Don't Leave Me Hanging: Cliffhanger Endings With Multiple POVs

This post is inspired by a question I read on the forums last week. It reminded me of one of the Star Wars movies, which was a "light bulb" moment for me regarding POV and chapter enders.

Multiple POV cliffhangers.

The Star Wars movie in question is one of the Anakin ones (I really can't remember which exactly). I do remember leaving the theater and saying, "What was Lucas thinking? Every time he got to a really cool part he changed scenes and totally killed all his tension."

That's when it hit me. I was doing exactly the same thing with my WIP at that time. I was so stuck on the "end with something exciting going on" rule that every time I got a good pace going and lots of tension I'd cut it and shift to a scene where the POV was just starting out on their problem and ramping up to the cool tension and then cut again back to the first POV scene, which by then wasn't nearly as exciting as it had been 12 pages before.

Now, y'all know I'm a firm believer in endings that make you want to read on, but that doesn't always mean cliffhangers, especially if you have multiple POVs.

Why?

1. Cliffhangers by their nature leave the reader hanging. The reason the tension is working so well is that it's had time to build. Steal that away, and even if you start with the next line in the scene, the tension is gone. Readers have to remember what was going on and then get back into the mindset. It's not always easy to switch gears that fast.

2. Do it too often and readers won't get invested even when there's good stuff going on. They know you're just going to yank them away, so why get into it? It keeps them detached.

3. Because if you do too good a job, your reader might skip the next scene to get back to the cliffhanger one.

Multiple POVs can be challenging because not every reader is going to love every character equally. Or be as interested in every storyline. They'll naturally skim the ones they don't care about as much and be engrossed in the ones they do. Cutting scenes in the middle of the good parts makes the odds of a less exciting storyline or POV getting booted much higher.

When you have multiple POVs and you're looking at how to end those chapters, think about the overall flow of the book, and not just that chapter. Maybe you can build both (or more) sides up at the same time so the same level of tension is always at hand. Maybe you can slip in slower-paced POV scenes after a major fast-paced event in another POV and give the reader a breather with another character. Mix and match, but don't jerk the reader around with how you pace your stories. Because that's exhausting to read and they'll likely get tired of it pretty quick.

The book as a whole should work, not just the individual pieces. Because a story is more than the sum of its parts.