The Art of Thrillers: Behind the Shadows

6. Good thrillers are made with good editing.

You're probably drowning in information, so here's one more thing to remember: good thrillers are made in editing.

You'll never nail it on the first draft. As you edit, you'll add complexity, deepening the layers. You'll weave in foreshadowing and red herrings. You might even make the twist or reveal less obvious in editing and remove some foreshadowing.

Give beta readers access to your manuscript and encourage them to write down their predictions at various points throughout the book. You may need to introduce more suspects or possible motives as red herrings if they figure out the twist too soon. It's acceptable if the reader is unsure about who the perpetrator is; this will benefit you because they will keep reading to find out which of your predictions came true.

Find the scenes in your book that lack intensity, seem repetitious, or go slowly as you go through each scene one by one. Consider how you could "recast" certain moments to make them more captivating.

For instance, there's a moment in your book where your main character joins her friends for a get-together in an apartment. However, because you had already included an "apartment meeting" scene earlier in the novel, one of your beta readers felt that the scene slowed the pace of the novel or created another loophole. It is therefore necessary that you recreate the scene in the apartment after another scene. Instead of an apartment, you can use other places that will be best for your novel. This will help maintain continuity and address any concerns raised by your beta readers.

That simple fix of changing the scene setting added more social stakes and tightened the pacing.

Making the character actively participate in the investigation as opposed to passively is another excellent tactic. Make it more difficult if your character is one who gathers knowledge quickly. 

Assume that your main character snapped a picture of a board at the police station in order to discover a vital clue—a image of the deceased girl's take turns homecoming outfit that had been torn with cutters. After that, she took a seat and discussed suspicions and such with her friends in her friend's bedroom. Your beta reader thought it was uninteresting and recommended having the girls find the dress on their own rather than only staring at photographs. That created a great deal of additional conflict, particularly since the main character isn't supposed to be interfering with the murder investigation in the first place, but they now need to call the police in relation to the evidence they have discovered.

Keep characters from becoming overly enmeshed in their own thoughts. They must travel, see, do, and interact with other characters. Another simple method to build pressure on your protagonist is to include a ticking clock. The character might only have a short window of opportunity to acquire information, and they might get caught doing anything improper. It's a popular thriller trope to see someone prying around on someone's computer or in their office.

Always look at your pinch points—any point where your character is butting against a significant obstacle. Look at those scenes to make sure you're maximizing your tension. Think about how the reader and character emotionally come into and out of the scene to tighten and increase tension.