Thriller Writing: A Creative Writing and Self-Publishing Guide for Aspiring Thriller Novelists

Ash Greenslade

Unknown (Oct 2016)

Rating:
★★★☆☆

Tags:
Writing, Education

Writingttt Educationttt

In this essential guide for aspiring and experienced writers, novelist Ash Greenslade covers the thriller genre’s key elements from devising suspenseful plots and intriguing characters to crafting vivid description and concise dialogue. The author provides invaluable tips on structure, foreshadowing, counterplots, tension and conflict. Covering topics from testing story ideas to creating powerful scenes, THRILLER WRITING includes everything a novelist needs to write a dramatic thriller.

Much more than just a creative writing guide, this book also explores the entrepreneurial attitude and additional skills writers need in order to publish online. The author discusses self-publishing on Amazon, Kobo, iTunes and Barnes & Noble. There are numerous tips about typography and formatting in Word for the paperback and e-book versions of a novel. From a story’s concept to its publication, THRILLER WRITING shows the way.

Complementary resources on www.thrillerwriting.guide support this informative and inspiring book, making it one of the most helpful writing guides ever produced for the thriller novelist.

THRILLER WRITING

A creative writing and self-publishing guide for aspiring thriller novelists

Ash Greenslade

Copyright © 2016 Ash Greenslade

Ash Greenslade has asserted his right under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without prior written permission of the author. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the author’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

Cover image used under licence from Shutterstock.com.

Contents

About me

The goal of this book

About you

Disciplined writing

Traditional publishing

Self-publishing

Writing a series

Defining the thriller novel

Learning your craft

Recommended authors

The importance of plotting

The importance of characters

The three-act structure

Beyond the three-act structure

Subplots and counterplots

Chapters and scenes

Foreshadowing

Light and shadow

Reality and the suspension of disbelief

Finding ideas to write about

What is your book about?

Comfort and health when writing

The writer’s block hoax

Setting realistic goals

Drafting and editing

Points of view and tense

Description and dialogue

Showing and telling

The first chapter

Use your native English

Paragraphs and breaks in Word

Typography quirks in Word

Work in progress and validation

Back cover copy

Entrepreneurial attitude

Sales outlets and distributors

Keywords and categories

Copyright and digital rights management

Creating a master manuscript

Formatting for CreateSpace

Formatting for e‑readers

Cover design

The proof copy and final corrections

Pricing

Author Central

Creating a personal website

Some final thoughts

Resources for the self-publisher

Fiction titles by the author

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Station Helix series

Station Helix

The Elzevir Collective

Torus

…

Standalone work

Watch Them Die

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Join the author’s mailing list at

http://www.ashgreenslade.com/

…

Visit the Thriller Writing Guide website at

http://thrillerwriting.guide/

“Be a first-rate version of yourself rather than a second-rate version of another author.”

David Morrell

About me

I love thriller novels. The catalyst for this realisation was David Morrell’s The Brotherhood of the Rose. I was hooked from the first page and drawn into an exciting world of conspiracies and assassinations. It was the late eighties and I was at school studying dull literary works which were conspiring to erode my love of reading. Morrell’s novel showed me it was possible for books to be well written and captivating. I bought more novels by the man who became – and remains – my favourite author. I’d found one of the genre’s pioneers and most talented writers. I was inspired but not yet ready to tackle writing my own thriller.

In fact it took over two decades for me to start my first one, Station Helix. I’d written quite a lot during the intervening years but not in the thriller genre. I now describe that period as my apprenticeship. The quality of my writing doubtlessly varied, but those words and ideas were gradually leading me to a moment when I told myself: Now is the time. I came up with an idea about a young man who was an unwitting subject in a Ministry of Defence experiment. I set to work and created a story which I’m proud to call my own. The book inspired a series with The Elzevir Collective and Torus completing the set.

I should probably be critical of myself for waiting so long, but the timing actually worked to my advantage. Although self-publishing wasn’t new, it had been invigorated by Amazon and the Kindle e‑reader. I conducted a lot of research and concluded that the publishing landscape had changed profoundly. There was a viable and straightforward alternative to the traditional method of sending synopses to literary agents in the unrealistic hope of getting signed. I found out how to prepare manuscripts for both paperback and Kindle, and designed a cover using one of my own photographs. Seeing Station Helix on sale for the first time was a proud moment. I’d done it.

However much I enjoyed figuring out how to self-publish, I still wish I’d had one good source of information to help me find my way. I made a few mistakes. I rushed in places. I tried things which seemed like good ideas but turned out to be obstacles. But now, having published three novels, I’ve refined my methods. I often get asked questions by aspiring authors who want to tread the same path. I love helping them out. This book enables me to offer that same help to you.

The goal of this book

It’s simple really – I want to encourage aspiring thriller authors to write and publish great novels. This book aims to cover the key points about thriller writing and self-publishing. To my knowledge these topics have never been covered in the same book. In today’s market it’s a lucky writer who can leave the publishing details to someone else. Self-publishing has established itself as the most logical entry point into a writing career. Just being a writer is no longer enough: you need to adopt an entrepreneurial attitude and learn some do-it-yourself publishing skills.

The traditional publishing route is still a worthy ambition, but it’s an incredibly hard and unrealistic one with no certainty of reward for most authors. In this book my intention is to offer practical advice about achievable goals in the context of today’s publishing opportunities. It is a very exciting time to be a writer as long as you’re prepared to adopt a new way of thinking.

That may sound more intimidating than it’s meant to. Self-publishing isn’t difficult but it does require care and patience. Writers are now following in the footsteps of independent musicians and other creative people who see and seek opportunities in the Internet-powered world. I’m not going to promise you that you’ll sell any books. Success is not assured. The work doesn’t stop once you’ve uploaded your book to Amazon and the other booksellers. I’ll touch briefly on promotion towards the end, but marketing is beyond the scope of this book. It’s my intention to get you to the point where you have something to sell.

I love helping people fulfil their potential. In one way or another I’ve been involved in teaching for many years. I don’t have all the answers, and I must emphasise that some things which work for me may not work for you, but hopefully you’ll find some useful ideas here. One of my reasons for pricing the book as I have is because I want the information to be accessible to a broad audience. When you publish your novel you won’t be in competition with me. There is plenty of room for everyone; readers don’t pick one author instead of another.

My decision to price my non-fiction work as I have is not entirely altruistic – I hope very much that you’ll consider buying by novels. But there’s another reason for writing this book which I must confess to. Thriller Writing was written partly in response to the expensive self-help books for authors which vie for your attention in the marketplace. While there are a few good books out there, there is an awful lot of mediocre material. I have an intolerance for vagueness. Most self-help books are simply regurgitated blog posts and motivational speeches with very little substance. That’s not helpful for aspiring writers who need useful facts. I don’t want you to waste your money. In this book I’ll mention online resources. These are suggestions rather than recommendations. I don’t use affiliate links as a matter of principle.

I’ve focussed on thriller writing in this book because that’s where my experience lies, but a lot of the content can be applied to any creative writing genre.

About you

There are many people who say they would like to write a book. Most of them never will. The usual excuse is that they claim not to have the time. The real reason? They don’t have the desire. The fact that you’ve picked up this book gives me hope that you are not one of those never-writers. (I made that word up as I typed it, but I like it.) It is my fervent wish that you share my love of writing; that you have the passion and motivation needed to turn the story in your head into printed words.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have loved books since you learned to read. Stories fill your thoughts like autumnal leaves in the wind. Sometimes you won’t sleep because vivid images keep you awake. You walk down a street and invent histories and mysteries for the people around you. I’d go as far as saying that you’re very comfortable in your own company, and you don’t need constant social interaction. Much of life seems superficial and ordinary to you. You’d be lost without your imagination to keep you entertained. Don’t worry – this isn’t cold reading or questionable astrology, but I am trying to show you that writing needs a certain character type. Creativity is wonderful but let’s get real for a moment. A good imagination isn’t enough. You cannot approach writing without accepting it is hard graft. You have to understand your motivation.

