Skip to main content

Are cliffhanger chapters acceptable?

I'm pleased to say that I have just published the fourth in my Stephen Capel murder mysteries, A Twisted Harmony, and I've done something I never thought I would: at the end of the book, I've tagged on the first chapter of the follow-up novel An End to Innocence, which will be published in the autumn of 2017.

When I read a book and hit one of these 'bonus' chapters at the end, I tend to feel a little cheated. This is because I rarely bother to read them, so it feels like the book is shorter than it appeared to be. And the reason I don't read them is because I don't like books to leave things dangling. Inevitably, reading just the first chapter of a book leaves the reader in suspense, potentially for a long time. (It's that US habit of ending a TV series on a cliffhanger until next season.)

I made the decision to do it this time for two reasons. One is that I already really liked the way the new book was shaping up in my mind, so I wanted to get started on it straight away. And the second is that the new book continues straight on from A Twisted Harmony without any break.

So, in essence, A Twisted Harmony has two endings. You can stop reading at the conventional end of the book, where you get a nice, tied-up-loose-ends finish. Or you can continue to the bonus chapter and get yourself into cliffhanger territory. The choice is the reader's. And that, I hope, makes all the difference.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense