Picture this: You’re in the middle of reading an incredible book that has you at the edge of your seat.
For one reason or another, you need to get back to your life and momentarily put the book down. But even after you’ve stopped reading, you’re somehow still thinking about it. You’re going about your day turning over different plot points, agonizing over the fictional lives of the characters, and trying to predict how it’s all going to pan out.
The best thrillers leave their readers feeling this way, both while they’re reading and long after they’ve stopped.
They leave readers with goosebumps and racing thoughts and an eagerness to find out what’s going to happen. But what is it about these stories that keep readers wanting more?
Here are six elements to include in your manuscript if you’re looking to write a page-turning thriller that will captivate your readers from the moment they pick it up to long after they put it down.
#1 Something to be Solved
A thriller needs some sort of question, problem, or mystery that is solved over the course of the book—which is a major element that sets it apart from other genres.
This is some sort of ominous scenario that grabs the reader’s interest, is continuously referred to, and pushes them through to the end of the story. You’ll want readers to be asking things like what happened, who did it, what’s going on, and how will this turn out.
While there may be many layers and moving pieces over the course of your book, this is the central plot you’re writing everything else around.
Here are some example of things needing to be solved from popular thrillers:
- What happened to the missing girls? (Sharp Objects)
- Who’s blood-curdling scream was that? And what happened? (The Guest List)
- Who murdered Savvy? (Listen for the Lie)
#2 A Gripping Inciting Incident
A central element in nearly every story is an inciting incident. An inciting incident is a plot point that occurs somewhere toward the beginning of the story that changes the pre-existing world the story is set in.
This doesn’t need to change the entire world per se—but certainly the world of the characters.
Some examples include moving to a new house, switching schools, going through a break up, or bumping into someone on the subway.
In a thriller, this inciting incident needs to be compelling and related to the central “problem to be solved.” Sometimes this inciting incident is the problem itself that pulls the reader through the entire story—for example if the inciting incident was a murder. In other cases, this problem comes as a result of the inciting incident.
Some examples of inciting incidents include:
- A man’s wife has vanished (Gone Girl).
- There is a wedding on a remote island (The Guest List).
- A woman is on the run after stealing money from her client (Psycho).
#3 Flawed or Morally-gray Characters
What often separates a thriller from a typical mystery is that in a thriller bad guys, unreliable narrators, and even villains can be main characters.
The best thriller authors walk a fine line of creating characters that their readers can root for, while also creating characters that have striking flaws or that are difficult to trust.
There are a wide range of things you can do to make a character untrustworthy or flawed. If you’re looking for a slight flaw, you could have your character be a substance user, experience memory loss, or have some sort of pre-existing trauma.
If you want to go full unreliable narrator, you could make someone a criminal or murderer.
Some examples of morally-gray protagonists:
- Lucy Chase has a brain injury that makes it so she can’t remember what happened the night her best friend was killed (Listen for the Lie).
- Camille Preaker is a cynical alcoholic who cuts herself (Sharp Objects).
- Joe Goldberg is a stalker turned murderer (You).
Loving this article? Be sure to check out Jess Munday’s Substack!
#4 Intentional Information Gaps
Thriller authors intentionally keep things from readers. They leave little breadcrumbs for their readers that give them a hint or possible solutions to “the thing to be solved” without revealing everything all at once. These breadcrumbs come in the form of information gaps where a character may get a little piece of information related to the puzzle to be solved, but not the full thing.
Lucy Foley does this really well in The Guest List (major spoilers below):
- There’s a scream on the night of the wedding shortly after the lights go out.
- We flash back to the day everyone arrives. Backstory and character development happens.
- We find out there is blood and a body outside the wedding tent.
- We flash back to learning about all the characters and their flawed relationships with one another.
- We find out the groom was murdered.
- We get a glimpse into potential motives each guest has for killing the groom.
- We flashback to the moment before he was killed and find out who did it.
The way that she lays out the story makes it so the reader gets small pieces of information about what happened as the story goes on. The reader can then hypothesize and try to solve the mystery alongside the characters as the plot unfolds.
#5 Steady Build up of What’s at Stake
Additionally, you’ll want to raise the stakes as the plot goes on. This adds suspense to the story and increases the tension overtime to keep the reader invested.
This could look like a race against time, the character making increasingly bad choices, or giving them more to lose.
Some examples of raising the stakes:
- The character is racing against time.
- The character is on the run or at risk of getting arrested.
- The character could lose people in their life (children, spouse, family, etc.)
- The character could lose their job, home, or another important material thing.
It’s important that this build up happens at a steady pace. It shouldn’t feel like the stakes rise too quickly nor should it feel like it’s happening too slowly after your inciting incident.
#6 A Big Reveal
You’ve given them a problem to be solved, left them breadcrumbs, and raised the stakes, now it’s time to give the people what they want!
Before your book ends, you need to answer the big question you’ve been using to pull the reader through the plot of your story—a full account of “what happened” or “who did it.”
This doesn’t necessarily need to be the very last part of your book—you can leave them with some sort of resolution or can even leave them on a cliffhanger.
However, you do need to answer the primary question you presented that drove the story and ensure that all the breadcrumbs you left along the way add up and make sense with your final reveal.
Jess Munday is a thriller writer preparing to publish her debut novel. She is based in San Francisco where she works as a content marketing manager for a tech company. She is the creator of the Sweet Dreams Tennessee newsletter on Substack.
