I especially appreciate your detailed advice. I often watch one of your videos just before writing because they always make me feel like I have a new angle to approach my story.
This is wonderful! I’m not a fiction writer, but I’m very sold 2 million+ copies of my computer programming books, by trying to use fiction principles. I started by adapting Save The Cat. Yes, the publisher thought this was absurd 😊. I leaned heavily on ending chapters with a question/mystery to help pull them through to the next chapter, but what you laid out in this video are simple and compelling ways for me (and my co-authors) to apply this 🙏
I am currently revising my novel and will implement these principles. So, thank you for this video. I will watch it more than once to remind me as I work on each scene.
All is still as I look at the wooden dock, the little sand beach, the… “Where’s the canoe?!” - Ending of Chapter 6 of my Novella: Hold my Beer, An Apocalypse 😊
Chatpers are a hopeless unit for plotting and writing. The smart way is to focus on scenes, and let them be as long as they need to be, then at theend decide on an average chapter length, and then place chapter endings on cliffhangers at approximately the places your chapter length average suggests.
Quickly I open the door, “Sash, what are you doing here?”, grinning with excitement I ask. Turning around to face me with tears streaming down her face, “I need your help Lex, I think I fucked up really bad.”, releasing a sob as she ran a hand through her hair, “No, I know I fucked up really bad.”, she bawled.
The stories whose endings I remember most is the open endings. Like a villain whom survived the final fight stating that it is his turn, or the main character is lost but not dead and his second-in-command replace him, or it is unclear but unlikely that a marriage will survive that the wife learned about her husband's adultry during the story.
The first two sound like cliffhangers which better get a sequel lol. This is only a personal thing, but while an open ending can work for me, a poorly done one will make me regret reading to the end wanting these to be resolved. It feels cheap. Forced, intentionally unfinished in a bad way, especially if the characters get the answer but it ends just before we do. I hate that stuff
"He looked at the water and blinked. The moon. There was no reflection. In the corner of his eye the shadows started dancing again. Then the water reached for him." The ending of the first chapter of my as of yet unnamed book.
Pleased to say I'm already way ahead in the game with these techniques to ensure there's never a dull moment or a too-well rounded ending. From the ending of my first chapter in my recently published debut fantasy novel 'The Meijadin Revelations': Berthold sat up and pressed his hands into the cover, its waxy texture almost sensual like the touch of a woman’s flesh. Suddenly it all made sense. Give such lofty ambition the respect it deserves by speaking it into words, and maybe it will happen. A small smile cornered his lips as he sat cross-legged on his bed, basking in herb-augmented communion with his prized possession. With this, he began again, now sure of the words to come. ‘I could…’ The words simmered on his lips like the steaming quench of freshly-hammered steel. ‘Conquer the world.’
This reminds me of the "yes but/no and" process to help discovery writers. The idea is your character has a goal for a particular scene, and your audience is asking "Do they succeed?" and you go "Yes! _But..."_ And you introduce a new complication. So you do that whether or not they succeed. At the very end it becomes "yes and/no but" so it's like "No he doesn't get to keep the money, but he does get the girl." One thought on the idea of the audience feeling cheated, that I think ties into this same process, I don't feel like the audience will feel cheated as long as the fakeout still progresses the plot in some way. I was watching two KDramas the other day and coincidentally they both had this kind of fakeout. In one this woman is extremely paranoid, and we're kind of used to her suspicions about strangers being wrong anyway. A man tries to enter her apartment in the middle of the night. In the next episode it's revealed that the person trying to enter her apartment was actually the landlady, and the man was a prospective tenant. The protagonist had already given notice of her intention to move to a new apartment, and while she feels the timing and the methodology was inappropriate, it didn't seem to me like an implausible scenario at all. When she hears they were trying the factory default code to her electronic lock - because she's paranoid - she tries to change that code the next day, but gets locked out of her apartment. This pushes her towards the male love interest, while she waits for a locksmith she is given the chance to stay in his apartment, and by chance, meets his mother. So the plot progresses. The other one was a little more contentious, I imagine, but still works, I think. At the end of one episode a man is seemingly accused of murder "It was you..." in the next episode it's revealed that they weren't talking about the murder at that particular moment, but something else that had been a mystery to them. This doesn't seem like a big deal though, because it still HEAVILY implicates him in the murder, and adds further fuel to the fires of an adjacent mystery, that being how or why the suspect acquired certain key pieces of evidence, both before and after the crime was committed. Additionally now he is dealing with the same suspicion the audience was left with at the end of the previous episode. So they were secretly "no but" scenarios. "No, we weren't actually saying he is the murderer, definitively, _but_ we're not NOT saying that - and also all this other stuff!" I also think, maybe if not EVERY chapter ends this way it's not going to be the end of the world. I found the ballroom example to be kind of tacky. If you're invested enough in the characters by that point I think the first example is enough to keep you reading. Second example is only a better ending if you were going to make that your point of tension anyway. But I know you already said it shouldn't be random.
