In this article, we begin discussing thriller novels by talking about suspense. How do we create suspense? How does it work within a crime novel to create a satisfying experience for readers?
It’s all about mood.
The label “thriller” encompasses a wide variety of fiction. In terms of popular genres, you’re likely familiar with legal thrillers, psychological thrillers, historical thrillers, and many more.
It is one of the most versatile types of book, because any story can contain elements of a thriller. That is to say, any story can be thrilling. As a result, they are incredibly fun to write, because thriller authors have a great deal of freedom in terms of subject matter, story structure, and the mechanics of the creative writing craft.
The key to every thriller is having the right mood, which demands that you create suspense for the reader.
How do we write with suspense?
I define good suspense as a combination of excitement and apprehension. I want to be desperate to know what happens next in the book, but I also want to experience a sense of dread.
You have to make the reader worry about the outcome of the story. Each new plot point has to change the game in such a way that the reader says, “Uh-oh, now what?” You should make your reader hope for a happy ending but fear impending doom for the characters.
The narrative in a thriller is built on layers of twists and turns that create both excitement and apprehension. Each layer changes the status quo in such a way that the reader senses the tension building, which makes them wonder when that tension will become too much. They instinctively know that the story can’t go on like that forever.
These layers build to an ending that pays off those feelings, arguably the most important part of a thriller–the end is the most cathartic stage of the reading experience, when the emotions are at their peak.
Writing with suspense entails creating, managing, and escalating that sense of impending disaster, as the narrative progresses from its inciting incident to the climax, at which point the protagonist’s life will be irrevocably changed.
There will either be a happy ending (what the reader hopes for), a negative ending (what the reader dreads), or a mix of the two. Perhaps an FBI agent catches the serial killer, but must compromise her personal values and identity to do so. Those complicated resolutions are the ones that will resonate with readers the most, because they keep you thinking long after you finish the novel.
The resolution in a thriller must be both surprising and inevitable. It must shock the reader. At the same time, when the reader considers the story in retrospect, the ending must make complete sense. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, they should feel like they should have seen the end coming all along.
Thrillers are built on hope.
To write a compelling thriller, you must manage the reader’s hope and fear. But how?
One of my favorite techniques is dramatic irony, when the reader knows more than the characters.
The most common example of this is found in horror movies, when a clueless character goes down into the dark basement. The viewer knows that the monster is down there, ready to rip asunder the poor soul’s head. But the character believes they’re making the right decision.
This creates a powerful sense of impending doom. We hope that they survive, but we dread the likely possibility that we’ll be saying goodbye to this character in a matter of seconds.
Another example…
In my first novel, No Hard Feelings, my protagonist–a hit man named The Apostle–believes the woman he’s seeing has betrayed him to the police and to a group of criminals, who want revenge for a crime he committed against them.
Chapter 11 opens with the woman–Eve–driving home from a date with another man, a detective no less. She’s feeling positive after meeting with him. The next scene shows The Apostle breaking into her apartment, where he plans to confront her about her alleged treachery. He’s irate, hurt, and desperate. And he’s a professional killer.
Eve has no idea that he’s waiting for her, but the reader does.
When you get to that scene, you hope that their encounter will end peaceably. But you dread more negative outcomes.
That’s how dramatic irony works. It plays on the reader’s hope and fear.
Hope is built on good characterization.
It is essential that your reader connects with the characters for this to work. It is required, or your thriller will be less than satisfactory and contain no emotional power whatsoever.
Read It, by Stephen King–a masterpiece of characterization. We get to know the Losers’ Club by seeing the intricacies of their dreams, apprehensions, and lives as both children and adults. The horror plot points in the novel are compelling and terrifying, because we become close enough to the characters for us to feel their dread along with them.
We hope and fear because they do, and King’s skill in creating and developing engaging characters is the key to that.
How to write characters that resonate with readers.
This subject is worthy of its own post (or series of posts), but I’ll keep it simple in this article.
Thrillers are known for their action-packed plots. In any story, there is an external narrative and an internal narrative. The thriller genre is driven by the external; that is, the events of the story–the conflict surrounding the characters.
But it’s the internal narrative, the conflict within the characters, that binds the reader to them on a human level. The internal conflict speaks to a human experience that we’ve all had or will have.
What makes this even more interesting is that it’s common for the reader to know what a character’s internal conflict is…but often the character does not. They typically learn it by the end, in a moment of revelation. “I thought I wanted x, but I needed y all along.”
The internal narrative also enhances our experience with the external narrative, because it adds to the plot’s stakes.
For example, let’s go back to that FBI agent/serial killer bit. The agent’s external objective is straight-forward: they want to solve the case. The plot of the novel will be built on that objective, as we follow the agent’s progress.
But what about the internal objective? Perhaps the FBI agent must solve this case to make up for some horrible thing they did in their past. Now the stakes are much higher. It’s not just a story about stopping a serial killer. The protagonist’s entire sense of self and subconscious journey for redemption now rides on the outcome of the case.
We’ve all experienced a time in life when we sought redemption, so we relate to that story. We hope that it resolves in the agent’s favor, because if they can find redemption, surely so can we. But we dread the negative ending, because we feel the same doom as the character.
For more information about external and internal conflicts, read the full article on how to use them effectively in your story writing.
Back to No Hard Feelings.
In my novel, The Apostle faces two tremendous conflicts in the scene where he breaks into Eve’s apartment.
The external conflict: he’s on the run from the police and a gang, and the woman he loves may have sold him out. The internal conflict: his father used to mercilessly beat him as a punishment. He became a hit man, a professional murderer, so that he would always be the most dangerous person in the room. So that no one could ever hurt him again.
The fact that the woman he loves is likely hurting him is too much for him to handle. It brings him back to his childhood, when another loved one caused him emotional (and physical) pain. He constructed his whole adult persona to avoid such torture, and now that persona is failing him.
He must find the truth about Eve for the sake of his sense of self, his identity, and his ability to find peace. All of which adds to the stakes of the external events in the chapter.
Because of that strong internal narrative, the reader feels connected to him and is more invested in the outcome of the scene. On top of that, the reader has spent enough time with Eve by this point in the story (chapter 11, remember) to know what her internal conflicts are.
When the two characters are in a scene of conflict together, the reader desperately hopes they’ll find happiness, while also dreading the opposite. In short, the chapter is suspenseful because it resonates with the reader on a human level.
Summary.
Okay, let’s review. To write a good thriller:
- You must write with suspense.
- Suspense is a combination of excitement and apprehension, hope and fear.
- Dramatic irony is a great technique for creating suspense.
- You must get your readers to connect with your characters for them to feel hope and fear.
- To make that happen, write compelling internal narratives that add to the stakes of your plots.
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