Thrillers and How to Write Them

Last weekend I took an online webinar, as they call them, on thriller writing, sponsored by Writers' Digest. It was quite entertaining, and may even have been helpful. Time alone will tell whether my two hundred dollars was worth spending to resuscitate my perishing writing career. I know I can thrill people if I put my mind to it, but it's possible that I need professional help. Thrilling people, I mean. Professional writing help.

The webinar consisted of six presentations lasting about an hour and a half, one of which blew up fifteen minutes in, and two of which I had to miss, since they took place while I was at work at the Marshall House. But I can see them later today, when the webinar people send me the links. For those of you who don't know what a webinar is, and I didn't, before I undertook this, here's how it went:

First thing I did was to log on to the link they sent me. That presented me with instructions to download the software to put the webinar on my computer. The webinar appeared in two panels, one to show the video portion, one to play the audio while displaying the name of the person talking. You could type questions into a box. You could not speak to the presenter through the computer microphone, not for this webinar, though it may be possible for others.

Then came the presentations.

Hallie Ephron gave her usual bracing talk on how to give your story forward momentum. I have my notes right here, in case you've never heard her. My notes say, open with an unanswered question, use a hook-and-grab scene structure with rising stakes and a ticking clock, put your major plot twists at the end of Act 1, the middle of Act 2, and the end of Act 2, and go to the Conklins' for meatloaf at six-thirty. (Wait, that was when the Conklins called in the middle of the presentation.) And a bunch of other notes. I took more notes during her talk than anyone else's, because she had so much useful stuff to say. I'm not going to tell you all of it because it's her presentation, and also because I don't have the space.

The next presenter, William Martin, talked about historical fiction, which is what I write these days. Instead of giving a Powerpoint presentation he spoke into the camera in his computer, positioned so as to give us a nice view of his handsome and orderly office. He mentioned that the office, and the house it was attached to, were paid for with the proceeds of his writing, but he was such a nice guy that I couldn't quite bring myself to hate him for that. Particularly not after he went on to tell us many useful things, not only about building a good story but about research. People want to be educated as well as entertained, he said, which is why you want to get the details right. Never stop doing research, he said. Read the contemporary newspapers. Walk the ground. I felt inspired.

Larry Brooks, the next speaker, began to tell us about putting the maximum thrills in your thriller, whereupon his cell phone failed; with no audio, all we could do was watch his cursor flailing ineffectually across the screen, where his PowerPoint presentation was still being displayed. But not to worry. I can catch up on everything today, when the folks from Writers' Digest will email me a link to his completed presentation.

I missed the first two presentations on Saturday. They looked good, but I had to go to work, as I mentioned. I'll get them later. The third and last was all about voice. It was presented by D. P. Lyle, who read from a number of famous and well-written books, illustrating and commenting on the voice of each author. I see here that I wrote almost nothing down about this one, being mesmerized by his speaking voice, beautiful, with a touch (or more than a touch) of the South. I did write it down when he said that knowledge, experience, and confidence will form your writing voice, and you must read a lot and write a lot to develop these things. Respect the reader, he said. I can do that.

So I'm off to write my thriller, in a special thriller voice that I will work on for the occasion, perhaps stealing it from renowned Dan Brown. Or not.

This morning a book came in the mail that gave me a genuine thrill. I can't remember when I was so excited about anything. It was this: the 1915 yearbook of the New York Yacht Club. Von Rintalen lived there, you see, while he was spying for the Germans in New York City. I had to know: Was he listed in the membership? Not as von Rintalen, as it turns out, but rather as plain Franz Rintalen. He had been a member since 1906. Which means that when he came to New York in 1915 to blow up all the ammunition destined for the British, he had been there before, and indeed had already established himself as a person of high social position.

A bonus in the little book are the many pages of colored private signal flags, the flags of schooners, single masted vessels, yawls, steamers, power boats, and launches belonging to various members of the club, as well as flags for members who were non-yacht owners. What names. A roster of Waspdom. Tarrant Putnam. Percy R. Pyne. G. W. Quintard, 3d. (Franz Rintalen had no private signal flag. Tells you something.)

