Psychological Thriller?

Mark_Young

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Hey all, I've got a question (or a few). But first a bit of explaining.


A psychological thriller has little to no action in it. In fact from what I've seen, most don't even have an edgy beginning, books or movies. Instead, psychological thrillers have strong elements of mystery and drama of all things, and sometimes dabble into the Horror section.

The so-called suspense of the psychological thriller comes from a focus on characters and, I suppose, a "battle of the mind", hence the psychology. The thrill part seems geared towards psychologists and those who study psychology in an effort to try and figure out a source or reason for the error in the mind.

In addition, psychological thrillers, to my understanding, have a great amount of focus on characters and very little focus on plot or action (which is the exact reversing opposite of other thriller types).

One of my favorite examples (but by no means the best I'm quite sure) of the psychological thriller sub-genre is the movie Hide and Seek (2005) staring Dakota Fanning. It's listed as a thriller, but there isn't a single piece of chilling or heart-pumping action till close to the last 30 minutes of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3G9Qm2dLWU

Some of you might've seen the horror movie Orphan, which is very similar to the psychological thriller aspect. Both movies kinda give you the creep aspect I guess, to put it in my own words.

If you like guns and knives, a lot of guts and blood, or chilling, creepy things keeping you constantly on the edge of your seat and screaming every 5 minutes, this thriller is NOT for you.


Does anyone know the history on this genre, like where it came from, who might've started it (I'm sure Edgar Allen Poe is a good example, not 100% sure), and my biggest question: why it hangs around the Thriller section? Also, is the psychological thriller just unpopular or appeal to a specific audience? Please post your references and experiences (or discussion with an agent, etc. I won't take your own words as a cited source).


Specifically I tried posting a piece of psychological thriller in the thriller section because according to my research, that's exactly the type of story it was. So into the Thriller SYW it went. Then I got a great amount of bullshit about people asking where all the action and hair-raising thrill is. I was rather surprised at little people seemed to know about psychological thrillers.
 

heyjude

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why it hangs around the Thriller section?

Because it's a lot closer to thriller than, say, romance?

I'm guessing Deaver would fit your definition of psychological thriller? His books tend to be more about outwitting the enemy than action, IIRC.
 

Mark_Young

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Because it's a lot closer to thriller than, say, romance?

I'm guessing Deaver would fit your definition of psychological thriller? His books tend to be more about outwitting the enemy than action, IIRC.

Lol. Not quite. He's got some thrilling stuff but it's definitely on the side of mystery/crime. Let's see if I can get another example...



Stephen King is considered to have written psychological thriller, though some of his books are more aligned with the actual thriller part. Hmm, aside from what I listed, I can't really think of some good, popular examples. The Machinist is another one.



The focus on the themes, as I've said, surround the main characters and their actions and discoveries and usually revolve around specific psychological issues.

For example (something I made up). A script writer and director makes millions. He writes some of the most horrific, creepy, and realistic scenes in Hollywood. People wonder how he does it.

He gets drunk on occasion and goes to bars in secluded locations when a woman meets him and recognizes him. She eventually meets with him more and more and the two fall in love. She finds out that he has some odd issues but passes them off.

But when he takes her to his house, she finds out exactly why his movies are so realistic: he bases them on personal, real-life experiences. She then has to run through his mansion of horrors as he pleads and goes after her, trying to kill her slowly and bloody. He explains to her how he is a sadist, a serial killer who gets sexual satisfaction watching women slowly bleed to death from having their limbs twisted off, slowly falling in a quicksand of small metallic objects (and where he can see her body being molten to a bloody pulp as it falls through the floor and into a glass container), and etc.

When he thinks she dies from loss of blood from several near-misses, he attempts to rape her dead body when she's able to retaliate and kill him. Imagine all the action in the last 35 minutes of the 1 hour and 20 minute movie (or climax of the book).


Its like thriller mystery for psychologists sometimes. It keeps people guessing as they add up the symptoms with social association.



