Question about writing a thriller

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by crich70

I'd say use humor sparingly to break tension if it gets too high. If you use it too much then the story becomes slapstick.

To a certain extent real people do sometimes appear in fictional stories but you have to be very careful especially when you have living people involved. Otherwise you can find yourself the defendant in a lawsuit.

I think it would make a story more intense and full of tension if the hero slowly builds up to what the baddie is doing. You see it all the time in TV shows like "Criminal Minds." Someone is missing or a body is found and the team investigates it. Then it turns out that what was thought to be one crime is actually multiple crimes and then the race is on to find clues that point to who the killer is before he/she can kill their next victim.

It's going to be flat-out funny though. In the skeleton of a thriller though. I don't know what the genre will be. Genre-less probably.

Yep, will stay away from real people. Life is hard enough without getting sued.

I like the advice ala "Criminal Minds." Have seen that sort of thing so many times and it really works. Think my protagonist would know the full extent of what the antagonist is up to by say the 25% mark? (I'm looking for a %.) That sounds right to me anyway.

Thanks buddy.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

It's going to be flat-out funny though. In the skeleton of a thriller though. I don't know what the genre will be. Genre-less probably.

Yep, will stay away from real people. Life is hard enough without getting sued.

I like the advice ala "Criminal Minds." Have seen that sort of thing so many times and it really works. Think my protagonist would know the full extent of what the antagonist is up to by say the 25% mark? (I'm looking for a %.) That sounds right to me anyway.

Thanks buddy.

You're quite welcome Gregg. I agree with you that the Criminal Minds idea is seen in a lot of dramatic story lines. Probably because as you noted it does work so well. I'd think that every storyteller from the days of Aristotle and Homer onward has used it.
I think if you go by the idea of 4ths you can't go very wrong. By 25% he's sure there is a problem at 50% he thinks he's well on the way to solving it but then something goes wrong and he has a big setback. By 75% he's rapidly approaching the showdown with the villain and then of course comes the final fight and the aftermath or resolution. In screen plays they map it out as six key points. It's also known as Aristotle's Incline.
1. Opening
2. Plot Point One -25%
3. Midpoint - 50%
4. Plot Point Two - 75%
5. Catharsis - the final showdown
6. Wrap-up (where everything is right with the world again)

[Penforhire]

Adding a lot of humor is difficult to do without breaking the tense mood. For a good modern example I think Harlan Coben goes to the very edge, and sometimes beyond, in his Myron Bolitar thrillers.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by crich70

You're quite welcome Gregg. I agree with you that the Criminal Minds idea is seen in a lot of dramatic story lines. Probably because as you noted it does work so well. I'd think that every storyteller from the days of Aristotle and Homer onward has used it.
I think if you go by the idea of 4ths you can't go very wrong. By 25% he's sure there is a problem at 50% he thinks he's well on the way to solving it but then something goes wrong and he has a big setback. By 75% he's rapidly approaching the showdown with the villain and then of course comes the final fight and the aftermath or resolution. In screen plays they map it out as six key points. It's also known as Aristotle's Incline.
1. Opening
2. Plot Point One -25%
3. Midpoint - 50%
4. Plot Point Two - 75%
5. Catharsis - the final showdown
6. Wrap-up (where everything is right with the world again)

That's just the sort of thing I'm looking for. (I copied and pasted it.) One final thing is bugging me.

So my protagonist is little by little becoming aware of what the antagonist is planning (the antagonist's dastardly deed). At the very beginning my protagonist knows something is going but isn't sure what. At 10% she's getting a rough idea of what's going on, but it's still very uncertain. At 25% it's substantially clearer. Then say at 50% she finds she wasn't quite right about her ideas about it. She has to re-adjust her thinking but now she's really pretty much on to the dastardly deed. And say at 75% she knows for absolute sure what the planned dastardly deed is. And then the rest of the book is her frantic rush to stop it from happening.

Does that sound about right?

See, I'm just so used to other books that say, 'get the inciting incident out in front of the readers RIGHT AWAY or you'll lose them.')

Thanks again.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

Adding a lot of humor is difficult to do without breaking the tense mood. For a good modern example I think Harlan Coben goes to the very edge, and sometimes beyond, in his Myron Bolitar thrillers.

Read "Tell No One." Will check out the Bolitar ones too. Thx much.

[Gregg Bell]

One last thing. (I feel like Columbo.) If I want my antagonist to live on to the next book, how do I have an effective final showdown scene? Thank you!

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

That's just the sort of thing I'm looking for. (I copied and pasted it.) One final thing is bugging me.

So my protagonist is little by little becoming aware of what the antagonist is planning (the antagonist's dastardly deed). At the very beginning my protagonist knows something is going but isn't sure what. At 10% she's getting a rough idea of what's going on, but it's still very uncertain. At 25% it's substantially clearer. Then say at 50% she finds she wasn't quite right about her ideas about it. She has to re-adjust her thinking but now she's really pretty much on to the dastardly deed. And say at 75% she knows for absolute sure what the planned dastardly deed is. And then the rest of the book is her frantic rush to stop it from happening.