To possess an artifact like this from the period you're working on is the next best thing to walking the ground. I'm terribly excited. Thrilled, in fact.

© 2015 Kate Gallison

So, How Did You Learn to Write Thrillers?

Our guest today is James (Jim) Hayman. When I read this post of his about learning to write thrillers on the Maine Crime Writers blog, I invited him to share it with our readers, not only because I make no secret of my own devotion to Maine–Prout's Neck, a tiny village on the coast near Portland, is one of my favorite places on the planet!–but because it's a thought-provoking and informative piece.

Jim Hayman began life in New York City, was educated at top schools in New England, and after a highly successful professional career in Manhattan moved to Portland, Maine, just before 9/11.

The Big Apple provided years of training that now serves him well as he pens spine-tingling crime novels. A star on Madison Avenue, as well as in TV production, his experiences in creative direction on famous accounts like Procter and Gamble, the U.S. Army, Lincoln/Mercury, as well as superb credits in The Sopranos, Law and Order and Murder One, provided this talented writer with material that brings out the fear and trembling in his increasing hordes of eager readers.

When I read his first book, The Cutting, I thought, "This guy HAS The Touch!" Then The Chill of Night made my little grey cells clamor for more! Now I anticipate Darkness First!

Thelma Straw

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Whenever I give a reading in a bookstore or a library, I usually mention that when I began writing the first McCabe thriller, The Cutting, I had no prior experience writing fiction. I’d never written so much as a single short story. Not even as an exercise in a college creative writing class.

When I say this, someone in the audience, often an aspiring mystery writer, inevitably asks, “So, how on earth did you manage, first time out, to write a thriller that someone wanted to publish?”

“Well,” I respond truthfully, “I started by reading a bunch of how-to books on the craft of writing mystery fiction.” These included James Frey’s How to Write a Damn Good Mystery, Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel by Hallie Ephron and Write Away by Elizabeth George. All were helpful in teaching me the basics. How to structure a plot, how to build tension, how to shift point of view and a number of other writerly techniques. “But,” I tell the audience, “I can’t honestly say they gave me the skills I needed to write and publish The Cutting.”

“Okay, so what did?” my questioner asks.

“Well,” I say, “I’ve been a writer all my working life and managed to make a living so I guess writing comes naturally to me. It’s about the one thing I think I’m genuinely good at.”

The questioner still looks dubious. “What kind of writing did you do?”

I then describe how, for the ten years prior to sitting down to write The Cutting, I churned out an almost endless stream of brochures, newsletter and business press articles, web content, speeches and white papers that were written mostly for companies in the healthcare and financial services industries. I also mention the two non-fiction books I wrote, one a history of Banknorth Group, the other a history of Maine Medical Center.

“Do you think writing that stuff gave you the skills you needed to write thrillers?”

“Well, some,” I reply honestly, “But not all.”

At this point, my questioner usually gets a determined look in his or her eye. “Okay,” they ask, “so what did?”

“Advertising.”

“Advertising?”

“Yes. Advertising. Specifically television advertising. More specifically television advertising for clients who, back in the eighties and nineties, wanted and could afford to pay to produce big-budget movie-like commercials shot on location by top-notch directors like Michael Bay, Joe Pitka, Tony and Ridley Scott, Eddie Bianchi and others. Before going freelance, I worked as a copywriter and creative director at one of the top agencies in New York writing and producing those kinds of commercial for clients like the U.S. Army, Lincoln/Mercury and Merrill-Lynch.”

At this point there’s usually a joke from the audience. “Advertising?” some wag will say, “I thought you said you’d never written fiction before.”

Having just lived through a political campaign where nearly everything the candidates claimed in their TV commercials was exaggerated to the point of being flat lies, I can’t do anything but smile, nod and agree.

“However,” I add, when the laughter finally dies down, “that’s not really my point. The truth is writing mini-movies like TV commercials is great training for writing not just thrillers, but any kind of fiction.”

