Happy Fall! Did you think I’d forgotten about my promise to do deep-dives into different genres? Fear not! This week—especially as October finally graces us with cooler weather and glimpses of spooky season—I’m picking apart the mystery/thriller genre.
I adore this genre for its puzzle-like, pulse-pounding, thrilling experience. And even if you’re not writing a mystery or thriller, I think there are quite a few takeaways you can apply to whatever genre you’re writing.
As I settled in to uncover how one might go about writing a propulsive mystery or thriller, I looked to some of the mega-successful books and movies in the genre. I decided to use the blockbuster Gone Girl as our guide because not only is it one I hope most people are somewhat familiar with (book or movie), but it’s also a master class in…well almost everything. So buckle in and let’s get to it.
Okay, so the question I asked as I did a deep dive into Gone Girl was: what makes this a successful thriller? And, more importantly, how could I help guide writers through the elements of a mystery/thriller.
Before I give you those elements, I think it’s important to understand the genre. What exactly is a thriller? What’s a mystery? And what’s the difference between the two? There are some conflicting schools of thought around story genre, so, for the sake of this article, I’m going to try to simplify.
A mystery centers around figuring out what happened after a crime has already been committed, while the thriller genre is more about preventing something terrible from happening.
According to the Story Grid, the thriller genre “features a heroic protagonist (someone willing to sacrifice his own life for others) facing a personal conflict just a hair’s breadth short of the omnipotent horror antagonist…the thriller must make the antagonism personal. That is, the protagonist of the Story must be revealed, usually by the middle of the novel or the end of the second act, as the victim (94).”
A mystery, on the other hand, may not put the protagonist in mortal peril, though the case they’re looking to solve must feel meaningful to them.
Gone Girl is a thriller because it becomes clear at about the halfway mark that Nick Dunne, the story’s protagonist becomes the victim versus the antagonist. He has everything to lose, and comes dangerously close to losing it all at the hands of his sociopathic wife.
So now that we have a sense of the broad definition of the genre that I’m choosing to use for the purpose of this article, let’s look at the elements that create propulsive mysteries and thrillers—yes, there’s a lot of overlap!
1. Tropes/Subgenre
One thing you want to be aware of as you set about writing your mystery/thriller (or whatever you’re writing!) is what tropes and subgenres you’ll be using. There are loads of mystery/crime subgenres (cozy, noir, master detective, police procedural, caper, courtroom, newsroom, espionage, etc.) and thriller subgenres (legal, medical, domestic, psychological, medical, political, military, etc.), each of which sets specific expectations for its audience. A legal thriller wouldn’t be complete, for example, without a big courtroom showdown in which the big baddie gets taken down (e.g. A Few Good Men; The Lincoln Lawyer).
Gone Girl is a psychological thriller. It seeks to answer the core question “Is he/she crazy?” Or, rather, who is crazy? Is Nick? Is Amy? Are they both? For psychological thrillers, this is the question that drives the story.
Once you have a better sense of what kind of story you want to tell, it’s important to do research on the essential scenes and elements of it. If you skip this step and later come to find that it feels like something is missing, chances are it might be.
To be clear, you can still avoid a mystery/thriller that feels overly formulaic or predictable even if you use must-have scenes or deliver on tropes you set up in the premise or hook. It’s all about twisting them just enough so there’s still surprises.
2. A Catalyst/Hook
The first thing you need if you’re writing a mystery/thriller is a catalyst that sets everything in motion. Often, this looks like a crime: a murder, a theft, an attack, a disappearance, etc. In Gone Girl it’s the disappearance of Amy Dunne, the wife of our protagonist, Nick Dunne.
This is the event that will not only kick off the rest of the story, but it’s what’s going to force your reader to ask questions. And keeping your reader in suspense means getting them to ask questions: Why did this happen? How? Or what happened? Who did it?
Sometime this catalyst happens on the page in the vein of The DaVinci Code, where you see the who and how, but are missing the why. And sometimes, as in Gone Girl, that catalyst happens “off-screen.” We only know that Amy is missing when Nick comes home to his home in disarray, blood at the scene, and a wife who is nowhere to be found. With this catalyst we immediately start wondering: Where is she? Is she alive or dead? What happened? Was there a break-in? A kidnapping? A murder? If so, who did it and why? Did Nick do it? Especially given the opening monologue about him wondering what was inside her head—cracking it open and unspooling the contents.
As humans, our brains are wired to always be searching for answers—for meaning. So your first task as an author is to hook them. That is, force them to ask questions and seek answers.
3. Character(s) & Motives
This one should go without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway: Every great novel begins with a compelling protagonist who wants something. Because novels rest on the shoulders of their characters—regardless of genre. And the first step in creating a compelling character is determining what is motivating them.
