Cliffhangers

Have you ever tried to explain to someone what a cliffhanger is? I suspect they became popular when Dickens, Trollope and co were writing weekly instalments and there had to be something exciting and dangerous so that people would remember and buy the newspaper or magazine the following week. Classical scholars would cite Scheherazade, who managed to save her life night after night by telling the Shah of Persia stories and always ending on a cliffhanger. Try that for a thousand and one nights and see how you fare.

You could argue that cliffhangers exploit the reader. The author chooses to tie the heroine to the railway tracks and  leaves her there with the distant hoot of a train in the distance, so of course the reader gets agitated. If only someone would find and free the woman then we'd all relax - and forget to buy the magazine next week. As it is we spend the entire week in a frenzy of will she die - or will she be saved?

Too many cliffhangers in one story do exploit the reader - or they annoy and irritate at the very least. But a good, gripping cliffhanger is worth it's weight in gold, and it doesn't have to be in a thriller, though the one I'm reading at the moment happens to be one of Dick Francis's classics - Come to Grief. At the end of Chapter Twelve, the hero is tied to a chair, and has watched his  prosthetic arm destroyed by a one-time friend - and you just know that there is worse to come for Sid Halley. 

So the essence of a good cliffhanger is the build up, I think. First of all, there has to be empathy for the victim, otherwise the reader doesn't care enough to worry. Then there must be a slow tightening of the screw, tension has to rise somehow, and then - only then, can the author bring the cliffhanger to its proper threat. And escape must seem impossible. 

Style and technique

Spring has turned into a howling gale, so I'm done with the blossom pictures - there's hardly any blossom left!

This fire-engine turned up in our cul-de-sac this week. It seems someone had set the woods alight and this was the closest they could get to it. Can't have been much of a fire, thank goodness, since twenty minutes later they drove away.

Another incident was this rather large van trying to cross the too small bridge across the Tyne. There are large notices warning that the Victorian bridge is a mere 6 foot wide and there is a 3 ton weight limit on it, but these vans will try. This one couldn't even get on, and then caused chaos by reversing away from it with a queue of cars behind him.

But back to more writerly matters. Newbie authors/wannabee authors are often told 'read the line' or 'read the genre' to know what is required. There are certain difficulties with this, I find. First of all, the books we read are often two or three years old - but new enough to us - and the genre has changed and moved on in that time, especially since publishers are looking for something that will hit the shelves in one or two years time.

Also they always ask for something - you've guessed it - 'different.' Now I'm not saying that our plot would be identical to any particular published author, but if we learn the style of a famous author, and style is the thing we've been told to study, then how can we be different?

I suppose the answer would be 'learn the technique and develop your own style.' H'mmm. At first glance, style and technique seem very close. Sometimes, I suspect they might merge. At the othe end of the range, technique is a skill, a way of putting nouns and adverbs together so that the reader understands the message I want them to understand. Style is how it looks (reads).

For example, Dick Francis has a style I've mentioned before, applauding its brevity. Gabaldon has a style which is the exact opposite. Both are successful, both are suited to their particular genre, both are instantly recognizable. I think I've answered my own question - but what do you think?

Dick Francis and POV

I've noticed that Dick Francis writes in the first person, too. He doesn't use the I word very much but it is definitely First Person. Here's the opening lines of Under Orders:

"Sadly, death at the races is not uncommon.

However, three in a single afternoon was sufficiently unusual to raise more than an eyebrow. That only one of the deaths was of a horse was more than enough to bring the local constabulary hotfoot to the track."

He's good on first paragraphs, isn't he? It is only in the middle of the second paragraph that the I word comes into play. Now that I think back over the titles I've read over the years, I think most of them have been First Person - and yet I never really clocked it.

It's raining today, but I've been out on my bike anyway. I have to get fitter somehow, and it always seems that I do about a week of walking or cycling and then the good weather vanishes and I find myself staying indoors, lounging around, and by the time the good weather reappears, I've lost that little bit of fitness and have to start again. Stupid really. I've also done the grocery shopping and so can sit down to do some work feeling virtuous.