The Unreliable Narrator: How to Heighten Suspense and Keep Readers Guessing in Psychological Thrillers

By Carol Willis

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One of the most powerful tools in a psychological thriller is the unreliable narrator—a character whose perception, memory, or understanding of reality is compromised. This technique pulls readers deep into the mind of the protagonist while simultaneously keeping them at a distance, sowing doubt and suspicion. When done well, it heightens tension and fuels page-turning suspense.

In psychological thrillers, the unreliable narrator isn't just a stylistic choice—it's a structural engine. First-person narration lets readers experience the character’s inner turmoil, but what happens when that narrator cannot be trusted? Whether the cause is head trauma, substance abuse, mental illness, or sheer denial, the effect is the same: uncertainty. 

And uncertainty is the lifeblood of suspense.

What Makes a Narrator Unreliable?

Unreliable narrators are those whose version of the story is distorted by deception, delusion, or impairment. Some lie deliberately; others mislead unintentionally due to mental illness or altered states of consciousness. In psychological thrillers, the latter are especially compelling. These narrators believe what they say and yet the reader comes to understand that what they believe may not be true.

Let’s take a closer look at how several authors, Annie Ward in Beautiful Bad (2018), Tana French in The Witch Elm (2018), and Imran Mahmood in I Know What I Saw (20210) use head trauma, addiction, and psychological instability to create deeply unreliable perspectives that drive suspense and emotional tension.

Head Trauma as a Narrative Device

Set in the American Midwest, Annie Ward’s Beautiful Bad is a tightly constructed domestic psychological thriller centered on Maddie, a devoted wife and mother, her war-scarred husband, and their young son. As is typical of the genre, nothing is as it seems: buried secrets and simmering tension culminate in a shocking murder. During a camping trip, Maddie suffers a traumatic brain injury that leaves her memory fragmented. Much of the novel hinges on her attempts to piece together what really happened. Ward structures the story through short, staccato chapters and a nonlinear timeline that mirror Maddie’s cognitive disorientation. She also weaves in her husband’s PTSD and alcoholism, which amplify the emotional instability and deepen the atmosphere of dread. Readers are drawn into a fog of partial memories and unreliable perceptions, forced to navigate Maddie’s fractured psyche in search of the truth.

Tana French’s standalone psychological suspense, The Witch Elm offers a more introspective, character-driven psychological thriller, where trauma fractures not only memory but identity. Toby, a privileged and affable young man, survives a brutal home invasion that leaves him with a severe head injury and a lingering sense of cognitive instability. As he retreats to his family’s ancestral home to recover, a skull is discovered in the garden, triggering both a police investigation and a deeper unraveling within Toby himself. French masterfully entwines the external mystery with the internal one: who was Toby before the attack, and can he trust the person he is now? The narrative blurs the line between guilt and innocence, perception and denial. Toby’s unreliable memory becomes the novel’s engine of suspense, compelling readers to question not only what happened, but whether Toby himself might be capable of violence he can no longer remember.

Imran Mahmood’s I Know What I Saw (2021) offers another powerful example of how head trauma can fracture both memory and identity. The narrator, Xander Shute, is a once-successful barrister now living on the streets of London. When he accidentally witnesses a murder in what he believes is a break-in gone wrong, he reports it only to be told by police that no such crime occurred, and the apartment is occupied by a completely different couple. What follows is a tense unraveling of Xander’s mind. His past trauma, mental health struggles, and head injuries blur the line between what he remembers and what may have never happened at all. Mahmood uses fragmented memories, dreamlike logic, and time slippage to keep the reader guessing: Is Xander witnessing a conspiracy, or is he caught in the spiraling aftermath of untreated trauma? His voice is sharp, intelligent, and self-aware. Yet the more he insists on what he saw, the more readers question whether they should believe him.