Good tips. I'm reading court of thorns and roses now and maybe it's because I'm a male reader but I'm starting to get annoyed by the constant angst which at first I found to be strong undersranding of character voice. I think there's a balance to be had with dramatic chapter endings
In my WIP, Chapter XX: “Santiana”, ends like this: She dug her nails into the wood. Pushing, she hoisted herself out of her chair. Not a sound escaped her lips-not even a strained breath-as she pulled herself up onto the rails. She hung over the side on her stomach, her limp legs dangling behind her. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was how she’ll get her wish. Harper shut her eyes. And she let herself fall forward.
I don't worry about "chapters". I write the story without thinking about them and put them in after. They are not written separately and then assembled. They divide the story at the natural breaks, but the story is seamless. The story should hold the reader's attention and never quit. the "chapter breaks are there as a reference to help the reader keep their place.
I try most of the time to end my chapters at a suspenseful moment. Not always possible but hopefully engaging enough for the reader to keep going. Good advice to keep in mind for my current WIP.
Here is the end of my Chapter 1: He hit send, then turned back to the device. With steady hands, he began to disassemble it, packing each component carefully into his tool kit. Tomorrow, under the guise of routine maintenance, he would plant the seeds of revolution. As he worked, Marvin whispered to himself, echoing Vogler's words: "For the Belt. For our future." Above, on the surface, Psyche Station hummed with life, oblivious to the betrayal in its midst. And deep in the crevice, a community slept, unaware that their world was about to change. The revolution was coming, and there would be no turning back.
Here's one part. In my story the main character asks a Werewolf he just saved if he killed his Fiance, he shows him her picure, the Werewolf man answers "No, but I know who did". End chapter.
think of the drifting to sleep, I would have the MC make a big deal about the loud insects around her house during this season in the chapter. Then with the final strand of her conscience she notices she is falling asleep fast from the lack of chirping bringing her peace. Little does she know they are silent when something else, something bigger is creeping about.
Third chapter closing of my novel, Moon Dance: One other thing, he added. Please refrain from too many unauthorized pauses in time or your privileges may be revoked.
From Chapter Two of my WIP after the main character goes through a breakup with her boyfriend: There was nothing for me in New York now. My whole life was waiting for me in California, and I had to catch up with it while I still had time.
He momentarily thought he heard movement in the rocks but couldn’t distinguish where it was coming from. Suddenly, a sting on the side of his neck immediately made him dizzy, and he struggled to stay upright as he leaned against the boulders. Falling backward, he landed on the ground. A dark face loomed over him blocking out the sun. He couldn’t make out any features because the face was shadowed by the bright sky and inverted from his perspective. He gradually went to sleep to the lullaby whispered by the figure, “Rock-a-bye baby in the treetops. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall. Down will come baby, cradle, and all.” End of Chapter: SECOND LINE from Adult novel, MARDI GRAS RIPPER.
Totally unrelated but you might want to consider reorganizing your bookshelf... The vases in the background give you Minnie Mouse ears 😂 That said, great tips.
Then, amidst the myriad sounds, she heard a voice. It whispered, “Come now. Come. Into the circle where the ancient ones dwell.” She took a deep breath and stepped through the trees.