Do you know why you want to write? It’s an interesting question. In his excellent non-fiction book The Successful Novelist, David Morrell suggests the reason is a simple but profound one: writers write because they have to. Let’s face it, giving up a year of your life to a manuscript which may never be read by anyone else is obsessive. That compulsion to release a story into the world is a challenge which few people are prepared to endure. It takes a little bravery and a lot of stubbornness. People who don’t write will assume you’re indulging a jolly hobby, oblivious to the amount of effort it actually takes to construct a novel. It’s a preoccupation which competes for your time with work, family and life.

But it’s worth it! Finishing a novel is a huge achievement. You can allow yourself a moment of elation. Yes, just a moment. Once you’ve congratulated yourself on your creativity, you have to get back to work and write the next one. That’s the reality of writing. If you’re just toying with the idea of writing a novel, this book isn’t for you. If you’re serious about it, this book will bring some clarity and help you focus.

Disciplined writing

Finding a routine is important for novelists. The schedule you keep has to be realistic and work for you. When you begin your first novel, the chances are you’ll be fitting it in around numerous demands on your time. Some writers get up very early and write for an hour before going to work. British thriller writer Mark Dawson used his commute to London as his creative time. For others, writing in the evening suits their lifestyle. When I wrote Station Helix, I found that I couldn’t concentrate on the book during the week, so I dedicated 10 to 12 hours each weekend to writing, plus almost all of my holiday time.

It doesn’t matter when you write, you just have to write. Procrastination is your worst enemy. Never allow yourself to avoid writing during your allocated creative time. From a practical perspective, you must stay connected to your book. Time away pushes you out of the story. It’s hard to make up lost ground and re-engage with your characters and plot. Regular writing time gives your work rhythm and momentum. Keeping on course will be hard, but persistence eventually becomes an enjoyable habit.

Consistent writing benefits your imagination. It’s like a muscle: the more you use it the stronger it becomes. It’s also important to realise that there is more to writing than just sitting at your keyboard typing the words. You don’t need to be in front of your computer to visualise the scenes in your story – you can do that when you’re walking to the shops. You can test plots in your imagination, looking for holes and assessing plausibility. Listen to your characters’ voices and allow them to tell you how they would react to the situations you throw them into. The more you live inside your story, the better you will write it.

I will spend a lot more time talking about developing ideas later in the book. For now, though, remember successful writing depends entirely on the attitude of the writer. You have to dedicate yourself to your work, block out distractions and never let yourself find excuses to stop. I know I’m not being gentle with you, but this is important. If you want to be a writer, you have to know what you’re committing to.

Traditional publishing

The challenge of getting published by a traditional publishing house is monumentally difficult. Some established authors will tell you that if a book is good enough it will find a publisher. Unfortunately we’re no longer in the 1970s and that’s not an accurate assessment of the industry. I want to put things in perspective for you. A literary agent receives hundreds – or even thousands – of submissions from authors every year. Most of those manuscripts won’t be worth the agent’s time, but let’s say 1% deserve to be printed. That doesn’t mean they will be. An agent might be willing to take on half a dozen new clients annually (but probably fewer). Those are dreadful odds, but they get even worse. Even with the backing of the agent’s pitching skills, maybe only one or two of the agent’s authors will be offered publishing contracts.

To continue this scenario a little further, let’s assume you are one of those lucky few. You won’t get a decent advance because they only go to big name authors these days. You’ll have to sign away the rights to your book for several years. You’ll have no say over the cover design. Even your book’s title will be altered if the publisher doesn’t like the one you came up with. If you’re lucky your book will be printed after a year, although eighteen months might be more realistic. There will be a print run of perhaps 20,000 books. You’ll receive a royalty of about 10% on the books which sell, minus your agent’s percentage. Books which don’t sell will be pulped. If you get lucky and sell really well, your prospects improve for your next book, but you’ll be committed to a deadline which could be hard to meet. If you don’t sell, expect the publisher to drop you like a hot coal.

I’ve just described a best case scenario. The truth is this: unknown authors – no matter how good they are – will rarely be published. The industry today is controlled by a handful of large companies whose goal is a fast profit. They don’t have the time or inclination to nurture burgeoning talent. If you’re a celebrity you’ll get a book deal because you have a ready-made audience. That gives the publisher some assurance that people will buy your book. If you’re unknown, why would they take a chance on you? It’s said that traditional publishing acts as a quality filter so only worthy books get published, but I’m not convinced that’s wholly true when the commercial appeal of a book is always at the forefront of publishers’ minds.

It sounds rather gloomy, doesn’t it? No wonder authors are looking for an alternative which gives them complete control over their work. Despite what I’ve just said, I’m not opposed to traditional publishing. It’s an industry which supports a lot of authors and produces some superb books. But it’s not a viable model for most new fiction writers. And while I don’t think a publishing contract is a bad aspiration, I’ve come to realise that I’d much rather be in charge of my own destiny. Self-publishing is the way I – and you – can achieve that goal.

Self-publishing

When we think of self-publishing today we rightly see it as a phenomenon of the Internet age. The tools for self-publishing are easy enough to use, but they do require basic computer skills. The technology which allows you to publish to e‑reader platforms across the globe is still relatively new. However, self-publishing actually has a long history and some famous names in its roster: Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf and Walt Whitman to name just a few.

The perception that this method of publication is just vanity publishing for people whose books aren’t good enough for a book contract has diluted to the point of irrelevancy. Vanity publishing – where authors paid printers high fees for single print runs of their own books – has largely been pushed aside by independent authors. That said, there are still numerous companies who will try to sell you ‘author services’. They prey on writers who haven’t done their research. I want to emphasise a very important point – there is no need to pay anyone a single penny to publish your books for you. Returning to the point about quality, there is merit in the argument which says self-publishing is susceptible to poor standards. A lot of self-published books are simply awful, and a system open to everyone has inherent risks. But I’ve also been unimpressed by the quality of many traditionally published books, so it’s not as simple as saying one route to publication is better than the other.

The choice to buy a book ultimately comes down to the reader, who is assisted by preview features and reviews. I’d suggest that most readers won’t notice any differences between a great traditionally published book and a great independently published one. Many readers won’t care where a book comes from as long as the story is good. The biggest obstacle for self-publishers is not reader snobbery but getting noticed in a very busy marketplace. Finding an audience for your masterpiece is harder than writing the book itself, and the chances of spectacular sales are slim. However, persistence can pay off, and there are some inspiring success stories in the self-publishing world.

Having control over the entire process is one of the biggest draws of self-publishing. You can set prices, commission cover designs, run promotions and even offer free books as a marketing strategy for a series. Your books are available for as long as you want them to be. If you spot an error you can upload a replacement file. Royalty percentages are considerably better than those offered by publishing houses, and all the money is yours. You don’t have to sign away any rights to your book, and you’re not committed to anyone’s timescale but your own. It puts things into perspective doesn’t it? Submitting manuscripts to agents and waiting months for rejection letters no longer seems like good use of an author’s time. Self-publishing is empowering and makes good sense. I hope this book encourages you to unlock your potential as an independent author.

Writing a series

If you want to have a career as a novelist, you need to write more than one book. A catalogue of titles is no different from any other range of products. The more you have available in the marketplace, the more you can potentially sell. This book isn’t a marketing guide, but there are a few points to consider while you’re gathering your thoughts and deciding what to write.

I’ve already touched on how self-publishers ought to take an entrepreneurial view of their work. Part of that is establishing yourself as a brand, and that means working out what defines you as a writer and how to package those qualities. For this reason, writing in a single genre makes good sense. The fact that you have this book in your hands right now means you’re drawn to thrillers, but that doesn’t mean you’d be incapable of writing in a different style. But think about your audience. Readers may love your thrillers, but that doesn’t mean they’ll rush to buy a surprise epic fantasy from you. Loyalty to brands is achieved because customers know what they’re getting. You should aim to build a reputation for consistency and quality as a thriller novelist.

I would also encourage you to consider writing a series first and standalone titles later. Building a series is another way of encouraging readers’ loyalty, and while they probably would buy unrelated titles, the draw of a series is stronger. If readers identify with a great character in your first book they’ll be desperate to find out what happens to him in the next one. A series may contain a plot arc which weaves through all the books, but you must ensure that each book is an individual and complete story. Never finish a book on a cliff-hanger ending which leaves key themes unresolved. Doing so will be unsatisfying for readers and may put them off buying more titles from you.