My story, Lisa's Secret, reveals early on (chapter 2) the source of her psychological issues. But it's part of a bigger story in the same manuscript. In the chapter preceding Lisa's Secret, Lisa's shoe print (for a small 12-year-old girl) is found in a pool of blood with a sort of ransom note. Nobody knows what happened to her, only who must have her. As a group of assassins (including her father, James) move in, James finds out that a group of massacres are spreading and that clues of his daughter keep showing up.

In the meantime, Lisa's Secret set of chapters shows her developing relationship as time reaches up to the present, up to the point she is kidnapped (time being funneled, moving faster) and eventually... well let's just say that I explain the clues to her being in the midst of the violence.
 

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I love psychological thrillers, but I'd disagree that nothing happens in them. It's kind of like people thinking literary novels don't need a plot. :tongue

They do tend to be more character based, but the character is dealing with particular situations going on around them. For instance, you can have what's basically a psychological thriller focused around a serial killer who is playing games with the detective, and the detective is having to confront old situations from his past, or being faced with a situation requiring him to act in a way he would consider immoral, something of that sort.

My first novel (jokingly called plotless, but that was because it wasn't outlined and I made it up as I went) was a psychological book. While the main conflict focused around the MC and his faith, there were quite a few other outside elements influencing the character (his friend's death, his child almost killed, things of that sort. He was being tempted to the dark side, so to speak). The difference is, rather than those becoming the main conflict, the main conflict was his battle of faith and those were all just various influences compounding that.

The issue with a thriller is that there really should be some evidence of the conflict very early on. It doesn't necessarily have to be action, but there should be some kind of drama happening. Thriller is, by it's very nature, darker with more at stake from the very beginning. Some genres might allow you to build, or might allow you to limit the danger, but if you're calling it a thriller, the reader should have a sense of the very serious nature from the very beginning.

My first concern with Lisa's chapters is that, depending on how they're done, just showing a hunky-dory relationship building that then goes wrong probably is boring. It almost sounds more like backstory. I'm not entirely sure who your MC is or what the psychological conflict is, but it all depends on how it's done.

Something you could try if the Lisa chapters are what's bogging you down is to make it clear to the reader that the person she's developing the relationship with is dangerous. Lisa may not know it, but as long as the reader does, it's going to provide a good amount of tension because we won't want to see it continue. We'll want to see her figure it out, but know she doesn't and that something really bad is going to happen.

You know what might be a great story to read? Not sure if it's exactly what you're going for, but Joe Hill's "The Black Phone" is the first thing that comes to mind. It's about a boy who's been kidnapped, and most of the "action" is just taking place with this kid locked in a room knowing he's going to be killed. It was awesome (it's in 20th Century Ghosts), and gave a really great example of building tension because you know what's going to happen more than what's actually happening.

I'm just speculating at this point, though. It's hard to know without reading. Actually, I'm going to pop over and give you a crit. :)

ps--I don't actually consider Stephen King psychological thriller at all. Horror or literary horror, maybe. Though, kind of ironic that I'm recommending his son as an example. I do agree, however, that horror and thriller share some elements.
 

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I dunno... maybe you ought to be posting in another forum category?

Psychological thrillers in the world of films ARE NOT the same as what is usually called psychological suspense/thrillers in the world of novels.

They're apples and oranges in a lot of ways.

Using cinematic examples to bolster an argument about prose is, well, more academic than practical.

The average commercial psychological suspense novel is usually jammed packed with action... though a lot of that action just might be inside of the MC's head.

A few current big sellers in the genre:

SHUTTER ISLAND, Dennis Lehane
HEARTSICK, Chelsea Cain
THE LIKENESS, Tana French

RED DRAGON by Thomas Harris is, of course, in this category and in many ways started that whole ball rolling.
 

Mark_Young

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Alright, just quoting based off of what I read and heard. This seems to make more sense to me now.