Hi Alyssa, what are your thoughts on the tiktok ban and how it could affect booktok and debute authors going forward? Would love to hear you speak on this. Thanks!
There's an interesting word: Unputdownable :) A nice video as always and very inputable :D Here's an ending of one chapter in my recent book: "As he watched the shoreline recede, a chilling thought gripped him. He had escaped for now, but the amulet hidden in his pocket pulsed faintly, as if echoing the whispers of unseen forces."
A possible question I would love for the next Q & A Wednesday. In my country, South Africa, the literary culture is a bit different than in the US and quite a few big publishing houses still accept unsolicited queries. With that in mind, what if I get full manuscript requests from a very good agent as well as from editors directly at publishers? The pros and cons are driving me mad. Is it better to rather go through an agent? On the one hand, through an agent, I have someone to fight for me, but directly I don't have to share my possible advance, but a share of a better deal is still more. Also, what if I receive a request from an editor directly, but when they hear I have acquired an agent, they may decide that they are not interested anymore? I've also heard that agents are your friend, while editors tend to gaslight you a bit in terms of what they can do for you. I know this sounds paranoid, but it's my one shot and I don't want to mess it up.
The POV character broke into a house. This is the end of the chapter: A beam of icy blue light sliced the room in half. Metal groaned as the garage door opened beneath her. Frozen, she stared at the light racing up the wall as their car crept inside, until it disappeared, plunging her back into the dark.
Ending of Chapter 1 of my horror novel BURIED SECRETS ON DARBYTOWN ROAD “ Before Meghan reached their mudroom door, she looked over her shoulder at the house and with sorrowful eyes mouthed, Sorry for your loss. A new owner will come along and everything will be fine. You’ll see” (Note the last bit is italicized but doesn’t come through in comments here.)
I received that compliment for my first two novels. They were published initially as ebooks and now have been published through Amazon as both ebooks and hardcovers. Another good but unique compliment that I received for my first novel: While reading my book, a woman would burst into giggling fits at the humor I'd injected into several scenes. Her husband - who doesn't read for pleasure - became intrigued, and he started reading over her shoulder. Not long after he started doing this, the book went missing. It turns out that her husband borrowed the book and took it to work. His laughter piqued the interest of his coworkers so much that he ended up reading my novel aloud to them. Only after he'd read the whole book for them did he return it to his wife so she could finish reading it. She ran into me a couple of months later, and she told me this story. I walked on air the rest of that day. And I was so tickled that I still remember this story about two decades later.
But what if I have the character drifting off to sleep... but have previously mentioned the demons that can come in her dreams to drag her off to Hell?
This was so helpful, thank you! Here's one of the chapter endings in my book: "Secure in the fact everything was locked up tight, I turned off the lights and went upstairs with the echo of the voices haunting my mind."
Ms. Matesic I've been following your advice for some time now. I hope this makes the cut. Thanks in advance. "The gravel crunches softly behind Max. An innocent sound he has heard countless times. This time, though, its convenience reeks of pure menace."
Before watching the video, I will assume that "Super glue surface cover" is the best answer. My book might be terrible, but try to read something else if you're glued to the pages, literally.
I have watched Alyssa's videos so often that if my book ever gets published, I will add her on my acknowledgement page.
That's so kind! Thank you so much!
I especially appreciate your detailed advice. I often watch one of your videos just before writing because they always make me feel like I have a new angle to approach my story.
Excellent advice. I consider each chapter as I would if it were a series on tv for crafting.
💯
This is wonderful! I’m not a fiction writer, but I’m very sold 2 million+ copies of my computer programming books, by trying to use fiction principles. I started by adapting Save The Cat. Yes, the publisher thought this was absurd 😊. I leaned heavily on ending chapters with a question/mystery to help pull them through to the next chapter, but what you laid out in this video are simple and compelling ways for me (and my co-authors) to apply this 🙏
I am currently revising my novel and will implement these principles. So, thank you for this video. I will watch it more than once to remind me as I work on each scene.