Self-publishers frequently use the first book as a marketing tool to encourage sales of the rest of the series, because readers may be more willing to take a chance on an author they don’t know if the book is cheap or free. (It isn’t always possible to give away a book on some platforms. I’ll discuss this more later.) Giving away a novel which you’ve worked on so hard may sound like torture, but many authors use the strategy successfully to increase their exposure and promote sales of their other books.

When I wrote my Station Helix books, I found the series format helped my writing. With room to grow over three books, my characters became more defined as I came to know them better. I had no fear about starting The Elzevir Collective because the first book had established a foundation and I knew my cast well. I wasn’t starting from scratch with a completely new idea. I was confident about Torus for the same reason. Familiarity, therefore, is another compelling and practical reason for writing a series.

I know the prospect of writing a series may seem daunting if you haven’t yet started your first novel, but now is the perfect time to establish a thought process in your mind. Each book is a step closer to your goal of being a thriller writer. You don’t need to commit to a fixed strategy – as a writer you’re entitled to make adjustments to the plot – but do start thinking about what you would like to achieve during the next three or four years. I’m excited for you. You’re about to write a story with yourself as the protagonist.

Defining the thriller novel

There are certain characteristics which are found in all thrillers. When defining the genre, some commentators will offer a fairly predictable collection of clichés, from ‘non-stop action’ to ‘gripping page-turner’, and probably throw in a few rather concerning medical problems like ‘heart-stopping’ and ‘breath-taking’ as well. As a reader I absolutely want to be carried away by what I’m reading, but the best thrillers are not relentless in their pace. I don’t think it’s helpful to typecast thrillers by such simple definitions.

It’s a matter of personal taste, but I don’t find constant-action thrillers particularly satisfying. It’s much more important to have strong characters and an enthralling plot. Pace doesn’t require an explosion on every page. Tension can be achieved with subtlety. Action scenes should be interspersed with reflective moments. David Morrell’s brilliant First Blood is one of the most violent thrillers I’ve read, but it is the book’s psychological conflict between Rambo and Teasle which makes it a classic, not the body count. Alan Furst’s espionage novels are what I describe as rising-tide thrillers: the tension encroaches with unstoppable foreboding rather than via frequent action, and the books are thoroughly absorbing for it.

Great thrillers find the balance between depth and momentum. Perhaps more than any other type of writing, thrillers rely on eliciting emotions in the reader. We are the modern-day storytellers, continuing the tradition which began long ago when adventures were recounted around campfires. It is our duty as writers to create suspense, trepidation, anxiety and curiosity. By the light of the fire or the Kindle screen, our role is to hold the attention of the audience and make them ask: What happens next? That is essentially what the thrill in thriller really means. We make the reader ask questions and – rather cruelly – hold back the answers until we’re ready.

That’s why suspense rather than action is at the heart of every thriller, regardless of whether its focus is espionage, law, medicine, horror, crime, psychology or any other sub-category within the genre. Suspense can be found dangling at the end of a burning rope or in the consequences of a decision. If you can hold the attention of your reader, you’ve done your job. Sometimes you’ll achieve that with a dramatic scene, sometimes through nuanced foreshadowing. Imagine that campfire once again. The darkness in the shadows is as enthralling as the light of the flames. They co-exist and the fire always burns. It isn’t action you need on every page: it’s anticipation.

Thrillers and mysteries are closely linked. It has been said that a thriller is concerned with preventing a crisis whereas a mystery is about solving something that has already happened. If we were comparing action thrillers with basic whodunits the definitions would be fair, but most stories cannot be diluted into such simple rudiments. Thrillers frequently contain mystery elements. In Matthew Dunn’s The Spy House, protagonist Will Cochrane tries to solve a murder in order to prevent a military invasion. Going back a century into thriller history, John Buchan’s Richard Hannay tries to unravel a code in The Thirty-Nine Steps so he can sabotage the work of a German fifth column. The overlap between mysteries and thrillers has always been there.

An unmistakeable characteristic of thrillers is the presence of obstacles in the protagonist’s path. Not only must he face adversity but he must be changed by it. The character at the end of the book must be different in some way from who he was at the start. It’s common to demolish early success in a story, forcing the lead character to weaken and then fight back to regain lost ground. This is actually a very old archetype. You’ll find it in Arthurian quests and older Greek mythology. A thriller must contain jeopardy. Incidentally, jeopardy is of French origin – jeu parti – and means divided game. That’s a perfect elucidation of the conflict between protagonist and antagonist which thrillers demand.

Learning your craft

You don’t have to look far to find advice about thriller writing. Suggestions about plotting, characterisation, pace and suspense abound. It’s all useful. I’ll cover a lot of the material in this book to help you on your way. However, there is one piece of advice which is rarely mentioned but surpasses all others. If I could strip away the content of this book to a single essential detail, it would be this: read a lot. It’s non-negotiable.

David Morrell emphasises the point in The Successful Novelist. It isn’t possible to become a good thriller writer if you haven’t first immersed yourself in the genre. Morrell presses home the point that you need to become an expert in your chosen category of thriller. You cannot do that without research. He reminds us that we cannot know if our ideas are truly original without knowing the genre’s history.

We learn best when we see a subject in context. That’s why a mechanic tinkers with an engine and a swimmer jumps into a pool. For writers the comparable experience is the simple pleasure of reading. Read books firstly for enjoyment and secondly for the stylistic details. I can give you hints about devising a plot for a novel, but if you’ve never followed a plot yourself, the advice will be of very limited use.

Every writer has a unique style. By reading a variety of novels you will learn what works for you and what doesn’t. This informs your writing, helping you to develop your own voice. Personal taste plays a big part in this. You’ll connect with some writers and dislike others. Your favourite authors might be different from mine. Finding out what leaves you cold is as important as learning what enthrals you.

So far I’ve been talking about something which is intuitive rather than defined: subjective artistic appreciation. That’s why I cannot instruct you on how to invent yourself as an artist. Your writing voice takes inspiration from the history of the genre and blends it with your own experiences and imagination. It is unique and personal. Over time it will grow and reinvent itself. It is the living part of your novels. It is the storyteller within.

That’s great, but you can’t write a book on imagination alone. You need to learn technique as well. This is the craft, or method, of writing. I’ll make a comparison with sport to illustrate the point. When I was at school I took up fencing. My coach would instruct me on the correct positions of the parries, how to attack and riposte, and how to feint to provoke reactions from my opponents – the mechanics of the sport. In order to win bouts, I had to add flair – or art – to those techniques. It’s the same with writing – you need both.

Writing technique begins with understanding grammar and sentence structure – the positions of the fencing parries to continue my sporting analogy. As time progresses and you become more fluent, you learn which rules you must adhere to and those you can bend. You learn techniques which hold the reader’s attention, such as making dialogue concise and avoiding lengthy introductions to scenes. You figure out how to add vividness by referring to smells and sounds. You learn how to trick your reader with a feint and hit him with a surprise attack, eliciting the emotions which define thrillers. Learning these skills takes time and effort.

Some more advice which never comes up elsewhere but should: buy yourself a decent dictionary. If you want to fill a book with thousands of words, you must be sure you’re using the right ones. Doing so is respectful to your readers and reinforces your credibility as a writer. I find words fascinating, so spending time perusing my dictionary is time well spent and entertains me. I love discovering new words and learning about their origins. My Collins English Dictionary is my secret ingredient. I always have my dictionary beside me when I’m writing.

A thesaurus is useful too, but it must be used in conjunction with a dictionary. Synonyms are not always exact replacements. Don’t get carried away with fancy alternative words. Sometimes the simple one you think of first is the best choice. An unfamiliar word could upset the pace of an action scene and spoil the reader’s enjoyment. Using your writing software’s built-in thesaurus to search for synonyms is fine, but always check its offerings in your dictionary.

