Cliffhanger Examples in Short Stories: 6 Breaks That Leave the Reader Hanging
Quick answer: Cliffhanger examples from Saki, Stockton, Kafka, Gilman, Poe and Conan Doyle, showing how short fiction uses section breaks and final lines to suspend the reader mid-danger.
A cliffhanger stops the story at a moment of unresolved danger or unanswered question and makes the reader wait: for the next chapter, the next instalment, or, in a short story, forever. The term comes from serial fiction, but short stories use the device at section breaks and, more daringly, at the very end. The test is that the reader must be able to imagine the next moment vividly and not be shown it.
Six breaks that leave the reader hanging
The Interlopers by Saki pins two enemies under a fallen tree, lets them make peace, and has them shout together for help. Figures come running down the hillside. One man laughs with relief and asks whether they are his men; the other, who has seen more clearly, answers with a single word. The story ends on it, and the reader is left in the second before the wolves arrive.
The Lady, or the Tiger? by Frank R. Stockton builds to the young man's hand on the door and stops. Stockton spends his final paragraphs addressing the reader directly and refusing to say what came out. It is a cliffhanger with no next instalment, and its sequel, The Discourager of Hesitancy, teases the answer and withholds it again.
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka closes its first section with Gregor being driven back into his room by his father's stick, wedged in the doorway, bleeding, and shoved through as the door slams. The second section ends with an apple lodged in his back and his mother begging for his life. Each break leaves Gregor in worse case than the last.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is written in journal entries, and Gilman ends many of them on a hook: the narrator's sudden claim that there are things in the paper nobody knows but her, or her decision that she will tell nobody what she has seen. The gaps between entries are where the reader's dread grows.
The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe stops each phase of the narrator's ordeal at its worst point: at the lip of the pit in the dark, under the descending blade with rats swarming, between the closing red-hot walls. The rescue at the very end arrives in a sentence. Poe is interested in the hanging, not the landing.
The Final Problem by Arthur Conan Doyle ends with Holmes and Moriarty gone over the Reichenbach Falls and Watson certain his friend is dead. Readers waited ten years before The Adventure of the Empty House brought him back. It is the most famous cliffhanger in short fiction, and it was intended not to be one.
How to use it in your own story
A cliffhanger works when the reader knows exactly what is at stake and exactly what the next moment will decide. Vagueness is not suspense.
Common mistakes
The commonest fault is the false cliffhanger, a section ending on a dramatic line that the next section immediately defuses, which trains the reader not to worry. A second is the cliffhanger as substitute for an ending, where the story simply stops because the writer did not know how to finish; the difference is that a true cliffhanger has made the next moment inevitable. A third is repetition, every scene ending on a gasp until the reader's pulse stops responding.
Where readers meet it today
Modern readers meet the device in Roald Dahl's The Landlady, Shirley Jackson's The Lottery in its final sentences, Stephen King's short fiction and every television drama since the serial began.
What writers can take from this
- End on action or a single word, never on a thought.
- Each break should worsen the position.
- Make the next second imaginable; withhold only its outcome.
- Delete the paragraph after the hook.
- One final-line cliffhanger per story; scene-level hooks can recur but should escalate.
Try it yourself
Write a 600-word story in three sections. Each section must end with the protagonist in physical danger worse than the last, and the story must end before the third danger is resolved, on a line of no more than five words.
Questions
What is an example of a cliffhanger in a short story?
The final line of Saki's The Interlopers, where two reconciled enemies trapped under a tree hear figures running towards them and one of them identifies the figures with a single word. The story ends before anything happens.
How do you identify a cliffhanger?
Look for a section or story ending that stops at a moment of unresolved danger or an unanswered question, where the next moment is clearly imaginable and deliberately not shown.
Can a short story end on a cliffhanger?
Yes, if the stakes are clear and the next moment is inevitable. The Interlopers and The Lady, or the Tiger? both do it. If the reader cannot picture what comes next, the story has simply stopped.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
Enter a Writory story contest
Enter the Writory Short Story Contest and have your own story read and scored out of 100. Entries close 25 November. That first entry makes you a Writorian.