Thrillers Bring A Chill To The Chase

The main difference between mysteries and thrillers is how the plot is driven. Is it the puzzle that draws readers to your fiction? Or the seat-of-your-pants, dig-your-fingernails-in-and-hold-on careening of a hero in constant peril?

If it's the latter, you've come to the write - oops, right page.


An Incompetent Hero

One of the easiest ways to explain the difference between mysteries and more suspenseful fiction is to describe where the hero is coming from.

In mysteries, the hero is generally a competent man or woman who knows how to track a killer. His or her mind is keen and stabs straight to the point - and the culprit - two steps ahead of the reader. A trail of clues leads, and misleads, you as you wind your way through on the heels of this hero.

In contrast, the hero of a thriller (yes, it can be a woman, too) is plunged into peril without all the skills needed to survive. If he's going to make it and win over the odds - and the antagonist - he's going to have to learn to swim fast.

In essence, the hero becomes a hero through the course of his travails. That's a thriller.


Thrill Me

In order to write good thrillers, you need to create a roller-coaster effect. Your heroine is dragged helplessly up that first incline and flung over. From there, she's jerked left with no warning, then right, then hung upside down and spun.

In suspense fiction, like no other genre but horror, your reader begs to be sacred silly. Your rising action needs to be just that - rising. Up the ante with every chapter, leave your readers screaming, "No! Don't stop now!" at the end of every chapter, and you've written a winner.

How can you possibly accomplish this?

By careful plotting. By lots of "what if-ing". When you think you've made things impossibly horrible for your protagonist, think again. What's the worst thing that can happen now?

Make it happen. Your readers will thank you.


More Than You Bargained For

At its roots, this genre is out to over-deliver. Thrillers don't just thrill, they push the limits of setting, conflict and character to the stratosphere. Foreign countries, jobs you never knew existed (or didn't want to), ruthless people who'll kill for their beliefs - or for the money they get to betray the hero.

And while they're at it, this kind of suspense fiction delivers heaps of information you never thought to look for. Step into one, and you get an intimate peek at worlds you never knew existed. Foreign places, foreign subjects, foreign careers.

That's part of their thrill. So, if you're going to write in this demanding fiction genre, you better be prepared to research deeply.

Just make sure you don't fall more in love with your research than your characters. The technology of your story is not the main player. Your hero or heroine is.


Unhappily Ever After

If you're going to write big, you better end big. Without killing your readers' faith in you.

Yeah, you can screw up big time when you're writing thrillers. If you try to end with an overblown Hollywood-esque finale, you're dead. No keeping secrets until the last minute that should have been revealed earlier, either. If that bit of information should have come out in chapter ten, put it in chapter ten!

Don't be distant. A thriller is all about the thrill, the up-close-and-personal heart-thumping viewpoint. Don't ruin it all by telling us over the phone the antagonist is dead.

On the other hand, don't be gory for gore's sake. We don't need that either. Nor killers who rise from the not-really-dead for one last blast. We want to believe what's happening, right up to the end. Don't deny us.

If you tangled the heck out of your hero's life, think twice before untangling it in two pages. Give him justice (literally and figuratively if need be), and be thorough. On the opposite end of this spectrum, don't try to overdo an ending you didn't set up properly beforehand.

Last but not least, please don't cheat us. Don't sketch your ending without enough detail to wring out the last drop of sweat from our palms. Be kind, and soak us till the last... word.

Remember, we'll thank you for it.