Other Forms of Unreliability

Substance abuse is another common and highly effective device in thrillers. Alcoholism and drug addiction introduce uncertainty, distortion, and mistrust—the perfect ingredients for narrative suspense. These altered states skew perception, bend time, and create memory gaps that leave both the character and the reader struggling to connect the dots. In Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train (2015), for example, blackouts erase entire chunks of the protagonist’s experience. The narrator becomes both detective and suspect, trying to solve a mystery she might have unwittingly caused.

Mental illness—especially dissociation, anxiety, and PTSD—can also destabilize a narrator’s grasp on reality. A character may be telling the truth as they see it, but that version of events is filtered through trauma, fear, or delusion. These internal fractures not only add emotional complexity but also keep readers questioning what’s real, and what’s imagined.

Why It Works

Unreliable narrators heighten suspense by withholding clarity. In a genre driven by twists and revelations, these characters provide fertile ground for ambiguity. The reader doesn’t simply ask, "What will happen?" but, more compellingly, "What is really going on?"

Unlike thrillers that rely solely on external threats, psychological thrillers with unreliable narrators turn the narrative inward. They make the protagonist’s mind the true battleground. The suspense comes not only from what the character might do, but from whether they even know what they are capable of.

For Writers: Using Unreliability to Build Suspense

Start with character: What might your protagonist be unwilling or unable to see clearly? Consider layering trauma, denial, or dependence on substances to introduce narrative distortion.

Use memory loss or selective recall to reveal truths in increments. Structure scenes around flashbacks, contradictions, or moments where the narrator second-guesses themselves. Let your setting mirror the character’s instability—fog, rain, locked rooms, or chaotic domestic spaces can reinforce psychological disarray.

And most importantly, root the unreliability in emotional truth. Readers don’t need to trust your narrator to follow them—they just need to believe in their struggle. Suspense thrives in this space between belief and doubt.

Police and Bribes

By D.L. Williams

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Chances are you’re going to write about a dirty cop if you are penning mystery or thriller stories. Graft is, heartbreakingly, an ugly reality of police work, and it certainly merits attention from mystery and thriller writers. We write conflict, after all, and there are few things more controversial than a cop willing to take a bribe. 

In my honest and broad experience, corrupt cops are in the significant minority. Most officers are conscientious, ethical people who do good work, but some cops are worse than a suspicious rectal polyp. Taking dishonest officers to task through your writing is one way to fight against corruption, so I encourage you to dive in. Let’s talk about it.

When I was twelve years old, I secretly borrowed a book off my father’s shelf. The story I chose was entitled Serpico, a decidedly R-rated book, not intended for juvenile audiences. Dad didn’t realize for years I’d read that book. Alas, it changed my life.

Serpico is the story of a real police officer by the name of Francesco Vincent Serpico who worked in New York City during the 1960s and ‘70s. NYPD was awash in corruption during that period, and Serpico rose to fame by his refusal to ever take a bribe or even a free meal at a diner. His colleagues distrusted him because he wouldn’t play along, and this led to him being set up for murder by fellow officers. He survived, through the bullet that blasted his skull hastened the end of his career.

I was mesmerized, and I admired Serpico’s courage so much I decided before turning the last page that I would one day be an honest cop. He is the reason I went into police work, and I hope I’ve done honor to his legacy. 

I don’t know a single officer on the job for more than a few months who hasn’t been offered some type of bribe. This is anathema to the honorable spirit of professional policing, but the offers do come. Over the years I’ve been offered piles of money, sex, concert tickets, and cars. On one occasion, a fellow I’d arrested for driving while intoxicated offered me a villa complete with a maid and lovely garden in Mexico, my name free and clear on the title, if I’d let him out of my squad car and let him walk home. 

Turned out he had plenty of money to do that, and he really did own a little house on some acreage south of the border. It was his sixth arrest for DWI. The judge had told him he’d go to prison if he ever got caught driving drunk again the last time he was in trouble. He was terrified of going to the actual “big house,” and I think he would have gnawed through the inside of my squad car if he thought he could escape custody. I’ve occasionally wondered about that little house, but I never considered taking him up on the offer. 

