What Is a Cliffhanger?
Quick answer: What is a cliffhanger? An ending that stops at the peak of suspense, leaving the outcome unresolved so the audience must return. History, examples, cautions.
A cliffhanger is an ending, of a chapter, episode or instalment, that stops the story at a moment of peak suspense, leaving a character in danger or a question unresolved so the audience must return to learn the outcome. The name is usually traced to Thomas Hardy's serial novel A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873), which left its hero literally hanging from a cliff between instalments. It is a device of serial storytelling: a promise deferred on purpose.
Understanding what a cliffhanger is, and where it belongs, matters because the device is habit-forming for writers. It buys momentum cheaply, which makes it tempting to spend everywhere, including places, like the endings of standalone short stories, where deferred resolution is not intrigue but debt left unpaid.
The longer answer: suspense borrowed against the next chapter
A cliffhanger works by exploiting the mind's intolerance of incompletion; interrupted tasks stay active in memory long after finished ones fade, a tendency psychologists call the Zeigarnik effect. Serial writers discovered this by instinct. Dickens published novels in monthly parts and ended instalments on arrests, revelations and collapses; crowds in New York famously shouted at an arriving ship for news of Little Nell. The unresolved moment is a hook lodged in the audience between purchases.
The distinction that matters is between suspended action and withheld resolution. A chapter may close mid-crisis, the door opening, the letter unread, provided the story ultimately answers what it suspends. A cliffhanger becomes a cheat when the next chapter defuses it trivially, the gun was empty, the fall was a dream, because the audience learns that the story's promises are counterfeit. Spend suspense honestly and readers extend credit; spend it falsely and they close the account.
Cliffhangers across forms
The device shapes whole media. Silent film serials like The Perils of Pauline ended weekly episodes with the heroine in literal peril, fixing the modern sense of the word. Television refined the season cliffhanger into an industry event; 'Who shot J.R.?' kept Dallas in the news for eight months. Scheherazade is the form's patron saint: in the frame of the Thousand and One Nights, she survives by ending each night's tale at a point the king cannot bear to leave unresolved.
Within novels, chapter-level cliffhangers are pacing tools: thriller writers end chapters a beat early, on the turn rather than after it, to keep pages moving. Short fiction is the exception zone. A standalone story that simply stops at its crisis has not deployed a cliffhanger; it has declined to end. Open endings are legitimate, but they resolve emotionally even when events stay uncertain, which is a different and harder trick.
How to use cliffhangers well in your own writing
Use them at joints, not at the end of the whole structure: chapter breaks, section breaks, scene cuts between viewpoints. The reliable technique is to cut one beat early, end on the decision rather than the action, the knock rather than the visitor, the diagnosis withheld as the doctor sits down. Then honour the suspension quickly; the payoff should be worth the interruption.
Ration the device. If every chapter ends mid-explosion, readers acclimatise and the effect dies, so alternate cliffhangers with closed, resonant chapter endings that let tension breathe. And for contest work, resolve. A story entered where judges score structure on a published rubric, as Writory's monthly contest does, needs an ending that lands rather than a pause that dangles; blind judging is unusually unkind to stories that mistake stopping for ending.
Common misconceptions
The device attracts confident misuse, mostly from conflating suspense with withholding.
What poets can take from this
- End chapters one beat early: on the knock, the turn, the decision.
- Reserve true cliffhangers for structural joints, never for a standalone story's final line.
- Pay off every suspension at honest value; fake-outs bankrupt reader trust.
- Alternate suspended endings with resolved ones so the device keeps its charge.
- If you want an open ending, resolve the emotion even while leaving events uncertain.
Try it yourself
Write a three-chapter micro-story of 400 words per chapter. End chapter one on a suspended action and chapter two on a revelation, then give chapter three a fully closed ending. Note how the two suspensions change what the final resolution must deliver.
Questions
Where does the word cliffhanger come from?
The standard story credits Thomas Hardy's A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873), serialised with its hero left clinging to a cliff between instalments, and the silent-era film serials that ended weekly episodes in literal peril. The word generalised from those hanging heroes to any suspended ending.
Is it bad to end a short story on a cliffhanger?
Usually, yes. A standalone story owes the reader resolution, emotional if not situational, because there is no next instalment to honour the debt. If you want uncertainty, write an open ending that completes the character's change while leaving events unsettled.
What is the difference between suspense and a cliffhanger?
Suspense is the ongoing state of tension about what will happen; a cliffhanger is a structural cut made at suspense's peak. Suspense is the fuel, the cliffhanger one way of spending it. You can sustain enormous suspense in a story that never once cuts away.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
Enter a Writory poetry contest
Enter the August contest and have your own poem read and scored.