How to Write a Thriller

How to Write a Thriller

Patrick Quinlan

Copyright © 2019 by Patrick Quinlan

All rights reserved.

www.patrickquinlan.com

Praise for Patrick Quinlan’s novels:

Tarantino-esque first novel about the past catching up with an ex-criminal turned children’s toymaker, and by extension with his young girlfriend Lola. Lots of villains and violent deaths plus likeable characters and some quirky humour. The first chapter – in which Lola busts her way out of a thoroughly nasty rape scenario with karate-kicking panache – would hook anyone.

-- The Bookseller (UK)

Graphic action and exhilarating chases ensue as Quinlan's characters play cat-and-mouse through Portland,...makes one hope that Smoke hasn't quit the life entirely. Lola is a fierce delight. -- Publishers Weekly

A fast and furious debut thriller notable for a vintage collection of really rotten bad guys. Characters to care about, even the no-goods. Readers may be bearing early witness to the arrival of a major talent. -- Kirkus Reviews

SMOKED should absorb any fan of Bruckheimer blockbusters and everything else that goes boom.

-- Entertainment Weekly

A fast-paced thriller...the story moves at warp speed, capped by a cinematic chase...before ending in spectacular fashion.

-- Los Angeles Times

Watch out for [SMOKED]. A superb debut. A great crime novel. Brilliant is the word.

-- The Independent on Sunday (UK)

This first novel is wonderful! What makes [SMOKED] so wonderful is an author who can write great prose, great set-ups, great dialogue, and create characters that jump off the page. Can’t recommend this enough for those of you who like your thrillers on the very dark side. -- Bookaholic

[A] breathless sequence of abduction, car chases and con jobs. Just what the doctor ordered for a Hollywood flick.

-- The Calcutta Telegraph (India)

[A] strong cross between Elmore Leonard and Quentin Tarantino doing Elmore Leonard. The result is tightly plotted, confidently written and very hip. -- The Sunday Observer (UK)

Quinlan's prose is as smooth as his character's dialogue and when the action hots up, its hard not to find yourself grinning with pure joy. Quinlan… does it with an infectious enthusiasm and a confidence that makes SMOKED a pleasure to read.

-- Crime Scene Scotland

One hell of an exhilarating ride. Certainly one of the better thrillers I’ve read this year. -- Shotsmag (UK)

Cue kidnappings, explosions, beatings, murders and car chases aplenty. Pacey, punchy and raw, this is one self-assured debut. - In the Air – inflight magazine of Qantas Airlines (Australia)

[A] thrilling ride that will keep you hanging on the edge of your seat. It will make you curse the fact that you need sleep.

-- Bullz-Eye.com

The story combines vicious villainy with threadbare morality to produce a bang that movie producers and script-writers would be sorry to miss. Once you've picked it up, it's hard to put it down. -- Channel NewsAsia (Singapore)

THIS is the stuff – violent, pacy, stylish and funny.

-- The Daily Mirror

You can work with me.

For a limited time, I am offering readers of this book the opportunity to work with me personally on their writing.

If you and I work together, I will:

- Read up to 2,500 words of a short story or excerpt of a longer work that you’ve written;

- Offer my personal edits, comments and suggestions on what you’ve written, consistent with the information in HOW TO WRITE A THRILLER;

- Give you my honest opinion about your story idea, including whether I believe it is saleable, and how I believe you should proceed, both with the story you’ve sent me, and also with your writing in general;

All for less than half of my normal consulting fee.

After you’ve read HOW TO WRITE A THRILLER, if this idea interests you, please see the chapter called Do You Want to Work with Me? at the back of the book. It will give you more information.

How to use this book:

Obviously, this book is yours to use however you like. What I recommend is read it through once in its entirety, to get the overall idea.

After that, simply refer to the parts you need, especially while you are working on a novel or other writing project.

The Table of Contents, which is on the next page, contains links to each chapter, for your convenience.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Who Am I?

What is a Thriller?

The 3 Major Elements of a Thriller

Major Element #1: A Strong Plot

Classic Story Structure

How to Generate Plot Ideas

Build Your Broad Outline

Plotting the Page Turner

Start with a BANG

Opening BANG Case Study #1: SMOKED

Opening BANG Case Study #2: GIRL, TAKEN

Writing Good Scenes

How to Create Suspense

The Plot Twist

A Word About Research

Major Element #2: Strong Characters

The Hero’s Journey

The Hero and the Villain

How to Write Convincing Characters

Major Element #3: Exceptional Writing

Tips and Tricks

How to Write Dialogue

Other Books to Read

Do You Want to Work with Me?

