Dear
book lovers and authors,
I would describe myself as a bookworm, as
will most of you. We have survived the deaths of beloved characters, dangerous love
triangles and the disastrous movie remakes, but by far the most aggravating experience
is when you are in a tense situation, the author is skillfully building up the
climax and BOOM! You’ve run out of pages and don’t know any answers to the
vital questions raised. You take a deep breath and contemplate the worst
possible outcome. You quickly search for the next book release; your heart
breaks as the date says you have to wait a year for those crucial answers. How
do you survive? The only way you can! You read another book. You are ensnared
by the plot twists, love affairs and character developments and BOOM! It
happens again!
In the meantime a year has passed, you’ve
moved on, and then you see it gleaming in the window of your beloved bookshop
in the ‘NEW’ category. Every memory of heartbreak returns to you and you
convince yourself that you don’t need to save up money after all. You run home,
brush the dust off the first book in the series and bury yourself into the
familiar pages to make all the small details and characters clear in your mind
again. Once you finish, you feel refreshed and reborn. That is until the neglected
book you were reading in the meantime calls out, so again you jump into a whole
other world. Another book, another cliff-hanger, an infinite loop of suffering.
I do understand that authors have their
reasons. Sometimes the publishers suggest it as a way to make fans read the
next book and that’s acceptable, except when it gets to the point where fans
are camping outside book stores to buy it. That’s not what literature is about.
Literature isn’t about the money, it’s about the enjoyment of the book and
feeling as though you’re a part of the story. For instance, most of you have
probably read Harry Potter (what book worm hasn’t?), Rowling’s book made you
feel as though you were part of the trio; you stuck with Harry until the very
end, that is what a book is about. You take on that characters feelings and
experiences as your own. In Potter-world you are a student at Hogwarts and even
now you are still waiting for your letter (and argue that it got lost in the
post). But unlike some mercenary authors, J.K Rowling wrote such a well
conceived series that she didn’t need heart wrenching cliff-hangers to make the
audience read on. Each book is a carefully crafted narrative arc, one that can
be read and appreciated on its own as well as a part of a finely tuned series.
On the other hand, there are amazing authors
who still use cliff-hangers for reasons other than the monetary purposes. Rick
Riordan (author of the Percy Jackson series – famous for the most deathly
cliff-hangers) kept his stories consistently interesting and yet, he leaves his
fans in the pits of Tartarus because his cliff-hangers are that agonising. Riordan’s
writing style consists of the original incident being resolved but at last
minute giving birth to another incident as a consequence of resolving the last
one. You have the climax and the relief but with an after taste of “oh, for
crying out loud!”
However, you have to remember that there
are different kinds of cliff-hangers; some are expected, so you’ve already
prepared yourself for the heart ache, and some are just cruel. You have the
famous, most clichéd, ones that leave you questioning whether or not the
characters are alive or dead? Even though we all know that no author can kill
off the main character (if they do, the character always come back one way or
another) but what about that side kick, the innocent that has helped the
protagonist every step of the way? The one we say ‘aww’ at whenever they do
something? The side kick is the one that remains pure even with a bit of blood
on their hands? That type of character is the one that is typically killed off
to spark determination in the main character and then they normally solve the
problem at hand.
The nice kind of cliff-hanger is the one
where the story has been summarised but it’ll leave you with ‘what’s going to
happen to the characters’ lives now?’ Which is the one J.K. used the most
(thankfully). There are a plethora of others as well as these, endings where
everything seems hopeless and the villain has the upper hand, leaving you with
no idea how the characters are going to get out of their predicament; the
famous conclusion that’s normally used in romance fiction, involving the
character doing something they’re not supposed to be doing while the audience
knows this will lead to great consequences for them later on. You worry for
them, scared that the relationship is going to be destroyed or that they might
end up with the character you despise most, sometimes to the point that you
wish you could dive into the story and correct its course.
So, why do some authors choose not to
write the whole series and then publish it? Or at least plan out the whole
series in detail first so it won’t take as long to write? More often than not
it is because they love watching us, the devoted fans, squirm. You follow them
on Twitter for any news or insights. Some tease and give out clues, mostly
warning you. For example Rick Riordan loves to tweet hints in the form of
riddles or make death puns (e.g. a fan asked Rick how his book: Blood of
Olympus was going, he replied: “Everything is proceeding according to
plan. *Diabolical laughter*.”)
Authors have the power to make us feel
anything they want, they enjoy being Gods in our eyes and yet through all the
unforgivable plot twists we keep coming back. We can’t live without them and we
wait patiently for the silver linings, much like the characters who’s journeys
we all adore sharing. So, we pick up a book, encase ourselves in a new world,
invest in new characters and BOOM!
