Chapters - Beginnings and Ending that Work

Roseanna M. White pens her novels beneath her Betsy Ross flag, with her Jane Austen action figure watching over her. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two children, editing and designing, and pretending her house will clean itself. Her novels range from biblical fiction to American-set romances to her new British series. She lives with her family in West Virginia. Learn more at www.RoseannaMWhite.com 

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Stephanie has blogged before about the importance of arriving late and leaving early in a scene or chapter of your novel. This is awesome advice, and a turn of phrase that has certainly stuck with me. But sometimes we know where to begin or end and still fumble a bit on how.

We've all been there: we're reading a book, totally caught up. We're chanting one more chapter in our heads. The action is going swimmingly, we turn another page, and....wha??? That was a chapter ending? But it didn't sound like it. It took us totally off guard. We flip back, reread that last line, and while we can kinda see where it's a hook, it still just didn't sound right.

Or that time when we pick a book up again after not having time to read for a few days, and it's one of those times when we did actually stop at a chapter break (I have this lovely habit of getting hooked by the end-of-chapter hook, so flipping the page and reading the first bit of the next chapter...and then putting my bookmark in at a random paragraph...). We start reading and can't for the life of us remember what was going on, and the opening paragraphs don't tell us much. Or maybe time has passed in the story, and we have no clue how much. Or where we are now.

Beginning and ending chapters isn't just about hooking the reader--they're also about grounding them. And this, I've found, helps me with that how.

I've done things my own way for pretty much ever, and I didn't honestly know if that way was okay until my editor drew my attention to it. It was during the edits for Circle of Spies, my final Culper Ring Series book that came out last April. This was the part she drew my attention to--the previous chapter had ended with my hero and heroine in a train car, headed into Western Maryland's mountains:

     With the mountains came darkness, more from the moaning clouds than the descent of the sun. Thunder had been rolling for the past twenty minutes, and flashes of lightning danced around the hilltops.

     Marietta scooted closer and closer to his side, which Slade accepted with nary a complaint. He may only have another hour with her, so he would savor every moment.

When I wrote this, I wasn't really thinking too much about it. But my editor raved about this chapter opening, saying that authors seem to spend so much time crafting that perfect end-of-chapter hook, but they rarely pay attention to how they start a chapter.

A good point, but one I think a lot of writers ignore at first because they're so determined to show-not-tell that they don't want to fall for even a moment into narration. Sometimes, though, it's necessary. Here's another example, from Susan Meissner's Shape of Mercy (an absolutely breath-taking book, if you haven't read it!):

     I was alone in Abigail's house when I completed the diary. It was early Sunday, between two and three in the morning. I had finished reading the diary well before then, but my mind refused to be a dictation machine and simply decipher and type. I read, digested, pondered, and then typed.

     It was the only way to get through it.

     I read the final three words a dozen times before committing them to the digitized image.

     I am ready.

     I am ready.

     Ready for what?

Now, the style of this book involves having these diary entries in the text. The last chapter ended with said diary entry, with those three words. This new chapter, if we avoided all telling, could have just begun with "Ready for what?"

Instead, Susan takes a few paragraphs to ground us. To put us back into the character's head, draw us out of the diary entry, and give us a glimpse of her emotions as she put those words onto the page. She's still following Stephanie's "arrive late" advice--we don't go all the way back to her transcribing the entry. We're instead put in the scene after she's finished, then brought up to date on those emotions. This is one of those times when telling is brilliant, and used correctly.

This sort of chapter opening isn't always called for. If you're in a high action scene and you end the previous chapter with a high action hook, then you can just keep plunging on. But if you're:

• Changing locations
• Skipping time
• Switching POVs

then it might be an occasion to break out your narration skills and flex those prose muscles. Use imagery. Paint a word picture. You're still showing us what happened, but you're doing it from a bit of a distance before swooping down into the character's thoughts of that minute. This can be an incredibly effective tool. To use it, those paragraphs need to establish:

• Where we are
• When we are
• Whose head we're in

Meissner's book is in first person, so aside from the diary entries, it's always the same POV. That's easy. =) But she quickly establishes the (1) where: Abigail's house and (2) when: two or three in the morning.

