6 Tips for Writing Thrillers With a Speculative Twist
If you ask a reader what a thriller is, they’ll probably tell you it’s a story with a lot of tension and excitement, one riddled with twists and turns. I write stories that focus on ordinary people trying to live their lives with new technologies humming away in the background. They didn’t create them, they’re not responsible for them, but they’re still having a massive impact on their life.
The settings tend to the domestic, and the thrill is of the psychological variety. So there aren’t many explosions, but there’s paranoia and anxiety as my characters become increasingly aware that the world around them isn’t working as it should, and that they don’t know why.
Tip 1: Test the idea to make sure it has legs
Speculative thrillers are created from the idea up. For me, the first step is to brainstorm as many what ifs as I can. It doesn’t matter how silly they are. If you’ve heard the term ‘elevator pitch’ before, this is effectively what you’re trying to create.
Once you’ve got some ideas, it can be fun to try them out on people you know. See how they react. This can help you to decide which ideas are worth pursuing. It also saves you from writing 50,000 words before realizing that the idea isn’t as good as you thought it was!
One of the Boys started this way, with a one-line pitch chosen from half a dozen. The basic premise is really simple—scientists discover a gene that makes men violent, and we can test for it.
Tip 2: Figure out the rules
Once I had that, it was time to start world-building. I created a fake wiki page for myself, describing the discovery of the gene, the development of a test, and the move from that to a widespread, government funded testing program. I had to figure out what the rules of the test were—who gets tested, when, where, how, and why?
I then considered the bigger picture. Every new technology has a ripple effect that builds over time. At first, when not many boys had been tested, it would be something quite niche. But as more boys were tested, and then started to grow up, society would have to adapt to this new knowledge.
There would be economic impacts, both positive and negative. Schools would be affected. Would discrimination be acceptable? How would the law deal with it? And what would happen to these boys when they reached adulthood? Would we let a man with a genetic predisposition for violent behavior be a teacher or a police officer? Would you want your daughter to marry him (probably not!).
It’s helpful to look at real world examples and the impact they’ve had, short- and long-term—the internal combustion engine, the smart phone, antibiotics, and the contraceptive pill are all great for this.
Tip 3: Work out who the rules will hit hardest
Once I had the world figured out, and I knew most if not all of the rules (some only become obvious once you start writing), I had to think about characters. There are three possible things a boy can be in the world of One of the Boys—positive, negative, and unknown, so I included one of each.
Their mothers were key to the story, too. I decided to focus on two sisters, making very different decisions that push their sons down different paths. Younger sister Bea, who doesn’t have her son tested, finds herself trapped. Having him tested would solve all her problems, but only if the result was negative. I maximized her conflict by making her a struggling single mother, so that if her son got a positive result, she couldn’t afford treatment.
In contrast, older sister Antonia not only has a negative son, her husband is a paediatrician who runs a private clinic that helps positive boys. She’s pretty much won the lottery in the world of the test, and Bea is forced to look at it pretty much every day.
And then there’s Zara, mother of the positive boy. She’s there to show Bea what can happen if the result is positive.
Tip 4: Use your characters to inform your plot
It’s a basic rule of storytelling that all unknowns must be known by the end, so it was immediately obvious that Bea’s son had to be tested, and that his result would change everything. All other plot points directly or indirectly followed on from this.
According to the rules I created when I developed my world, once her son turned 18, he could consent to the test himself. So I also knew when it was going to happen, and how to maximize the conflict for Bea!
What led up to it, and what happened afterwards, I can’t tell you (spoilers!) but I hope you can see that the initial premise creates the rules, and the rules create the characters, and they create the story.
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Tip 5: Play with the timeline
First of all, although the events in your story have to happen in a logical fashion, you don’t have to reveal them to the reader in that way. One of the Boys opens with a conversation between two women, one of whom is in prison for murder.
The reader doesn’t know who these women are, or who has been killed. But they are taken back in time and get to watch events unfold, knowing this is coming. It heightens the tension and makes you want to keep on reading.
Tip 6: Have everybody lie
The truth is in there, but your characters don’t have to tell it. Make the most of secrets and lies. You might want to let the reader in on some of them. In fact, you probably should.
But there will be others that will hide in plain sight until the end, at which point their revelation will turn the story on its head, and if you get it right, will give the reader the emotional punch they’ve been waiting for.
So that’s how I write a speculative thriller. I hope you’ve found it interesting, and if you’d like to see these ideas in action, please read One of the Boys!
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