About the Author

Introduction: Who Am I?

Hello. My name is Patrick Quinlan.

Long years ago, when I was a young upstart, I had an ambition to become a novelist. Actually, it seemed more like a pipe dream than an ambition.

Those were different times. Ebooks didn’t exist, and the only way to break in was to go through the gatekeepers - literary agents and acquisitions editors at large publishing companies.

I didn’t know anyone in the industry. I didn’t have connections who could pull strings for me. I didn’t go to a fancy college. People I knew thought I was crazy for even considering this, never mind pursuing it. They thought I was wasting my time, or worse.

Sound familiar? I imagine you could say these same things.

Well, I did it, and so can you. I became a novelist, a writer of thrillers, and a somewhat celebrated one at that. My novel SMOKED was translated into four languages, became a bestseller in several places, and had three film options taken on it. In a real way, that book launched my career, and it’s a career that has already been satisfyingly long.

At last count, I’ve written or co-written more than 30 books and ebooks, under my own name and a handful of pen names, and I’ve made a nice living as an author for more than a decade. I am currently the ghost author of a series of USA Today- and Amazon-bestselling political thrillers. My books have delighted audiences all over the world.

As I get older, I find I have the urge to demystify the process of becoming (and remaining) a writer of books. I know quite a few things now that I wish I had known at the beginning. If what I share helps people, so much the better.

I invite you to join with me.

Maybe we’ll all learn something.

What is a Thriller?

Before we start to write one, we should probably agree on what it is.

To my mind, at its simplest, a thriller is a novel (or a movie, or a TV show), which creates vicarious excitement for the reader (or viewer).

Thrillers can take a lot of forms, from natural disaster epics, to crime capers, to spy novels, to science fiction, and beyond.

A band of lovable rogues sets off to steal the world’s largest diamond from an African despot? That’s a thriller.

A team of scientists and soldiers race to stop a giant asteroid from hitting Earth and wiping out civilization as we know it? Also a thriller.

A lone FBI agent is on the trail of a psychopathic serial killer? You guessed it. That’s a thriller.

Despite the wide variety of thrillers out there, all thrillers have some things in common. These include:

- A strong plot, which tends to follow a clear structure that we are going to discuss in great detail later in this book. The plot will tend to have a lot of action (hence the vicarious excitement), high stakes (lives are almost always at stake - sometimes the entire world is at stake), suspense (which there are many ways to create) and the good guys will struggle against nearly impossible odds.

- A hero and a villain, which we will unpack and spend a fair amount of time on. Suffice to say for the moment that thrillers are morality tales, and play out humankind’s fascination with the battle between good vs. evil. The hero is just about always on the side of good, and the villain… of course. Often, the hero and the villain are presented as starkly different, not just in their goals and attitudes, but even in how they appear. Think David vs. Goliath, white hats vs. black hats, an unstoppable and remorseless killer robot pursuing a terrified, vulnerable young woman through the nighttime streets of Los Angeles.

- Exceptional writing, which requires a ton of practice, but even here there are some shortcuts you can take, and I will try to identify them for you. The goal of exceptional writing, at least in the case of thrillers, is always to make the author disappear from the reader’s view. You want your readers to experience the story as if it is really happening, and they can’t do that if you are in the way.

Learning to do these things well is what this book is about. We will break down these aspects of a thriller in great detail in later chapters. For now, an important idea to absorb is that of creating vicarious thrills.

Thriller readers want a strong hero to identify with, and a strong villain to hate, but almost more than anything (and certainly more than other types of readers), they want the adrenaline rush of exciting, pulse-pounding action, spine-tingling suspense, and even paralyzing fear.

They want the luxury of experiencing these things, all without leaving their chair. And it’s your job to give it to them. If you can deliver these experiences consistently, there’s going to be demand for your services and you’re going to write a lot of books.

Are you going to become a world famous zillionaire who hangs out with rap stars and rock stars and movie stars? I don’t know. Probably not. I happen to know a couple of zillionaire authors, and they’re actually pretty reclusive.

More likely, what will you do is make a nice living from something you enjoy, and perhaps even love. I can tell you from personal experience that this is a great thing to do!

