Cliffhanger
Cutting the narrative at maximum tension — the character hanging from the cliff — to force continued reading.
The cliffhanger suspends the story mid-danger or mid-revelation: a chapter ending on a gunshot, an episode ending on an opening door. The term comes from serials where the hero literally hung from a cliff until the next installment. The device exploits a real psychological mechanism: an unfinished situation occupies the mind more than a resolved one.
Inherited from serialized novels (Dumas and Dickens were virtuosos), it's now the basic tool of series and page-turners. Its Achilles heel is debt: a cliffhanger promises, and the continuation must pay. Resolving the cliff with a pirouette ("it was all a dream") squanders trust — and trust is non-refundable.
Example
Chapter ends: "She recognized the voice behind her." Next chapter: elsewhere, three days earlier.