The first time I was ever offered a bribe was during the traffic stop of a middle-aged Hispanic man driving an old pickup truck. I can’t recall why I stopped him, but I have a vivid memory of him holding a $100 bill in his left hand as I approached the driver’s side. The message was clear: take the money and leave me alone. 

I’d venture to guess that one-hundred-dollar bill was about the only money he had in the world, probably his payment for days of labor. He was shaking in fear, and I felt sad that he believed his first action upon being stopped should be to bribe an officer. How pitiful that a laborer just trying to feed his family was so panicked about being pulled over by a cop that he offered me his grocery money. I gave him a warning and sent him on his way. 

Two weeks later, a patrol officer working in an adjacent town just north of where I’d pulled over that laborer was arrested for taking a bribe. The State Police had gotten wind that he was shaking down Mexican workers for cash, so they set up a sting with Hispanic officers dressed like farm workers driving battered pickup trucks. The crooked officer took the bait and went to jail. Fantastic! 

Which makes me wonder if that fellow I stopped had already heard about the corrupt officer working that area and assumed I was in on it. Corrupt officers harm us. They make good officers look bad in the eyes of the very people who need their help most of all. 

Sex is also offered more often than you might imagine. I lost count of the number of times a woman (and every so often a man) suggested coyly, “Is there anything I can do [to avoid arrest or citation]? Some were even more overt, casually offering variations of sex if I would let them go. 

For the record, no. 

Temptation is always lurking around the next traffic stop, and I’m not so naïve that I don’t realize some officers cave. I can simultaneously understand why and scorn them for it. Lust and greed are listed among the deadly sins for a reason, and weakness exists even among the toughest out there. 

Corruption in police circles tends to start on the low end of the sinister spectrum. Maybe it’s taking the offer of free food at a restaurant or accepting access to a private hunting lease for the weekend in exchange for letting a speeding motorist off with a warning. 

You could say, “No big deal,” but it is. Those freebies are like a gateway drug, and at some point, the officer who took one “hit” will rationalize doing it again. 

Humans must be the best animal on the planet for rationalizing acts we know to be wrong. We can talk ourselves out of going to the gym two weeks after the newest round of New Year’s resolutions. We can justify that second piece of cake or that “just one more” drink. One of the things we’re best at legitimizing is taking something that doesn’t belong to us.

This is especially true when someone is in financial straits. Those credit card bills keep mounting, the mortgage and car payments are overdue, your kid had to go to the ER last month, and the after-insurance invoice is a whopper. Desperation is the destroyer of ethics, especially when it comes to money.

Corruption among police officers is analogous to the dynamics of white-collar fraud. Those cases always involve three elements: Access, trust, and an ability to rationalize a deed unworthy of that trust. A hedge fund manager who embezzles from his clients has access to the funds, the trust of his clients, and an ethical platform built on dry sand. 

The same holds true for officers who take bribes. They have access to a person who can provide something they need or want such as cash, sex, or entry into a lifestyle they only imagined before. They have the general trust of the public and supervisors. And, if they have turned to the proverbial dark side, they’re able to justify their actions so they don’t feel like the dirty cop they’ve become. 

Cops aren’t paid what they’re worth relative to exposure to danger, the job requirement that they make critical decisions for strangers based on inadequate information, the hate they endure on a daily basis, and all the PTSD-inducing moments they experience over the course of a career. Here’s the thing; they know they’re not paid what they’re worth, and this starts to chafe souls after a while. It’s a great career, and I am so glad I was able to do it, but I never believed my fellow officers and I were being paid for the true value of our work. 

