WinterSteelWords

Don’t. Just don’t.

There is a way to use cliffhanger endings, but the vast majority of the time, they’re either cheap attempts to force the audience to “stay tuned,” or they’re the result of the writer not knowing the ending. I’ve only ever encountered a handful of stories, either books or films, that did a cliffhanger well. Most of the rest gained a moment of shock, and then bitterness from the audience.

To be clear about what I’m talking about: a narrative cliffhanger is when a major narrative element (plot line, character arc, setting development, or thematic question) is left unresolved. The theoretical purpose of this is to build a huge emotional investment in your audience. I have sometimes seen people try to add a flip in narrative context to this definition, but this isn’t a cliffhanger, it’s a plot twist. These are different storytelling devices used for different purposes. Some famous plot twists are the ending to the 1968 Planet of the Apes, or 1999’s The Sixth Sense. A good plot twist encourages reviewing, as the seeds are present for the twist and it serves as a logical, satisfying ending to your story. Cliffhangers are different. If it’s done correctly, a cliffhanger can be a useful tool in pulling your audience in, making the emotional payoff of your story hit even harder. Unfortunately, cliffhangers are very rarely used correctly.

There are two common errors, two common misuses of the cliffhanger: the cheap setup for a sequel and the unresolved surprise. If you want examples of the cheap setup, look no further than 2017’s The Mummy or 2014’s Amazing Spider-Man 2. You might notice that both of these films came out in the mid 2010s, at the peak of the MCU. This was after The Avengers exploded and every studio was desperately trying to start their own multi-billion dollar franchise. Universal went with their Dark Universe, a cinematic universe based on their classic monsters. The Mummy had a lot of other problems, but one of the worst was that it wasn’t a stand-alone story. Russel Crowe’s entire Jekyll/Hyde character was nothing more than a plot device to lead into several more films.

The actual end of the film has Tom Cruise as the new mummy, walking into the desert and, presumably, into the next movie. Not only was this sequel bait (bad enough), but the whole film was nothing more that a set up for more movies. Amazing Spider-Man 2 had the exact same problem. There was a complete plot line in the film with Electro. He is set up, developed, given a motivation and a conflict with the protagonist, and then resolved. But the studio wanted their own cinematic universe (this one based on Spider-villains), and so Harry Osborne is shoehorned in.

All of his scenes are contrived, his character arc is accelerated ludicrously (a slow-acting, degenerative disease suddenly rockets into overdrive), and he literally just appears after the real antagonist of the film is defeated. This is what bad cliffhangers look like: they try to force the audience to watch the next story to get any actual resolution. The 60s Batman tv show actually made this a major device: “tune in tomorrow, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.”

Don’t do this. It’s bad storytelling and is frankly abusive to your audience.

The other common problem with the cliffhanger is the unresolved narrative. Both The Mummy and Amazing Spider-Man 2 have this problem: they didn’t get their sequels. Both films set up questions in their plot, characters, settings, and themes, that were never resolved. Herein lies the real danger of trying for the cheap sequel bait: what if there’s no sequel? Hollywood is actually rampant with this. 1987’s Masters of the Universe, 2016’s Doctor Strange, 2009’s District 9, 2001’s Planet of the Apes, 2021’s The Eternals, Lois & Clark: the New Adventures of Superman, Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles, and on and on and on. In each case, the studio was trying to set up a sequel film or another season, but the next part of the story never happened, so the story is left unfinished.

There’s one last example of bad cliffhangers: when the writer doesn’t know the ending. Consider Star Trek: the Next Generation’s season 3 finale: “The Best of Both Worlds.” Infamously, the writers had no idea how the story would end.

They didn’t know if Captain Picard would die. They didn’t even know for sure if the show would be picked up for another season. In the episode, there are no indicators, no hints of any kind that a viewer could look back on as evidence that the writers were setting up the story’s conclusion.

They just took a narrative shot in the dark. Lucky for them, it paid off. More often than not, though, you get something like Stargate Universe, in which a character faces almost certain death with only a slim chance of survival, but, on no, the show is cancelled. Give your audience an ending and know what it is before you start writing.

This is the real trick to cliffhangers: you (the writer) have to know the answer. John Carpenter’s 1982, The Thing has a great cliffhanger ending. All but two of the characters are dead, the base is destroyed, and the last two survivors are trapped in the Antarctic, doomed to slowly freeze to death.

The film sets up that Childs might be another duplicate, but doesn’t definitively answer. Fade to black, we don’t know if the alien-monster wins or not. Here’s the thing (sorry, bad pun) though, Carpenter himself knew the answer. Years later, he gave an interview in which he said what the answer was and even pointed to specific shots, specific dialogue, and specific actions that he put into the movie. Even though he didn’t give the audience the answer, he gave us enough data that we could figure it out on our own. That’s a good cliffhanger.

The reason cliffhangers have been in my head lately is that I’ve finished the primary writing on my sci-fi horror story. I knew, going in, what the ending was going to be. I often encourage reverse plot development: start at the ending, at where you want the charaters to end up, and then figure out how/why they got there. The ending I’ve got right now is pretty open-ended. I don’t definitely say if the final character survives or not. The trick will be that I need to give enough evidence so that the reader can decide, do you want her to have survived or not?

This weekend, I’ll be attending the Bookish Bliss, Last Chapter of Summer Book Fair in Sandown, NH. Rather than the usual, big craft fairs and festivals that I fill summer with, this is an author/book specific event. Many local writers will be there, offering their stories, along with a few treat vendors, and one old burn-out. After that, I’ll be back at the Gunstock Resort for the start of Spooky Fall Season.