The use Cliffhangers? brain is wired to crave complete stories; therefore, the lack of an ending creates dissatisfaction. This happens thanks to a psychological effect of unfinished business: the Zeigarnik effect.
Development or Knot
This effect was named after Soviet researcher Bluma Zeigarnik, who discovered that people industry email list tend to remember unfinished or pending tasks better than those that have already been completed.
In 1927, the researcher published a study in which volunteers were asked to complete a series of mathematical exercises and solve riddles, among other activities. During the study, they were interrupted before completing the exercises. Ninety percent of the volunteers preferred to stay until they had completed all the exercises.
Finally, it was shown that participants were better able to recall tasks they had been unable to salesforce marketing cloud complete due to the interruption than those they had successfully completed.
The brain is wired to crave complete stories; therefore, the lack of an ending creates dissatisfaction. This happens thanks to a psychological effect of unfinished business: the Zeigarnik effect.
Examples of Cliffhangers
People are accustomed to cycles and closures. Unfinished stories or jokes without punchlines leave people feeling a bit uncomfortable. Undoubtedly, the Zeigarnik effect is used in film, literature, and TV series due to the dependency effect that an unfinished resolution creates in the viewer.
If you want to capture people’s attention through stories, it’s essential to understand how the brain responds to these types of resources and stimuli. To illustrate cliffhangers in more detail, let’s analyze the case of Netflix.
Netflix is one of the clearest current examples of the use of cliffhangers. The multi-season europe email series format has managed to reach and engage all types of audiences around the world. This is largely due to the use of cliffhangers, through loose ends and unfinished business.
To learn how to use cliffhangers, we’ll look at the parts that make up the structure of any narrative.
Introduction
The introduction is the general presentation of the characters and the plot. It is the story before the protagonists appear in the story.
In this stage, the action begins. The characters find themselves involved in hostile situations. Here, the character develops a moral or physical evolution, seeking a way to solve the problem and return to normalcy.