This sense of being undervalued creates a danger zone; cops grind their teeth and lose sleep over bills, all while knowing they’ll suit up and jump back into a societal fire for which society will never truly appreciate them. It gnaws on some officers, bending their morality until they can no longer remember that they swore to protect and serve the public, and that they vowed to do so in an honorable fashion. 

Think of all the emotions you would experience if you were driven to shoplift. Shame comes to mind, but so does the thrill of being naughty. Add to that a sense of indignation: “They should have hired more security guards…added more surveillance cameras…not placed something so valuable right by the exit doors. Shame on them.” 

It’s the embezzlement triad all over again: Access (not enough security precautions and a thing of value placed where it can easily be stolen), the basic trust every store operator must have for customers, and rationalization of the act (e.g., “That company is so big, they factor in petty theft to their bottom line.”) 

Writers shouldn’t defend corrupt officers, but knowing how and why such bad acts occur should be part of your creative palette. Perhaps your dirty cop wasn’t always corrupt. Showing your readers how and why he came to take bribes is an extraordinary tool in character building. We all talk about not creating one-dimensional characters. Here is an opportunity to create more dimensions and, thus, more compelling personalities. 

Dirty cops have betrayed the badge and no longer belong in the ranks. Ethics and honor are everything in a profession where a big chunk of the job is confronting others who have lost their ethical way. Such officers are hurting, and they’ve bent to the pressure. I get it, but I will never abide a fellow officer succumbing to temptation. Having sworn officers simultaneously taking bribes and arresting people for doing unscrupulous acts is untenable. So, write about police corruption, making sure you offer your readers characters who are flawed, multi-dimensional, and deliciously bad. Onward. 

Five Key Elements in a Psychological Thriller

By Carol Willis

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Psychological thrillers are driven by emotion and psychological tension, focusing on the minds and behaviors of their characters. They create an atmosphere of menace through plot twists, mind games, and unreliable narrators, keeping readers in suspense with a looming sense of dread. Unlike traditional mysteries, which unravel past crimes, psychological thrillers often establish the villain early, with protagonists struggling to prevent an impending threat. While they share elements with other suspense genres, psychological thrillers stand out for their deep exploration of fear and paranoia. Below are five key elements that define this gripping genre.

Atmosphere of Menace - often characterized by setting, weather, and time of day. Think secluded cabin in the woods, a spooky gothic mansion, ominous storms and in the dark of night. Usually something external that causes anxiety and uncertainty for the main character (and the reader). 

Tension and Danger - Psychological thrillers create tension by placing ordinary characters in inescapable danger, often in familiar settings like suburbs or homes. Unlike action-packed spy thrillers, these stories upend the ordinary, revealing that the greatest threats often come from those closest to us. The protagonist—often a vulnerable yet resourceful woman—must outwit a determined villain, who is frequently a spouse or family member. By rooting fear in the familiar, these thrillers immerse readers in psychological mind games, exploring themes of trust, paranoia, and hidden dangers while gradually unveiling characters’ backstories and mental struggles.

Mind Games and Psychological Manipulation - Characters experience paranoia, gaslighting, or memory manipulation. The villain often leads the protagonist in a high stakes cat and mouse game with escalating danger. The reader is made to feel as uncertain and anxious as the protagonist.

Suspense and Twists - Suspense is how an author builds tension throughout the story. It’s necessary in any genre, but it’s absolutely vital in thriller novels. Ultimately, your goal for the reader is that they never want to put the book down. Each chapter must end with a cliffhanger or significant plot twist or important question. 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. Emphasis is on the eerie over the sensational. Twists again are key, with chapters routinely ending in one disturbing revelation after another. Character is more important than pacing, but pacing can’t be neglected. This subgenre demands an ability to reveal dread and panic without explosions or car chases. 

