Steps to Chapter Ending Mastery

1.   Why are Chapter Endings Important

2.   Tips for Ending your Chapter

3.   Examples of Famous Chapter Endings

4.   Writing Challenge

Why are Chapter Endings Important

1st They Make your Reader either Continue Reading or Stop

- Obviously, to Keep them Reading, Propelling them through the Narrative- - - How does the Reader Feel when Finishing an Ending

2nd Chance to Give the Reader Pleasure

Technique Tips

1st End on a Beginning

- Come Up with Ways to Start the Next Part of your Novel – and Put that at the Chapter Ending

- Why? The Natural Instinct is to End on an Ending, and Start Something New in the Next Chapter

Example. Standing on the doormat were two people I had never seen before in my life. A chubby Korean woman with a short spikey haircut, a Hispanic guy in a shirt and tie who looked a lot like Luis on Sesame Street. There was nothing at all threatening about them, quite the contrary: they were reassuringly dumpy and middle-aged, dressing like a pair of substitute school teachers, but though they both had kindly expressions on their faces, I understood the instant I saw them that my life, as I knew it, was over.

The Beginning of a Chapter is When They Start a New Storyline, or Whatever

However, It’s Good to End on Something Beginning

End on Something Starting,

-      The Next Chapter, Go On to Report What Those People Do

-      So, I Think Your Goal is to Come Up with Ways to Start the Next Part of Your Chapter and Then Put That at the End of the Prior Chapter

-      We Don’t Know Why It’s such a Big Deal to Change Everything about the Story, and We Want to Know How

3rd Another style is to promise them a revolutionary moment – there are various types:

2nd The Second Technique that You would do Well to Use is Cliffhanging

-      Example: Sharp Cliffhanger. That was it! By looking in the funhouse mirror in the victim’s bedroom, she had finally figured it out. She knew the identity of the killer, and she would bring them to justice.

To understand multiple different types of cliffhanging, Instead of the story

we see …We start thinking about why didn’t the author just go ahead and tell us who she figured out the killer was?

-      Example: Gentle Cliffhanger. Through the window, bright red strobe lights flashed across the walls accompanied by a high-pitched wailing. The sound was nagging and accusatory. It was nothing like a song.

Anne Patchette, ‘Bel Canto’

We start to feel like the storyteller is getting in the way of the actual story

So what happened? This event happened at an opera - where there was a hostage taking. Police Cars arrive … it’s a kind of cliff hanger: Question: are we Right? What are the police going to do about the hostage-takers? The author doesn’t use the word police – which is a kind of cliffhanger.

She does a masterful job of making you want to know what’s going to happen, but … the cliffhanger works in making you want to continue reading.

The goal here is to make the reader continue to read without making them feel cliff-hung

    3rd A Third Technique is Character-Based Chapter Endings.

Example: And that night, among her Rothkos, Danielle, mint tea in hand, the downtown lights winking knowingly at the window, could not help but remember that taste, the electricity of him, the charisma, the focus. As if he were alight. And the hand, delicate but firm, not directing but engaging, somehow, a sensation that carried within it, surely not just for her, the promise of something – was it sex? Could it have been? – a promise that she carried away like an unopened present. For the next time.

Claire Messud, The Emperor’s Children

Like a cliffhanger, the reader is expecting some aspect of the plot – let me

tease them with something that’s going to happen next in the plot.

Your chapter endings in terms of advancing or evolving character in some

way: She starts to think about, maybe I could be interested in this man – that’s a really good technique that’s a pretty significant interchange that’s happening inside this character, because she’s changing her character right at the very end and therefore the reader wants to continue reading to see how this character is going to evolve

So it’s character-based chapter ending rather than plot-based chapter

ending

    4th Another technique is Look-Back–Look-Forward: This is where you advance or wrap up the character’s story while simultaneously showing the reader the future

Example: But he made a mistake letting the Reverend go that day, and it would cost him down the line.

James McBride “The Good Lord Bird”

Only using look back doesn’t entice the reader to turn the page to look forward

Aside: Using an elephant joke at the beginning of a chapter, expands joke at chapter end – ties beginning-end together

At a chapter ending, connections from the past to the present/future are essential for a chapter ending

-      why is this important now?

-      and what are the repercussions in the future of the events we just witnessed?

Not every chapter does both of these, but I see a lot of chapters

         Point: advance or wrap up the chapter story while simultaneously

show the reader the future … in the past, while you’re tantalizing the reader with what’s coming

And here’s the problem with using just one technique: if you’re only looking

back at the chapter, it doesn’t entice the reader to continue reading, while only looking forward misses the opportunity to entertain the reader with what been done in the chapter

You want to use that material, make a joke, offer wisdom of some sort, have

a character change at the end of the chapter

5th Technique: Break the rules

Examples:

He really seemed to be burning himself, I thought. And then I fell asleep.

This time sleep came to take me – a deep sleep that all but pulled me to the bottom of the sea

Then I leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes. Eventually sleep overtook me, like a gradually rising tide.

I fell asleep listening to the river flow

Haruki Murakami “The Wind-up Bird Chronical”

Sometimes you don’t need to use any of them

Think: What do they have in common? How does this man do it?

Middle of the chapter has enough momentum – sleeping fits into his theme – break the rules rather than be awkward

Sometimes you don’t have to use a cliffhanger

I do think that the middle of Murakami’s chapters are filled with so much

fascinating material that there’s enough momentum that he doesn’t need to end with some sort of fancy ending

Writing Challenge

Step 1. Take the last paragraph of each of your chapters and put them in a separate file. Ask each:

-      Is this the exact right spot to end?

-      What technique is used in each?

-      Rewrite them using one of the above techniques

Step 2. Take one of your favorite books and study how they end their chapters

-      Do they use different techniques each time?

-      Do they use a technique we didn’t discuss

-      Can you use their techniques to one of yours?

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