Thriller Fiction

The thriller thrives on extraordinary situations with a high emotional thrill. As a thriller writer your aim is to keep the reader sitting at the edge of their chair as they wait for your next swipe at your protagonist. You want to make your book, that book they can’t put down. The one they are caught reading in the middle of class as you keep them tense and dangle an impending sense of doom.

The plot structure will often depend on exactly what sub-genre of thriller fiction you have decided to write on. It can be a psychological, crime, political or paranoid thriller, but basically, the villain will present the protagonist with a problem and he/she will go through a lot of danger to solve it. The most critical element is that it be fast-paced with plot twist, cliff hangers and red herrings.

Common themes include international intrigue, ransoms, heists, revenge, kidnappings, stalking, death traps, paranoia, threats to the country, espionage, assassins, electronic surveillance. Unlike the mystery, in thrillers, cover up of important information is allowed as the main aim is to keep the reader on the edge of their seat and not solving the problem. The primary theme is the search for justice.

As opposed to whodunit mystery fiction, thrillers require that the protagonist stop the crime before it happens.  Evidently the protagonist will have some kind of time limit within which they must stop the crime. The criminal may be known but somehow they can’t be exposed because the protagonist is not in a position to reveal it or the authorities are disbelieving of the grandiose claims of your hero/heroine.

In the course of the story there is often a shift in the balance of power from scene to scene where sometimes the bad guys have the upper hand and sometimes the good guys seem like they could actually take this one. With each page the stakes are raised, the excitement level increases until it gets to the climax – the most stressful part of the plot. The hero stops the enemy with a lot of pomp and fanfare.

Compared to other forms of fiction, character development is pretty limited as the concentration is on providing non-stop action. In this type of fiction there is often no middle line, the main characters are either good or evil.  The thriller like horror fiction has a villain driven plot. The antagonist presents obstacles that the hero must overcome. The villain is initially stronger than the protagonists. 

The point of view is dominated by the protagonist. Often the protagonists may be an ordinary citizen, however he should be tough and resourceful. He/she must face eminent death (their own or somebody else’s). The protagonist and villain battle at both a mental and physical level testing both wits and strength.  The character development is pretty limited as the concentration is on the action.

You can set up your characters in ordinary settings like suburbs and cities or exotic setting such as deserts or the high seas. They may involve traipsing through varying geography or they may be home-bound, as long as it supports the action component.