All is still as I look at the wooden dock, the little sand beach, the… “Where’s the canoe?!” - Ending of Chapter 6 of my Novella: Hold my Beer, An Apocalypse 😊
This is a great example!
Chatpers are a hopeless unit for plotting and writing. The smart way is to focus on scenes, and let them be as long as they need to be, then at theend decide on an average chapter length, and then place chapter endings on cliffhangers at approximately the places your chapter length average suggests.
Quickly I open the door, “Sash, what are you doing here?”, grinning with excitement I ask. Turning around to face me with tears streaming down her face, “I need your help Lex, I think I fucked up really bad.”, releasing a sob as she ran a hand through her hair, “No, I know I fucked up really bad.”, she bawled.
This is such good advice while I’m knee deep in developmental edits. So good as always.
The stories whose endings I remember most is the open endings. Like a villain whom survived the final fight stating that it is his turn, or the main character is lost but not dead and his second-in-command replace him, or it is unclear but unlikely that a marriage will survive that the wife learned about her husband's adultry during the story.
The first two sound like cliffhangers which better get a sequel lol. This is only a personal thing, but while an open ending can work for me, a poorly done one will make me regret reading to the end wanting these to be resolved. It feels cheap. Forced, intentionally unfinished in a bad way, especially if the characters get the answer but it ends just before we do. I hate that stuff
@@m8rs558 In the first case it was intended to be a cliffhanger but the next season was cancelled. The second was the ending.
"He looked at the water and blinked. The moon. There was no reflection. In the corner of his eye the shadows started dancing again. Then the water reached for him." The ending of the first chapter of my as of yet unnamed book.
Pleased to say I'm already way ahead in the game with these techniques to ensure there's never a dull moment or a too-well rounded ending. From the ending of my first chapter in my recently published debut fantasy novel 'The Meijadin Revelations':
Berthold sat up and pressed his hands into the cover, its waxy texture almost sensual like the touch of a woman’s flesh. Suddenly it all made sense. Give such lofty ambition the respect it deserves by speaking it into words, and maybe it will happen. A small smile cornered his lips as he sat cross-legged on his bed, basking in herb-augmented communion with his prized possession. With this, he began again, now sure of the words to come.
‘I could…’
The words simmered on his lips like the steaming quench of freshly-hammered steel.
‘Conquer the world.’
This reminds me of the "yes but/no and" process to help discovery writers. The idea is your character has a goal for a particular scene, and your audience is asking "Do they succeed?" and you go "Yes! _But..."_ And you introduce a new complication. So you do that whether or not they succeed. At the very end it becomes "yes and/no but" so it's like "No he doesn't get to keep the money, but he does get the girl."
One thought on the idea of the audience feeling cheated, that I think ties into this same process, I don't feel like the audience will feel cheated as long as the fakeout still progresses the plot in some way. I was watching two KDramas the other day and coincidentally they both had this kind of fakeout. In one this woman is extremely paranoid, and we're kind of used to her suspicions about strangers being wrong anyway. A man tries to enter her apartment in the middle of the night. In the next episode it's revealed that the person trying to enter her apartment was actually the landlady, and the man was a prospective tenant. The protagonist had already given notice of her intention to move to a new apartment, and while she feels the timing and the methodology was inappropriate, it didn't seem to me like an implausible scenario at all. When she hears they were trying the factory default code to her electronic lock - because she's paranoid - she tries to change that code the next day, but gets locked out of her apartment. This pushes her towards the male love interest, while she waits for a locksmith she is given the chance to stay in his apartment, and by chance, meets his mother. So the plot progresses.
The other one was a little more contentious, I imagine, but still works, I think. At the end of one episode a man is seemingly accused of murder "It was you..." in the next episode it's revealed that they weren't talking about the murder at that particular moment, but something else that had been a mystery to them. This doesn't seem like a big deal though, because it still HEAVILY implicates him in the murder, and adds further fuel to the fires of an adjacent mystery, that being how or why the suspect acquired certain key pieces of evidence, both before and after the crime was committed. Additionally now he is dealing with the same suspicion the audience was left with at the end of the previous episode.
