A book that is un-put-downable is a rare kind of treasure.
One of the best compliments a reader can give the author is I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning to finish your book.
It means the reader gave up sleep to read your book. In other words… they really liked it.
So how do you as a writer keep the reader reading all the way until the end?
Most of us have started books we’ve never finished. As authors, we hope that doesn’t happen when readers read our books, right?
What will keep your readers hooked to keep turning the pages?
End each chapter with a cliffhanger.
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How Do You Write Chapter Endings that Keep Readers Hooked?
When creating a hook you are encouraging readers to turn the page to find out what happens next in your story.
For chapter endings, it’s important to stay in viewpoint because if you don’t, you’ll lose the immediacy of what’s happening right now. Readers want to experience what’s happening to your character in the moment.
For example, if your character is shown putting on a dress while thinking to herself: “Before the day was done, I’d wish I’d put pants on instead.”
You can tell that this character is looking back from future events instead of living in the present. This can cause readers to lose the sense of timing that holds them to her viewpoint. Readers are supposed to hear what she hears and see what she sees, so how can you see what hasn’t happened yet?
Foreshadowing is great because it builds tension, but you can foreshadow using more subtle techniques while still staying in the character’s point of view. Write in a way that keeps your reader inside your character’s senses in the here and now. A great way to do that is to end your chapter with a hook that stays in character.
Here are some chapter endings that will urge your reader to keep turning the pages.
1.Important Decision: A crucial choice your character makes that will affect the story’s momentum is a great way to end a chapter. Here’s one from my first novel, where a baby dies in childbirth and she chooses to leave the village.
“Tears streamed down her cheeks like a dense waterfall; she could barely see her way on the road ahead. How would she explain what happened today? It was bad enough that most of the girls her age in Pleve Colony spoke against her, but now everyone who lived here would brand her as something much worse than a loose woman – they would call her a murderer.” (excerpt from Historical Romantic Suspense, Answering Annaveta (Russia to Canada Trilogy Book 1)
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2.Character is in Physical Danger: When there’s a cliffhanger situation where one of your main characters is in physical danger, it heightens the suspense. Here’s an excerpt from a suspenseful book #1 in this awesome Dystopian series.
“Holding his side, Tomas crawls out from under the dead boy and lets out a sigh of relief at being safe. But we aren’t safe. Tomas doesn’t know what I know. I didn’t take aim in time. I was no the one who fired the gun.” (excerpt from Dystopian novel, The Testing (The Testing Trilogy Book 1)
3.Unexpected Revelations: This is where a secret exposed or an important plot point – or twist – arrives in the story. In the following excerpt, there’s a secret that’s revealed – an affair the main character’s brother-in-law was having – and it causes a new twist to the story.
“She’s going to forgive me, right?”
“I don’t know. Some decisions are very hard to forgive.”
Steve walked out to his car, looking beaten. The house of lies he’d been building had come crashing down. (excerpt from Contemporary Romance, At Hidden Falls (Angel’s Bay Book 4)
Scatter these three different chapter endings into your story and hopefully one day you’ll get an email letter from a reader that says, I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning to finish your book.
What ideas have you used to hook readers at the end of your chapters? I love to hear your thoughts. Please share an excerpt of a chapter ending you’ve written 🙂
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Good points, Lorna. I’m in the editing process now and always trying to make that last chapter paragraph or sentence make readers want to move forward.
Thanks Joan 🙂 It’s fun to tray out unique ways to end a chapter, to captivate the reader and urge them to keep turning the pages. Hope your editing process goes well ! Can’t wait to read your book 🙂