Unreliable Narrator - An unreliable narrator heightens suspense by making the reader question who they can trust. Often, it’s revealed late in the story that the protagonist suffers from post-traumatic distress, mental illness, a head injury, or drug addiction, distorting their perception of reality. As noted above, lies, paranoia, and flawed memories are common in this genre, which is why many thrillers use a first-person POV. This perspective immerses the reader in the character’s experience, building sympathy while limiting their understanding to a single, potentially deceptive viewpoint—raising the crucial question: how reliable is their version of events?

Psychological thrillers focus on suspense, fear, and the uncertainty of a future crime rather than solving a past one. Unlike traditional mysteries, where the crime has already occurred, these stories often introduce the antagonist early, with the protagonist working to prevent their next move. Common elements include an atmosphere of menace, heightened tension, and psychological mind games. The genre thrives on upending the ordinary, often featuring domestic settings where danger lurks close to home. Suspense is crucial, with chapters ending in cliffhangers or shocking revelations to keep the reader engaged. An unreliable narrator, paranoia, and flawed memories add layers of intrigue, making the reader question what is real. Character development is central, with pacing maintaining a steady build-up of dread rather than relying on constant action.

In the next essay, we’ll take a deeper dive into these five key elements, exploring how they shape psychological thrillers with examples from some of the genre’s most gripping stories. Stay tuned for a closer look at what makes these thrillers so hauntingly unforgettable.

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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 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. 

The Scene Of The Crime

By Shannon Hollinger

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Location. Location. Location.

It’s true for real estate, restaurants, and even books.

As a reader, I’ve lost track of the number of times that I’ve purchased a book based on the setting. Whether it was a place I’ve always wanted to visit, an area I was already familiar with, or a spot that promised a form of intrigue that I just couldn’t pass up, no other part of a book has the ability to create a picture quite as quickly and thoroughly as where it is set.

That’s because a location has the uncanny ability to transport the reader to a new world. It’s cheaper than a vacation, less crowded than the airport, and safer than traveling by car, but like anything you’re looking forward to, readers have certain expectations. Your setting is a promise you make to them, a pact that that small town will be brimming with secrets… that beach filled with romance… or that jungle saturated with suspense.

When writing, ask yourself—how much thought have you put into your setting? Do you craft scenes oozing with atmosphere? Are your locales drenched with details? Or is your setting simply the place where your fascinating characters bring your stellar plot to life?

I have to admit that while I occasionally focus on developing an atmospheric setting in my short fiction, in my novels, the settings tend to be the trunk on which my plot branches and my characters grow their leaves.

The idea for my Chief Maggie Riley series, set in the fictional town of Coyote Cove, was inspired by the real-life, no stoplight town where my husband and I spent our honeymoon years ago. 

That’s right. I spent my honeymoon plotting a murder. Fortunately for him, it wasn’t my husband’s.

But it wasn’t the thought of the impending ups and downs that marriage would bring once the honeymoon was over that had me thinking about death. There was something magical about that small town in Maine nestled in a mountain valley on the edge of a lake. A spot where moose outnumbered people three to one, the annual snowfall numbered in the triple digits, and everywhere you looked, you saw a postcard setting. 

It just seemed so… perfect. And I wasn’t buying it for a second. 

Call me cynical or jaded—or a mystery author—but the more we explored this seemingly flawless place, the more I became convinced that beneath the peace and the quiet and the enchanting beauty lurked something dark and sinister. I couldn’t help thinking to myself that this idyllic little burg would be the perfect breeding ground for crime. 

But would the setting be able to carry a series? To answer this question, I considered the location in terms of being its own character. 

It was wild. Unpredictable. Moody. Vulnerable. In short, yes, it would.

I decided that the remoteness, aided by the harsh environment, would be ideal for creating suspense as well as conditions that could be used to torture my heroine and further complicate her struggles. 

Sitting beside that lake—one that surely hid at least a few bodies—all those years ago, goosebumps peppering my flesh as I listened to the chilling cry of a loon, answered by the hungry howl of a predator, I knew the scene was prepped for murder. Coyote Cove was born. Some small towns hide big secrets. And some secrets are deadly.

