What kind of chapter ending do you normally write?
Do you tend to end on a resolved or unresolved action?
A resolved action might be a character going to sleep at the end of the day, having come safely back from visiting their sister and finding out all she remembers of the night their father went missing.
An unresolved action might be that same character arriving at their sister’s house and knocking on the sister’s door, and her opening it, but then you cutting away to another plot-line — only to return to the ensuing scene later, or perhaps only reporting it indirectly.
There is also an in-between, a semi-resolved action — the same character going to bed at the end of the day before, with the reader knowing they are planning to visit their sister the next day to find out all she remembers etcetera.
It seems to me that this choice is definitive of a writer, and of the kind of novel they are producing.
Here’s a statement — for thinking about, rather than for insistence:
Genre novels are more likely to end chapters at points of unresolved action (high dramatic tension, i.e., on cliffhangers)
whereas literary novels are more likely to end chapters at a point of resolved action (low dramatic tension, i.e., on a dying fall).
I know there are some people who dislike the genre/literary distinction.
I’ll happily argue that literary fiction is a genre, with rules as strict as crime fiction (often rules of avoidance).
But go with me for the moment.
The writer’s choice of where to end each chapter is intimately connected to the kind of story-time they want to create.
Genre story-time — the story time in a thriller or horror novel — is far likely to be more brutally chopped around, ruthlessly pursuing an escalation (with breaks, perhaps) of narrative tension.
Literary story-time will deal more in lulls, fadings away, ebbs and flows of narrative energy.
Another difference between genre and literary fiction relates to change of pace. Genre fiction loves radical changes of pace; literary fiction largely avoids this (partly because, as I’ll explore to another time, it has much lower maximum speeds).
If we return to our visit-to-the-sister scenario, the unresolved or — perhaps more accurately — interrupted action is flagrant. It is achieved as a scene shift, not plotted in.
A plotted interruption would be the sister’s husband arriving home with their visiting daughter, fresh from the airport, just as the brother has asked his crucial question. The scene goes on, but we’ll have to wait for any revelations.
By contrast, the cutting away from the brother-sister scene on the doorstep, before he speaks, is a deliberate formal frustration. The time of the scene is interrupted. In order to find out what happens next, to rejoin that time, we are forced to read on.
Such a duh-durr scene ending in a teleplay is typical of soap operas like EastEnders and Hollyoaks.
So, which do you tend to write? And might that tell you something about your narrative predilections? In this particular novel, if not in your whole writing life.
It’s fun to think of changing a non-genre to a genre novel, just by moving the chapter breaks around.
Here’s a writing exercise:
Create a new file and call it Cliffhanger. In it, write two bits of chapters from a genre novel. Call them End of Chapter 12 and Start of Chapter 13. They feature some characters of yours who are being murderously pursued. Have the End of Chapter 12 lead up to a life-threatening cliffhanger and then have the Start of Chapter 13, without a time-break, satisfyingly resolve this with escape or rescue. But keep writing the action of the Start of Chapter 13 until your characters are entirely safe again — so safe they can go to sleep in a comfortable place. Now, copy that file, Cliffhanger, and call the new file Dying Fall. Within Dying Fall, simply remove the chapter ending from just after the cliffhanger and instead place it after the characters have gone to sleep. Now re-read all you’ve written. Feel how Cliffhanger differs from Dying Fall. Without changing a word.
All of this is related to the kind of story-time you’re assuming your reader wants.
There’s more to say about story-time.
Of course of course.