Cliffhangers: How to use them to hold your readers

How many times during an action movie does the main character face disaster? Does it happen so often you lose count?

The cliffhanger is very old. You’ve probably seen it at the end of book chapters, or at dramatic points of TV shows and movies. In old movies at the theater, the cliffhanger actually happened.

  Let’s say the hero and villain fight. The villain pushes the hero off the cliff, but he grabs the edge of the rock and holds on.

What will happen? Will he fall? You’ve got to come back to the theater next week to find out.

Personally, in almost every story I write, I search for ways to work a cliffhanger into a paragraph. This very short report explains more.