Tips for Writing a Thriller

Seems interesting I think I will check it out. Thanks for sharing this ^^

thanks for posting. Steps 1, 2, 4 pretty much describe my planning approach (in any genre), but I don't get what he's saying in 3. I know what a MacGuffin is; I just don't grok how he's defining it here. Since he brought up an example in step 2, he should have continued with that example in step 3: what was the MacGuffin in that same book? Maybe you can explain what he meant to me?

And his title is misleading; this is really about planning a thriller (or any novel). And unless in 3 he is saying "plot the whole thing" he's missing that step. (But I can't plot until I know my characters.) So my process typically is:

1) idea (his step 1)
2) research facts so I understand the idea and its plot possibilities
3) characters (his step 4)
4) leading to elevator pitch (his step 2)
5) leading to working query and short synopsis
6) leading to either writing or a more detailed outline (and ongoing research and more detailed character arcs)
7) leading to several months of actually drafting (Sometimes leading to dead end and abandonment but ideally to a full draft)
8) revisiting Q and S
9) leading to rewriting, editing, proofing
10) Qing (and while Qing, start again searching for new 1)

Step 3 is a bit enigmatic. Either he's misunderstanding what a MacGuffin is or or he's using it in the sense of reliance on a plot gimmick with no other story content to back it up.

I don't think he knows what a Macguffin is. I think he thinks he knows, but he doesn't.

The way that I see Step 3 is in the Hitchock sense (since Hitch is the one who came up with the idea of the MacGuffin in the first place). My understanding is that Hitch used the idea of the MacGuffin as something that the characters want but in the end doesn't really matter. For example, in Psycho, the MacGuffin is the fact that Janet Lee stole money from her employer and ran off with it. It's the plot device that gets things going but the real story is about the Anthony Perkins character and his psycho tendencies and relationship to women and his mother and all that.

Similarly, the microfilm hidden in the Mayan statue in North by Northwest is the MacGuffin - it's the thing that the spies involved in the story are chasing, but it isn't really what the story is about. The story is more about Cary Grant's character being mistaken for someone else and the dangers involved in that.

I might be way off, but that's how I see it. I think he was mainly saying that you need some kind of plot problem to get the story started to get people reading but what really matters is the complexity of the plot and the characters. It's sort of like going out for a drive - the motor in the car starts you off but you have to choose what road to drive on and where your destination is.

I can sort of see this happening with a novel I'm working on. The plot device that gets the story started is the fact that a woman's teenage brother-in-law is discovered hanging from the rafters of the attic room. But the real story revolves around her pursuit of what led to his death and her discoveries about the "double life" he was leading beyond what the family knew (not to mention the fact that the suicide turns out to be a murder rather than a suicide).

Djuna

Here's one I just found:

http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2010/01/19/writing-thrillers-james-rollins/