So they were secretly "no but" scenarios. "No, we weren't actually saying he is the murderer, definitively, _but_ we're not NOT saying that - and also all this other stuff!"
I also think, maybe if not EVERY chapter ends this way it's not going to be the end of the world. I found the ballroom example to be kind of tacky. If you're invested enough in the characters by that point I think the first example is enough to keep you reading. Second example is only a better ending if you were going to make that your point of tension anyway. But I know you already said it shouldn't be random.
This one was invaluable, thank you!
Good tips. I'm reading court of thorns and roses now and maybe it's because I'm a male reader but I'm starting to get annoyed by the constant angst which at first I found to be strong undersranding of character voice. I think there's a balance to be had with dramatic chapter endings
In my WIP, Chapter XX: “Santiana”, ends like this:
She dug her nails into the wood. Pushing, she hoisted herself out of her chair. Not a sound escaped her lips-not even a strained breath-as she pulled herself up onto the rails. She hung over the side on her stomach, her limp legs dangling behind her.
Maybe this was it. Maybe this was how she’ll get her wish. Harper shut her eyes.
And she let herself fall forward.
I don't worry about "chapters". I write the story without thinking about them and put them in after. They are not written separately and then assembled. They divide the story at the natural breaks, but the story is seamless. The story should hold the reader's attention and never quit. the "chapter breaks are there as a reference to help the reader keep their place.
Great Advice!, Thanks
I try most of the time to end my chapters at a suspenseful moment. Not always possible but hopefully engaging enough for the reader to keep going. Good advice to keep in mind for my current WIP.
Here is the end of my Chapter 1:
He hit send, then turned back to the device. With steady hands, he began to disassemble it, packing each component carefully into his tool kit. Tomorrow, under the guise of routine maintenance, he would plant the seeds of revolution.
As he worked, Marvin whispered to himself, echoing Vogler's words: "For the Belt. For our future."
Above, on the surface, Psyche Station hummed with life, oblivious to the betrayal in its midst. And deep in the crevice, a community slept, unaware that their world was about to change. The revolution was coming, and there would be no turning back.
Thanks ❤
Here's one part. In my story the main character asks a Werewolf he just saved if he killed his Fiance, he shows him her picure, the Werewolf man answers "No, but I know who did". End chapter.
Love this! It's a great example of posing a question - now the reader wants to keep reading to learn who did it.
@AlyssaMatesic Yes, I usually end my chapters like this, with people thinking, "Wait what's next"?
think of the drifting to sleep, I would have the MC make a big deal about the loud insects around her house during this season in the chapter. Then with the final strand of her conscience she notices she is falling asleep fast from the lack of chirping bringing her peace. Little does she know they are silent when something else, something bigger is creeping about.
Third chapter closing of my novel, Moon Dance: One other thing, he added. Please refrain from too many unauthorized pauses in time or your privileges may be revoked.
From Chapter Two of my WIP after the main character goes through a breakup with her boyfriend:
There was nothing for me in New York now. My whole life was waiting for me in California, and I had to catch up with it while I still had time.
He momentarily thought he heard movement in the rocks but couldn’t distinguish where it was coming from. Suddenly, a sting on the side of his neck immediately made him dizzy, and he struggled to stay upright as he leaned against the boulders.
Falling backward, he landed on the ground. A dark face loomed over him blocking out the sun. He couldn’t make out any features because the face was shadowed by the bright sky and inverted from his perspective. He gradually went to sleep to the lullaby whispered by the figure, “Rock-a-bye baby in the treetops. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall. Down will come baby, cradle, and all.”
End of Chapter: SECOND LINE from Adult novel, MARDI GRAS RIPPER.
In other words, end chapters like Scheherazade.
“Time to go.”
“Back to the temple?”
“Yes, and no.”
Fallin glanced up at him, the question left unasked.
“We have somewhere else to go.”
Nice example - we want to know where that "somewhere else" is!
@@AlyssaMatesic Thank you!
Totally unrelated but you might want to consider reorganizing your bookshelf... The vases in the background give you Minnie Mouse ears 😂
That said, great tips.
I learned this a while back.
