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To be a successful writer in a genre, you have to read a lot of books! Genre writing is quite specific in that people have expectations and if you don't meet them, the reader is disappointed. I am currently writing a thriller and want to satisfy my potential readers by giving them what they want in the genre as well as interesting new writing. Therefore, I have identified what I like in a thriller and am aiming at providing that in my own books.
Incidentally, some of my favorite thriller writers include James Rollins, Matthew Reilly, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Steve Berry, and yes, I like the Dan Brown series! My own novel, Pentecost (later re-published as Stone of Fire), is Lara Croft meets Robert Langdon in a smackdown biblical action-thriller.
The things I want in a thriller novel include: a gripping story, a page-turner, escapism and a way to get out of my life for a time, myth/religion/spirituality in theme, education of some sort e.g. new facts about a topic or a place, different locations and information about them, preferably exotic!, high body count and violence without being too graphic.
I download a lot of samples onto my Kindle and delete a whole load almost immediately if they don't fit the bill. I am aiming that my novel fits my criteria.
View Comments (5)
If the story is good, I don't really care if the setting is an exotic place or who the bad guy is. Just as long as it's a good story.
But in a thriller, suspense and pacing should be considered extremely important!
I write fantasy, and I read fantasy almost exclusively, by choice. I also read in lots of other genres, but that's because my publisher produced them and I read everything my publisher does. I do believe that you have to read what you write if you want to do it well, and that a thorough grounding in the genre is more valuable than any degree of academic training. In my case much of what I learned from reading, even when it was excellent, was put to use in trying to avoid doing the same things. Some books were more valuable as negative examples of how not to write.
Marc Vun Kannon
http://authorguy.wordpress.com
That's great Marc, and I agree. I have analysed a number of popular thriller writers in the area I like. I have broken down chapters and worked out how long chapters are, and really tried to understand what makes the thriller work (the type I like anyway!)
As you say, it is an education in itself knowing your genre which means knowing your audience and their expectations.
One of my favorite authors is Donald Westlake, with his absurd characters and ridiculous situations (the best: Castle in the Air). When I started 'Shadows of Duluth', it was intended to be a serious crime drama, but with the unexpected addition of a stolen purple portable toilet, it took a major turn toward farce, and never looked back. I felt as though I was channeling Mr. Westlake, enjoyed writing more than I ever have before, and ended up with a story that makes me laugh out loud. I hope my readers will enjoy it as much!
I took a book out of the library called "The Hundred Greatest Thrillers" or something like that and I noted down some titles that looked interesting. One that I hunted down and read because it seemed so different from most of the others was "Summer Lightning" by P. G. Wodehouse. It's a comic novel but it has plots within plots and secrets and hidden identities--the works!
But what everybody is stealing and hiding or looking for, etc. are a prize-winning pig and a scandalous unpublished memoir...
It's a wonderful book to read but it was also interesting to think about it as a thriller--a thriller with no serious menace, only comic violence, and about the lowest stakes imaginable. If you subtract those traditional thriller items from your book without compromising its page-turner status everything else, especially the pacing and the plot, has to be close to perfect!