So tomorrow morning I'm taking a trip to the book store. I'll try to find:

The Black Phone
Shutter Island (actually I think a family member of mine owns this)
Heartsick
The Likeness


And Red Dragon I've heard of and wanted to read but could never find (but probably because I'm usually erratic in a book store).
 

Mac H.

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In my mind, psychological thrillers tend to be more like a mystery with a ticking clock.

So:

1. Figuring out who murdered the secretary - I'd classify it as a mystery.
2. Once we realize that the wife is the next victim and that we have to find the killer in the next 12 hours - it becomes more of a thriller.

Whether it is an action thriller or a psychological thriller depends on how the story is approached.

Funnily enough I've noticed before that 'psychological thrillers' in fiction tend to be more action based than 'psychological thrillers' in cinema - but I'd never really connected the dots before.

An interesting discussion !

Mac
 

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The Black Phone is one of the stories in 20th Century Ghosts. :) Which are all worth the read haha. Especially if you enjoy horror. :D

Oh Red Dragon! That's the one I wanted to recommend but couldn't remember the name of. That was definitely a psychological thriller. Loved it.
 

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I agree with this being interesting. I can also see how films and books would differ in their approach too.
 

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You've tripped into my genre, big mistake! :D

I write psychological crime novels, so basically a crime novel that incorporates the genre characteristics, but probably more indepth character development and demonstrating the psychological pressure and burden it causes the character.

For example, my WIP is a kidnap novel. So I explore the psychological pressure of the crime on victim, and family and friends; the psychology of protaganist and motives (no 'he's a psycho' permitted in this genre); and the 'ticking' psychological bomb; and not forgetting the conflict between antagonist and victim/protaganist; I also have conflict rising between my protaganist and the police.

There's something much more satisfying in psychological suspense than blood and guts flying everywhere.

Some of my favourite writers are:
Val McDermid
Ruth Rendall
Wilkie Collins
 
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Mark_Young

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Alright, so there is a market out there for novels in psychological thriller.


My next big question is basically about mixing genres in the same book. So I've got a single manuscript with 4 different stories each in their own set of chapters, and each with their own main characters, and 3 of the main sets intermingle with each other (IOW, they're not set together in their own section of the book, the end of one chapter set is preceded by a chapter of another set).

The first set is the only exception, and there's some pretty good chunk of violence in it. After those 4 chapters, the intermingling begins.

One set of chapters is a psychological thriller (I think. Now that people are telling me that a psychological thriller in a movie is a bit different from that in a novel). There's action in it, but not till much later. Another set is action, lots of shooting, lots of fighting, but some mystery in there and character tensions. The third set is a mystery thriller, as the investigators travel in behind the shooting and fighting trying to find answers.

Eventually it gets to a point all the stories are neck-and-neck, and once they're on top of each other, all the characters finally meet... though some are dead by the time the investigators come face-to-face with them.


Are those who read psychological thrillers not going to pick it up because of the other elements? Or my bigger fear, are the thriller readers going to skip over my psychological thriller to find the heart-pumping action?


Or is this idea sounding so outrageously stupid it just needs to be dropped? Kaitie, you're the one who read Lisa's Secret, so your word would probably be most valuable since you know the content of what I'm getting at.
 

kaitie

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I think most of these genres tend to blend. We actually have semi-regular discussions over here about what the differences are between thriller/suspense/mystery and how you know which is which because they're difficult to distinguish and they tend to share elements with one another. There are even some works that could easily be called different things depending on who you were talking to.

I really don't think you would turn off a psychological thriller fan by having mystery or suspense elements included. Of course, I'm a genre splicer big time, so I might be biased. ;)
 

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> so there is a market out there for novels in psychological thriller.

Thrillers of all kind are still and will continue to be in high demand. Don't worry about this.


> Are those who read psychological thrillers not going to pick
> it up because of the other elements?

Just write your story to the best of your abilities and work with your agent / publisher on how to best market your book when you get to that point.

