Ending a Chapter (Prose Techniques)

(Img by Pierre Santamaria)

Closers are tricky. It’s all about leaving your reader with a reason to turn the page. Here’s a few techniques.

1. Foreshadowing

“This was the way summer should be. This was the way it was going to be. / Dale had never been so wrong.” – Dan Simmons, Summer of Night

“Amy wondered dully if she would be stuck on the hamster wheel forever, stuck in retail forever, stuck at Orsk forever. / But she didn’t have to worry. / Tonight would be her final shift.” – Grady Hendrix, Horrorstor

2. Stakes Reminder



“That, and a big sacrifice to…any other female goddess. / If I survived that long.” – Assaph Mehr, In Numina

“He should beware making enemies in the uncertain days to come”

“Whatever had crept under his skin would burn off with the sunrise. / He was sure of it.” – Stephen King, The Outsider

3. Motivation Reminder

“He’d give her a chance to fix it. But if he caught her with Aaron again, the break would never heal. / And to make it even, he’d break Aaron’s fucking neck.”

4. Ominous Repetition

“So do I,” Amos Hall replied, but the gentleness had gone out of his voice. “So do I.” – John Saul, Nathaniel

“It’s six months. A lot can happen in six months.”

“Everyone is changing and the change is not good. Not good at all.”

“She’d never thought of herself as maternal, exactly, but maybe she’d been wrong. / Perhaps she’d been wrong about everything.”

5. Humor

This one is hard to capture in a brief excerpt, since usually the humor builds on facts established earlier in the chapter. For example, in Ruth Downie’s Medicus, Ruso is given a cooking recipe that he believes he has no use for. At the end of the chapter, he chases puppies out of his room by throwing the recipe scroll at them. “So he did, after all, have a use for the recipe for venison gravy.”