Cliffhanger Endings

    A cliffhanger ending is an ending that leaves the reader wondering what will happen next. It is a  literary technique that is used in films, short stories, novels and novellas and plays. As is true with all literary techniques, it can be used properly ior misused.  When used properly the reader will not feel as if the writer took the easy way out because he could find no other way to extricate himself from the complexities that his story generated.

     It that sense, it is similar to the deus ex Machina,  literally [God on a Machine, employed in Ancient Greece wherein an actor playing the role of God would by lower onto the scene by attached by ropes to a pulley in order to have him rescue the protagonist from a situation impossible for him to have escaped on his own.


  In short, it was a trick employed by the lazy minded play writers. It Didn't seem to anything bother the ancient Greeks but try it today, and you will quickly lose your reader. So as long as the cliffhanger ending isn't used in that way the writer is OK.


     There is also the possibility a reader expects all stories to have a conclusive resolution. In that case, t such a reader will deem such stories using a cliffhanger to be flawed or incomplete. The reader will feel that he needed to know what happened nest and that what happened next should have been included by default But used skillfully the cliffhanger endings do have their place and many a fine and fascinating a story has been concluded in that way.

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