How To Write Thrillers, Horror, Mystery, And Crime Fiction

I write action adventure thrillers as J.F. Penn, along with crime novels set in a darker London and folk horror rooted in the English landscape. The craft of these genres is what I love talking about most on the podcast.

Readers of thrillers, horror, mystery, and crime know exactly what they want. Deliver it, and they will follow you through a series for years. Miss the tropes, or get the details wrong, and they will tell you.

This page gathers everything on The Creative Penn about writing in these genres: my own tips, interviews with authors, police officers, an FBI agent, and a martial artist, and articles on getting the details right. Start with genre itself, then go to your corner of the dark side.

Understand your genre first

The Anatomy of Genres with John Truby. What genre is, what each one promises readers, and how transcending it can improve your fiction. The best place to start.

Story Genius with Lisa Cron. How to use brain science to write a riveting novel, whatever the genre. An older episode, but the ideas hold.

The Joy of Genre Mashing: 5 Tips for Writing Cross Genre. Write the stories you want to read, never tell only one story at a time, and remember everyone is the hero of their own story.

Writing Cross-Genre with P.D. Alleva. Why cross-genre fiction takes longer to find an audience but pays off in the long run, and how horror can help readers work through trauma.

Thinking of changing genre? Hear how Sacha Black, Anna Sayburn Lane, and Dan Padavona pivoted, and Betsy Lerner on finding your voice across genres.

Thrillers and action adventure

In 7 Tips for Writing Action Adventure Thrillers, I share what I’ve learned from writing the ARKANE series, with excerpts from other thriller writers. The tips are:

1. Put your characters in difficult and dangerous situations
2. Include a ticking clock
3. Feature a MacGuffin
4. Research thoroughly. Details matter
5. Help your readers escape into an exciting setting
6. Use quotes for inspiration, but be careful with attribution
7. Write a series

Writing Action Adventure and Travelling for Book Research with Luke Richardson. The tropes and reader expectations of the genre, and how travel enriches the writing.

Writing Action Adventure Fiction and Systems Thinking with Nick Thacker. Balancing craft, pleasing readers, and building a business as a full-time action adventure author.

How to Use Mystery to Hook Your Readers with Jonah Lehrer. Elements of mystery work in any genre. How to plant questions readers have to see answered.

Horror and dark fiction

Horror is far more than blood and guts. The genre rewards writers who explore what truly scares them, and readers can tell when you do.

7 Tips for Writing Horror Stories. A guest post by horror and dark fantasy author Alan Baxter: all story is character, you need more than one idea, maintain tension, leave room to breathe, explore an underlying theme, hit the head and the heart, and write what scares you.

How to Write Monsters with Philip Athans. Why we fear what lies just beyond the campfire, and how to tap into that primal fear on the page.

Writing in the Dark with Tim Waggoner. How to write your darkness without drowning in it, and write original horror while respecting the tropes.

How to Be Successful Writing Horror with Iain Rob Wright. Writing deep in a genre you love as the route to a full-time indie career.

Writing Horror with Boris Bacic. The key elements of horror, and how to self-publish successfully in the genre.

Writing Horror and Selling Direct with David Viergutz. Selling a fiction experience rather than just a story, and how our obsessions surface in our books.

Writing Poetry in the Dark with Stephanie Wytovich. Stop self-censoring and share the deepest parts of yourself with readers, in horror and in verse.

My own horror is folk horror and adventure horror, from an English vineyard to the tunnels under Edinburgh. You can find those books on my books by genre page.

Mystery and crime

Accuracy matters more in crime than anywhere else. Readers include police officers, lawyers, and true crime obsessives, and they notice. These episodes come from people who did the job.

How to Write a Cozy Mystery with Debbie Young. Why cozy is so popular, the tropes that matter, and how to market a cozy series.

Writing a Successful Crime Thriller Series with Angela Marsons. Years of rejection, then a breakout, and how she weaves the Black Country into a long-running series.

Writing and Marketing Crime Fiction with Ed James. The key elements of a good crime novel, and rebooting a career through publishing and marketing changes.

How to Write Authentic Crime Fiction with Patrick O’Donnell. A police officer on nuanced police characters and under-used crimes that make interesting plots. His article on common mistakes in police procedurals is the companion piece.

Myths and Misconceptions about the FBI with Jerri Williams. A former agent on what writers get wrong about the Bureau.

Writing Conflict in Crime Fiction with Detective Adam Richardson. The details writers get wrong about criminal investigation, and how conflict drives the story.

For technology in your plot, see digital forensics for novelists.

Villains, fight scenes, and injuries

Writing Heroes and Villains with Sacha Black. Villains who are more than moustache-twirling cut-outs, and heroes with real flaws. Then 5 tips for writing superbad villains.

Writing Fight Scenes with Female Characters with Aiki Flinthart. A martial artist on fights between trained and untrained characters, from sword fights to domestic noir.

How to Write Effective Injuries for Your Characters with Samantha Keel. Writing injury realistically so it moves the plot forward and reveals character.

Everything on character, dialogue, and emotion is on my How To Write Compelling Characters page.

Books to go deeper

Read the books behind the tips

These are the genres I write in as J.F. Penn. Each series starts here.

All my fiction is at jfpenn.com.

More on writing fiction

The rest of the process is here: how to write compelling characters, 7 steps to write your first novel, how to get ideas for a novel, and how to write the first draft.

New interviews on writing craft arrive every week on The Creative Penn Podcast.