Does that sound about right?

See, I'm just so used to other books that say, 'get the inciting incident out in front of the readers RIGHT AWAY or you'll lose them.')

Thanks again.

As I understand it the inciting incident doesn't have to be something that's right in the character's face. It's just something that starts to bring the character's attention to what is going on. in "Hound of the Baskervilles" the inciting incident is that Dr. Mortimer (who has left his walking stick behind him) at Holmes rooms after calling on him and Dr. Watson returns for it and tells them of the legend of the hound and the death of Sir Charles Baskerville. He's seeking advice on what to do with Sir Henry Baskerville who is to inherit the estate. Up til that time Holmes knew nothing of the family or the legend. They then meet Sir Henry and learn of the incident of a missing boot and the story goes on from there.
In "Murder on the Orient Express" the inciting incident is that M. Poirot is traveling back to England after solving a mystery for someone he knew long ago. He takes a berth on the Orient Express and a man approaches him wanting to employ him as a bodyguard. He refuses and the man is later found murdered.
In "A Christmas Carol" all seems right in Scrooge's world he has no desire to change and then Marley's Ghost appears to him and the story is off. You don't need a big incident to start with, just one that matters to the character. Holmes interest is piqued by a new client, Poirot wants to know why the man was murdered, Scrooge finds that he is to be haunted by three spirits of Christmas.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

One last thing. (I feel like Columbo.) If I want my antagonist to live on to the next book, how do I have an effective final showdown scene? Thank you!

You could have him appear to be killed but really escape. Or it turns out that the antagonist is in the employ of the real villain. Maybe for example he's been getting calls or text messages from someone else (who isn't seen) through out the book. And in the next book the hero discovers that the mysterious contact of the previous villain is the real mastermind. It's a fair technique as long as you plant clues like the calls/texts that point to the possibility. Maybe your hero saw some texts or phone records and assumed (in error) that it was an underling checking in with his boss.

[Gregg Bell]

I'm getting it, crich. Excellent suggestions. Yeah, I was looking at the "inciting incident" the wrong way. (Kind of confusing the inciting incident with the full revelation of the antagonist's dastardly deed.

And I'm realizing now I can have a dramatic showdown ending with the antagonist surviving it.

Thanks for all your help with this.

[Gregg Bell]

My latest question about how to write a thriller. A knowledgeable friend said that in a thriller:

In the actual novel, you'd refer to the effect of the antagonist’s actions like you would changes in the weather or symptoms of a disease. Agents of the villain could be revealing plot points to the protag, not the villain directly. If the protag doesn't know who is causing the problems, this could be difficult and confusing and that makes the plot more like a mystery--finding out who done it plus saving the day.

This underlined part made me wonder, because in the book I’m writing, the protag IS very uncertain as to who the antagonist is. I mean, she knows IN GENERAL who the antagonist is. But the antagonist is a shadowy evil mastermind, who is very elusive and reclusive. So when something bad happens, the protag says: ‘oh, this is the work of the antagonist.’ But as the novel progresses, she starts wondering if this character, (who say, did something seemingly sympathetic to the antagonist’s evil goal) or that character might be the antagonist. (And I am having fun writing it that way—and I think it adds to the tension and suspense.) To me, although my book is NOT a spy thriller, it’s like a spy thriller, where the protag doesn’t know who is the bad guy (and the guy she thought was a good guy can turn out to be the bad guy, which can also be a part of a big twist) at first and only slowly comes to know more surely who he is. And then only at the very end is she really sure, and then maybe not even entirely because her not being completely sure can set up a hook for the next book.

So my question is: am I going to be “causing problems” as my friend said, turning my thriller into more of a “who done it” mystery by doing it the way I’m doing it, or am I okay?

THANK YOU!

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

My latest question about how to write a thriller. A knowledgeable friend said that in a thriller:

In the actual novel, you'd refer to the effect of the antagonist’s actions like you would changes in the weather or symptoms of a disease. Agents of the villain could be revealing plot points to the protag, not the villain directly. If the protag doesn't know who is causing the problems, this could be difficult and confusing and that makes the plot more like a mystery--finding out who done it plus saving the day.

This underlined part made me wonder, because in the book I’m writing, the protag IS very uncertain as to who the antagonist is. I mean, she knows IN GENERAL who the antagonist is. But the antagonist is a shadowy evil mastermind, who is very elusive and reclusive. So when something bad happens, the protag says: ‘oh, this is the work of the antagonist.’ But as the novel progresses, she starts wondering if this character, (who say, did something seemingly sympathetic to the antagonist’s evil goal) or that character might be the antagonist. (And I am having fun writing it that way—and I think it adds to the tension and suspense.) To me, although my book is NOT a spy thriller, it’s like a spy thriller, where the protag doesn’t know who is the bad guy (and the guy she thought was a good guy can turn out to be the bad guy, which can also be a part of a big twist) at first and only slowly comes to know more surely who he is. And then only at the very end is she really sure, and then maybe not even entirely because her not being completely sure can set up a hook for the next book.

