Serialisation and the Art of the Cliffhanger

As Tuesday rolls to a close, I find myself contemplating this evening's entertainment. Nothing too flashy on the cards tonight, I'm just going to settle down in front of the TV.

Up until a couple of week's ago, I'd be tuning in at 9pm to CSI Miami. However, that all changed when the new season of Spooks (which is about MI5 agents and not a cheap rip off of Ghost Busters...) started and the aforementioned American show took a severe nosedive in quality.

I've watched pretty much every season of the spy show and I have to say that, possibly barring the excellent season one, this one is the best yet. The writers have really upped their game. It's so good I wouldn't miss an episode. The reason it's so compulsive is very simple. Serialisation. Yes, I know, pretty much every season runs in a series but this particular installment has one long-running storyline. In previous seasons the story lines tended to start and finish with a given episode wrapping things up nicely for a fresh crisis in the next installment. It was still good but I didn't feel as invested in it as I do the current season. This is such a great strategy to adopt as viewers will be hooked from episode one all the way to the end. It's the reason massive shows like Lost, Prison Break and 24 have done so well, and why, currently, Heroes is so popular.

It worked for the seventh season of CSI, too (the Las Vegas, original and best, version). This particular show was running the risk of growing stale in its seventh year (what's that about an itch...), plus it was facing stiff competition from its spin-offs set in Miami and New York. But as soon as the writers adopted the serialised formula it became compulsive, even unmissable. They introduced a serial killer format that the series had been crying out for and several long-running story arcs. The fact that the season was also innovative in terms of its story telling with some truly great cameos didn't hurt either, but I'm straying off the point. Back to serialisation...

This compulsion to know what the answers are, to discover the fate of the characters I have become so invested in and spent so much of my time with led me to thinking about how this 'serialisation' effect can be achieved in prose. Indeed, how it is readily employed by many writers, this notion of having one central story arc, throwing in subplots and dividing it into episodes which each - and he's the crucial part - have an 'I absolutely must find out what happens next' cliffhanger at the end of them.

Serialisation employed in this way in the TV equivalent of the 'page turner' in book form. Ever bought one an entire DVD boxed set of a show of this ilk and watch five, six, seven or even all the episodes in one go? It's the same thing.

Getting the viewer/reader to want to know more to get them hooked so they can't put the book down/are desperate for next week's show or immediately hit the button remote for episode two etc is such an important factor. Well, it is for me and the pulpy kind of writing that I do.

I was penning a chapter of Wyrd Dreams (short story coming soon - check out my previous posts for more details) a few days ago and I was coming to the end of what I had planned in my head. I got to a good bit, pausing to go get a coffee (it is my fuel, as I suspect it is for many) and when I came back I stopped. Purely by accident, I'd left it on a cliffhanger (it came about through I trick I use whenever I pause in my writing - either leave it mid-sentence... or leave it at a good bit, where you're aching to write more). I'd planned out a whole extra scene, I had dialogue in my head and knew where, originally, I was going to end it. 'This', though, I thought to myself, 'is so much better.' I'll reroute any extraneous but important information I was going to divulge in that 'lost' scene later on. I had my serialised episode. I had the nail biter I wanted. And what was I going to do for the next chapter? Shift focus completely. Just leave that previous scene hanging. Plant a question in the reader's head: 'What the hell is going to happen next?'

It's not a new idea. Dickens was doing it for years, reading out and publishing extracts/chapters of his books - the books we see and read today - one at a time. Pick up a copy of Great Expectations and you'll see a host of instances where Dickens leaves his story on an absolute cliffhanger.

It's a pretty old trick, tried and tested, well used by thriller writers the world over, but not one that's easy to master...