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With degrees in Crime Scene Technology and Physical Anthropology, Florida author Shannon Hollinger hasn't just seen the dark side of humanity - she's been elbow-deep inside of it! She's the author of both adult and YA standalone psychological thrillers as well as the gritty Chief Maggie Riley series. Her short fiction has appeared in Suspense Magazine, Mystery Weekly, and The Saturday Evening Post, among a number of other magazines and anthologies. To find out more, check out www.shannonhollinger.com.

Twists and Reveals: The Art of Keeping Your Readers Guessing

By Claire Cooper

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An interesting plot and intriguing characters are key ingredients to keep readers turning the pages of any work of fiction. But if you’re writing thrillers, crime, mysteries, or suspense, twists and reveals can be the secret sauce that turns a good story into a great one.

The two terms are often used interchangeably, but twists and reveals are quite different things. What are they? How do you construct them? And most importantly of all, what needs to be in place for them to work well?

The difference between twists and reveals

A reveal is just what it sounds like—new information that answers an important question. 

It might be the central question of the plot (who’s the killer?). Or it could be a nugget that brings the reader closer to solving the mystery (that dodgy guy who’s been stalking our heroine is her long-lost brother).

A reveal is essential to any whodunnit. Lucy Foley’s The Hunting Party is a classic example—there’s a cast of characters, one of whom is the murderer. The set-up has readers poring over every word, searching for clues to the killer’s identity. When it comes, the reveal is beautifully satisfying.

And while that happens at the end of the story, there are other, smaller reveals along the way. They keep things interesting, provide clues, and allow the reader to form theories about what’s happening. 

Like reveals, twists also impart information—but that’s not all. That information turns everything the reader previously thought they knew on its head.

That creates an exciting reading experience. And it also means readers will recommend your book to all their friends, because they’ll be desperate for other people to talk to about it.

Gone Girl is perhaps the most famous example of a twist in a modern psychological thriller. At the start, it reads as a well-written but conventional mystery: a woman has gone missing, her husband is under suspicion. Has he killed her?

But halfway through, we’re presented with new and shocking information. Everything we thought we knew was wrong. And we’re faced with a different set of questions to keep us reading.

Twists appear in classic crime, too. Agatha Christie’s After the Funeral has one of the most brilliantly constructed twists I’ve ever read. No spoilers: if you haven’t read it, put that right ASAP.

What is it that makes some twists and reveals work so well? And what goes wrong when they fall flat?

Writing a great reveal

Both twists and reveals play on the contract between author and reader. Some people refer to this as the “story promise,” the set-up that tells the reader what to expect if they decide to read the book.

Reveals honor that promise. Twists are an unexpected bonus (although the prevalence of twists in modern fiction means they’re not always unexpected—more on that later).

The reveal in The Hunting Party works so well because it offers readers exactly what they wanted when they started reading the book: they find out who the killer is.

Other reveals along the way answer some questions while posing others, keeping the tension high throughout. At the end, everything is resolved—and crucially, it fits together and makes sense.

That logic is essential. Part of the delight of reading a whodunnit is trying to work out the answer for ourselves. With the best books we fail, whilst knowing we could have succeeded, if only we’d spotted all the clues.

When a reveal goes wrong

When reveals fall flat, on the other hand, it’s often because new information comes out of the blue. There’s no way a reader could have worked it out. And there’s no pay-off for our concentration because nothing we’ve read until that point is relevant. We feel cheated.

The same goes for a reveal that feels implausible. While it could happen in real life, it feels too unlikely to be satisfying. It doesn’t fit comfortably with the world as it’s presented in the book.

Classic reveal fails can be guilty of one or both of these sins. Revealing that a character has an identical twin, say, or that a huge chunk of plot has been a dream—both feel like the author isn’t taking us seriously.

