My wife and I recently watched Conclave, based on the Robert Harris novel of the same name, and were swept up in a very suspenseful political thriller set at the Vatican, during a conclave to choose a new pope. The riveting storyline and plot twists led to my diving into the KZB archives for another round of wisdom about thrillers.
We have Larry Brooks discussing the underpinnings of thrillers; Sue Coletta on causes of false eyewitness testimony, often a plot point in thrillers; Jordan Dane provides eight ways to write conspiracies, which are often plot fuel for thriller plots. As always, the full posts are date-linked from their respective excerpts.
Every novel has a premise, for better or worse. But every premise does not necessarily have something conceptual within it. They are separate essences, and both are essential.
The goal is to infuse your premise with a conceptual notion, a proposition or setting that fuels the premise and its narrative with compelling energy.
The hallmark of a concept is this: even before you add a premise (i.e., a hero and a plot), something about the setup makes one say, “Wow, now that sounds like a story I’d like to read!”
A good hook puts the concept into play early, posing a question so intriguing that the reader must stick around for an answer. It provides a glimpse of the darkness and urgency to come. It makes us feel, even before we’ve met a hero or comprehend the impending darkness in full.
Despite how a story is set up, there is always an inevitable something that shows up after the setup that shifts the story into a higher, more focused pace. In three-act structure this is the transition between Act 1 (setup) and Act II (response/confrontation), also known as the First Plot Point, which launches the dramatic spine of the story.
Once that point in the story is reached there is no turning back, either for the hero or the reader.
In any genre it is easily argued that this is the most important moment in a story, appearing at roughly the 20th to 25th percentile mark within the narrative.
Thrillers especially are almost entirely stakes-driven. If the hero succeeds then lives are saved and villains with dire agendas are thwarted. Good triumphs over evil and disaster. If the hero fails people die, countries crumble and evil wins.
The more dire the impending darkness, the higher the stakes.
In any good novel the hero needs something to do – a goal – which can be expressed as an outcome (stop the villain, save the world) and a game plan (what must be done to get to that outcome).
A novel is always about the game plan, the hero’s journey. The outcome of the quest is context for the journey.
Great thrillers invest the reader in the path toward that outcome by infusing each and every step along the way with stakes, threat, danger and obstacles the hero must overcome.
It is the degree of reader empathy and gripping intrigue at any given moment in the story that explains a bestseller versus an also-ran.
Larry Brooks—June 15, 2015
Action Details
When we witness a crime, we absorb the information by the actions that happened during the commission of the crime. For example, a man pointed a gun at a woman, pushed her into his van, and sped away. The central information — what an eyewitness focuses on — and the peripheral information — what’s happening around said eyewitness — often becomes skewed with the surge of adrenaline.
Such findings suggest that when we witness a traumatic event, our attention is drawn to the central action at the expense of descriptive details. Yet, in other circumstances, such as non-violent events, our attention may be spread more evenly between the two.
Which brings us back to inattentional blindness. This phenomenon occurs when attention is drawn toward only one aspect of an eyewitness’ surroundings, resulting in lack of information. Which writers can use to our advantage.
Weapon Focus
The use of weapons complicate matters even more. When a gunman brandishes his firearm, an eyewitness tends to focus on the pistol rather than other details, such as the suspect’s hair and eye color, build and dress. Researchers have tested this theory, as well.
In the study, they showed participants videos of robberies — robbery involves a weapon and a victim; burglary does not— where one group witnessed the robber with a concealed pistol and other group witnessed the robber with the gun in plain sight. When researchers asked the concealed weapon group to identify the robber in a line-up, only 46% of participants could identify the suspect. From those who watched the video where the robber brandished the weapon, only 26% could identify him.
Schemas
In order for an eyewitness to be able to answer a question, they must be willing to respond. And it’s this willingness that can impair their memory of the events. Not everything we “see” or “experience” is stored in our minds. Our brains don’t work like computers where each bit is encoded. Rather, we make connections to other things in order to process information. If you’re interested in learning more, I’ve written about Subliminal Messages on my blog.
Episodic memories — memories involving an event — are organized in our minds as “event schemas.” This allows us to store knowledge, events, and activities by connecting to what we classify as “normal.” In other words, rather than remembering every time we dined at our favorite seafood joint, we tend to build a general impression of seafood restaurants … the smell, the atmosphere, and so on.
However, the use of schemas can distort memories. The perfect example of this is when someone asks me about my childhood, then asks my brother. From our answers one might think we grew up in different households. Many factors contribute to how we remember times and events. Such as, influence. When gaps exist in our memory we tend to incorporate new information in an attempt to fill in the blanks. Although useful in everyday life, this poses real problems for investigators, because this new information is often constructed after the crime took place, and leads to false testimony.
Sue Coletta—October 22, 2018
8 Key Ways to Writing Believable Conspiracies
1) Take advantage of paranoia. Mistrust and suspicion are keys to pulling off a believable conspiracy plot. Even if readers haven’t considered darker subversive motives at play during relatively routine activities, trigger their paranoia with your plot and a different way to look at it.
