Stop Ending Your Scenes with Success

Every scene you end with a success is slowly killing your novel’s momentum.

I’ve seen this pattern hundreds of times. A student with clean prose and characters readers actually care about. People quitting halfway through. No idea why.

The problem is always the same: every chapter ends with something resolved.

Readers stop reading when they feel closure. A chapter that ties things up is a chapter they can put down.

Here’s the rule I teach: every scene has 3 parts. A character wants something. Something blocks her. The scene ends with the goal unmet, complicated, or made worse than before.

Not melodramatically worse. Worse as in: a partial win that created 2 new problems. You get one door to close and 2 new ones to open.

That gap between what she wanted and what she got is what turns the page.

When a protagonist gets exactly what she wanted at the end of a scene, you’ve given your reader permission to stop. Give her a win with a cost instead. A solution that creates a new problem.

The reader should finish every chapter thinking “just one more.”

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