Yes, we know that identical twins exist; and yes, people dream. But if we haven’t been given any clues about what’s going on, the author has essentially been wasting our time. And even if the clues have been seeded, it’s hard to feel that the writer hasn’t taken an easy way out. 

The key to a successful twist

The same rules apply to a twist. It has to make sense. It has to be plausible. And it has to tie into what’s been presented before.

But with the twist, that final criterion is especially difficult to pull off. As writers, we need to lead our readers in the wrong direction, while still playing fair. Our characters can say things that aren’t true—they can be unreliable narrators. But we ourselves can never lie.

In Gone Girl, the twist is set up by the way we’re persuaded to think about the two main characters. One character reveals they’re lying to the police—they must have something to hide. We hear from the other in a context that makes it seem impossible that they’re lying.

That belief colors our interpretation of everything else. When it’s flipped on its head, we realize all our preconceptions are wrong.

The twist here works at a meta level, too. It changes our whole perception of the kind of book we’re reading. The story promise we thought we were being presented with at the beginning is something else entirely. 

That’s a risky approach. But with Gone Girl, it works because it’s so exciting. You thought you were getting something good—but you’re getting something even better.

With Agatha Christie’s After the Funeral, the twist is set up so subtly you don’t notice it’s been done. Not only are we misdirected, we congratulate ourselves for having worked something out for ourselves. What we don’t discover until right at the end is that we got it completely wrong. 

And Christie achieves that while only presenting us with the facts of the story. It’s a masterclass in misdirection.

The role of planning in constructing your twist or reveal

I’d argue that planning is essential to constructing both twists and reveals—even if, for pantsers, it only kicks in at the editing stage.

That planning starts with a clear story promise, the question that will be answered by the end of the book. That gives you the substance for your big reveal. 

To get there, there’ll be other questions that need to be answered. And those mini-reveals should pose new questions, too.

Also crucial is to decide what to reveal when. A good rule of thumb is to release important information at the last possible moment, only when readers need it to make sense of what happens next. Reveal it too soon, and suspense will leak away.

If you’re including a twist, you need to walk a tightrope. On one hand, your reader needs enough information that the twist will make perfect sense. On the other hand, you need to disguise that information in a way that doesn’t allow your reader to spot what’s coming.

There are lots of different ways you can do that. Here are a few:

• Have a character tell the truth, but make them appear so untrustworthy that your reader won’t believe them

• Have a character who lies but appears honest 

• Include red herrings

• Slip out crucial facts alongside revelations that appear more important, so your reader focuses on the wrong thing.

Finally, think about where you want your twist to appear. The only rule here is not to have it happen too soon: you need your reader to have developed a clear (and wrong) idea of what they think is happening for it to have real impact. 

The role of the twist in book marketing

Once upon a time, a twist was a relatively rare thing. These days, in genres like psychological thrillers, it’s almost expected. 

That presents some challenges. If readers suspect a twist is coming, they’ll be on their guard. And some people complain that blurbs mentioning a twist distract them from the story, diverting their attention to trying to spot it. 

It’s a fair point. But it’s also true that a great twist can be the thing that gets readers talking about a book. That, of course, means more sales—and what marketing department or indie author can afford to ignore that?

If savvy readers looking out for a twist are wise to the usual tactics, it’s up to us as authors to respond. Either we find ways to execute those tactics so brilliantly that we still bamboozle our readers, or we come up with new tactics altogether.

That’s pretty daunting—but it’s exciting too. I for one can’t wait for the next book with a “mind-blowing twist!”

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Claire Cooper grew up in a small village in Wales before moving to London as a student. She was a civil servant for 17 years, but hung up her bowler hat when she discovered that she much preferred writing about psychotic killers to Ministerial speeches. She lives in London with her husband and a pond full of very cute newts, and also writes as C. J. Cooper. Her latest book, "The Elevator" is set in New York, Bristol and London, and includes lots of reveals (and maybe one or two twists!). It was published on August 25th.