Ending on the Highest Note

Except for the shortest of chapters, where you leave a reader at the break before the next chapter has a large influence on whether they will turn the page. This point seems straightforward, but I can’t tell you the number of times that I have enjoyed an exciting chapter only to feel stranded out in the middle of nowhere at the chapter’s end. It’s as though the main piece of action wasn’t really the point of the scene.

The cliffhanger is a common device in commercial fiction. To use the imagery in a slightly different fashion, think of a chapter as a drive up a mountainside until it reaches the edge of a cliff. Focus on the drive part, not leaving the reader hanging. What matters is the momentum you build in one specified direction. That’s how you make the ending pay off: because of what preceded it. An event as seemingly insignificant as a mother’s scoffing at her daughter’s rough charcoal drawing could be made into a terrible blow if the daughter spent the entire scene beaming inside about how happy it will make her mother.

Conversely, if you have a dynamic piece of action for which there is no build-up, placing it at the end of a chapter is not going to have much impact. The event will come at the reader out of the blue, and it’s hard to generate excitement that way. If the action sequence is exciting, then use it as a focal point around which to organize the entire chapter.

If you have a novel structure in which a chapter frequently comprises several scenes, you need to determine the dramatic weight of each of the scenes. To judge when you should end the chapter, write down the event that closes each scene. One sentence, describing the piece of action. If, for example, the first scene ends with the FBI showing up and confiscating a company’s files, that seems like a pretty high point of drama. But if your next scene follows the business owner going to his child’s sports event so that he can talk to his wife about the FBI showing up, that is obviously a piece of lesser action. Don’t end the chapter there.

You don't want is a chapter that steps down from one event to another. You're always trying to build upward. After all, that’s how you’re trying to build the novel as a whole, right?

Exercise: A character’s reaction to an exciting plot event can be moved to the start of the next chapter. This is an ideal place for such material, anyway. Characters discussing an event is not as exciting as the event itself. It is secondhand news, even if an important new plot pursuit emerges from that discussion. Think about that in terms of structure. If a new direction emerges, that constitutes a new start—so it belongs at the start of a chapter. 

“I can’t understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.”  —Fred Allen 

Copyright @ 2026, John Paine