2) Write what you fear. If you fear it, chances are that readers will too. Convince them. Exploit common fears and highlight deeper ways that get readers thinking. In fiction, it works to grip readers in a personal way. The fears we all share—the things that wake us up in the middle of the night—can tap into a great plot.
3) Villainous motivation must feel real. You can be over the top but give your diabolical conspiracy a strong and plausible motivation. Don’t be vague. Drill down into your conspirators and justify their motives and existence from the foot soldiers on up the line.
4) Give your bad guys believable resources. Make it seem insurmountable to stop them. Think of the infrastructure it would take to plausibly pull off your thriller plot. Have them use believable technology, science and manpower to give them the appearance of Goliath when it comes to your hero/heroine fighting their diabolical acts.
5) Know organizations and your governmental jurisdictions to give your plot teeth. How do they operate in secret? Give them a plausible connection to organizations the reader may know about. Draw from organizations or systems readers will understand. If you’re too vague, readers will dismiss your plot as unlikely and a shadowy plot with no substance.
6) Make the risks personal for your hero and heroine. High stakes are important, but force your main character(s) to dig deep to fight through their fears and insurmountable odds. This is what will keep readers rooting for your characters. Make them worthy of their star role. A global phenomenon can put readers on edge, but bring the impact down to the personal stakes of real human beings for maximum impact.
7) Ripped from the headlines stories can add layers of credibility. The best fictional thrillers come from events or news that readers are familiar with.
a.) Re-imagine a well known historical event. Add your best twist to a conspiracy makes your work more interesting and forces readers to think.
b.) Or dig into a headline story for facts that are not readily known. Often that story will be deeper than most readers are aware of, especially if there are personal human stories within the big headline.
Jordan Dane—April 18, 2019
***
By Joe Moore
I was listening to James Brown sing “It’s A Man’s World” while trying to decide on adding to the gender bias thread stitched so well into TKZ posts throughout the previous week. But since my fellow blogmates so thoroughly covered the SinC vs. PW dust-up and the related Venus and Mars writing debate, I chose instead to talk about Balloon Boy.
We all saw it on TV. The Jiffy Pop-shaped silver aircraft streaking over the Colorado landscape. It was mesmerizing watching the helicopters circled the makeshift flying machine like they were covering the arrival of visitors from another planet. The possibility of a 6-year-old boy being trapped inside with the chance that the craft might run out of air and crash or he could come tumbling out at any moment. And we would all witness him cartwheel through the air and slam into farmhouse tin roof or rusty 1950s Chevy pickup. It was drama at its finest. And no one could look away.
If this had been a novel, it would have shot past Dan Brown on the bestseller list with millions lined up to get their copy. As writers, we would have all been asking the same question: Why didn’t I write that? And as readers, we would have been curled up in our beds well into the late night turning those pages as we devoured the story to find out what happened next.
So what can we learn from Balloon Boy when it comes to writing novels? That his story had all the elements of a bestseller.
Initially, there was an immediate grab with extreme danger: Breaking News! A young child’s life was hanging by a thread. Like any great thriller, there was a ticking clock—how long would the craft be able to stay up? Then there was a growing mystery: was the child even in the balloon? The event was ripe with emotion—anyone with children knows the sickening feeling of helplessness as they watched. After all, it could have been their kid.
So we had danger, a young life at stake, time running out, mystery, and gut wrenching emotion. The protagonist was an innocent boy possibly frightened beyond belief and fighting for his life thousands of feet in the air—all in front of a captivated world. And he may only have minutes to live.
Now we all know that for every great protagonist, there should be an equally evil antagonist. In this case, an unlikely character emerged—the boy’s father. As the story progressed after our heavy sigh of relief at finding that the child had been home and save the whole time, the spotlight shifted to the parents, particularly the father. We soon found that he deceived us and caused everyone undue emotional stress. He forced his child to go along with the scheme to fulfill his own personal ambition of securing a family reality show. He even called the local network affiliate to report the runaway balloon before he dialed 911!
The mother was an equal co-conspirator willing to let the plan go forth with full knowledge of the deception. As fear for the child shifted to disgust for the parents and pity for the boy and his siblings, we were taken on a ride that saw our feelings shift from one grand emotion to another as distinctly as a color wheel spotlight shining on an old aluminum Christmas tree—fear, relief, suspicion, revulsion.
The conspiracy started to unravel when Balloon Boy let it slip on a national morning interview that they did it for the “show”. The dedicated local sheriff started digging deeper and finally was able to pull back the façade and expose this despicable conspiracy for what it really was—a lie to capture the headlines and to make money even at the expense of a child.
How does any great story end? The villains get caught and must face their just rewards. The parents have now pleaded guilty and may have to serve jail time.
So what can we learn from Balloon Boy? That it was all there in plain view—the main ingredients for a solid, absorbing and captivating thriller. Boy, I wish I’d written that.
