Editing Rant: Chapter Ending Questions

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I recently read a book where nearly every chapter ended with the point of view (POV) character asking themselves a question. What’s up with that?

I think the problem is they were told to end chapters on a mini “cliffhanger” to keep the reader moving forward, making the book unputdownable (yes, a word). John Hartness (recent book release of Eternal Winter in his Bubba series)) and Jason Gilbert (Three Dog Knight, which I edited) are masters of this technique; fortunately they write shorter books so you can survive the unputdownable structure and, maybe, get enough sleep that night to work the next day. But why didn’t a pleasure-read book work if this is a valid techinque?

Well, the cliffhanger can work different ways, sometimes it is a beat break within a battle. Sometimes it is a climax of a scene, emotionally or physically, then a switch to a different POV character. Writers master getting the scene to the point where everything is in place, then break to a different stakes in the next chapter. That one gets to the high stakes, then switch back to the original POV character or situation. Then the cruel-writers resolve the problem they had ended on but before they return to the second issues, they raise the rollercoaster back to the edge and leave us hanging again. Rinse and repeat for the second plotline. No sleep at all, but what a ride. Why didn’t this ride work for me?

The other big way to end, rather than continuing action, is with a question. The way to do this is have the POV character be asked a question or ask someone else a question, encapsulating either what had just happened or bringing up something that had been left by the wayside. “Did that seem too easy to you?”;  “Should Billy have been here by now?” Both sorts of question interchanges have the reader freezing for a moment going, “oh no!”, and jumping into the next chapter to find the answer. Why doesn’t the character asking themselves a question work?

If the book had been a literary book, with layers of self-reflection, it might have worked, but the book was a middlegrade action-adventure. Asking questions like “What should I do next?” and “Should I return home to find out what happened to my family or continue on my quest?” doesn’t create tension for genre. These are internal questions and slow down the action. Self-reflection is fine to figure things out, but a self-reflection question, even “Should I take a boat down the Rapids of Death?”, at the end of a chapter to create a cliffhanger actually pulls a reader back from the edge and leaves them questioning why is the character questioning themselves instead of acting. Literary is self-reflection; genre books are action. Why ask yourself a question?

Action, dialog, interaction, raising stakes. All these are genre tools to pull the reader through the book and make it unputdownable. Asking questions through dialog is fine. Asking questions of yourself is fine as a place to slow down and contemplate, to have a breather for the reader before returning to the rollercoaster.  But using self-reflection questions (which slow things down) as the tension technique to pull the reader through to the next chapter doesn’t work. Do you got that?

Good. Go forth and write something that is unputdownable.