Then, amidst the myriad sounds, she heard a voice. It whispered, “Come now. Come. Into the circle where the ancient ones dwell.”
She took a deep breath and stepped through the trees.
Hi Alyssa, what are your thoughts on the tiktok ban and how it could affect booktok and debute authors going forward? Would love to hear you speak on this. Thanks!
There's an interesting word: Unputdownable :) A nice video as always and very inputable :D
Here's an ending of one chapter in my recent book:
"As he watched the shoreline recede, a chilling thought gripped him. He had escaped for now, but the amulet hidden in his pocket pulsed faintly, as if echoing the whispers of unseen forces."
most of my scenes end with thr MC sleeping, and start when she wakes up, but that's because I narrate everything else she does lol
A possible question I would love for the next Q & A Wednesday. In my country, South Africa, the literary culture is a bit different than in the US and quite a few big publishing houses still accept unsolicited queries. With that in mind, what if I get full manuscript requests from a very good agent as well as from editors directly at publishers? The pros and cons are driving me mad. Is it better to rather go through an agent? On the one hand, through an agent, I have someone to fight for me, but directly I don't have to share my possible advance, but a share of a better deal is still more. Also, what if I receive a request from an editor directly, but when they hear I have acquired an agent, they may decide that they are not interested anymore? I've also heard that agents are your friend, while editors tend to gaslight you a bit in terms of what they can do for you. I know this sounds paranoid, but it's my one shot and I don't want to mess it up.
I've already been doing this in my writing. Something I learned from watching 24 (TV series) in which every episode ended as a cliffhanger.
Prison Break, from around the same time, I thought was better at this.
Is it okay to query an agent with the same manuscript if you've made heavy revisions?
The POV character broke into a house. This is the end of the chapter:
A beam of icy blue light sliced the room in half.
Metal groaned as the garage door opened beneath her. Frozen, she stared at the light racing up the wall as their car crept inside, until it disappeared, plunging her back into the dark.
Ending of Chapter 1 of my horror novel BURIED SECRETS ON DARBYTOWN ROAD “ Before Meghan reached their mudroom door, she looked over her shoulder at the house and with sorrowful eyes mouthed, Sorry for your loss. A new owner will come along and everything will be fine. You’ll see” (Note the last bit is italicized but doesn’t come through in comments here.)
I received that compliment for my first two novels. They were published initially as ebooks and now have been published through Amazon as both ebooks and hardcovers.
Another good but unique compliment that I received for my first novel:
While reading my book, a woman would burst into giggling fits at the humor I'd injected into several scenes. Her husband - who doesn't read for pleasure - became intrigued, and he started reading over her shoulder. Not long after he started doing this, the book went missing.
It turns out that her husband borrowed the book and took it to work. His laughter piqued the interest of his coworkers so much that he ended up reading my novel aloud to them. Only after he'd read the whole book for them did he return it to his wife so she could finish reading it.
She ran into me a couple of months later, and she told me this story. I walked on air the rest of that day. And I was so tickled that I still remember this story about two decades later.
But what if I have the character drifting off to sleep... but have previously mentioned the demons that can come in her dreams to drag her off to Hell?
Hi🎉
This was so helpful, thank you! Here's one of the chapter endings in my book: "Secure in the fact everything was locked up tight, I turned off the lights and went upstairs with the echo of the voices haunting my mind."
First! Your great!
Thanks so much!
Ms. Matesic I've been following your advice for some time now. I hope this makes the cut. Thanks in advance.
"The gravel crunches softly behind Max.
An innocent sound he has heard countless times. This time, though, its convenience reeks of pure menace."
Thank you for responding, but I really wanted your insight regarding my chapter ending sample.
how about "impossible to put down" lol
One of my chapters ends with, "And then what he remembers next is pure black."
Before watching the video, I will assume that "Super glue surface cover" is the best answer. My book might be terrible, but try to read something else if you're glued to the pages, literally.
“She closed her eyes and slowly drifted off to sleep. Just then, an alien spacecraft arrived and forty-two bloodthirsty Krangires stepped onto Earth.”
Talk about a dramatic turn of events! Nice!