I read recently about ending each chapter with a hook, to keep the reader interested.

I'd never really consciously thought about this. Well, apart from the first couple of chapters. After that i kinda hope that the story itself propels the reader to turn on. But maybe i am missing a trick here.

I wondered, do any of you consciously end each chapter with a hook? In a way, a lot of mine tend to do the opposite and towards the end of each chap the MC comes to a conclusion.

Casey

I always try to end chapters with something intriguing. It has to be enough to make the reader turn the page, but also to give a satisfactory break – which is, I'm told, the reason we have chapters. Or at least one of the reasons.

For what it’s worth, I usually write as far as the second or third draft before I divide the ms into chapters. This means I'm not labouring to write a cliff-hanger every few thousand or so words, and I can chose the most appropriate places to insert a chapter break once I know how the whole story works out.

Dee

That's an interesting concept, Dee. Not sure i could cope with that, i find one thing that propels me through the first draft is the satisfaction, as i go along, of finishing a chapter. How different we all are...

I hear what you're saying about the intrigue, but wondered if this really was necessary every chap - mine seem to be more of a satisfactory break, to use your words, rather than a hook. Hmm. Might have another look at where i have actually made the breaks.

I think part of the problem is that i've worked so hard at the structure of each chapter, i've almost made each one into an individual story.

Thanks Dee.

Casey

There’s a danger – to my mind – that, if the chapters are too complete in themselves, there’ll be little incentive for a reader to turn the page, or to pick up the book again the next day.

But that’s just my opinion, and I expect it would depend on the type of book it is.

I read Pride & Prejudice again recently for the first time in years, and was amazed at how the chapters simply fizzled out with no sense of wrapping them up or leaving us on a cliff-edge. She wouldn’t get away with that these days!

Dee

I do tend to end a chapter at a significant moment or piece of dialogue, so that the moment goes on vibrating, as it were, as the reader turns the page to the next chapter. But I think it can be very tiresome if there's too strong a sense of 'Will she escape in time - tune in next week...'. If your plot's properly set up and your characters are involving enough then I don't think you need anything that mechanical - and if it isn't and they aren't, then a hook at the end isn't going to keep the reader reading.

Having said that, I've realised the second half of my current work has an excellent plot-motor of suspense in it (well, I think it's excellent... at the moment) and I'm now trying to see if the first half needs a bit more to match it for tension. But I suspect it won't be in hooks at chapter ends, more about setting something up at some point in each chapter, to be resolved in the next one even as a new problem starts up.

Emma

the chapters simply fizzled out with no sense of wrapping them up

to be resolved in the next one

I prefer that route too.
Avoid resolving anything at the end of a chapter unless it throws up more questions than it answers.


- NaomiM

Oh dear, fizzingly out, i fear, is an expression which might apply to some of my chapters. I'm so sick of the re-write though, i can't face anymore restructuring.

Would it be too amateurish an attitude to leave it as it is until (the unlikely moment that) someone requests my full manuscript...

don't answer that!

Thanks guys, you've given me plenty to dwell on.

Casey

Perhaps the real reason why 'fizzling' chapter endings bother you, Casey, is you just have too tidy a mind.







<Added>

Check out the 50 shortlisted writers on the NIAY competition. I'd say a lot of them fizzle.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/exclusions/competition/competitionshortlist.xml

Personally, as a reader, I don't need a hook at the end of each chapter to make me turn the pages. I do need some kind of a hook in the story to keep me going, though. I'd need to be thinking fairly early on 'well, what's going to happen there then?' or 'what happened for her/him to be like that?' - alright, clumsy examples but hopefully you see what I mean.

Referring to Dee's prologue for TWH that would give me enough of a hook to keep turning the pages, the question for me being 'what happened to the young girl and the baby?'

Sharon
x

I'll have a look at those, Naomi, might make my tidy mind feel better

Hmm, Sharon, that's the way i've been writing, in the hope that the general plot will intrigue the reader to keep turning those pages, i'd never even thought about chapter hooks, apart from the initial ones - and only those because they make up the partial - which made me think, hmmm, maybe i should be doing that all the way through.

I don't think it's essential though, as long as the story as a whole has hooks.

Still thinking about this though.

Casey x

Thanks Sharon!