I'll be happy to pick up your book in a bookstore. It just has to be there.

-cb
 

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Are those who read psychological thrillers not going to pick it up because of the other elements? Or my bigger fear, are the thriller readers going to skip over my psychological thriller to find the heart-pumping action?

It depends on the story for me. Something has to attract me. I'm reading my first Alex Gray [Glasgow Kiss] I was intrigued by the setting because I'm a big fan of Ian Rankin's portrayal of Edinburgh.

I'm also a big sucker for my home city Newcastle. :D
 

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Just write your story to the best of your abilities and work with your agent / publisher on how to best market your book when you get to that point.

-cb

This, exactly. There's too much worrying about what exactly to call something. Give it your best shot and let your agent deal with the rest.
 

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Alright, just quoting based off of what I read and heard. This seems to make more sense to me now.

So tomorrow morning I'm taking a trip to the book store. I'll try to find:

The Black Phone
Shutter Island (actually I think a family member of mine owns this)
Heartsick
The Likeness

And Red Dragon I've heard of and wanted to read but could never find (but probably because I'm usually erratic in a book store).

I don't know about BLACK PHONE myself... but SHUTTER ISLAND and HEARTSICK and RED DRAGON would be good choices...

However, and yes I recommended it, THE LIKENESS is not an easy read, though a brilliant one... it's, are you ready?... LITERARY psychological suspense... another ball of wax, so to speak. Also, THE LIKENESS is a follow-up novel to INTO THE WOODS. Please keep that in mind: Tana French is truly off in a class by herself but you have to brace yourself for what she has on offer. Interestingly, she's commercial despite being sorta hard going.
 

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In my mind, psychological thrillers tend to be more like a mystery with a ticking clock.

So:

1. Figuring out who murdered the secretary - I'd classify it as a mystery.
2. Once we realize that the wife is the next victim and that we have to find the killer in the next 12 hours - it becomes more of a thriller.

Whether it is an action thriller or a psychological thriller depends on how the story is approached.

Funnily enough I've noticed before that 'psychological thrillers' in fiction tend to be more action based than 'psychological thrillers' in cinema - but I'd never really connected the dots before.

An interesting discussion !

Mac

Excellent points, Mac!
 

Bergerac

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Oh Red Dragon! That's the one I wanted to recommend but couldn't remember the name of. That was definitely a psychological thriller. Loved it.

I love that one, too. I re-read it recently and it scared me even though I knew what was coming! Quite a masterful work. Talk about psychological terror -- whew!
 

Mark_Young

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Seems like links to other places aren't followed very often here.

I've got a ms put together called Cether. It's one of those stories that breaks up the different main characters into their own adventures that eventually come together at the climax. (I know there's a term for it, but I can't break it out of my head.) There's 4 different chapters; the first set (4 chapters) is called "Rescue" and is ok because it's in chronological order, and it's all solidly an action thriller. It's all set 12 years in the past to explain how a family got to where they are and why the world is in total peril and disaster. So yes, it's necessary.

Then things get tricky. The next three groups are three different stories with 1 MC in one set, 3 in a second, and 2 in a third. One set is a series of chapters titled "Assassins". There's death right from get-go. Actually, it starts with a car chase with recurring characters from the past trying to get away from a massed city police chase. However, the time frame of "Assassins" is several to a few hours before the present.


The second set of chapters are titled "Investigation". An investigator working for the [American] government is heading an investigation over the death of a Presidential candidate. He and his partner get a tip from a spy and the three help each other chase down the Assassins. The scenes are relatively the same between the two, the only difference is the timeline.


For the trickiest part of all. I finally figured out what was wrong with these chapters so that no longer concerns me. "Lisa's Secret" is about the daughter of the lead Assassin from the second set of chapters. We know from the first chapter in "Assassins" and "Investigation" that she disappears and is believed to have been kidnapped by the Illuminati. In fact, the last scene in "Investigation" (or Assassins, haven't picked which yet), show's Lisa's shoe print in a pool of blood of her dead [older] cousin, who's girlfriend is also found dead.

