If you want your thriller or other suspense fiction to be a compelling page-turner, make sure you’ve included most or all of these elements:
1. A compelling opening. Don’t rev your engines with a lengthy description of the setting or background on the character’s life. Jump right in with your protagonist in a tension-filled scene with someone important in his world. See my article, “Act First, Explain Later.”
2. A protagonist who’s both ordinary and heroic. Rather than having a “Superman” invincible-type hero, it’s more satisfying to the readers if you use a regular person who’s thrown into stressful, then increasingly harrowing situations, and must summon all of his courage, strength and inner resources to overcome the odds, save himself and other innocent people, and defeat evil. Readers relate more personally to this type of main character, so bond with him better.
3. A likeable, sympathetic protagonist. The readers need to be able to warm up to your main character quickly, to start identifying with her; otherwise they won’t really care what happens to her. So no cold, selfish, arrogant characters for heroes or heroines! See my article, Creating Compelling Characters.
4. A worthy adversary for the protagonist. Your antagonist/villain needs to be as clever, strong, resourceful and determined as your protagonist, but also truly nasty, immoral and frightening. See my article “Creating a Worthy Antagonist.”
5. An interesting setting. Readers like to find out about places they haven’t been, whether it’s the seedy side of Chicago, glitzy Hollywood, rural Kentucky, the mountains of Colorado, or the bayous of Louisiana — or more distant, exotic locations. And milk your setting for all it’s worth.
6. An inciting incident. What happens to the main character to set the story events in action? Make it tense and compelling.
7. A great plot, with ongoing conflict and tension. You need a big story question and plenty of intrigue. And every scene should contain tension and conflict of some kind. If it doesn’t, delete it. See my 3 articles, “Tension on Every Page.”
8. Lots of suspense. Keep the readers on the edge of their seats, turning the pages to find out what’s going to happen next. See my 3 articles “Heightening the Suspense.”
9. Multiple viewpoints. Narrating the story from various points of view, including that of the villain, will add interest, complexity and suspense to your novel. But don’t head-hop within a scene! Wait for a new scene or chapter to change viewpoints. Deep Point of View is the most intimate and compelling. See my 3-part series: Deep Point of View.
10. A tight, generally fast-paced writing style. Streamline your writing to improve flow and pacing. Go through and take out all unnecessary words, sentences, and paragraphs, and any repetitive phrases, events or ideas. Thrillers are not the genre to wax eloquent or show off your erudition.
11. Internal struggling of the protagonist — Give her a moral dilemma; show his inner conflict. Make them complex and fascinating; never perfect, complacent, or overly confident.
12. Lots of emotions. Bring your characters to life by showing their fear, trepidation, panic, pain, worry, anger, determination, courage, satisfaction, relief, joy, excitement, elation and other emotions. See “Show Those Feelings — and Reactions!”
13. Vivid sensory descriptions. Put the reader right there in the scene by using all five senses wherever possible, plus emotion. Show what the character is hearing, smelling, feeling, touching and tasting, not only what they’re seeing. Appeal to the Senses — and Emotions!
14. Increasing danger. Keep raising the stakes and putting your hero in deeper and deeper trouble, to stretch his courage, determination, physical abilities and inner resources to the maximum — and increase the reader’s admiration and emotional investment in him! See my 3 articles on Writing a Killer Thriller.
15. A ticking clock. Your hero is racing against time to defeat the villain before innocents are killed — or even the whole world is imperiled. Adding ever-increasing time constraints increases the tension and suspense.
16. Troubles that hit home. Endanger the protagonist or someone close to her, to add a personal dimension and more stress to the threats and conflicts.
17. Critical turning points. Present your hero with life-or-death decisions and show his anxiety, tension, and indecision.
18. Obstacles in the way. Your heroine runs out of gas on a lonely road; your hero’s weapon falls into the river far below; he is wounded and can’t run; her cell phone battery is dead; whatever can go wrong does, and more.
19. Enough clues. Be fair. Use foreshadowing, and layer in clues and info as you go along, to slowly reveal the plot points and character backstory and motivation to the reader.
20. Twists and surprises. Write in a few unexpected plot twists, but make sure that, in retrospect, they make sense to the readers.
21. A compelling climax. Put the protagonist at a disadvantage in the final conflict with the antagonist, to heighten the stakes. Pile on the adversity the hero has to overcome at the end.
22. A satisfying ending. Leave the unhappy or unresolved endings for literary fiction. Let the good guy overcome the bad guy — by a hair.
23. Psychological growth and change in the hero/heroine. Adversity has made him or her stronger, braver, wiser — a better person.
Do you have any other essential elements to add that would enhance a thriller or other suspense fiction?
Copyright © Jodie Renner, February 2012
Jodie Renner is a freelance manuscript editor, specializing in thrillers, romantic suspense, mysteries, and other crime fiction, as well as YA and historical fiction. Jodie publishes craft-of-fiction articles here (occasionally) and on five other blogs (regularly): Crime Fiction Collective, Blood-Red Pencil, The Thrill Begins, The Writer's Forensics Blog, and Suspense Magazine's blog. Check out Jodie’s website at www.JodieRennerEditing.com .
