for a good cliff ending without spoilers, so for that reason, if you haven't read the The Alchemist, you may want to stop here.

If you have, then that works as a good example for a good cliff hanger. Throughout the series we hear so much about the gods and how they settled a new world which eventually led to the creation of the modern world, and we also hear and even meet death, one of the ultimate deities who is one of the oldest gods there is. So then, when at the end the two main characters go back in time to right before the old world is destroyed and the new one is born, we are left with a cliff hanger of Sophie leading the survivors while Josh obtains great power, thus becoming death. Although its ended at a seemingly important scene of the series, we are left enough information to know what will happen next, and also the looping of the timelines answers questions posed throughout the series about fate, humanity, and death, leaving us with a new perception about the series as a whole. Although the series isn't perfect, I do think that the cliff hanger ending did a really good job of wrapping up the series in a neat little fantasy bow!

So that's all I got for now, but I may come back to this topic sometime in the future with some different insight and opinions! Hopefully you learned something or thought about cliff hangers differently than you did before, thanks for reading guys. Peace!

-Ink