In the mystery/thriller genre, the motivation—or motive—is especially important. That’s perhaps why Jessica Brody, author of Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, names one of the story genres “Whydunit” instead of “whodunit.” Because the why matters more than the who, and we’re actually reading to understand why a person does the things they do.
So the first thing you must do as you consider your mystery/thriller, is determine a motivation—and motive for each of your characters. Even the ones who aren’t guilty of the main crime (more on this later).
In Gone Girl, there are plenty of things motivating Nick: externally, he wants to be exonerated for a crime he claims he didn’t commit. He doesn’t want to go to prison. Yet, we also get the impression that he doesn’t much want to be in his marriage anymore either. Especially once he finds out the lengths to which his wife will go to keep him.
But as Flynn unravels the narrative, she also gives plenty of possible “motives” for why Nick might have wanted to get rid of Amy: he wants to run away with his young mistress; he’s jealous of Amy’s fame and success; he doesn’t want to be a father and finds out Amy is “pregnant;” he just wants to have a fun bachelor life again…etc. And there are clues that point to each of these possible motivations, which I’ll talk more about in a second.
And Amy is just as intriguing of a character with her own motives. She is motivated by her desire to be beloved as she is—not as the Amazing Amy characters her parents conceived of for her. When she learns that she’s losing her husband, whom she uprooted her entire life in New York for, to a young co-ed student mistress, she’s furious. Vengeful. So she decides to frame Nick for her murder.
Now remember, I never said Amy was likeable, I said she was interesting. Intriguing. And the more complex, deep, and universal you make your character’s motivations, the more likely you are to have a character that audiences will stick with through the whole length of a book.
So, when you sit down to write or plan out your mystery—or, heck, any book at all!—you want to ask yourself: what does my character want? What drives them in this story? And, perhaps, specific to mystery/thriller: why could they have committed this crime?
4. Misdirection & Buried Clues
Your job as a mystery/thriller writer is to steer your reader down paths that make them question and/or believe the things you put in front of them. I mentioned above that our brains are hard-wired to make meaning out of information and facts. So it’s your job to give readers facts to process.
Or clues, in other words.
Clues that will point them down the right path, and clues that will point them down the wrong path.
In Gone Girl, the whole first half of the book is Flynn stacking evidence against Nick Dunne: the lingerie in his office; the affair; the new life insurance policy; the things that don’t quite add up in the crime scene that point to Nick’s culpability vs a home invasion; Amy’s diary entries showcasing her increasing fear of her husband; the “pregnancy”; the credit card debt; the shed full of fun single guy stuff; and Nick’s strange, cold, aloof behavior in the face of it all. Though Nick adamantly denies having anything to do with her disappearance, the reader can’t help but question his honesty given the giant arrows pointing in his direction.
Which is, of course, exactly what Amy was going for when she set up this elaborate plan to frame him.
Essentially, the whole first half of the book is a fascinating character study…but it’s also one giant misdirection. And when the midpoint kicker comes in, revealing Amy’s own culpability in the whole thing, suddenly readers are yanked in another direction…an immensely satisfying one.
We are forced to ask more questions: Why did Amy do all this? How? And how’s innocent—though clearly morally grey—Nick going to get out of this? What is going to happen?
When you’re seeking to build your mystery/thriller, it’s your job to uncover buried clues. To have your readers question the culpability of everyone. Thinking to Agatha Christie books and movies…she’s a master at giving every character a compelling reason to commit the crime, and clues that point at each of them. Fill your cast with possibly-culpable characters, and drop hints that point to the right and wrong ones. One rule of thumb I read is to cast suspicion over your characters by giving them at least two of the following: means (ability), motive (a reason), and opportunity (a situation that would allow them to commit the crime. Nick Dunne sure has all three, which is why he is a likely suspect.
Some other ideas for misdirection include:
a character who appears complicit, but isn’t;
an object that seems more important than it is (like a gun that never actually goes off)
a misleading clue that was planted by the culprit.
5. Mounting Pressure/Raising Stakes
This is another bit of writing advice that is genre-agnostic. You must have raising stakes, and/or mounting pressure affecting your character. What do I mean by raising stakes? Well, the simplest way of thinking about it is complicating things for them. Giving them more to lose or gain if they don’t accomplish their goal.
For Nick Dunne, Flynn never stops raising the stakes. First it’s just his wife’s disappearance (which is already pretty horrific for someone to take) then it’s the dog-pile of mounting evidence against him. Then it’s the way the press skewers him. And the way the detectives are circling closer to him and eliminating any other suspects. Then all of a sudden it’s revealed that Amy is “pregnant.” And finally, when we learn the truth, that Amy is a whole-ass sociopath…the stakes are raised further since now Nick really has to get out of this mess. He’s to go on national television in spite of his questionably empathetic behavior. He and Amy are playing a cat and mouse game at this point. And then stakes are raised again when she comes home covered in blood and wounded from the “kidnapping” from her ex-boyfriend. And finally, when we learn that Nick must decide whether to stay with his crazy wife, and his child knowing what she’s capable of.
