Chiller Thrillers for humans!

Chiller Thrillers to die for.

Intriguing plots, suspense, dreadful predicaments, breakneck pace, ‘out of this world’ events even... These are all elements of a good fiction thriller novel. Of course, you can also break thrillers down into lots of sub genres and start including spy/terrorist, swash-buckling adventure, horror, and supernatural. Maybe the key ingredient of thrillers is that they should have you breathlessly hanging onto your hollyhocks to see what will happen next. The stakes are high and layer after layer of ‘can it possibly get any worse?’ is superseded only by the hero/heroine’s attempts to come good, which conversely just gets him/her into further disasters... I just love these plots…

But wait there is more to it than this...

As a thriller writer I’m always fascinated by human behaviour in extremis. When the chips are down (forgive the cliché) all bets are off! Because, much more than the exciting plot lines, there must be a strong human interest that readers can relate to. And that, I believe, is what makes a thriller story so believable and engaging. It is the hero/heroine suffering and struggling and yet overcoming adversity – eventually - that makes readers empathise with them.

One of the main faults I had when I first started writing thrillers was that I did not understand the power of empathy. I focused on the multi-layered plot making it as full of chills and frights as I could. I made my main character a bit of a bitch and apart from overcoming the threat to her and her family I never made her particularly likeable. After this criticism of my story came from more than a few quarters, I looked afresh at other stories, comparing them to my own and realised they were right. Mostly main characters should be likeable even if they do some not so good things.

None of us know how we’d react if we were put in a life or death situation or were faced by a dreadful choice but we can’t help but wonder how we’d cope and that emotion – empathy - is the engine of all good fiction, not just thrillers. Of course it does mean that the heroine/hero characters must be likeable so we can root for them to succeed. Even superheroes and star trek characters have to have some human frailties for us to feel for them.

Thrillers may be fast paced, exciting reads but they still need to conform to basic story telling rules and the main characters need to connect with us, the readers.

Do you think empathetic charcters are key ingredients in good fiction? 

Murdering Mama's

Murderous Mothers

I have always been fascinated, yet at the same time repelled, by some of the classic narratives about mothers who kill their children. As a mother myself, and possibly because of my child protection background, I have long been interested in exactly why some mothers can murder their own offspring and why writers would want to write about it.

Writers who have used this theme litter the history of narratives and whilst child murder – indeed any murder - is unacceptable to society there is something so shocking about the phenomena that it has always had shock value and therefore been of interest to writers.  In classic literature there is the tale of Medea who murdered her children to exact revenge on their father. In modern literature there is the story of Beloved by Toni Morrison and countless stories which involve some measure of Fabricated Induced Illness (F I I). This can include mothers who smother their babies so making the death seem like natural causes e.g. cot death. These women are generally emotionally unstable or suffering mental illness but their concern for their children is very believable. These women appal people but maternal instinct is sometimes no match for deadened emotions or thwarted personal ambition.

But why are mothers who kill their children, seen as so much more repulsive than fathers who kill? The evolution of mankind has always required a mother or mother substitute and without that connection to a nurturing person during the defenceless time of infancy, the human race would not have survived. Jung says that the mother archetype is an inbuilt ability to recognise and form a certain relationship – that of mothering. The issue of trust and dependency therefore becomes an important one and I believe this is the reason why we are so repelled by women who go against the archetype and kill the very people they are supposed to be protecting.

I believe this theme makes for some of the most compelling drama and story telling I have come across. Modern day writers have used F.I.I. in their plots and there are many books and films depicting this condition although it is still a hotly debated topic.  Crime writer Patricia Cornwell uses it in her book ‘The Body Farm’ The murdered victim is an 11-year-old girl and the suspect is a serial killer but it turns out that she was killed by her own mother. The screenwriter M Night Shyamalan also uses a similar scenario in the 1999 film ‘The Sixth Sense’. Even ‘The X files’, ER and Law and Order have all featured episodes around women who kill their children (FII). These stories reflect today’s society where the awareness of mothers killing their children is both growing and yet controversial.

It makes for challenging drama but also reflects some of the darker corners of our society.

So, could you use controversial issues like this in your writing?

Killer Thrillers

 Killer Thrillers

Murder, the TV and film industry would have us believe, is common and frequented by dastardly criminal types and . The truth, happily, is that in real life, it is not as frequent as it might seem. As we all know, murderers inhabit the pages of whodunits and mystery novels like the opening night of a big screen blockbuster! The best example in English TV is the small quiet leafy village of Midsommer where murders – usually more than one - happen every week! The focus of these plots is the hero/heroine (usually a clever detective) who solves the murder and catches the killer.

In thrillers, unlike mystery and ‘whodunit’s’, a murder is often not the main plot line. But a killing will often serve to raise the stakes for the hero/heroine i.e. a woman desperate to save her child (and the rest of the world maybe) has to accept the kidnappers mean business when another child is found murdered. In a race against time, Killings along the way may be viewed as acceptable losses. Some murders are even inconsequential – strange though it may seem. For instance the multitude of deaths in war stories, blockbuster disasters and action movies.

The best thrillers, though, often have a murder somewhere in them, even if it is only a bit player (e.g. The Da Vinci Code and other search/quest thrillers). A murder lifts the story from ‘so so’ to an elevated level where more important characters are under threat. The tension and anxiety for the reader thus ratchets up a level. This, of course, is where thrillers come into their own for they are all about rising tension and cliff hangers at a mile a minute speed.

In one of my books (The Witcheye Gene) the killing actually starts in the prologue - another familiar way to show the true nature of what the hero is up against.

So do you need to show the actual murder in graphic detail or not? Depends is my answer – if we want the reader to feel worried or scared for the hero then yes. But maybe a few choice details will suffice rather than a blow by blow account. I also think it is more about showing what kind of person the protagonist is (and how his character connects to the story) than the actual deed.  However no one is truly all evil – except maybe the devil himself - so a fully rounded villain also needs some redeeming qualities. Many of the best known villains murder ruthlessly and without compunction yet they love their mother/animals/children! In fact, I believe it is these very human traits mixed with the very worst traits that fascinate us so much. And that is why the best known fictional villains/murderers stay with us for a long time. They could so easily have been just like us!

Murder for murder’s sake should never be introduced into a story just to spice it up but a well placed, well developed villain/protagonist who murders,horrifies us and that can certainly rev a tale up into top gear!

Who is your favourite murderer/villain in the most well known fiction?