6 Tips for Writing a Home Invasion Thriller
1. Scrap the blueprint
Even though it should sound exciting, when I hear the words “home invasion thriller,” I almost feel bored. I feel like I can envision exactly how the story’s going to go. Some evil person tries to break in the house, and the main character, a resident, spends the rest of the story trying to hide, until against all odds, they finally escape. I want to be surprised and enlightened by the stories I read, and in the abstract, a home invasion thriller doesn’t feel like a story with a lot of room for unpredictability or complexity.
(3 Tips for Writing an Abduction Scene.)
But you can have a thriller with home invasions that don’t follow the standard formula. With Shadow Drive, I started with a simple idea. A landlord has just rented a house to a woman who has lied about who she is. She’s now changed the locks on all the doors and covered all the windows with newspaper. The landlord wants to find out what she’s up to behind those newspaper-covered windows. And I knew at some point he was going to have to break into the house to see what she was up to. It was a premise that could easily turn into a cat-and-mouse game-a version of Home Alone but between a landlord and a tenant—but I didn’t want it to be that. I wanted the book to be surprising and unpredictable, so I set out to try and make something that didn’t adhere to any preset formula.
2. Lay the foundation
The best thrillers are character driven, but in order for characters’ decisions to drive the plot, the characters have to be fully realized people with their own distinct personalities. My main character Gabe is a father who is taking care of his daughter, who was injured in a car accident caused by her own drunk driving. But he’s also someone who is incredibly optimistic and trusting. As I began writing about him, I saw how his personality, especially his immediate desire to give others the benefit of the doubt, would cause him to trust people even when it wasn’t in his best interest.
3. Build the home
You need a setting. A home to be invaded. The house itself doesn’t have to be anything special. It can be an old house with a lot of history, or it can be a house that was just built, but the house’s personality, interesting or bland, should be clear to the reader. You can do that by giving the house specific, concrete details. This can also make the home invasion more interesting, because the details can be used to build tension. The details don’t have to be something like a secret passageway or a hidden room, but something simple can unexpectedly create an opportunity for a set piece unique to your story.
The house at the center of Shadow Drive belongs to the main character Gabe’s ex-wife. It’s a standard suburban house just like others on the street, but there are little details about it that become a part of the story. There’s a doggy door leading out to the back deck and a metal door with a lock on it preventing anyone from entering the basement. Even though these are simple details, they end up creating moments of drama and tension later in the story.
Check out Nolan Cubero’s Shadow Drive here:
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4. Mask the intruder
You don’t have to literally stuff the home invader’s head inside a ski mask, but I find that an antagonist is more interesting when something about them is unknown. Their identity, their origin, their desire, their philosophy, their exact plan. I find an antagonist can often be scarier the less you know about them. By obscuring something about the home invader from the residents of the home, you can keep the residents of the house (and the reader) in suspense.
I made the tenant in Shadow Drive a woman who has lied about her identity and her connection to the house. Gabe has to not only get her out of the house but also figure out what she wants. He finds out rather quickly it’s more difficult to counter an antagonist when you can’t interpret their past actions much less predict their future ones.
5. Cut the lights
An easy way to create suspense is to leave the characters in the dark about what’s happening. In Shadow Drive, I have a scene where you hear people entering the house, but you don’t see what’s happening. By focusing in on one person’s perspective and on one sense, it allowed me to channel the fear and suspense that the character felt since the reader gets to experience exactly what the character experiences: Someone opening the door, walking through the house, and slowly making their way toward the hiding space.
6. Find a way out
Ending any story in a unique way can be difficult, but home invasion thrillers can be especially difficult since the tension is often resolved as soon as the main character escapes the house. It can be tempting to just let the character run out in the fresh air to safety without adding anything surprising or new, but it can be rewarding for both writer and reader to push for a more memorable ending. If it doesn’t come to you right away, I would suggest you just keep brainstorming until you find something you like.
After reading Shadow Drive, a lot of people have asked me how I came up with the ending. But I don’t really have a good answer other than to say that I wrote myself into a corner and needed a way out. When I was writing it, I was about 75 percent of the way through and realized I had no idea what the climax or ending would be. I remember pacing around my house for days wondering what the hell I was going to do. I had spent a lot of time writing a novel but had no idea how to finish it.
Then one night, an idea occurred to me. I finally knew how I could end my story. I had to bang my head against the wall, but I think it was all that banging that eventually knocked loose the idea that I think will shock readers.