"Lisa's Secret" however goes back into the past about 6 years earlier. By reading the first set of chapters titled "Rescue", you can understand why her parents are treating her in a certain way. She's lonely, moves often, and is extremely reserved. This opens her up to become friends with a guy named "Ra'ef." Nobody sees him (not even Lisa). Nobody else hears him. To prove that he's not all in her head, he actually tells her that behind a pair of trashcans, Lisa can find a teddy bear with her name on it.

That lasts the first 2 chapters. After that, the story jumps up to a few months before her disappearance (6 years into the future) and shows how she's developed (or undeveloped as far as society goes). She's bullied and teased by her peers, has had absolutely 0 friends, and "talks to herself" all the time.


If you took "Rescue" on it's own away from the manuscript, you end up with an action thriller. If you take away "Assassins", you get much the same thing. If you take away "Investigation" you have a mystery, and when you get "Lisa's Secret" by itself without the others, it's a psychological thriller.



So what's the big problem? The chapters are not laid out together in their own parts. Each chapter of one set is preceded by a chapter from another set. So imagine you're reading about a group of assassins working together to gain access to a high-security computer. They're racing against time to seize information particular to the needs of each one when they know a small army of agents are on their way. Time runs out. They have to defend their position in an Alamo like situation. Each assassin uses their specialized skills, training, and biological implants to barely survive.

The next chapter the investigators are walking down the hall. They are looking at the carnage, examining each body. They play out and figure out the sequence of events, and walk into the room of the super computer. They see one of the assassins was shot and the computer room is shot to pieces. Did they make it? Did they survive? The investigators look into the files that were stolen. Were the assassins able to get all the information they needed?

The next chapter is about Lisa walking through a forest alone, having fallen behind from a group of kids in an after-school program, and 3 of the kids have planned to jump on her and tie her to the tree and hopefully forget about her.



What I need to know: is it possible to incorporate enough creepy, or other characteristics in "Lisa's Secret" to keep the readers from brushing over that set of chapters to get on with it to the next set? "Lisa's Secret" is extremely important because in the latter chapters, the answers are found in her chapters. All of the chapters to Lisa's Secret are really short (actually, most of the chapters are short) up until there's some really strong, and deadly, tensions going on.

There's a big mystery. There's this group of massacres that occur, and as the assassins complete their missions, they run into such massacres. The investigators look into elements the assassins couldn't, and "Lisa's Secret", at the climax, answers everything. So it's extremely important that the readers are able to read through them. So far I've had 4 beta readers read the whole thing in it's early stages. All of them loved it. Of course, all of them are about my age and have an IQ of 135 or higher.
 
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Ruv Draba

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I think that the ideas for psychological thriller may date back to Descartes -- the notion of mind and reality being potentially separate things. The origins of the literary genre can be traced to William Godwin's 1794 novel, Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams. Plot cribbed from Wikipedia below.
The novel describes the downfall of Ferdinando Falkland, a British squire, and his attempts to ruin and destroy the life of Caleb Williams, a poor but ambitious young man that Falkland hires as his personal secretary. Caleb accidentally discovers a terrible secret in his master's past. Though Caleb promises to be bound to silence, Falkland, irrationally attached (in Godwin's view) to ideas of social status and inborn virtue, cannot bear that his servant should possibly have power over him, and sets out to use various means—unfair trials, imprisonment, pursuit, to make sure that the information of which Caleb is the bearer will never be revealed.

Godwin described the book as "a series of adventures of flight and pursuit; the fugitive in perpetual apprehension of being overwhelmed with the worst calamities", so that Caleb Williams can be classified as an early thriller or mystery novel.
A psychological thriller is to my mind the 'purest' sense of thriller, because it comes purely from interpersonal drama, so it's the storyteller working with nothing but the basic tools of storycraft -- people and the lies they tell.