In the example from Circle of Spies, I did switch POVs, so I cover (1) where: the mountains, (2) when: at least twenty minutes after the last chapter ended, toward evening, and (3) who: Slade's POV.

Simple guidelines, but they can make a big difference in your writing...and give you some time to use those word-images that might be too much when the action's pulsing strong later in a scene.

Now, chapter endings get a lot of discussion. Because they're important--that's what keeps a reader reading, so it's important to keep them interested. But there are different ways to implement this. Another of my editors made mention of my chapter endings in The Lost Heiress (coming September), liking how sometimes I end with a question, but sometimes it's with a truth to ponder. Chapter 2 ends like this:

     But the servant looked to him. “Excusez-moi, Lord Harlow. Forgive me for bringing such news, my lord, but—your father. There has been an accident on the mountain road.”

     His fingers went lax within Brook’s tightened grip. Clouds gathered before his eyes. “What kind of accident?”

This is a rather typical hook, one that makes the reader ask, "What happened to his father? What's he going to do about it? How is this going to affect the path he just started out on?"

But that's doesn't always work for a chapter ending. Sometimes the tension doesn't come from the action...sometimes it comes from the inner journey. Chapter 3 ends like this:

     The crinkling of paper drew her eyes open again, and Deirdre saw a bank note dangling before her.

     Eyes wide, she looked past the note and to him. “Why is it more than we agreed?”

     “Incentive.” He reached over the pew back and slid it into the handbag she’d set at her side.

     There was nothing she could do but say thank you. Even though she knew the devil never made a gift without demanding something in return.

It isn't an action hook--we don't wonder what happens in the very next moment. The scene is finished, and it will come as no surprise when the next chapter opens a week later, in a different POV. But it does make us ask what this character is going to do in the future, and what the consequences will be. And it hammers home that the man she's meeting with isn't a nice guy, and that she fears him, even as she does his bidding. This is, in fact, our first introduction to one of the villains of the story, and he's clearly set up as such.

I tend toward this type of hook more than some authors do...and have even occasionally seen reviewers mention it (back before I stopped reading my reviews). One reader mentioned that (I'm paraphrasing) I don't end my chapters with everything up in the air, like so many suspense books do [insert Roseanna groaning, "Oh, I'm doing it wrong! Why did my editors not make me work on that?"]...and that she appreciated that, because sometimes those feel so contrived, like they just randomly end a chapter in the middle of an action scene, when the next chapter begins with the very next sentence in said scene. [Insert Roseanna going, "Oh. That's okay then."]

The takeaway? There's more than one way to provide a hook. Yes, it can be to leave that chapter so early that readers literally have to keep reading or the heroine is still leaping through air and hasn't even hit the floor yet. That works.

But not every book has exploding cars that send us leaping. For stories that don't, we can still end a chapter with tension and a question--or a truth--even if our next chapter skips an hour or a day or a week or a year. This is also an effective hook. One that makes the reader ask what's going to happen next, but doesn't leave the chapter unfinished.

A few tips for crafting these hooks:

• End with a literal question, i.e. "What kind of accident?" or "He said what?"
• End with a statement that harkens to something from the scene. From The Shape of Mercy, we get "Abigail lied to me." and "That night I dreamed I was eating yellow peas." Not action-hooks, but readers will identify that something has shifted for the character, and it's vital.
• End with a truth the character is just realizing, i.e. "One small hint to make her wonder at all the blank spaces."
• End with action that grabs the attention and prepares the reader for a POV shift, i.e. "The unmistakable sound of breaking china came from the other side of the room, breaking the mood as surely as it had the plate." The next chapter opens with the character who broke the plate and shattered the mood.

Which one you choose depends on the point you are in the book--and it can also be helpful to remember that tension can come not only from something shifting or changing or going wrong for your main character, but with something going right for a villain. All of these things propel the story forward and make the reader want to keep reading--and that's what it's all about, not making sure they fit a specific formula.

Has a chapter ending or beginning jumped out at you recently as being great, either from your book or one you're reading? Share in the comments!