A thriller novel is all about action, suspense, unexpected twists and high stakes. Each scene moves into the next, and the descriptions are pared down and spare.
Thriller Novel
Thrillers are more about the plot rather than character. I’ve talked about character driven tales. Thrillers aren’t these kinds of stories. When writing a thriller, plot twists, and action scenes, and page-turning prose are the most important part. Emotional insight takes a back seat to twisty plots.
The thriller lives right next door to a mystery, a horror and a crime novel. It has a tendency to blend elements of all of these novels, often beginning with a crime (often a murder) and then having the protagonist become victimized by the antagonist for most of the book, while they are trying to solve a mystery so that they can overcome the villain before the book ends.
The nice thing about the thriller being a blend of several genres is that there is a little more wiggle room. If you are into mysteries, but you also like a good suspenseful book, then thriller is the way to go. You may even think you have a crime novel, only to start querying and find out that it’s a thriller. A good way to figure out this is to have your beta readers give you an idea where they think it fits, if you aren’t sure.
Photo by Andreas Marquardt
This genre of story often has a ticking clock. There is a very serious problem that has to be solved or else. The clock is constantly ticking, causing the reader to turn those pages to get to the end.
Word Count
The thriller word count is around 90,000 to 100,000 words. These can be a little longer than other genres, because of the expected complexity of the plot.
Thanks for reading. Let me know if you like this, or if you have any thoughts about writing a thriller novel, or if you would like to read something different! Thanks!
Recently, the idea of separating the art from the artist has been floating around a lot. It comes up when discussing movies, there’s always another director or actor who did something awful. In the fiction novel world, there are times when authors are found to have troubling beliefs or ideas, as well.
Photo by JULIO NERY
When this happens, there’s discussion around two schools of thought on the subject. The first is to not spend any money on the works of the author. The second is: separate art from the artist. The idea is that you–as a person, can take anything from the art that is out in the world. Yes, the ideas of the person behind that creation matter, but only to an extent.
Separating the Art from the Artist
The second school of thought is the one I subscribe to. There is a reason for it, personally, I would hate it if something stupid I said online one day, some idea I had was taken the “wrong way.” Or someone read too much into something I said. And, I was labelled in some way.
Photo by Steve Johnson
If someone is asking questions and seeking understanding, then there isn’t a reason to be judgmental. You don’t have to agree with their belief system to enjoy their creation. You can support your local library instead of them by just borrowing instead of purchasing, if you don’t want them to profit off of you.
Summary
To sum up, in my opinion, it is okay to enjoy the art made by a person who has troubling ideas if it’s inspirational to you. You don’t have to agree with their belief systems in order to enjoy their creations. Take what you will from their works, and leave anything that doesn’t inspire you, behind.
I’m enough of a dork to be a frequent visitor on Reddit. One of the sub-Reddits that I like to visit is called “horrorlit.” In this space, horror fans will ask for and receive book recommendations. I recently came across a post where the OP was requesting books with an unreliable narrator. I thought this was interesting. So, I took a look myself, and grabbed some of the titles to read. I ran through two such books fairly quickly. Because I read them back-to-back, I am reviewing them together, in this double book review post. Enjoy!
Book Review #1
I’m Thinking of Ending Things
I will start by reviewing Iain Reid’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. It’s worth noting that there is a Netflix series made from this book. I’ve not seen the series. So, I won’t make any comparisons there. The plot of the book is simple, on the surface. It’s a journey/travel novel. A lot of the action takes place in a car, or at places that are unknown to the protagonist.
Book Review Cover
Once you reach the end, it’s hard to say whether the narrator is unreliable or not. Are they really that unreliable? Or are they simply playing out a fantasy? Do they believe the fantasy? Or do they understand everything that happened? You have to decide. The ending is not ambiguous, but the reliability or unreliability of the narrator, in my opinion, is up for debate.
The prose is incredibly precise, and the book is a work of art unto itself. Yes, I picked it out of a horror literature forum, and that’s probably where it’s shelved in a bookstore. However, based off of the character-driven plot and the beauty of the prose, this book is very likely considered literary.
If you are reading this book as a writer, and you are looking precisely at how to write unreliable narrators, this is a great book to read.
Book Review #2
A Head Full of Ghosts
So the next review, Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts, is a very different tale from the first. This one is the story of a crumbling family. There is a mentally ill sister, a suddenly religious father, a stressed mother, and a little sister who is witness. In addition to this, there is a camera crew who is there to record the family’s undoing.
Book Review Cover
This story is one that wants you to ask questions from the start. It invites you to try and figure out what’s going on. The argument for the unreliability of the narrator is made because she’s young.
But the narrator presents herself as reliable, and the readers never find any reason not to trust her. Even at the end, where the audience learns that things happened differently than everyone would have believed in the world of the book, she still doesn’t appear, to me, at least; to be an untrustworthy narrator.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, if you are looking to write something with an unreliable narrator. It is important to present evidence for the readers that shows the differences between the world the character sees, and the way things actually are.
In, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, the title itself has two meanings. By the end of the book, the tragedy of the whole thing crashes down on the reader. How much do I misunderstand? How much of a life can pass a person by? In AHead Full of Ghosts, much of the misunderstandings can be explained either by the youngness of the narrator, or by the fact that she wouldn’t have been told certain things, etc.
Both books are excellent examples of their genre. Both are stories worth reading, but only one has a truly unreliable narrator, even though they are both first person, which does mean that the narrators will be unreliable–to a degree.
Thank you for reading! Let me know if you enjoyed this double book review and if you would like to see more of this, or if you’d like to see something different. Thank you!