I believe that to be true, for three distinct reasons.

First, writing TV commercials teaches you to write dialogue. A lot of aspiring writers find creating believable dialogue to put in the mouths of their characters is difficult. But because so much of writing for film requires writing dialogue, that eventually, if you have any kind of ear for how people speak (and I think I do), it starts to become easy. All three of my books are dialogue-heavy. Most of the story is told through conversation. One character telling another what I want the reader to know. I imagine the same can probably be said about most of the books written by most of the other writers who have come out of ad agency backgrounds–James Patterson, Stuart Woods, Marcus Sakey, Ted Bell, Chris Grabenstein and many others.

The second important thing writing for the camera teaches you is to think visually. You have to know where the camera is in your scene and mentally write down exactly what it’s seeing. For example, when I was writing commercials, I might write a camera direction like: “Open on a a long shot of a white sand beach on an overcast morning in September. We can see a calm ocean behind it. Camera moves in to reveal two people, a man and a woman, walking along the waterline. They’re both wearing white. Continue to move in on their faces to medium close-up. Finally they stop walking and look at each other. Continue move to tight close-up of their two faces.”

In my first book, The Cutting, this kind of camera direction was translated into the opening two paragraphs of an important chapter: “Had anyone been watching, the two figures would have appeared almost spectral. A man and a woman, both dressed in white, moving together across a translucent, nearly monochromatic emptiness, where sand blended into sea and sea into overcast sky without perceptible delineation.

For a time, they seemed lost in thought, each looking down, each noting the prints their steps left behind in the sand. After a while they stopped and the woman turned toward her companion. She took one of his hands in hers as if willing him to move closer. He didn’t. She let go. A wisp of blonde hair blew across her face. She brushed it away.” Seeing the scene in your mind as clearly as if you were watching it in person or on a screen, then writing what you see helps the writing succeed.

Finally, the third thing writing TV advertising teaches is to write tight. In a sixty second commercial you get a maximum of roughly one-hundred-and-twenty words to tell your whole story. Beginning, middle and end. In a thirty second commercial, you get sixty words. In either case, every word counts. Not a single one can be wasted. It’s an important discipline that serves one well when writing fiction. Or, frankly, when writing anything else.

Those are the primary skills advertising gave me that helped me write all three of my books, The Cutting, The Chill of Night and my upcoming thriller Darkness First. You don’t need to spend twenty years in an ad agency to get them. Just listen to how people talk, imagine what your scene looks like and don’t get wordy. Having said all that, I have to add it doesn’t hurt to have an active imagination and a natural affinity for the English language.

James Hayman

Late Night, Groggy Morning

Normally I retire at ten o'clock, so as to be able to rise at six or so with a smile on my face and a song in my heart. Not so last night, when the season finales for Burn Notice (spy thriller) and Suits (legal thriller) were showing one after the other on the USA Network.

When people whine that there is nothing on TV, I am usually among the first to agree. But there's something about Burn Notice – Sharon Gless playing the mother, maybe. We aging mothers of feckless sons have no trouble identifying with her, even to the point of personal style. Gaudy earrings! Yes! That's the ticket. And huge explosions. What's not to like about a huge explosion? And wild plot twists. The end of the season finale leaves our heroes way up the creek, as always. It will be months before the next episode gives them the chance to start paddling.

As for Suits, their season finale is a similar thrill ride, in a corporate way, with the bad guys behaving worse than ever and the good guys pushed to the wall. Louis descends deeper and deeper into weaselhood. Harvey loses his cool. Mike gets in trouble with women. Again, it will be January before he has a chance to get out.

So when I fell into bed at eleven, I was far too restless from all that drama to sleep. Instead I picked up my IPad and read Cured, Donna Huston Murray's new medical thriller. (Look for it in October. Donna emailed me a review copy.) Her tough cancer survivor protagonist struggled against such dreadful ordeals at the hands of the bad guys that I was quite unable to put it down. Anyway, watch for it. October! You'll be able to see it long before the next episodes of Burn Notice and Suits.

Kate Gallison