I would also suggest making use of grammar guides to ensure your writing adheres to conventions. There are certain rules which should always be followed, such as those governing punctuation in dialogue, but other aspects of language usage don’t need to be so rigid. Never rely on your software’s grammar suggestions – it is not sophisticated enough to understand the nuances of creative writing. Your goal as a writer is to encode your message in a way that is easy to decipher by the reader. If that means bending a rule then that’s okay, but don’t be radical. Keep to the spirit of the game.

It is the combination of all these elements which shapes you as a novelist. You can’t rush this learning process or skip the parts you’d rather avoid. I don’t see any of this as inconvenient, and I hope you feel the same way. Your sincerity as a writer can be measured by the dedication you have for learning your craft.

Recommended authors

Devising a list of authors to read is never going to do justice to the wealth of talent that exists in the thriller genre. That’s why I’m simply going to list my favourite thriller novelists. I’ll describe why I believe these writers deserve special mention, and I’ll include book titles which you may wish to read.

Eric Ambler is credited with refining the espionage thriller by introducing flawed and ordinary protagonists. Many of us have followed Ambler’s model by writing about unskilled characters coping with extraordinary circumstances. His books are witty and curious observations on human foibles and schemes. Titles include: Uncommon Danger, Epitaph for a Spy, Cause for Alarm, The Mask of Dimitrios, Journey into Fear.

Belinda Bauer is known for her psychological thrillers. Delving into the minds of serial killers is fascinating and unnerving territory, and Bauer pulls this off with an eloquent writing style that blends vivid descriptions with sinister and tense moments. Titles include: Blacklands, Dark Side, Finders Keepers, Rubbernecker, The Facts of Life and Death.

John Buchan holds a landmark place in the development of the thriller genre. His classic manhunt story The Thirty-Nine Steps is his most famous work. British indefatigability is a consistent theme. The books are very much of a certain era but they are still enormous fun. Titles include: The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Mr Standfast, The Three Hostages, The Island of Sheep.

Harlan Coben is the master of the plot twist. His books have well-defined characters who often hide deeply buried secrets. You’re guaranteed a tense and thought-provoking experience with a Coben novel. Titles include: Tell No One, Gone for Good, No Second Chance, The Woods, Fool Me Once.

Mark Dawson is one of the most successful self-published British thriller writers. His John Milton novels tell the exploits of a troubled assassin and combine action with character development in refreshingly different situations from book to book. Titles include: The Cleaner, Saint Death, The Driver, Ghosts, The Sword of God.

Matthew Dunn used to work for MI6 and brings a wealth of authentic knowledge to his superb spy thrillers. His protagonist Will Cochrane is a complex and thoughtful lead. Dunn makes good use of secondary characters to explain and explore Cochrane’s friendships and motivation. Titles include: Spycatcher, Sentinel, Slingshot, Dark Spies, The Spy House.

Barry Eisler is another writer who includes tradecraft in his books, drawing on his time in the CIA. Eisler balances action with location, immersing us in the experiences of his characters. Titles include: A Clean Kill in Tokyo, A Lonely Resurrection, Winner Take All, Redemption Games, Extremis.

Ken Follett writes classic thrillers and epic historical dramas. He brings extensive research to his novels, making them feel authentic. He keeps readers engrossed by employing an easy to understand style which he describes as transparent prose. Titles include: Eye of the Needle, Triple, The Key to Rebecca, The Man from St. Petersburg, Whiteout.

Alan Furst writes espionage thrillers set in twentieth century Europe. He places his plots against the backdrop of political turmoil and paranoia. His books are deceptively leisurely in their pacing and thoroughly absorbing. Titles include: Night Soldiers, Dark Star, The Polish Officer, The World at Night, Red Gold.

Thomas Harris is known as the creator of Hannibal Lecter. There are very few fiction writers who manage to invent such memorable and famous characters. Titles include: Black Sunday, Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, Hannibal Rising.

Jack Higgins is a prolific writer with over eighty published titles. His World War II novels are arguably his best and most detailed. He cleverly makes us feel empathy with characters we should dislike, such as ex-terrorist Sean Dillon. Titles include: The Eagle Has Landed, Night of the Fox, A Prayer for the Dying, Thunder Point, Day of Reckoning.

Geoffrey Household is an important name in English thriller writing. He wrote with sophistication but still conveyed suspense. He avoided describing violence in detail, referring instead to its aftermath with unnerving detachment.  Titles include: Rogue Male, Rogue Justice, Fellow Passenger, Watcher in the Shadows, Hostage: London.

Alistair MacLean is known for his World War II novels – several of which were made into films – but also wrote many thrillers in other settings. High stakes, betrayal and adventure are recurring themes. Titles include: The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, Where Eagles Dare, Bear Island, Floodgate.

Peter May is superb at devising intricate plots and interesting characters. His writing is evocative, using vivid descriptions of the weather and landscape to make them characters in their own right. His books combine elements of thrillers and mysteries. Titles include: The Blackhouse, The Lewis Man, The Chessmen, Entry Island, Coffin Road.

David Morrell is best known as the creator of Rambo, the traumatised Vietnam War veteran of First Blood. He is a master of the craft and should be compulsory reading for aspiring thriller writers. Titles include: First Blood, The Brotherhood of the Rose, The Fraternity of the Stone, The League of Night and Fog, Long Lost.

James Patterson is one of the most successful writers of all time. He’s known for his Alex Cross psychological thrillers. Readers love his serial killer antagonists. His style is notable for its very short chapters and momentum. Titles include: Along Came a Spider, Kiss the Girls, Jack and Jill, Cat and Mouse, Pop Goes the Weasel.

Karin Slaughter writes brutal crime novels with vulnerable and damaged characters, set against the enchanting backdrop of the Deep South. She doesn’t hold back on the violence. She’s great at conveying the tension in difficult relationships. Titles include: Blindsighted, Kisscut, A Faint Cold Fear, Indelible, Faithless.

The importance of plotting

The plot is the blueprint of a novel. It defines the book’s central premise and sets out the route the story takes from its opening to its resolution. It is the glue which bonds scenes together, giving them collective purpose which would be unclear if they were viewed in isolation. A plot is the expansion of a single idea into a complete story.

Let’s think about that for a moment. When someone tells you she has a good idea for a book, the chances are what she really has is a good idea for a scene. The idea doesn’t become worthy of a novel until it has been nurtured and encouraged to propagate. A seed is not a plant, but it has the potential to grow into one.

It’s unusual for plots to appear in the imagination fully formed. Generally they require a lot of work, and this is particularly true for thrillers because of the volume of subtle details they require. I’ll give you an example from my own experience of taking one simple idea and developing it into a complete plot.

Station Helix began with a simple concept: a man in his early twenties finds out he is connected to a secret Ministry of Defence genetics experiment. I also had a location in mind for the secret laboratory where the science took place. The idea held my attention and I knew it had potential, but what I’ve described to you occupies less than a third of this paragraph. It wasn’t enough for a plot. It could barely be described as a scene. I couldn’t start writing based on that.

Plotting is actually a simple – if not easy – process. It involves asking yourself questions about your idea. Who is the young man? How is he linked to the experiment? How does he find out? Why is the MOD running the experiment? The answers to these questions start to give the original idea some context and layering. The answers may not always be connected, but that’s not a problem. It’s like building different parts of a jigsaw puzzle and gradually figuring out how to join them up. For example, I imagined a final scene for Station Helix early in this process, but couldn’t see how it connected to the rest of the story. By asking myself more questions, I connected the pieces.

Plotting isn’t something you can rush. I spent roughly four months thinking about the plot for Station Helix before I started writing, and even then I still had a lot to figure out. This brings me to another key point. Authors take very different approaches to plotting. A few claim not to plot at all, but this is a disingenuous assertion: some thought must go into the story before the writing begins. No one begins on page one with nothing to say.

It is the level of preparation which varies between authors. Some writers plan every detail for every scene and every chapter before starting the manuscript. With a blueprint prepared, the writing of the actual story becomes an assembly process. It’s orderly and efficient but doesn’t leave much room for spontaneity. There is an obvious benefit in thorough planning: it provides a clear route from beginning to end. Theoretically, this makes writing the novel straightforward. How I wish I had that level of discipline.

