Unlock the Secret Power of Cliffhangers: How Writers Keep You Glued to Every Page
The last type of cliffhanger we’ll look at is Thematic. This one might be the most difficult to incorporate, but well worth the effort.
5. Thematic Cliffhangers
Thematic cliffhangers incorporate something that illuminates a theme in the story.
Theme is the powerful undercurrent that runs beneath the story, delivering a message to the reader through events, dialogue, imagery and symbolism, character behavior and consequences of choices made, and so on.
As a cliffhanger, it’s most effective to create a chapter ending early in the book which suggests failure in terms of the theme. Then, in one of the last chapters in the book, revisit the theme in another cliffhanger, showing progress and change. Or, in a tragedy, the lack of it.
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