Modern thrillers in cinemas and many novels tend to be built on mystery stories with frequent fantastical action-sequences -- so it's thrill in the sense that an amusement park offers thrills, not necessarily drama so much as spectacle. Of course, one can do both too, like Thomas Harris does.
 

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I think the opinions of your betas are going to be more valuable than the opinions of people on this board. Not because your betas have IQs above 135 (do you actually make them write a test before handing them the MS?), but because they've READ THE BOOK.

Based on your summary, I wouldn't read the book, but based on most people's summaries, I wouldn't read their books. If your betas liked it, and it's ready to go, why not submit it to an agent and ask that person all the questions you're trying to get answered here?
 
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Ruv Draba

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Seems like links to other places aren't followed very often here.
Sorry, but I didn't follow the youtube link because it didn't look fun and I thought your questions were clear enough to answer without it.

Back to your supplementary question:
What I need to know: is it possible to incorporate enough creepy, or other characteristics in "Lisa's Secret" to keep the readers from brushing over that set of chapters to get on with it to the next set?
What you've described as "Lisa's Secret" sounds like backstory -- exposition required to support plot. If so, the question you've asked isn't a genre-specific one, but a general novellist's problem -- how much backstory is acceptable, and how to make it interesting.

My personal answer: any amount of backstory is acceptable, as long as it's interesting. Interesting means there needs to be conflict, drama and uncertainty of some kind or another, and the characters need to be just as good as the ones appearing in the plot. It's hard to tell, but I get the impression that you've done your best to make the backstory interesting, but it has a different mood to the rest of the story, and its characters may not be as strong.

Assuming all that, I doubt that the problem can be fixed by injecting more creepy mood. I suspect you'll need to winnow the backstory down and find other ways of revealing it to the reader. Backstory can come up in lots of ways -- in dialogue, memories, dreams, records, diaries, film... The best trick I know for making it interesting is to put it into the hands of interesting characters making important decisions in the face of conflict.

So, for example... say a character Lorna is walking in the woods, picking flowers. Boring so far, but what if she's being videoed by someone stalking her? What if the person watching the video is investigating her murder, has watched the video for a thousand times, looking for clues as to who's holding the camera? Suppose a falsely-convicted man is on death row and due to be executed at dawn? Suddenly, everything Lorna does, every jolt of the camera, every nuance of the environment becomes critical, raising dozens of questions.

Or what if Lorna survived the attack and is being interrogated by police about that day. Suppose she's hiding a secret unrelated to the murder-attempt and the police need to know everything. Again, the backstory suddenly becomes interesting -- even though it's all revealed in dialogue.

Hope that helps!

Concerning Care and Feeding of Beta readers, in my view the best readers are ones who can tell us things we didn't already know. IQ is helpful -- thinky readers are often good at analysing plot and setting -- but EQ is essential. A novel isn't an essay -- it's primarily an emotional experience. Well-read people with strong emotional sense (regardless of age) are often the best beta readers -- and incidentally good writers also need the same. If we don't have a strong EQ (mine's patchy) we need to develop it.

Hope that also helps.
 

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Concerning Care and Feeding of Beta readers, in my view the best readers are ones who can tell us things we didn't already know. IQ is helpful -- thinky readers are often good at analysing plot and setting -- but EQ is essential. A novel isn't an essay -- it's primarily an emotional experience. Well-read people with strong emotional sense (regardless of age) are often the best beta readers -- and incidentally good writers also need the same. If we don't have a strong EQ (mine's patchy) we need to develop it.

So beautifully stated, but as an observer to what has been said thus far, I fear that much of it will be lost in exposition and pontification that takes little into account where it concerns the responses.
 

Mark_Young

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I think that the ideas for psychological thriller may date back to Descartes -- the notion of mind and reality being potentially separate things. The origins of the literary genre can be traced to William Godwin's 1794 novel, Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams. Plot cribbed from Wikipedia below.

