Thriller genre is all about suspense, tension, surprise and plot twists. While similar to mysteries, thrillers focus more on building and maintaining tension rather than solely on solving a puzzle.
The stakes in thrillers are usually high, the pacing is fast, and things are simply intense.
Commonly, thrillers feature either investigations into crimes or delve into the character's mind, exploring their inner world.
The biggest difference between thrillers and horrors is the intent. While a horror story aims to scare or disgust readers, a thriller focuses on anxiety to keep them on edge.
Each chapter should end with a hook, either uncovering one of your hidden cards, showing things are not how they seemed, or deepening the tension in some other way.
The events in thriller stories should keep moving one after another with little to no time to breathe in between. Whatever unnecessarily slows down the plot should be cut out.
The stakes should keep growing and new obstacles introduced to keep the pacing and allow no breaks in tension.
Thrillers usually contain the "all is lost" moment, where it seems like there's no way things will turn out great for the MC.
SUBGENRES
PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER - a lot of the conflict is mental, with the protagonist having their sanity threatened
LEGAL THRILLER - the MC is a layer, and the focus is on courtrooms. The stories often involve solving a major criminal case
POLITICAL THRILLER - this subgenre focuses on the world of politics, either exposing the corruption or governmental secrets
DISASTER THRILLER - natural disaster is taking place, and the MC is either trying to stop the disaster, the extent of the disaster, or just save themselves before time runs out
TROPES
Properly paranoid - when the character who is considered paranoid is actually very right about what they're "paranoid" about; unfortunately, nobody believes them
World of mysteries - it will be lampshaded that what you're seeing is just the tip of the iceberg, a small part of a giant picture, and you'll be very lucky if you get answers to even a small part of your questions
Gambit pileup - involves two or more people with separate agendas each hatching complicated plans, which then collide and interfere with each other
Conspiracy thriller - before the protagonist(s) realize(s) it, they are caught in a multi-layered plot that involves possibly EVERYONE, especially those who are tasked with the official investigation
Unreliable narrator - the author is placing you in the hands of a storyteller whose version of events may not align with reality
horror • romance • adventure • fantasy • science-fiction • slice of life • historical fiction • folklore • inspirational • western
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