So my question is: am I going to be “causing problems” as my friend said, turning my thriller into more of a “who done it” mystery by doing it the way I’m doing it, or am I okay?

THANK YOU!

I'd say you are probably ok. If the protagonist knew exactly who the antagonist was what would keep him/her from taking action that might neutralize the threat of the Mastermind? You could say that 'good guys don't do x' but then there are the anti-heroes who can even get away with that maybe. I think part of the suspense of a thriller is that the protagonist can't prove right away that character x isn't what he/she appears to be and can't just shoot him or have him arrested etc. because they have no proof against the baddie. Would Prof. Moriarty be such a big problem to Sherlock Holmes if Holmes could just give evidence to Scotland Yard and have him taken into custody? I doubt it. And if it was easy to catch Count Dracula would we read through to the end of Dracula to see how he gets it? Unlikely. It's the fact that the good characters can't just solve their problems easily that makes the stories as interesting as they are (I think).

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by crich70

I'd say you are probably ok. If the protagonist knew exactly who the antagonist was what would keep him/her from taking action that might neutralize the threat of the Mastermind? You could say that 'good guys don't do x' but then there are the anti-heroes who can even get away with that maybe. I think part of the suspense of a thriller is that the protagonist can't prove right away that character x isn't what he/she appears to be and can't just shoot him or have him arrested etc. because they have no proof against the baddie. Would Prof. Moriarty be such a big problem to Sherlock Holmes if Holmes could just give evidence to Scotland Yard and have him taken into custody? I doubt it. And if it was easy to catch Count Dracula would we read through to the end of Dracula to see how he gets it? Unlikely. It's the fact that the good characters can't just solve their problems easily that makes the stories as interesting as they are (I think).

Thanks crich. What you say makes sense. If it's a done deal who the antagonist is, a HUGE opportunity for building tension is gone. I guess, the one thing with my story is I'm not planning on having the antagonist known (like Prof. Moriarty). It will be more like, one character says the antagonist is something (or someone) and someone else says something different. Thanks for the feedback. Priceless.

[Anna Drake]

Oh dear, I'm going to be bashed for this, but I say: Take a Dan Brown novel. Find a different premise, and copy, copy, copy. I mean, that man DOES thrillers to death -- and well. By copy, I'm suggesting you study how he keeps building up the tension. That's the way to do a thriller, even if he tends to repeat himself, a little. (BTW, that's why I stopped reading Evaonvich, every book repeated the same shtick over and over.) With Dan Brown, he releases few enough books that the system seems to work. At least that's my guess based on sales figures.

[Pulpmeister]

If you can find it, get

How to Write Best Selling Novels, by Dean Koontz.

It was written quite a few years ago now, so the opening section on the market etc is out of date, but the guts of the book is everything you will ever need to know on narrative hooks, plot, characterisation, use of locations, research, writing techniques, grammar, dialogue, even writing your way out of trouble--a master class by someone who knows what he is talking about.

On the question of the humorous thriller, Koontz has written those, too, and uses one as an example.

In his book he quotes from his own books as examples, because, as he explains, that way he could be quite sure what the author was trying to do, and because he didn't have to muck around getting copyright clearance from other authors.

The essence of the thriller is that the protagonist starts off in some sort of bad trouble; in making efforts to get out of trouble, the protagonist's troubles increase, until at last the issue seems to be resolved, there's light at the end of the tunnel, and finally one last, terrifying calamity which is resolved at the last minute.

An example vivid in my mind is Hammond Innes "The Angry Mountain", written just after WW2, in which the hero, a one-legged former RAF pilot, now a businessmen, goes to Czechoslavakia on a business trip just as the Communists consolidate their hold; and by the time it's over, the ex-pilot is fighting to save his life, and those of others, and escape from the encroaching lava flows from erupting Vesuvius outside Naples.

Innes was stationed at a RAF base close to Vesuvius when it blew up in 1944, and he has moved that eruption to about 1946 or 47 for the purposes of the novel; and bloody hell, you really feel what it's like to be trapped inside a village as walls of slow-moving lava steadily crush it.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Anna Drake

Oh dear, I'm going to be bashed for this, but I say: Take a Dan Brown novel. Find a different premise, and copy, copy, copy. I mean, that man DOES thrillers to death -- and well. By copy, I'm suggesting you study how he keeps building up the tension. That's the way to do a thriller, even if he tends to repeat himself, a little. (BTW, that's why I stopped reading Evaonvich, every book repeated the same shtick over and over.) With Dan Brown, he releases few enough books that the system seems to work. At least that's my guess based on sales figures.

I tried to read "Angels & Demons" and just couldn't get into it. I have no interest in the subject matter of "The Davinci Code." Can you recommend a different one? And I don't think Evanovich is a thriller. It's more about humor and romance. Thanks for the input.