A thriller is an especially intense form of action-adventure novel whose roots lie in very ancient epic poems and stories, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer’s The Odyssey, and the King Arthur legends.

The modern thriller sets the tempo for successful contemporary entertainment due to its very fast pace, frequent unexpected plot turns, and ability to impart a ‘thrill’ through daring deeds and narrow escapes. The challenge in writing a thriller is to be as original as possible, create a big stake for the reader in the hero’s survival, and develop fresh variations on timeless character archetypes — including the adventurer-hero, the dedicated but bumbling assistant, the beautiful yet stubborn damsel, the wily villain, and so forth. In its most sophisticated form, the thriller embodies powerful, classic elements taken directly from Western culture’s most profound myths, myths which recount the hero’s journey from ignorance to enlightenment, enduring many mental and physical tests of courage and strength along the way.

The thriller differs from the common adventure story in its faster pace, greater suspense or tension, and often the hero’s discovery of a ‘betrayal from within’ at a crucial moment.

Today, thrillers are very popular both as books and in film, so the professional standards for successful thrillers are very high. Your work will be immediately compared in any reader’s mind to the most successful popular entertainment available in the marketplace. Writing thrillers is not for the faint of heart.

There are basically three formats within which to focus a thriller. One format is not better than another; each allows the author to obtain specific results from the story she or he wants to tell:

Intellectual: By keeping the novel focused on a central innovative concept, this format allows the author to engage the reader intellectually as well as emotionally. The concept itself plays a dominant role in the story. Dan Brown’s huge blockbuster The Da Vinci Code is a brilliant example of an idea-focused thriller. Its premise is that Leonardo Da Vinci had been the leader of a secret society called the Priory of Scion — an organization that guards The Holy Grail and which is still in existence today. In his art, Da Vinci left clues about the mission of the Priory — puzzles which the main characters have to piece together before they are imprisoned or murdered. Brown never moves the narrative away from the central idea of the novel. Instead he reveals it slowly, enticingly, and uses the idea to drive the suspense.

Emotional: By centering the premise of a novel around the characters’ reaction to a new concept, this format allows the author to explore the human consequences of an unusual idea rather than the idea itself. Michael Crichton’s Timeline is a good example of this. Timeline is a novel in which the characters deal with the social and personal consequences of a new form of time travel. The idea of time travel is explained at the beginning, but the majority of the book is centered not on the emerging concept itself, but around the impact that has on the major characters — the emotional crises of losing a friend back in time and having to risk everything go get him.

Physical: By focusing mostly on the action of the characters, the author is able to use chase scenes and pitched battles to express a conflict of ideology in the story. This thriller format is most similar to the action-adventure novel. It centers the story around ways one group of characters can prevail over another. Tom Clancy’s Patriot Games is a good example of this format of thriller.