I see the logic in that detailed approach, but it’s too rigid for me. I prefer to figure out the themes of the book in looser terms. Harlan Coben makes the comparison with a road trip: you establish where you’ll start and where you want to end up, but you have the flexibility to take a few unexpected detours to places of interest along the way. It’s a little haphazard and you can run into dead ends, but I think it’s a good way to combine structure and spontaneity. It’s still plotting but it’s a hybrid of good planning and bold improvisation.

I’ve found that this organic outlining method works if you trust yourself and have belief in your ideas. There is a scene in the middle of Torus which came to me out of the blue, but it ended up affecting the tone of the rest of the book and strengthening the outcome I’d already decided upon. That probably wouldn’t have happened if I’d prepared a rigid outline for my plot. The trick is not to be afraid if your story twists and turns unexpectedly. Enjoy the ride.

As an author you invest a lot of energy in your plot. You have – and need – an intimate knowledge of every element. Without this attention to detail your story risks encountering mistakes and inconsistencies. But here’s an interesting observation: your readers invest more in the experience of reading your book than the plot itself. I’m not saying engrossed readers will miss the subtle details you include, but the goal of a thriller is to elicit emotional reactions rather than intellectual analysis. It’s the same with other entertainment media: you don’t enjoy a film because you can figure out the cinematography tricks of every scene; you enjoy the escapism holistically.

Now here’s the rub: your audience won’t notice when you get it right, but they will when you get it wrong. Readers may not be able to recall the names of your precious characters, but they will know if they’ve enjoyed being in their company. They’ll forget how your assassin set up her kill shot, but they’ll remember the tension of the moment when she did. A plot is a conduit along which readers channel their emotions. Holes in your plot will interrupt that experience and force readers out of the story.

I cannot urge you enough to develop your story – in notes or in your head – before you start writing the book. I’m convinced there are countless thousands of unfinished stories which never made it beyond the first chapter because the authors didn’t understand this basic storytelling requirement. The choice whether to use rigid scene-by-scene preparation or develop a looser improvisational narrative is yours, but always dedicate a lot of time to plotting. Your story will be better for it.

The importance of characters

A book needs strong characters as much as it needs a robust plot. By strong I mean engaging for the reader. In thrillers we encounter characters we would (hopefully) never meet in real life, so that creates an immediate problem: how does a reader make a connection to a fictitious person with no point of reference? Well, the clue is in the question: we give them something familiar. We humanise them. Readers don’t even have to like your characters, but they will happily spend time with them if they can relate to their motivations, fears and desires.

It’s possible to do this even with a dangerous and terrifying character. In my novella Watch Them Die the story is told from the point of view of a sociopathic killer. Had I just described how he murdered several people, the book would be uninteresting and readers wouldn’t feel any connection to him. So I allowed him to make rational observations about social issues such as religion and racism, and provided context for his thought processes by describing events from his childhood. As a reader you may loathe his cold perspective, but you can identify with his logic and see exactly where he’s coming from.

There are lots of ways writers can make characters interesting. Illnesses, upbringing, traumas, education and hobbies are just some of the options for giving your imaginary people depth. In The Successful Novelist Morrell talks about how writers should invent histories for their characters, even if those details never make it into the book explicitly. History influences personality, as do experiences in the present, and it’s very helpful to know why a character might react to provocation in a certain way. Thrillers include a lot of dialogue, so it’s essential to listen to characters’ voices and understand how they would communicate. It sounds rather ethereal, but if you throw a character into a scene in your imagination, he’ll reveal to you how he’d respond.

I think it’s inevitable that a little of the novelist’s personality finds its way into some of his characters, but it is also great fun to invent new characters unlike oneself. Books need a cast who bring variety and contrast to maintain interest, but you can’t add people just to make your scenes more colourful – every character must serve the plot. Another consideration is how personalities and perspectives change. Your protagonist, in particular, must be in a different place mentally at the end of the book from where she was at the beginning. (Otherwise, what’s the point of the story?) That transformation is caused by the obstacles she encounters as the plot progresses.

An archetypal thriller describes a good-versus-evil conflict between a protagonist and an antagonist. At face value the model doesn’t seem to fit contemporary stories: modern characters are seldom entirely heroic or wicked. Furthermore, the conflict rarely happens in isolation because we use multiple characters to move the story along. However, the hero’s quest as a theme remains essential to the genre, even though we now prefer imperfect personalities and love antiheroes. Your protagonist must endure hardships but ultimately prevail. Divert from that archetype and you’ve written something other than a thriller.

So how does a protagonist differ from the characters around him? If we accept that a contemporary story includes an ensemble cast of characters – some of whom will be very influential upon the plot – do we really need to label one as the lead figure? Well, yes. A thriller describes one person’s perspective in the context of the events which unfold around him. It keeps the book grounded in its purpose. The protagonist is the one character whose absence would cause the plot to unravel. Take Luke Skywalker out of Star Wars and you’re left with a documentary about an oppressive regime.

Thriller protagonists are frequently skilled in some way. There are plenty of spies, detectives, assassins and military specialists. We love these characters because they bring excitement and intrigue to our ordinary lives. As writers, though, we need to be careful when using characters who are experts in their fields. It doesn’t hurt to be imaginative when describing their exploits as long as realism is maintained. It is essential to research subjects thoroughly so your characters can speak and act with authenticity. In addition, don’t fall into the stereotype trap. If you want to write a British police procedural, please avoid making your lead character an aggressive alcoholic detective inspector who defies authority but is tolerated because of his instinctive ability to solve murder cases which no one else can. It’s boring, predictable and entirely unrealistic.

Of course, there is another type of protagonist you can write about: the one who doesn’t have the skills for the situation he’s thrown into. It’s challenging and fun to figure out how an ordinary person will cope with turmoil. Eric Ambler favoured this type of protagonist. In No Second Chance Harlan Coben forces his main character to endure the kidnapping of his baby daughter. The premise is instantly terrifying and we’re immediately willing him to find her.

The foil of a decent lead is a worthy antagonist, and it’s essential to put equal effort into his creation. Don’t give me a one-dimensional character who is just plain bad. I want the opponent to have a reason for doing what he does. It’s very important to understand the antagonist’s motivation and justification for his actions. Did he become a terrorist because his family was obliterated in an air strike? Is he fighting perceived injustice in the legal system? Is he acting under duress? Your antagonist should be complex and intriguing. I’d rather read about a conflicted intellectual than a narcissistic thug.

I’ve spent a while talking about the protagonist and antagonist, but I don’t want you to think that your supporting characters are any less important. It’s essential that your lead characters have other people to interact with, and the better your cast is the more revealing those interactions can be. You’ll need a range of characters from those with rank or authority to close friends of your protagonist. Variety is key because it’s easy to confuse or forget similar personalities. Use different ages, descriptions and accents. Give some characters steadfast beliefs and others moral ambiguity. Vary the life experiences they’ve been through. Make some experts with technology and others afraid of computers.

You can find some brilliantly written characters on television. In The Blacklist we’re awed by James Spader’s acting masterclass as the complex Raymond ‘Red’ Reddington, but we must not overlook the value of the other major characters. The writers’ cleverness is revealed not only in Red but also his unlikely entourage, the FBI team members and the criminals they pursue.

Memorable characters give substance and depth to your plot. The difference between them and the leads is only a technical one, namely the perspective from which the story is told. Get to know and love your secondary team. You’ll be surprised at how much they will contribute to your novel.

There is another group I want to mention: background characters. Their purpose is simply to be present when needed for a multitude of tasks, including answering phones, driving cars or getting killed. Their contribution to the plot is incidental rather than active. These minor players aren’t there to engage us emotionally, but we need them because their absence would be noticed. Even though our encounters with them as readers are brief, it’s still important to add little details which elevate them above the superficial. Take this excerpt from Station Helix:

A smartly dressed receptionist looked up. “Good morning. May I help you?” she asked with a soft Irish accent.

We’ll never meet that receptionist again, but I like knowing something about her from those two sentences. I’m interested in the fact that she takes pride in her appearance, and I can imagine the melodic tone of her voice. The description is necessarily short because I don’t want to distract you with lots of details about a minor character, but the scene benefits from a tiny amount of layering.

Finding names for your characters is the final topic I want to touch on here. There is something to be said for short and snappy names, but don’t be afraid to go with the occasional longer name if it suits a personality. One of my characters is called Archimedes Falkner – six syllables when used in full. It’s probably wise to avoid rhyming names, but if your characters are distinct this shouldn’t be a big problem. My first draft of Station Helix had Abi, Zoe, Lily and Carrie. I changed Carrie to Clare but kept the rest.

Some names convey tone because they’re interesting phonetically. Jack is popular with thriller writers because it sounds tough. I’ve used it for a CIA station chief. By contrast, when I wanted a name for an effeminate bohemian bookseller, I chose Bartholomew. I take similar care when looking for foreign names. Online lists make the task straightforward. Make your naming choices as varied as the characters themselves.

David Morrell deserves credit for what I believe is the best character name ever. No, I’m not talking about Rambo (although that’s a great name). I’m referring to Miles Calendar, the elderly gunslinger in Last Reveille. The name reflects the life and journeys of the protagonist and mirrors the book’s plot. Don’t try too hard to make your names symbolic like that, but if you do come up with a good one, don’t be afraid to use it.

The three-act structure

My love of writing began at a very young age. I can remember being given advice as a child which seemed both confusing and obvious: every story needs a beginning, a middle and an ending. As non-writers, the people who imparted that ‘wisdom’ probably didn’t understand it either. It’s stayed with me as the most unhelpful information about writing I’ve ever been told. Those words mean nothing out of context.

The advice, though, is spot on – at least once we get past the vague cliché. What we’re talking about here is a model for the movement of a story at its most basic level. It’s known as the three-act structure. The name reveals the obvious connection to theatre, although now you’ll usually hear about it in the context of screenwriting. Some commentators try to dismiss the three-act structure as false, but that’s usually because they’re taking the term too literally. I’ll explain what the model is and leave you to make up your own mind. The model is described fairly consistently by its proponents, but some of the terminology here is my own.

The structure represents the protagonist’s journey in its fundamental parts, and is therefore indelibly linked to the plot. The first act describes the normal life of the character. The second act is concerned with disrupting that normality and forcing the protagonist to respond. The third act empowers the character to resolve the crisis and restore some sense of equilibrium. Rather than beginning, middle and ending, it’s more helpful to think of setup, confrontation and resolution. Alternatively: prelude, crisis and showdown. You get the idea.

Let’s look at applying these acts to thriller novels in a little more detail. In the first act we introduce our players and the world they inhabit. The protagonist and antagonist need to be identified early. We are also confirming the genre at this point, reinforcing readers’ expectations by using drama and tension from the outset. The first act contextualises the story through its early scenes and provides the framework for the events which follow. An inciting incident – or catalyst – must affect the protagonist, changing his world-view. In addition, the first act includes a threshold plot point which forces the protagonist into the second act. This is more than simply a dramatic scene (there can be plenty of those beforehand): it’s a point of no return for the lead character. Once the threshold is crossed, he can’t return to the life he knew.

The term rising action is often used to define the second act, and I think it’s an apt description. This is when obstacles frustrate the protagonist. It represents the longest part of the book because this is where most of the drama lies. The main character has to adapt to changing circumstances as he’s dragged further away from the life he knew. Subplots surface and make matters worse. An early advantage over the antagonist might be lost. In the second act the odds seem to favour the opponent. There is a critical mid-point drama which creates turmoil for the protagonist. The action leads to a pendulum plot point where the main character starts to turn the tide, setting up the final act.

The third act is the shortest part of a thriller because the genre does not favour drawn-out endings. Subplots must be resolved during the third act, although this doesn’t preclude a story arc being left open for the next book. The end comes with the denouement between the lead characters when the protagonist finally wins the day. The climax should be the most intense part of the story. It is a defining moment for the main character in which the challenges are overcome, but the new equilibrium which ensues is bitter compared with the relative comfort of the first act. To summarise:

1.        Setup or prelude, including inciting incident and threshold plot point.

2.        Confrontation or crisis, including mid-point drama and pendulum plot point.

3.        Resolution or showdown, including plot closure, denouement and new equilibrium.

I really like the three-act structure as a basic model. It describes the phases of every human challenge. It’s instinctive and easy to understand. Using it helps to clarify the protagonist’s journey at the plotting stage. But it isn’t the whole story.

Beyond the three-act structure

Critics of the three-act structure explain their objections by pointing out that plays and films frequently have more than three acts. They’re not wrong about that per se, but they’re confusing the conceptual model with actual scenes. Every story is about the three core elements of the protagonist’s journey, regardless of whether that takes ten chapters or one hundred. There will be plenty of influential plot points, but the protagonist can only be drawn into the story on one occasion (inciting incident). The decision to commit to a course of action (threshold plot point) can only be made once, regardless of the number of factors influencing that choice. You can’t have two denouements. (Well, you can, but you need the alternative ending scene on the DVD for the second one.)

I consider the three-act structure to be a wholly valid concept, but I’m equally aware that it doesn’t describe every aspect of a play, a film or a book. Similarly, a story’s premise can never adequately convey the plot. A deeper breakdown of the story is needed, and here I concur with the critics of the three-act structure. The model does not accommodate the subplots which weave their way around the central theme. Nor does it recognise the critical influence of individual scenes. It doesn’t cater for the agendas of characters other than the protagonist and antagonist.

While the model rightly describes the key moments in the main character’s journey, we’d expect a lot more twists and turns in a novel than the structural ones I’ve already referred to. Ken Follett says a story should turn every four to six pages. By turn he means an adjustment to the direction of the narrative. Good thrillers work because they keep offering up revelations, shocks and obstacles, all of which contribute to the anticipation and tension we need throughout the book. The turns don’t always have to be overflowing with drama, but we do need to keep them coming. This layering is achieved by creating strong subplots.

Subplots and counterplots

A subplot is a story strand which support the main plot. In some types of literature it may be there simply for decoration, unconnected to the central premise of the book. That doesn’t work in thrillers because every moment counts. Subplots must be relevant and influential. I think of subplots as the agendas of characters other than the protagonist. I don’t particularly like the word subplot, and I’ll explain why shortly.

Imagine a rope representing the timeline of the main plot. Now tie several assorted pieces of string to it and use them to pull the plot this way and that. The image illustrates succinctly how the protagonist is affected by events during his journey (Follett’s turns). The depiction shows that subplots can vary in length and don’t have to occur at the same time. You can even twist a few subplot threads together as well.

Adding subplots causes an interesting paradox in thriller writing: we’re deliberately interrupting the momentum of the plot in order to strengthen it. The technique works because new layers make the story more realistic, and new conflicts increase the tension. Without outside influence, nothing would change in the protagonist’s life.

Subplots are sometimes described as secondary stories, but to do so risks devaluing them. Even the word subplot erroneously implies a theme of lesser importance. I prefer counterplot. It’s apt for thrillers even though it’s not a precise synonym. Counterplots are, by definition, agendas which hinder the protagonist. A counterplot can be as subtle as hiding the truth or as aggressive as wilful sabotage.

Thrillers lend themselves to the inclusion of several counterplots, and a fast pace means you can introduce one briefly, move on to something else and then make it resurface at a critical moment. The technique teases readers and is the reason behind the ‘page-turner’ label which reviewers generously give to books they enjoy. I love writing novels this way, but it requires careful plotting. The purpose of the counterplot must always be clear in the author’s mind.

Some writers have a rather neat way of keeping track of counterplots: they use different coloured index cards (digital or paper) for each one. Each scene in the plotline gets its own card. The cards are then distributed with the other colours when planning the timeline of the complete story. This method allows the writer to juggle several strands at once.

If the coloured card method seems unnecessarily flamboyant to you, then stick to describing your ideas in notes. Either way, make sure you work out the details. Counterplots will enhance your story.

Chapters and scenes

A technique commonly used by thriller writers is to come into a scene late and leave it early. That means focussing on the action and paying minimal attention to the build-up and aftermath. We don’t need to know much about a killer’s journeys to and from the murder scene; we’re more interested in what he does when he’s there. This method doesn’t prevent you from including key details – layering your story is important – but it is a good way of concentrating on the purpose of a scene. Writing this way inevitably affects the length of your chapters.

While I enjoy a leisurely dip into a novel, I also like to be entertained. The books I read are competing with box sets for my attention. I’m used to the pace of TV dramas like 24 and Spooks. Thriller novels need an equivalent level of suspense. Longer chapters filled with intricate details are seen less frequently in thrillers now. I don’t think that’s an entirely good thing, but we have to be realistic about what our audience wants.

When I was planning Station Helix I initially struggled to work out how to form my story. I realised I was thinking in terms of large chapters as placeholders for the book’s themes. The approach was too conceptual and lacked clarity. The way to write the book, I concluded, was to think like a scriptwriter. Chapters, I realised, was just another word for scenes. Short chapters are perfect for holding readers’ attention. People who don’t read a lot are more likely to engage with a book that dispenses with lengthy exposition.

I realised I’d encountered this style of storytelling in novels before. James Patterson consistently uses brief chapters. He didn’t invent the concept but he’s certainly popularised it. The one- or two-page chapter is an interesting lesson for aspiring writers. It’s a great confidence boost to know it’s fine to write this way, if you want to.

If you do adopt this style, you aren’t required to make every chapter short. It isn’t a template. As I said earlier, I’m not hooked by all-action stories. I like a balance between drama and nuance. Film scenes vary in length depending on their purpose and mood; book chapters can be equally wide-ranging. The goal is knowing exactly what you want to achieve with each chapter. If it takes eight pages, use eight pages. If the scene is brief, don’t pad it out. Let me give you an example.

Alex coughed and tasted salty blood in his mouth. The rain was the only sound he could hear besides his rasping breathing. The seconds of chaos had given way to an eerie stillness. It was over but he still couldn’t escape from his confinement in the wrecked car. The pain in his leg seemed to magnify.

Alex blacked out.

That’s one complete chapter from Station Helix. Fifty-nine words. I’d like to think James Patterson would approve. It would have served no purpose to add anything else to that scene. It’s visual, intense and direct. The next chapter, by contrast, has just over seven hundred words. It’s a scene with relaxed dialogue between a husband and wife. It can afford to be slower.

Every word in every sentence must add something useful to your chapters. It’s very easy for an inexperienced writer to write too much. This happened to me with Station Helix. I cut about 15,000 superfluous words from the original manuscript. I believe the problem is a simple one: we get caught up in trying to describe what’s going on around a scene and forget to focus on what’s happening in the scene. Keep it relevant. This is a topic I’ll return to when I discuss editing.

Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing is the technique of planting hints in the plot which become relevant later, either favourably as clues or deceptively as red herrings. It can be about anticipation and tension, but in thrillers I’d suggest it’s equally likely to be subtle. It’s fundamentally about establishing precedent. If I mention a character putting a box of matches in his pocket, I’m foreshadowing the moment when he burns down a barn. Here are the main reasons to foreshadow:

1.        Character development.

2.        Scene plausibility.

3.        Plot twists.

Don’t let your characters loose without giving some background information first. It’s emotionally unsatisfying when a character does something we could not anticipate. If we know a man had Special Forces training, we’ll believe it when he double-taps half a dozen terrorists. If we’re aware that a woman watched her sister drown, we’ll understand why she panics when her car plunges into a lake. Foreshadowing in terms of character development makes their actions feel genuine when they occur.

Scenes may contain a few surprises, but don’t allow them to be implausible. You can refer to objects and places several chapters ahead, even if their relevance isn’t clear until later. A character shouldn’t escape from a trap with a clever gadget if there has been no mention of technology beforehand. Don’t allow anything to happen out of the blue. Readers will switch off.

A plot twist will only work if it’s been set up properly. There must be justification for the change of direction. Foreshadowing for this purpose is comparable to sleight of hand in magic. Distractions are as important as clues. The trick is to make it impossible to tell which is which. Readers will enjoy being deceived as long as the resolution is clever and worthy of their emotional investment in the story.

Foreshadowing is another reason why plotting is so important. It’s fun as a writer to include hints in the plot, and perceptive readers love those I remember that! moments when they make the connections between seemingly unrelated incidents. Make good use of this technique in your writing.

Light and shadow

Imagine you’re at the coast on the top of a cliff. The sun is out in a cloudless sky, its reflections shimmering brightly on the tranquil turquoise sea. Barely a ripple disturbs the serenity. Now imagine the wind is picking up and making the water choppy. Dark storm clouds are blowing in. The sun breaks through the few gaps in the cloud, illuminating the turbulent sea in patches of gold on the pewter waves. It’s an uneasy, restless scene. Which of the two images do you prefer? For me there is no contest. I want the squall every time. As an aspiring thriller writer, I suspect you do too.

The pleasant scene is – to me – the equivalent of those boring books I was made to read at school. The imminent tempest is The Thirty-Nine Steps, Rogue Male and First Blood. The scene is moving, energetic, ever-changing. It holds my attention. I am anticipating the storm. I’ll linger on that cliff, feeling the wind on my face and the rain on my skin. It’s a much more elemental and emotional experience than looking at a flat calm ocean.

Thrillers should be moody like dramatic weather. I want light and shadow in my books, changing like those sunbeams on the waves. The counterplots should weave in and out of the story like the ripples on the choppy water, opposing the tide of the plot but ultimately obeying its command. The action should pick up and fall away like the wind, unpredictable but always in motion. Vary the mood in your stories by adjusting the pace. Light and shadow.

I’ve spoken about how thrillers engage readers by eliciting different emotions. I’ve mentioned this is often achieved through the drama of your scenes, but there’s another equally important method: put your characters through emotional turmoil and your readers will feel it too. No one maintains a constant emotional state – even a tough guy protagonist. (Actually, there is an exception: the emotionless psychopath. In this case, replace the feelings with cold intellect to elicit trepidation.) For every scene you write, think very hard about the mental impact it will have on the relevant character. Allow that reaction to surface in dialogue, thought or deed.

Thrillers have a latitude on readers’ feelings that other genres won’t dare to attempt. We don’t have to make our readers feel comfortable – that’s actually the last thing we want. We’re not interested in quelling juvenile angst as young adult books do, or the formulaic happily-ever-after sentiment of romance novels. Shaking up emotions is our hallmark. Force your characters to experience emotional light and shadow and your readers will be right there with them.

Reality and the suspension of disbelief

The best fiction feels real. It’s an interesting contradiction. Although I love to hear when my readers find my books exciting, I’m more intrigued when they ask: How do you know about this stuff? I can’t give an authentic answer. I don’t know about this stuff. The inner sanctum of the British Government? Never been there. How an assassin devises a murder? Not a clue. But there are things I do know. I can recognise a curious idea when it appears in my imagination. I understand people well enough to put myself inside their heads. And I know the importance of research.

One of the simplest methods of adding reality to your fiction is to set some of the drama in an iconic location. This creates an instant association in the reader’s mind. The establishing shot is a technique used regularly in filmmaking, and it’s one we can – and should – borrow for writing novels. You may have never visited London, but I bet an image of England’s capital city has just appeared in your mind. I know from the title sequence of House of Cards exactly what the show is about and where it takes place. While it’s best to go to a place and walk its streets, that’s not always possible, so use the Internet to learn more. If you want to refer to a specific building, research its history. These details will add authenticity to your story. Do be careful though. Photographs and street plans are very helpful but they might not be current.

Locations are fairly easy to research. Technical expertise is a different matter, and while it’s true that you shouldn’t turn your thrillers into technical manuals, you should be able to give enough information to create the impression you know what you’re talking about. If you want to include a description of a murder scene in a mystery thriller, it will help if you talk to police officers and forensic investigators. Don’t try to describe a postmortem if you’ve never been to a mortuary. And what about weaponry? Apart from strictly licensed shotguns and rifles, ownership of firearms by the public is forbidden in British law, so how does a British writer learn how a handgun works and what it feels like to fire one? Even getting terminology right can be difficult. If in doubt, find an expert.

Logistical information also has to be correct. If a character in your book takes a train from one station to another, make sure the route exists and your timetable is accurate. Check international time zones if you want events happening simultaneously across the globe. Make sure you have the correct sunrise and sunset times if you intend to use those periods of the day.

