Home » Reading & Literature » Mass Market Fiction » Why Thrillers Thrill

Why Thrillers Thrill

© Deborah Cannon

After months of revising, the agent still had problems with my thriller. I decided it must be because I still didn't know what one was. And I had to know if I was going to sell my book.

The thriller, the book doctor said, differed from the common adventure story in its faster pace, greater suspense or tension and, usually the hero's discovery of a betrayal from within just at the crucial moment. If this was true, then all I needed was to pick up the pace and to do this I had to increase the tension. My next step was to find out all I could on creating suspense. The writing books I consulted basically told me the same thing. To create suspense, the writer must arouse an expectation in the reader and then delay the fulfilment of that expectation. In other words, leave them hanging until the critical moment- then give them the resolution.

Easier said than done. Yes, my heroes were on a roller-coaster ride, encountering obstacle after obstacle along the way, but my book still didn't fit any definition that I could find of the genre. The logical thing to do would be to analyse some bestsellers. Again, I was stumped, my story was nothing like Tom Clancy's techno-thrillers, Dean Koontz or John Grisham's legal thrillers, Patricia Cornwell's or Kathy Reichs' medical thrillers. In fact, it didn't seem to fit any existing category.

So maybe it wasn't a thriller and maybe that's why the agent was having so many problems with it. Either that, or I wasn't a good enough writer, and I just wasn't getting it. But she stuck with me through yet one more draft. I finally signed with her after three years of rewrites, my manuscript deemed "perfect", and now making the rounds of the New York publishers. I have since written two short stories, two more novels, and am working on a third- all thrillers. Why are they thrillers?

Well, I didn't start writing about medical, legal or technological issues, and I didn't add superfluous action, gratuitous sex or violence. I stuck true to my characters and let them tell their stories, and it turns out that, even though their stories don't fit the standard categories, they are still thrillers. I realized after all of that soul searching and researching, thrillers thrill because they share a common underlying theme. And this theme is what powers them. In all books of this type, the hero is swept away by circumstances beyond his control. Whether it is a psychotic fan as in Stephen King's "Misery", a giant shark as in Peter Benchley's "Jaws", a vindictive terrorist as in Tom Clancy's "Patriot Games" or a serial killer as in Kathy Reichs' "Déjà Dead", the protagonists find themselves in a situation of helplessness, where the forces bent on their destruction get closer and more threatening with every page turned. It is this powerlessness, this idea of horrific things happening to you, things you can't control, that every person fears. And that is why, at the end of a thriller, the hero must find the strength to save himself.