Naturally, I don’t have the market cornered on what makes a thriller. Other people have their opinions, as well. A very powerful editor at the top of the publishing industry in New York once shared with me the three elements he looks for in any good thriller, and before we go any further, I’m going to share them with you.

They are:

1. The book has a high-concept plot;

2. It creates a high-level of self-identification in the reader. In other words, the reader thinks, What would I do if that were me?

3. The story harkens back to, or provides images and feelings that are echoes from classic story-telling.

Let’s break these down a little more.

THE HIGH CONCEPT PLOT

High Concept: A story idea that can be expressed in one, short to medium-length sentence. Almost everything that happens in the story flows from the very concept of the book. A few examples of books like this include:

ABSOLUTE POWER, by David Baldacci

A burglar witnesses the President of the United States committing a murder, and the burglar gets blamed.

JAWS, by Peter Benchley

A great white shark terrorizes a summer beach community.

THE EXORCIST, by William Peter Blatty

Satan possesses a little girl, and a self-doubting priest must try to save the girl’s immortal soul.

JURASSIC PARK, by Michael Crichton

People are trapped on an island with live, cloned dinosaurs.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

A Vietnam veteran finds a million dollars in cash at the site of a drug massacre, and is pursued by a psychopath hired to get the money back.

One thing you might notice about all of these books is that they were all bestsellers, and they all became major motion pictures as well.

They are all quite different from one another. Yet they all fit the What I would do if that were me? criterion pretty well.

And they all echo classic storytelling to some extent. How so? Let’s take a brief look at each one in turn.

ABSOLUTE POWER, by David Baldacci

The idea of a powerful person committing a terrible crime, then trying to cover it up, is a theme that goes all the way back to the Greek tragedies, or if you prefer something a little more recent, Shakespeare.

JAWS, by Peter Benchley

A great fish caused problems for Jonah as far back as the Old Testament. Also, a great white whale gave Captain Ahab fits in Moby Dick. Indeed, the character of Quint in JAWS is the captain of his own ship, and is obsessed with killing the shark. Eventually, just like Ahab, he pays the ultimate price for his obsession.

THE EXORCIST, by William Peter Blatty

The serpent coming on to and tempting poor young Eve is quite literally the first antagonistic character in the Old Testament. The Evil One turns up in quite a few forms in many, many stories throughout human history.

JURASSIC PARK, by Michael Crichton

While less classic than the others, Jurassic Park has strong echoes of King Kong, and perhaps Treasure Island.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

This is essentially a tale of the Wild West, complete with a white hat, a black hat, and an ineffectual lawman, updated to take place in Texas in 1980. There is a high noon type showdown in a deserted town between the hero and the villain. In this case, high noon happens in the middle of the night. Two of the main characters are Vietnam War veterans (and one is a World War II vet), much in the same way the characters in the old westerns were often Civil War veterans.

Now that we have the broad parameters of what a thriller is, let’s dig into the nuts and bolts of what makes a thriller.

The 3 Major Elements of a Thriller

As we talked about in the last chapter, I believe that a good thriller has three major elements. They are, in order of importance:

A strong plot;

A strong hero and villain;

Exceptional writing;

A lot of people who are starting out as thriller writers get this list exactly backwards. They start at the wrong end. They’ve got a copy of Elements of Style and they spend a lot of time on the writing itself – the magic of the words, the turns of phrase, the sentences, the images, and the various etc.

Don’t get me wrong. You want to be able to write well, and having a copy of Elements of Style is a very good idea. It’s important to write well, but it’s not the most important thing.

Other people start in the middle of the list. They spend a lot of time on their characters, and feel like the characters should dictate where the action goes.

It’s great to spend time on your characters, and we’re going to be spending time on characters later in this book. But you increase your odds of success from the very beginning, by focusing on the thing that is most important.

And by the way, allowing your characters to dictate where the action goes is a recipe for disaster. We’ll see why when we start to talk about the most crucial element of any thriller, the plot, on the very next page.

Major Element #1: A Strong Plot

Imagine for a moment that a friend of yours has just read a novel that they really enjoyed, or gone to see a movie that they loved.

They call you on the telephone and they say, The book I just read is the best one I’ve read in years. You really need to read it.

In response to this, what do you say? If you’re anything like me, or most people, you’re likely to say: