What is A Thriller?

By Carol Willis

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After I took the plunge and quit my job as a pathologist to write full time, the first novel I ever completed for adults was a psychological thriller. It is a genre near and dear to my heart. I love reading them, and love writing them even more. What is a psychological thriller? And what makes them so compelling? 

Let’s dig in.

Thriller is a genre of literature defined by the primary mood of dread and suspense. They aim to make readers unsettled, nervous, and eager to read what happens next. All fiction should elicit some amount of stress in the reader in the form of tension and conflict, but in a thriller novel, the stress is the main feature. They often feel cinematic and involve high stakes and dramatic plot points. 

In short, if it “thrills,” it is a thriller. 

In the introduction to Thriller, a major anthology published in June 2006, James Patterson says:

Thrillers provide such a rich literary feast. There are all kinds. The legal thriller, political, spy, action-adventure, medical, military, police, romantic, historical, religious, high-tech. The list goes on and on, with new variations constantly being invented. In fact, this openness to expansion is one of the genre's most enduring characteristics. But what gives the variety of thrillers a common ground is the intensity of emotions they create, particularly those of apprehension and exhilaration, of excitement and breathlessness, all designed to generate that all-important thrill. 

In other words, if a thriller doesn't thrill, it's not doing its job.

Thriller is a hybrid of mystery and horror, sharing a literary lineage with the epic and myth. Monsters, terror, and peril prevail. They are dark suspenseful plot-driven stories. 

In his excellent 2019 article for Writer’s Digest entitled, “The Differences Between a Crime, Mystery, and Thriller Novel” David Corbett again emphasizes the emotion: Of the three major suspense genres, thrillers are typically the most emotional, focusing on the fear, doubt, and dread of the hero as she faces some form of what Dean Koontz has deemed “terrible trouble.” 

There are many elements to thrillers that overlap with other novels of mystery and suspense but typically with an exaggerated atmosphere of menace and sudden violence, such as crime and often murder. A devastating crime is about to be committed or has been committed with the threat of another one looming. The villain is known, but his guilt is not certain—or the hero cannot accept the truth of his guilt. Uncertainty and doubt enhance the suspense.

The tension usually arises when the main character(s) is placed in a dangerous situation, and we spend the rest of the novel waiting to see if they’ll escape. Themes typically emphasize the dangerous world we live in, the vulnerability of the average person, and the inherent threat of the unknown. 

Thrillers can take place in exotic settings—think geopolitical and many spy thrillers—but most take place in ordinary suburbs and cities. The main character, the hero, is usually tough and resourceful, but essentially an ordinary person who is pitted against a villain determined to destroy them, their country, or the stability of society. 

Suspense is how an author builds tension throughout the story. It’s necessary in any genre, but it’s absolutely vital in thrillers. Ultimately, your goal for the reader is that they never want to put the book down. Each chapter ends with a cliffhanger, urgent question, or significant plot twist. And the plot must have high stakes. The characters must have a lot on the line—it needs to really matter they succeed. 

In a thriller, the plot should be driven by one big, important question. Think Chris Whitaker’s All the Colors from the Dark. The story begins when Patch is abducted when he is a young boy and held captive in a darkened room along with another young girl, Grace. Patch eventually escapes but spends the rest of his life searching for Grace. It is a complex, multilayered mystery involving missing persons, child kidnapping, and a serial killer weaving several plots lines, each with their own twist, but it is Patch’s quest that becomes the central question that drives much of the suspense throughout the novel. Who was Grace and what happened to her? 

While action does not need to be non-stop, suspense and intrigue need to be constant. There must be a sense of urgency to keep you turning the page.

This basic story structure emphasizes the importance of reader expectations: There is a distinct hero and a villain. The attack on the hero is relentless with escalating terror and dread. The hero must be vulnerable—not just physically but psychologically. 

So, what is a psychological thriller and what makes them different from other types of thrillers? 

The biggest questions revolve around the minds and behavior of the main characters. Common elements in include plot twists, psychology, obsession, and mind games. They incorporate elements of mystery and include themes of crime, morality, mental illness, substance abuse, multiple realities, and unreliable narrators. 

A psychological thriller finds the terror in madness and paranoia. Here the threat is diabolical but more contained, even intimate—usually targeting the protagonist and/or his family—and the hero is often relatively ordinary. 

It is the upending of our prosaic circumstances that disconcert us the most. This is why many psychological thrillers are domestic dramas set in the home, threatening our most cherished relationships such as husband and wife, mother and daughter, or sister and sister. The protagonist (and the reader) come to think if we are not safe in our own home, we must not be safe anywhere.  

Psychological thrillers generally, but not always, stay away from elements of fantasy or science fiction, focusing on events that could take place in real life. However, with advances in medical science and robotics, and the rise of AI, this is changing. Near-future psychological thrillers involving clones or robots gone awry can be eerily convincing. 

In summary, like all good stories, it comes down to setting and character with a problem. The reader must care about what happens next. Psychological thrillers are highly emotional and revolve around the minds and behavior of the main characters. Common elements in include plot twists, mind games, and unreliable narrators to create an atmosphere of menace with looming threats. They are suspenseful and filled with fear and dread to keep readers turning the page. 

In the next series of essays, I will discuss five specific elements we see in a psychological thriller. 

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Carol Willis (she/her) received her MFA in Writing (fiction) from Vermont College of Fine Arts. After receiving her medical doctorate from Texas A&M and an MBA in healthcare from George Washington University, she practiced child health and pathology before moving to Central Virginia. She is the author of a psychological thriller set in Chicago, a dark domestic drama exploring marriage, career, and identity. Her short stories have been published in multiple online journals and anthologies including Valparaiso Fiction Review, Inlandia: A Literary Journey, Living Crue Magazine, Crime in Old Dominion and others. 

What if?: A Most Important Question

By DP Lyle 

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Every author has been asked: Where do you get your ideas? The short answer is: Everywhere. Something you see or read germinates an idea, and a story unfolds. Sometimes the story comes together quickly, but most often weeks of building mental scenes and snippets of dialog, setting, and action must be waded through before pen meets paper. 

An overheard conversation might be the spark. Or a couple talking/arguing/laughing at a nearby restaurant table. Maybe an odd character strolling down the street. Perhaps an idea simply pops into your head from wherever those thoughts arise. 

Okay, so you have an idea. Now what? An idea isn’t a story. Ideas are a dime a dozen. They are literally everywhere. The key is to find an idea that can stand up through a 100,000-word manuscript. No small trick.

To do this, the original idea must be refined and fleshed out. An idea can become a scene, but to be a full-length novel it must evolve and expand. It must become a premise, or what many call “The Central Story Question.” It’s what the story is really about.

To become a premise, the original idea must ultimately lead to the question: What if? 

What if this happened? What if that person did this? What if that dude in the shabby clothes was actually a rogue undercover agent with a deadly agenda? What if the restaurant couple was planning a murder? What if that briefcase contained state secrets? Or an explosive device? Or a deadly virus?

From those two words--What if?--stories arise.

The power of your story’s What If? can’t be overestimated. If it is done correctly and not lost in the writing. A good What if? states the main character, the situation, the stakes, and, most importantly, the Central Story Question. 

It is the answering of this question that is the story.

Okay, so our restaurant couple is planning a murder. Who, what, when, where, and, most importantly, why? It’s always the why that makes a great story. Is it to get out of a messy marriage and save all that alimony money, or to cash in that million-dollar insurance policy, or to cover an embezzlement from a company they work for, or to seek revenge for some act? Even though the original idea was a couple planning a murder, each of these scenarios generates a different story. Each will lead your sleuth, who must solve the murder, into a different world.

What if a young couple witnesses a murder and in so doing put themselves in the cross hairs of a transnational criminal organization?

This is the What If? for my latest Cain/Harper thriller, TUNICA. 

The What If? should be stated in about 25 words or less. Because the What If? is brief, it’s often called the elevator pitch or the agent pitch. It communicates your story in the most efficient terms. We’ve all heard writers respond when asked what their story is about by saying things like, “Well, there’s this guy who lives on an island. And he hates the water. And a big shark is killing people and this is threatening to shut down the town’s beaches on a holiday weekend. And then there’s this other guy who is a shark expert and he has a really cool boat. Oh, I forgot, the first guy is the chief of police.” Yawn.

What if a hydrophobic, island-community police chief must go out on the water to kill a predatory shark to save the town’s summer economy and to prove his own self-worth?

What if an FBI trainee must exchange personal information with a sadistic serial killer in order to track another serial killer and save a Senator’s daughter?

What if the youngest son of a mafia family takes revenge on the men who shot his father and becomes the new godfather, losing his own soul in the process?

These are of course Jaws, Silence of the Lambs, and The Godfather, respectively. See how these What If?s reveal the protagonist and cleanly state the story premise? Read these books or watch the movies and you will see that each scene moves toward answering the story’s What If? Each of your scenes should, too. If not, consider cutting, or at least reworking, those that don’t.

Many authors consume weeks creating the What If? for their story. Constantly refining it, making it more on point. You should, too. It’s that important. It concisely states the Central Story Question.

Here’s a tip: When your What If? is completed to your satisfaction, print it out and tape it to your computer or the front of your writing pad so you will see it every time you sit down to write. Before writing each scene, read your What If? and ask yourself, “Does this scene help answer the Central Story Question?” If you do this, you will never lose sight of what your story is about. Particularly in the dreaded middle, where so many stories get lost in the jumble of character and backstory and cool dialog all the other stuff that goes into a manuscript. The What If? keeps you focused and on track.

Never Make Your Critique Partner Cry!

By Lois Winston

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We writers are not the best judges of our own work. Neither are most of our family and friends. They’ll either love everything we write because they don’t know any better, or they don’t want to hurt our feelings. Conversely, some will sic the green-eyed monster on us, telling us not to quit our day job. 

That’s why critique groups and/or partners are an invaluable tool in every author’s toolkit. They’re the writer friends we rely on when we’ve developed writer’s block or written ourselves into a corner. They brainstorm with us when the ideas don’t come, and they offer us honest criticism chapter after chapter, helping us hone our work until it’s ready for submission. Then, they either commiserate with us when the rejection letters arrive or whoop it up when we get that offer of representation or a book contract.

And because this is a partnership, we do the same for them.

However, none of us wants to hear that the 400-page baby we birthed through our fingertips onto the printed page is butt ugly. And neither do our critique partners. Just as we hope to find critiquers who will offer us constructive criticism, we also need to be able to give constructive criticism to others in return. The key is always to encourage, never discourage. Luckily, there are ways to do this.

Always remember to point out positives as well as negatives. It’s just as important for a writer to know what she’s doing well and correctly as what she’s doing poorly and incorrectly. As you read a work-in-progress, point out those parts you especially like, but don’t be afraid to point out areas that need work. Most importantly, in both cases, don’t forget to explain why. 

Our critique partners often become good friends, and it’s hard to criticize friends for fear of hurting their feelings. But if we can’t be objective and honest with our critiques, we’re not helping each other. We all need to know where our manuscripts are not working as well as where they are working.

It’s important to find a group or partner who either writes in the same genre or has a good deal of knowledge about each other’s genre. However, interests change. Writers often decide to explore different genres. What happens if Helen Historical is suddenly bitten by the vampire bug? You curl your nose up. You shudder. Vampires give you the creeps. You want to be a good critique partner, but try as you might, you can’t read those chapters with an open mind. If that’s the case, it’s time to step aside—at least until Helen returns to her historicals or you fall in love with bloodsuckers. 

Some writers have a hang-up about red ink. They feel like someone has taken a knife to their manuscript and slashed it to death. Bold type in all caps will make some writers feel as though they’re being yelled at. Be sensitive to how your partners feel about how you deliver comments. Avoid red type and all caps when making notes on digital pages. When working from printed pages, avoid red ink and thick black sharpies. Never write comments in script. Print them. We can all read our own handwriting, but others may struggle to decipher our scrawls.

If you’re one of those writers with a great handle on punctuation or grammar, your partners might ask you to do line edits. Rather than correcting their work, point out problem areas. This way, the writer will learn from the experience and not make the same mistake in future works. 

Keep in mind that just because you would write a scene or a character differently, it doesn’t make the author’s way wrong. If your partner is having problems with a sentence or scene and asks for assistance, offer suggestions, but never rewrite her manuscript in your style.

Often, writers gravitate toward other writers of the same experience level. This usually makes for a group or partnership that can work together more comfortably. If the various members are at different levels in their writing journeys, the more novice writers may begin to depend too much on the more advanced writers, and the more advanced writers may begin to feel that they aren’t getting much out of the group. Since we all progress at a different pace, you may discover over time that you’ve outgrown your present group and need to move on to another.

Manuscripts should be free of typos and spelling errors, but we all occasionally suffer from a short circuit between our brains, fingers, and eyes. No matter how many times we read and reread something, we often miss a “there” for a “their” or a “that” for a “than.” If your partner is getting ready to send her work out to an editor or agent, offer to read through her work with an eye toward the technical, but keep in mind that punctuation and sentence structure is often a matter of style. Point out grammatical errors such as misplaced modifiers and subject-verb disagreements, but keep in mind that characters often dictate grammar. A street urchin in Victorian England won’t speak like the Earl of Sussex.

Pay attention to structure as you read a work-in-progress. Every scene should have a purpose. Make sure the pacing is appropriate for the scene/event taking place. In the middle of a chase scene, the heroine shouldn’t be noticing the intricately detailed pattern of the hero’s tie. 

Sentences should be clear and understandable. Point out if the writer has gone off on a tangent about something superfluous to the scene, such as extraneous background information or too much detail. By the same token, note if the author doesn’t supply enough details and description for the characters and settings to come alive. 

Highlight non-descript words such as “it” or “thing” or bland words such as “pretty” or “nice.” Suggest substituting more specific or descriptive words. If the author uses clichés, suggest she find another phrase. Clichés bore readers. Also note repetitive word usage and sentence structure. 

Understand basic rules of writing before you offer to critique someone else. For many writers, passive voice is a difficult concept to grasp. Not every sentence using the various forms of the verb “to be” is passive. Passive voice is when the subject is acted upon. Active voice is when the subject is acting. 

Point of view is another difficult concept. Make certain you understand it before you criticize others for misusing it. Check for bouncing points of view within a scene, but keep in mind, point of view can change from scene to scene. However, if you feel like you’re at a ping-pong match, make the author aware of that.

Finally, know your facts before criticizing someone else. If you suspect the writer’s information is inaccurate, ask if she’s done any research on the subject. If she tells you she saw a similar event on a television show or in a movie, suggest she check the library or ask an expert. The media is notorious for taking liberties with facts and events. 

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USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry. A Crafty Collage of Crime, the twelfth book in her Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series, won the 2024 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Comedy. Her most recent release, Sorry, Knot Sorry, is the thirteenth book in the series. Learn more about Lois and her books at www.loiswinston.com where you can also sign up for her newsletter and follow her on various social media sites.

But It Really Happened

By DP Lyle

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But it really happened. I swear. 

This is the defense fiction writers offer when someone says their story isn’t believable. “That could never happen,” they say. But, it could. It did. Still, their disbelief lingers. 

I write both fiction and nonfiction. When people inquire about the difference between creating the two, my response is, “They are exactly the same, only different.” With NF, the research comes first. It must be gathered, fact-checked, and organized. Then, the writing begins. With fiction, you must first know your characters, plot, and setting before researching the materials needed to create a story that rings true.  

Fiction writers often base their stories on a true crime. A look at best-selling books and iconic movies over the years underlines this fact. The horrific slaughter of the Clutter family in rural Kansas became Truman Capote’s masterpiece In Cold Blood—a book that sits somewhere between fiction and true crime. Serial killer Ed Gein fashioned furniture and clothing from human skin and inspired Hitchcock’s Norman Bates in Psycho and Buffalo Bill in Thomas Harris’s Silence of the Lambs.  

For fiction writers, a true crime book, a news story, maybe a blog post sparks the idea. For my third Samantha Cody book, Original Sin, I created a character who was a snake-handling preacher. My research led me to the National Book Award finalist Salvation on Sand Mountain by Dennis Covington. It chronicles the story of Glenn Summerford, pastor of the Church of Jesus with Signs Following, who employed a rattlesnake in the attempted murder of his wife.  You bet that little wrinkle appeared in Original Sin.  

Or Victor Borkov, the bad guy in my first Jake Longly story, Deep Six. His enemies often found themselves lashed to an iron ring and dropped into the Gulf of Mexico. Alive. This is based on the actions of Skylar Deleon. Look up sociopath. You’ll see his picture. Under the guise of buying their boat, Skylar and a thug friend convinced Jackie and Thomas Hawks to go for a test cruise. It ended with the Hawks bound to an anchor and dumped in the Pacific Ocean.  Alive. 

These true stories are unbelievable. Yet true. For fiction writers, the trick is to morph unbelievable fact into believable fiction. 

We fiction writers owe a great debt to true crime writers. They do the heavy lifting, the research, the telling of the crime, and we use that to inspire and create our stories. Ann Rule once told me that when she approached a true crime story, she looked for the person who was the heart of the story. Not the bad guy, often not the victim, but someone who was deeply affected by the crime. In fiction, we do the same, but have the added freedom of not being bound to the facts. 

The marriage between crime fiction and true crime is alive and well. 

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DP Lyle, Award-winning author, lecturer, story consultant 

www.dplylemd.com

The Importance of Strong Pacing and Dynamic Structure in Science Fiction

By Stu Jones and Gareth Worthington

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Pacing, style, and structure. Why does they even matter? I have worlds to build!

This mindset is the downfall of even some of the most accomplished science fiction writers. To a sci-fi author, world-building is often the driving force for the book in the first place. “I want to spend page after page describing, in vast detail, the intricacies of my new world.” After all, isn’t that the fun of being a writer? Creating every nuance and allowing readers to enter the world of our imagination? What could be better for a story than that?

Indeed, historically, this was the status quo. 

Once upon a time, taking our readers through endless reams of description was possible. Hell, it was standard practice in sci-fi and fantasy, as evidenced by many of the greats. From the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, a reader was more likely to shell out their hard-earned cash for an author’s latest work. If reading it didn’t conflict with listening to one’s favorite radio broadcast or later, catching one’s favorite television show at five p.m. on a Friday, then there wasn’t much else at home outside a game of cards or a roll in the hay, with which to conflict.

Not so today, at least for the most part.

While there are still readers who enjoy longer novels, with incredible depth of world-building, for the average reader—and therefore the majority of our audience—long side stories about how a certain kind of flora came to be grown on a terraformed planet just isn’t going to cut it. 

And why? 

Because, dear authors, we are competing for attention. In today’s world, a person’s phone is only an arm length away—if that. And if our story lags into page after page of lavish descriptors, our reader will yawn, set the book down, and start browsing cat videos. Or worse, reach for the TV remote to see what’s streaming. And there, in the world of television and cinema, lies our greatest ally and enemy. While we all yearn to have our book adapted for the big screen and enjoy watching the imagined worlds we read come to life, movies and television series mean that our audiences who also read no longer need us to describe things in ridiculous detail. The average reader now has so many visual frames of reference we, as the author, don’t need to work so hard to help them along.

Let’s try it.

Mars. One word. You are already conjuring an image of a red planet, dry and desolate without oceans. A rocky surface and a thin atmosphere. We did not need to tell you those things. One word was enough.

With this in mind, has the entertainment industry destroyed the beauty of science fiction writing? “What can we do against the tyranny of Facebook, Instagram, and three-hundred-million-dollar movies?” you cry.

The answer is two-fold.

Firstly, we can address structure and prose. We can describe where it is necessary, where the reader may not have encountered our particular nuance for a given fictional ecosystem. But where just a few words will suffice to give the reader that visual nudge, we can move on. We can drive the story forward. We are, of course, referring to pacing.

 So, what do we mean by pacing?

It means two things. Number one, always be moving the ball down the field. Something has to happen. And it needs to happen often from the work’s start all the way to the finish. Every chapter should have a purpose to move the story along, not just describe something we would like to tell the reader about our world. If we want to convey a detail, make that detail important to the narrative. Now don’t get us wrong and interpret what we’re saying as descriptors aren’t vitally important. Descriptive prose is the perfume that helps to draw the reader closer to your vision. But perfume alone the beauty does not make. In the end, it’s a delicate balancing act between enough description to draw the reader in, without detracting from where the story is going. It takes constant vigilance to ensure we, as authors, do not wax or wane too far one way or the other.

When we were writing It Takes Death To Reach A Star, we struggled with this. After all, we’d created this whole new world and there were so many elements to show and so many factions vying for a moment in the spotlight. Even though our entire story was set in a single city, we had created a universe with religions, cultural factions, and histories---not to mention the merging of real scientific theories and religious doctrine. At times we were totally overwhelmed with the scope of what we were trying to accomplish.

To our great relief, we feel we managed it with reviews applauding our world-building and comparing it to the likes of Philipp K. Dick. Yet the book is only eighty-four-thousand words. Quite average by any fiction standard. How did we achieve that?

Well, during the refining process, our amazing editor, Jason, came to us with a formula which we both now use in all our writing: The 25, 50, 75 rule. He said that at regular intervals, things should be happening. Little things. Everyday moments of story intrigue and character development. But interlaced between those moments, at major quarter intervals, something big should happen. Maybe it’s a major character reveal, a plot twist, or the development of an unforeseen love interest who promises to change the scope of the story, or a look into the villain’s plan to do something dastardly. But something important that is central to the story should happen. Then, between the little moments and the big moments, the reader is anchored to our story.

No more checking the smartphone or Netflix, because now our readers have to know what happens in our story. If we can achieve this, then it’s safe to go ahead and pop the champagne. When an author nails pace and structure and their story leaps to vivid life, everyone wins.

So, next time you’re outlining your book, think about the rule above. What are the big moments in the narrative? When you’re writing, try to include your descriptors as part of the story, the narrative. Let your characters experience the world and relay what you see in detail, but keep the experience moving. We don’t sit at our desks contemplating the shape of the keys at which we tap away. Instead, we press them and move our story along.

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A Dragon Award Nominee, Stu Jones is the author of multiple sci-fi/action/thriller novels, including the multi-award-winning It Takes Death To Reach A Star duology and Condition Black, written with co-author Gareth Worthington (Children of the Fifth Sun, A Time for Monsters).

Gareth Worthington is an authority in ancient history, has hand-tagged sharks in California, and trained in various martial arts, including Jeet Kune Do and Muay Thai at the EVOLVE MMA gym in Singapore and 2FIGHT in Switzerland. His work has won multiple awards, including Dragon Award Finalist and an IPPY award for Science Fiction.

Subplots Can Tighten Your Story’s Saggy Middle

By Martha Reed

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We’ve all experienced that feeling of keen anticipation and undiluted terror when starting a new story, staring at that initial blank page, and wondering how on earth we’re going to fill it.

We may start out with an amorphous idea of what our story might be about, select an intriguing cast of characters, and develop a plot outline before committing ourselves to the months or even the decades of willful intent and devoted effort it takes to write 85,000 words in the right order.

For me, beginnings are easy enough. In between drafting books, I keep an untidy stack of newspaper clippings and screen capture print outs bearing provocative headlines hoping to plant these magical little seeds in my subconscious and trigger an idea or two down the road. How will these suggestions connect in my new stories? I have no idea, but I do know that they will. It’s part of that writerly sorcery, the creative fiction necromancy I’ve learned to enjoy—and to rely upon—because it’s that wizardry that keeps both me as the writer and my readers entertained.

Endings aren’t difficult because it’s our job as writers to wrap up loose threads. If our characters have followed their true hearts, their heads, and the story’s logic trail, then it should lead them and us to an ending that at least makes sense. It’s our writerly duty to make sure we provide readers with a compelling ending that satisfies them as a reward for following our words. If correctly done, we will gift our readers with a story they’ll remember for the rest of their lives.

Once we hook readers with that dynamic beginning, how do we entice them through our story’s middle act, so they’ll reach that magnificent ending? The answer is by using subplots.

Subplots are the unsung mighty little engines that could. They’re the smaller sidebar stories that support our main overarching storyline, and when we weave in subplots, they can reveal character insights, increase dramatic momentum, raise the stakes, and present plot twists. While subplots are connected to the larger story, they run parallel to the main plot, sub-surface, and they should end before the larger story arc does—or at least be a part of the final wrap-up.

There are dozens of subplot ideas. Here are a few I’ve used:

• A character background subplot/flashback helps a reader understand why a character is behaving the way they do. Did your protagonist grow up abused and dirt poor? Were they a spoiled only child? What made them the way they are now?

• A love interest subplot makes the protagonist more vulnerable since they’ll be revealing their emotions and/or personal attachments. Use this subplot to engage reader empathy.

• A comedic subplot can change the story’s pace, give the reader room to breathe, and lighten the mood.

• A parallel subplot shows two different sides of the same story that will eventually converge—for better or for worse. This convergence adds tension and dramatic suspense, especially if the reader sees it coming.

• A foreshadowing subplot can be used to insert red herrings, key hints, and clues.

Here are some subplots I like to use:

• Suggest a minor or secondary character in act one, but don’t introduce them until act two. Have other characters offer dribs and drabs of that backstory to tease reader interest, suggest potential plot complications, and prefigure unforeseen obstacles.

• Give your secondary character a skill in act two that your protagonist will need to use in act three. This is particularly effective if there’s an ongoing misunderstanding or rivalry between them that must be overcome.

• Misunderstandings are great subplot devices. Emails and text messages are often misread and feelings get hurt, increasing the dramatic tension because of the conflict.

• Every character hides a secret uncertainty or fear, and no one likes to admit to a weakness. In act two, offer an earth-shattering reveal that causes extensive personal and relationship repercussions between your characters and triggers new and surprising plot twists.

The trick with subplots is to correctly use them. Weave them into your story and they will support your plot with elastic drama and tension like a trampoline. Use too many and you risk muddling your plotline, confusing your readers, and derailing your tale. Practice makes perfect and the trick, as they say, is in the telling. Don’t be afraid to try.

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Martha Reed is a multi-award-winning mystery and crime fiction author. “Love Power,” her new Crescent City NOLA Mystery featuring Gigi Pascoe, a transgender sleuth won a 2021 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Best Attending Author Award as well as being a Silver Falchion Finalist in the Mystery category.

​Her John and Sarah Jarad Nantucket Mystery series garnered an Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book Award for Mid-Atlantic Best Regional Fiction. Her short story, “The Honor Thief” was selected for the 2021 Bouchercon anthology, This Time for Sure, edited by Hank Phillippi Ryan.

You’re invited to visit her website www.reedmenow.com for more detail.

The Magnificent 7: Universal Story Plots and the Twelve Archetypes

By Martha Reed

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I was asked by a curious fan how I built my stories. Not where my story ideas came from, but about their actual construction, their underlying, underpinning architecture. Writers already know how to use the basic three-act structure, but are there other options in our writerly toolbox that we should be using to lure our readers in?

The answer is ‘yes.’ Human beings have certain story expectations bred into our bone marrow. Developed in pre-written history, seven universal plots and 12 archetypes have successfully survived into our modern era, crossing multiple cultural divides. That’s not to say writers should rigidly follow a static and unwavering formula or create stale and hackneyed characters. Those would instantly turn an avid reader off. But do the following inherited plots and archetypes still have something to offer?

First, let’s look at definitions:

• The basic story question is: “What happens next?”

• Plot happens next. It’s the sequence of events inside the story.

• An archetype is a story element like an idea, a symbol, pattern, emotion, character type, or event that occurs in all cultures. Archetypes represent something universal in the overall human experience. (I’ll share an example. The international movie, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” used so many common archetypes that I found myself repeatedly wondering if I’d seen the movie before.)

In 2004, literary theorist Christopher Booker wrote “The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories,” basing his premise on the following seven plots:

1. Overcoming the monster – An evil force is threatening the hero/heroine and their world. The h/h must slay the monster to receive a great reward.

2. Rags to riches – The h/h is insignificant and overlooked by others. Because of a trigger event, they are revealed to be exceptional.

3. The quest – The h/h sets out on a long, hazardous quest, overcoming all obstacles until they reach their goal.

4. Voyage and return – The h/h travels outside of their comfortable world into the unknown before returning to the safety of their home.

5. Comedy – A series of trigger events involving mistaken identity or a fundamental misunderstanding that results in hilarious chaos.

6. Tragedy – A story without a happy ending that ends in loss or death.

7. Rebirth – The h/h falls under a dark form of control before breaking free and being redeemed. 

Regarding archetypes, psychologist Carl Jung theorized that we use such symbolism to grasp complex concepts more easily. He stated: “There are forms or images of a collective nature which occur practically all over the earth as constituents of myths and at the same time, as individual products of the unconscious.” Jung maintained that these archetypes remained unchanged and recognizable and that they exhibit personality traits that are commonly understood.

The 12 archetypes are:

1. The Innocent – Seeks to do things the right way in harmony, free of corruption or influence.

2. Everyman – Seeks connections and belonging. Supportive, faithful, and down-to-earth.

3. Hero – On a mission to make the world a better place.

4. Outlaw – Questions authority and breaks the rules.

5. Explorer – Inspired by travel, adventure, and risk.

6. Creator – Imaginative and inventive, driven to create things with real meaning.

7. Ruler – Creates order from chaos. Typically controlling and stern, yet responsible and organized. 

8. Magician – Makes dreams a reality.

9. Lover – Inspires intimate moments with love, passion, romance, and commitment.

10. Caregiver – Protects and nurtures others.

11. Jester – Uses humor, irreverence, mischief, and fun to bring joy to the world.

12. Sage – Thoughtful mentor or advisor bringing wisdom and deeper insight.

Taking this information, try these exercises to tighten your creative focus:

• Name a book or movie that uses each one of the seven plots.

• Name a character from a book or a movie that fits each of the 12 archetypes.

• Using your current work in progress, which of the seven plots fits your story? If you discover some overlap, which plot is stronger? What happens to your storyline when you focus only on that one?

• Identify an archetype for each one of your characters. Next step: which archetype do they think they are? Do the two choices match? What happens to your focus and your character’s motivations when they do?

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Martha Reed is the IPPY Book Award-winning author of the John and Sarah Jarad Nantucket Mysteries and of “Love Power,” her latest mystery set in the spellbinding city of New Orleans featuring Gigi Pascoe, a transgender sleuth. 

She’s an active member of the Florida Gulf Coast and Guppy chapters of Sisters in Crime, a member of Mystery Writers of America, and in a moment of great personal folly she joined the New Orleans Bourbon Society (N.O.B.S.)

Her stories and articles have appeared in Pearl, Suspense Magazine, Spinetingler, Mystery Readers Journal, Mysterical-e, and in “Lucky Charms – 12 Crime Tales,” an anthology produced by the Mary Roberts Rinehart Pittsburgh chapter of Sisters in Crime. Her story, “The Honor Thief” was included in the 2021 Bouchercon anthology, “This Time For Sure,” edited by Hank Phillippi-Ryan.

Martha adores travel, big jewelry, California wine country, and simply great coffee. She delights in the ongoing antics of her family, fans, and friends who she lovingly calls The Mutinous Crew. You’re invited to follow her on Facebook and Twitter @ReedMartha.

Fact to Fiction: Turning Real Crime into Story

By Anne Da Vigo

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Almost everyone has some memory of a real crime that has stuck with them.

Maybe you saw TV news about a strange disappearance. Or a great-uncle spun a tale of a brazen heist. When you worked for a former employer, you heard whispers of evil deeds.

For mystery writers, that’s how novels are born: an earworm of an idea sparked by real crime that won’t shut up until it’s transformed into fiction.

I started on the road from fact to fiction in the late 1970s. I was working as a journalist back then, in the agricultural and oil industry town of Bakersfield, California.

My editor sent me to cover a murder trial. The jury found the accused not guilty of stabbing and beating to death a local businessman. I wrote the story and within months had moved on to a bigger newspaper. 

But I was haunted by trial testimony about a thirteen-year-old boy abused by the victim.

Three years later, the boy murdered another of his abusers, a top county government official.

The victim was part of a secretive group of powerful men in business, law enforcement, and the district attorney’s office who abused vulnerable teens. These and other murders involving the circle were dubbed the Lords of Bakersfield cases. 

I spent years thinking about the Lords, and eventually began writing what would become my thriller, Bakersfield Boys Club.

As I sat down at the computer, I faced decisions many crime writers face: how to craft actual events into fiction.

First, I needed a unifying character to knit the story of the murder series together, someone with a passionate commitment to uncovering the truth.

My solution? Creating a struggling widow whose teenage son was ensnared by a circle of dissolute men. She wasn’t a real person, which gave me the freedom to delve into her innermost thoughts and feelings and share them with the reader.

Her harrowing journey from disbelief to relentless outrage also formed the essential character arc for the story.

Next, I wanted to include several characters in the thriller that were loosely inspired by real people, but I wasn’t certain how to protect myself against an accusation of defamation.

I found several internet sites that helped address my concerns. You can find a list on my web page, www.annedavigoauthor.com.

Basic advice for authors: mask characters by changing their names and physical characteristics.

Another aspect of defamation law was helpful as I wrote the thriller. Most of the prominent players in the Lords cases had died by the time I began writing; only a living person can file a claim for damages to their character or reputation.

Truth, of course, is the basic defense against allegations of defamation.

In my case, the local newspaper had written a series about the Lords of Bakersfield, winning a major journalism prize. I felt confident about using events that had been vetted by their lawyers and disseminated widely in the press.

Pacing was another issue that had to be dealt with in morphing the story from fact to fiction. Because the actual events occurred over a period of nearly twenty-five years, I was finding it difficult to build suspense.

Several drafts and thousands of words later, I decided to compress the murder series into a two-year time frame. That way, the frantic mother was working against an escalating threat to save her son.

I chalked up my strategy as a success when several readers said they stayed up late to turn the last page.

Finally, the facts, incidents, and characters that formed the factual story needed to be woven into a theme for the fictional mystery.

The theme wasn’t clear in my mind when I began writing, although my outrage at the abuse experienced by young people had been brewing for years.

As I wrote, the theme began to emerge: those who exploit the weakest among us must be punished, no matter what the obstacles.

My commitment to the theme of Bakersfield Boys Club led me to write a conclusion I’d never considered when I began the mystery.

Now I’m at work on another thriller, this one sparked by a mysterious tale I heard at my husband’s college reunion.

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Anne Da Vigo is a former journalist and public relations professional who lives in Northern California. Her thriller, Bakersfield Boys Club, is available from Amazon or on order from your bookseller.

Five Writing Tips No One Has Ever Told You

By Philip Cioffari

A bold assertion, I know, but there are things one learns over a lifetime of writing that seem to contradict what we’ve been taught and even, at times, to defy both logic and rationality. What follows is a short list of—insights might be too strong a word—items that I’ve learned the hard way.

ONE. You don’t need an idea to get started. Waiting for inspiration or for a “good idea” can be frustrating and time-consuming. Another way of saying that is you’re wasting precious time. Ideas are curious entities and they form in many different ways and for many different reasons. Most often, I’ve found they develop in stages; rarely do they appear fully formed. In lieu of that fully dressed idea, a writer can begin with an image, a single sentence, a character performing a simple action, a particular setting, or even a single word. Anything can serve as a starting point.

Take for example the case of Tennessee Williams. He has stated that his play, A Streetcar Named Desire, began with a single image: a woman in white sitting on a porch. That image eventually became the character Blanche du Bois: the tragic heroine of arguably one of the greatest American plays of the 20th century. When I began my first novel, I had only this notion: a group of boys playing in one of New York City’s urban swamplands. I had no sense of what I wanted to write—or that it would indeed turn out to be a novel—beyond that small detail. Some 10 years later—I know, I know, a hell of a long time, but it was my first—and my novel, Catholic Boys, emerged.

My point is, you can begin anywhere, with the barest scrap of material. Who knows where it will lead? The journey toward the idea is half the fun. One word on the page leads to a second, one sentence to a second sentence. It’s as basic as that.

TWO. Plot is another name for character development. One doesn’t have to agonize over outlining a plot or whether a plot is interesting enough. You don’t need a plot to begin. If the characters are interesting, the plot will be too, because the most genuine, credible plots are an extension of a character’s desires. If you know what a character wants, what the obstacles are, and what he or she will do to overcome those obstacles, then the plot, as if by wizardry, takes form. Simply follow your character’s struggle to reach an objective. And you will have your plot.

THREE. Tension should exist in every sentence. Much can be said about the ways to create narrative tension, but a simple rule I strive for is to have some kind of tension in every sentence of my books. That tension can be of varying kinds, it can be explicit or implicit, but it needs to be there. And I’m not talking about obvious explicit tension—a stabbing or a fist fight or an argument between people. That speaks for itself. I’m referring to the more subtle variations of implicit tension: something is unfinished or unresolved, something is left unsaid, something needs fixing, something is missing that a character needs or wants, and so forth.

Take for example a typical poem of the Romantic era. On the surface, the poem is praising the beauty of a particular flower, but the tension beneath the surface is that as beautiful as this flower is, it’s going to wither and die. So ultimately the poem is about, and the tension comes from, our sense of transience, loss, and grief.

FOUR. Finding your way when you get lost. Nothing is worse for me than losing my emotional connection to my work in the midst of creating it. Where did it go–that connection to the material, that passion that got me started on the work in the first place? Personally, I try to never abandon a work I’ve begun. Something stimulated my initial interest, impulse, or passion. For some reason the material or characters reached out and grabbed hold of me. There’s a story there that needs telling, so I try to forget what I’ve written so far and go back in search of that original impulse. Maybe that means revisiting a place or making contact again with a person or people connected to the incident I’m writing about. Often it’s a matter of feeling my way back to the source: those feelings that first got me engaged in the piece. I might listen to songs or look through photos from a particular period. Essentially, though, I’m trying to pinpoint the source of the impulse that made me want to begin writing the piece in the first place. If I can reconnect to it, I can usually reconnect to the story I’m telling. (This may mean eliminating some or even most of what I’ve written. It may mean going back to that point in the story where I went offtrack and picking up from there.)

FIVE. Revisions take time and distance. One can, and should, do some revisions at the conclusion of completing a piece. What I’ve found is that vital revisions require some kind of separation from that initial effort. What has served me best is to set the work aside and begin a new writing project. When I’ve completed a draft of the new project, then I go back and rework the previous piece. There’s something about immersing oneself in a new writing project that brings with it a sense of objectivity and awareness that’s necessary in the final polishing of a manuscript. Resist the temptation to rush it off for publication. A piece of writing needs time to mature. And we, as writers, are well-served to mature along with it.

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Philip Cioffari grew up in the Bronx and received his B.A. from St. John's University and his Ph.D. from New York University. He teaches in the writing program at William Paterson University. His novels and story collections include: If Anyone Asks, Say I Died From The Heartbreaking Blues; The Bronx Kill; Catholic Boys; Dark Road, Dead End; Jesusville; and A History Of Things Lost Or Broken.