A psychological thriller is to my mind the 'purest' sense of thriller, because it comes purely from interpersonal drama, so it's the storyteller working with nothing but the basic tools of storycraft -- people and the lies they tell.

Modern thrillers in cinemas and many novels tend to be built on mystery stories with frequent fantastical action-sequences -- so it's thrill in the sense that an amusement park offers thrills, not necessarily drama so much as spectacle. Of course, one can do both too, like Thomas Harris does.

That is really interesting. Thanks for the post!



If your betas liked it, and it's ready to go, why not submit it to an agent and ask that person all the questions you're trying to get answered here?

It's definitely not ready to go. I'm still wondering if I should even dare continue working on the thing. My first rejection letter that I cared for came from this story. It's seen a few more rejections, but basically I don't know exactly who to send it off to. If someone didn't like one element, that door seems closed. I'd hate to bother an agent with a query about a story they might not support. Some are more obvious than others.



What you've described as "Lisa's Secret" sounds like backstory -- exposition required to support plot. If so, the question you've asked isn't a genre-specific one, but a general novellist's problem -- how much backstory is acceptable, and how to make it interesting.

Actually in the earliest write-up, the characters in Lisa's Secret were more appealing than the assassins. Simply because in the old version the assassins were doing things based upon curiosity and revenge. Much like that sleuth who goes looking into a murder simply because she passed by and no other reason. She begins to risk her life because... whatever. Doesn't work very well.

Now that I've revised the characters, I can increase the length of the manuscript (right now it falls very short of what it needs to be) with conflict between the characters. The older version, everyone got along just because, and if one of them died, you could shrug. He didn't die for any notable cause, not even by his standards. Sure they were cool and all egomaniacs, but not interesting. Now they are each worthy to be their own main character in their own adventure, forced to work together to help each other in each of their own cause and reason. In short, they have purpose, and in each of their minds, everything is at stake. Do or die.


But I wouldn't call "Lisa's Secret" backstory. What I described is just glazing over events (as any summary). Even writing out the explanation of who is what churns my stomach. Some of those chapters were so emotionally gripping, that it was difficult for me to write and even more difficult to edit.


In the story's infancy, "Lisa's Secret" was three different short stories I had written pulled together by combining elements of different characters into one, complex and deep character. The set "Assassins" was another completely different story. I was writing them both out at the same time and suddenly found myself writing out Lisa's father as the same character as the lead Assassin. So I took the chapters I was writing for two stories and merged them together.

After I met the conclusion, I considered myself done. But the bad guys were victorious, and it didn't seem to end right (still a lot of heat) so I started on a sequel. That's where my investigators were introduced. I wrote that segment out quickly and then merged it to the end of the story. It didn't seem right to have these characters only at the climax and then the end. Not wanting them to waste I put them up in the beginning and intermingled their story with the rest.




I wouldn't be so concerned if the entire story were titled "Lisa's Secret". (I probably wouldn't be here). But what you're saying is that if things are done well, it doesn't matter what goes on in those chapters, as long as it's interesting in some form or fashion. It could be a romantic drama about a Hispanic couple in South America or a Sci-fi about an alien invasion in another dimension, or vampires living underground in a prison put in place by demons.

Psychological Thriller, Western, Steampunk, Romance, it matters not what it is, as long as it's interesting.


It's still a genre-concerned question that might be answered if I find out it's universal. Because from the examples I've seen so far, "Lisa's Secret" is a psychological thriller.
 

Ruv Draba

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That is really interesting. Thanks for the post!
You're welcome, Mark.
what you're saying is that if things are done well, it doesn't matter what goes on in those chapters, as long as it's interesting in some form or fashion.
I don't want to over-simplify it. Interesting is essential, but not enough. The best fiction grabs our hearts while entertaining our minds. Mood matters because it's part of the emotion, and we want the mood to be pleasing to the reader. If your chapters are interesting, well-executed, relevant to the over-all plot and in keeping with the mood then I don't think it'll be a problem.