As for Amy, Flynn dogpiles crap on her too. She gets robbed, then when she goes to her ex-boyfriend for help, he creepily holds her kind of captive, and then she must concoct a way to get back to Nick and exonerate him from the framing scheme she set up.
Like woah. It’s just this upward trajectory of raising stakes.
So as you work on your novel, ask yourself: how can I make things worse for my protagonist? Both internally and externally?
6. Surprise Twist
Readers love to be surprised. Twists, when executed appropriately, are immensely satisfying and memorable. And they’re one of the best tools in your arsenal to prevent your book from feeling formulaic or predictable.
The question is, how do you execute a great twist? My answer: Hide the truth in your buried clues so that you lay the foundation; and think about it in terms of the phrase things aren’t what they seem.
For Gone Girl, the big twist comes at the midpoint, when we realize that the victim is actually the villain. (So, things aren’t what they seem). And then there’s another twist at the end when Amy reveals she is actually pregnant and therefore Nick has no real choice other than to stay with this monster. Not a happy ending, but a twist nevertheless.
And if you look back, the clues were all there, as Nick figured out. When he found the shed full of fun-guy stuff as part of his anniversary scavenger hunt clue, he knew that Amy was behind it all.
Or, if you’ve seen or watched Shutter Island, then you’re likely aware of the twist reveal that reminded us that things aren’t what they seem. Same with The Silent Patient, and every (fantastic) book that Alice Feeney has ever written. Side note: if you want a masterclass on twists, look no further than her brilliant Rock Paper Scissors.
To determine your twist, ask yourself how things might not be as they seem? What’s really going on beneath the surface. And then work backwards to trickle in tiny clues.
Hint: so many of the best twists have to do with character perspective/POV. Who is telling the story? Are they reliable? Trustworthy? Biased or unbiased? Coherent? Sane? Keeping very big secrets? Gone Girl, along with other psychological thrillers play with this idea for their twists: The Sixth Sense; The Girl on the Train; Black Swan; Fight Club. The list goes on.
Things aren’t what they seem.
Other mysteries/thrillers play with the crime and the victim to lead readers to the big reveal of the unlikely perpetrator (Mystic River). Or a motive that blows everything up by revealing a bigger secret about society or the world at large (The DaVinci Code).
A twist, when executed properly, should feel completely unpredictable, yet inevitable.
And here’s my final secret about crafting a great twist: often the twist is directly tied to the main point your book is making. Its theme. It might be about marriage (Gone Girl) or alcoholism or voyeurism, or greed, or sanity, or justice served.
So if you’re having a hard time coming up with your book’s twist, consider what point you’re trying to make about the world/society/the experience of being human—and figure out how your ending can drive that point home.
7. Story Structure
Last but not least, you’ll want to craft your mystery/thriller with a strong story structure. As you probably know, I’m a big fan of Save the Cat but if there is another that you prefer (Story Grid, Story Genius, Hero’s Journey, etc.) that’s fine too. At the very minimum, your story should have a cause-and-effect trajectory, with each big event causing a character to take action, which brings about another event/effect.
Gone Girl definitely follows a tight structure, hitting all the beats that make it a satisfying reading experience. What I like about following a story structure is that not only does doing so give you guidance, but it helps you properly build momentum and hold your readers’ interest throughout the book.
If you’d like to see a full breakdown of Gone Girl’s Save the Cat! beat sheet, click here.
Or, on a simpler level…according to The Story Grid, there are six key scenes that are present in every mystery/crime novel:
1. Crime is committed
2. Personal investment: the person digging into the crime becomes personally invested for some reason
3. Potential motivation for crime (midpoint) big aha moment: After they’ve investigated a number of clues and or motives, a major reveal happens.
4. All is lost – pursuing the wrong lead, etc.: the protagonist/detective realizes they’ve been focusing on the wrong thing this whole time
5. Confront the real culprit
6. Justice served
You can hear the brilliant Savannah Gilbo break it all down for you here, using Knives Out as her master text.
Thrillers follow slightly different conventions, but nevertheless, I am a fan of using some structure to make sure you’re hitting crucial (and genre-expected) scenes as you draft.
Phew! Thanks for sticking with me. I know I threw a whole lot at you. But I hope it will be helpful as you work on your mystery—or any!—novel. If you’re working on a mystery/thriller, drop me a note! Let me know if this was useful and/or what you’re working on. Or, if you need help brainstorming or untangling any plot points or planting clues, feel free to jump on a free 30-min chat at any time.
Happy (Mystery) Writing!
Karyn
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