If you’re writing a mystery thriller novel, this article is a must read.
Continue reading to learn about 6 essential ingredients your story needs.
1. Create a mystery to solve
When it comes to writing a mystery thriller novel, you need to start with the mystery part. Something happened (i.e. a person went missing, a person was murdered, or an important item went missing), and now the protagonist needs to find the person or item that went missing, or discover who did the murder or who stole/kidnapped the item/person respectively.
The reason why you need to start with the mystery part of the plot is because the plot in a mystery thriller novel is a coin that has two sides – the mystery side and the thriller side. You start with introducing the mystery, and then while the protagonist tries to solve the mystery, they embark on a journey – which is perilous and full of danger, and thus makes up the thrilling part (thriller part) of the novel.
2. Choose the correct protagonist
Normally, in mystery, and in some thriller novels too, the protagonist is a person who is perfectly equipped to solve the mystery. For example, a detective or a police officer in a mystery novel, and a spy in a thriller novel.
In a mystery thriller novel, however, the protagonist is not going to be a person who is professionally equipped to solve it. The protagonist should be an ordinary person. For example, a woman in her 50’s goes missing. She has left a note that she has gone on a no-contact retreat. Ergo, the police consider the case to be closed. But, her daughter, who has no sleuthing or detective experience whatsoever, does not believe that, so she decides to solve the mystery of where her mother went on her own.
If a detective, a spy, or any such person come to take part in the story (and they should do so in such stories), they will feature as characters who help the protagonist (since they do not have the necessary experience), to solve the mystery at hand, and protect the protagonist from the dangers to come too.
3. Put the protagonist in danger
As we previously stated, thriller is the other side of the coin, and it needs to be weaved into the protagonist’s efforts to solve the mystery. In fact, just by deciding to solve the mystery, the protagonist has put themselves – and those that work with them or the people who are closest to them – in danger.
What does this mean exactly? It means that each time the protagonist attempts to follow a clue to solve the mystery, they will be met with resistance created by the antagonist/villain. For example, witnesses might disappear or die right before the protagonist’s eyes, before they get a chance to talk to them. Another example, a simple car ride can become a car chase as the bad guys try to prevent the protagonist from reaching a certain place.
The protagonist can barely manage to find a safe place to settle down for a night, and even if they do, they should be attacked by the antagonist/villain or their accomplices not long afterwards. In other words, the protagonist will rarely have a moment of peace until they solve the mystery and defeat the antagonist/villain.
4. Show the agency of the villain
In order to add suspense in a mystery thriller novel, you can show what the antagonist/villain is up to. It’s worth noting that the reason why we refer to the antagonist and villain as one and the same is because in such a novel, the antagonist and the villain are both one and the same.
Normally, you can have an antagonist who is not a villain, and you can also have a villain who is not an antagonist. The antagonist is someone who is preventing the protagonist from reaching their goals in the course of the story. The villain is the one who has done the bad thing: the theft of the item, the kidnapping of the person, the murder of the initial victim. In a mystery thriller novel, the two of them are one and the same. They will do their best to prevent the protagonist from solving the mystery and they will use any kind of force – even kill the protagonist – to achieve this goal.
Knowing what the antagonist/villain is up to will add suspense for the readers. The readers will know that the antagonist/villain is one step ahead of the protagonist and can come really close to eliminating them. This will ensure the readers will want to keep reading to find out what happens and ensure the protagonist is successful.
Of course, you do not have to reveal the specific identity of the villain/antagonist. You can give a glimpse of what they are up to without revealing this, which would be better than revealing their identity, as it will give you the chance to use misdirection to keep the suspense going as to who the antagonist/villain really is.
5. Add suspects, red herrings, and twists
Adding suspects, red herrings, and twists – that is what misdirection is in a mystery story. You make the protagonist (and thus the reader) look in one direction for the perpetrator of the crime that set off the story, all the while keeping the real villain hidden and making them difficult to detect.
Adding suspects means the protagonist can never zero in on one person as the perpetrator of the crime. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you need to add 20 possible suspects, but for example, having six suspects will be better than only two or three. Additionally, it will be even better if most of those suspects seem to have an air tight alibi and no reason to have committed the crime. This means the protagonist needs to dig deep into those suspects to be able to solve the mystery.
Some of those suspects will be red herrings. Red herrings are clues (including suspects) that do not seem to lead anywhere. Let’s borrow the previous example of the woman in her 50s who has gone missing and her daughter is now solving the mystery of her disappearance (despite the letter her mother left about going on a retreat, the daughter still believes she was kidnapped and is trying to find her).
During the daughter’s investigation, she finds that her mother visited a spa, which she almost never does, two days prior to her disappearance. Additionally, the spa is owned by one of the people the daughter suspects to be behind her mother’s disappearance.
So, the daughter goes to check out the spa, but discovers that her mother merely visited the spa to get her nails done, and there was nothing out of the ordinary during the visit. On the way back from the spa, however, she is attacked and almost killed, so she then looks towards the owner of the spa (who would’ve known she visited it) as the possible kidnapper.
6. Keep a constant quick pace
Normally, in a novel, you need to keep a dynamic pace – fast action scenes followed by slower scenes of reflection, where the protagonist analyzes what happened and decides on the next steps. These scenes would ideally be nearly identical in length (page-wise) to allow some time for character development.
In a thriller, however, you need to keep a constant quick pace. It means that the action scenes will be longer, while the reflection scenes will be shorter and happen less often. Do not worry about overwhelming the readers with such a fast pace, thriller readers expect to go on a rollercoaster ride while reading the novel, where action keeps happening.
Additionally, this means that you must either avoid flashbacks or scenes from the past altogether, or if you really do need them, you need to keep them as short as possible. If you need to show what happened in the past, try to convey it in a present conversation, or in as short a manner as possible, so as to not detract from the present action.
Moreover, the scenes where you show what the antagonist/villain is doing also need to be short, because while they add suspense, they do not move the story forward (as only the protagonist is the one doing that). These scenes would show the antagonist/villain planning their next step and anticipating what the protagonist will do, which means you need to keep these short. If you reveal too much of the antagonist’s plans, you will also cut some of that suspense. Show that the antagonist is planning something – but do not reveal what it is.