Stories become convincing if they’re set in a realistic context. For the writer, it is easier to build a lie upon a truth. Describing the process that way might sound disingenuous, but it’s the opposite. Readers give writers permission to mislead, as long as it feels real. Your audience is willing to give you some latitude with your facts in order to be entertained. It’s known as the suspension of disbelief, and the term was coined by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1817.

I love the paradox – the reader will accept fiction if it seems genuine. It’s an elegant psychological oddity which it is our duty as writers to manipulate. But there’s a catch. Screenwriter Blake Snyder explains in Save the Cat! that the audience will only be prepared to suspend disbelief once. A single implausible element in a story is acceptable; add another and your audience will switch off. They’ll go from being entertained to being analytical. Repeated that would never happen moments will spoil the story. It’s the one flaw in John Buchan’s otherwise absorbing books: we happily suspend our disbelief when Richard Hannay gets caught up in unlikely adventures, but we’re dubious when he encounters old acquaintances by chance in remote locations. (In fairness to Buchan, he was transparent about using this plot device.)

So how can we take advantage of readers’ suspension of disbelief in modern thrillers? Well, as an example, the fictitious MOD laboratory in my Station Helix novel is sited at Orford Ness – a location which was used for military research in the First, Second and Cold Wars. Readers know I’ve made up the lab, but they’ll accept it because Orford Ness is real. You can research the place online and even visit its derelict buildings at certain times of the year. Intelligence services are fun to write about for the same reason: we know they exist but their activities are shrouded in secrecy. The link between fact and fiction encourages the suspension of disbelief. The best lies are convincing. Use that in your writing.

Finding ideas to write about

There is one question I am asked a lot which amuses me: Where do you get your ideas from? I’m never sure how I should answer it. The implication is that I have access to a well of imagination from which plots and characters spring forth readily. That’s not how it is at all. There is no muse. I have to work for my ideas. But I’m troubled by the question in equal measure, because I can’t imagine how anyone would be unable to come up with a story concept when inspiration is abundant. There is no magic to being creative. We simply allow ourselves to be receptive to ideas.

Finding ideas is rarely a passive process. We have to hunt for them. We do this by looking at the world obliquely and by asking lots of simple questions. Why did that beautiful woman run into the Underground Station? Why is the van hidden down a back street? Who just stepped off the flight from Cairo? Why does that person in the café keep checking his watch? Is the shopkeeper an informant for the security services? The answers may not develop into plots, but that’s not the point. It’s about getting your mind used to storytelling.

Look also at current events. News reports are rarely free of bias, despite the insistence of journalists. Tabloid newspaper headlines are filled with propaganda. What are they covering up? What is their agenda? Whom are they working for? Why is an important report buried by something trivial? If you’re writing a book set in the past, apply the same scrutiny to the events of that era. Conspiracy theories and distrust of authority are not new concepts.

Ideas don’t arrive fully formed, so don’t expect them to. It’s very important to remember this, because otherwise you might become frustrated when they don’t appear. It’s also profoundly important to understand that an intriguing idea does not automatically qualify as suitable for a story. Interestingly, timing is also relevant. That good idea might not work now, but it could become a key theme in your next book. Allow yourself to become a collector of ideas. Keep a folder on your computer for that purpose. Use it like a digital scrapbook for notes, photographs, news reports and anything else which catches your eye. It might help to have a physical equivalent too. Use it for train tickets, maps and other objects of interest which you acquire during your travels.

My ideas repository holds scraps about plot ideas and even book titles which don’t yet have stories attached. If I think up a good name for a character I’ll write it down. Interesting locations get noted. I’ll record anything and everything which holds my attention. Most of it I’ll never use, but stockpiling resources keeps my brain in an imaginative place. I have no fear of writing because I know I can always venture into my vault and find something to work with. It’s like a child’s toy box.

Testing ideas for robustness is the next stage of the process. If it feels like you’re forcing it, stop. Writers sometimes get bewildered when a plot point loses momentum, but it’s really not hard to work out what’s going on: they haven’t tested the concept enough before writing. If they had, they’d have admitted the idea was not good enough and abandoned it. Once again we have another good reason for plotting properly. How do we test ideas? We go back to asking questions. We immerse the ideas in scenarios and see if they float.

The questioning process also applies to theoretical concepts. Thriller writers have to come up with imaginative ways of killing people. We have to invent conspiracies. Dreaming up assassins and psychopaths goes with the territory. Our minds spend a lot of time in dark places. It’s fun and rather indulgent, but there’s a serious side to this exploration: everything we create must be realistic and convincing. If you don’t think a method of execution is plausible, your readers won’t either. Test your ideas until you know they’ll stand up to scrutiny.

The testing doesn’t end once you’ve devised your plot. It’s possible that you’ll write yourself into a corner a few times while working on the manuscript. When that happens, have an honest conversation with yourself about why something isn’t working. David Morrell suggests having a separate document for this purpose and typing out the questions and answers. The notion of having internal dialogue sounds slightly odd, but I’ve tried it and it works surprisingly well. With Station Helix I had more counterplots than might have been sensible for a début novel, and I frequently found myself wondering how I could coordinate them all. Questioning my ideas fixed the issues or gave me better alternatives. Your analytical self will solve the problems your creative self causes.

What is your book about?

Are you able to answer that question succinctly? It can be quite difficult to summarise a plot, but it’s something I’d encourage you to think about before you start on the manuscript. If you were to write an advertisement for your book, how would you describe it? For Station Helix I’d go with something like this:

A young man discovers he is connected to a secret Ministry of Defence genetics experiment and hunts for the truth.

Now, that’s not exactly a clear explanation of the whole story – far from it – but it does give a very basic sense of direction. It’s helpful as a writer to have some focus on a coherent plot. If you can frame your story in this simple way you’ll have an objective understanding about what you need to achieve by the end of the book.

The idea of summarising a plot into one line comes from the film world, and it’s called high concept. It’s become the standard way of pitching an idea to a movie executive. If a writer can’t sell his screenplay in one line the proposal will be rejected. It’s brutal and favours simpler storylines over intricate ones. It says a lot about the formulaic rubbish that comes out of Hollywood.

That probably sounds rather contradictory. Why would I mention high concept if I dislike it? Well, as a tool to bring focus to a plot it can be useful. As a gauge of quality it’s deeply flawed. Being able to explain what the book is about in a concise way is good for a writer because it encourages refinement when plotting, and a clear plot makes writing easier. The problem with high concept is its superficial nature. As a writer it’s important to know you are not obliged to reduce your novel into a commercially appealing soundbite.

I need to know what a book is about before I write it. It prevents me starting (and inevitably dropping) a weak project. A paragraph of description might be more apt than a single high concept line, but the principle is the same. I must be confident in my book’s premise before I touch the manuscript. Frankly, I don’t want to waste time on bad ideas, and I’d encourage you to be equally ruthless.

Comfort and health when writing

I wanted to include this chapter as a short intermission between the writing advice topics. I’m not qualified to give you medical guidance but I believe there are a handful of topics which all writers should consider. Seek professional medical opinion to find out what’s right for you.

In the excitement of getting ready to write your novel you may not have thought about the physical challenges of doing so. I accept writing is not the most arduous of activities, but that’s a risk in itself: you’ll probably need five or six hundred hours in front of your computer to write one novel. That’s a lot of typing and a long time to be otherwise inactive.

I’ve already discussed the challenge of finding writing hours when there are numerous other demands on your time. Adding a time-consuming sedentary activity to your life means you’re inevitably reducing the opportunity to exercise. I think it’s beneficial to get outside for a brisk twenty minute walk in the fresh air every day – not just for the basic cardiovascular exercise but the simple pleasure of being outdoors and clearing your head.

Laptops are convenient but can cause neck and back pain when used for too long. These days I only write on a desktop because correctly positioned screens make writing more comfortable for me. I don’t have to bend my neck to look down at a small screen. If you do use a laptop, make sure your posture isn’t likely to cause you aches and pains. Whichever design of computer you use, consider turning down the screen’s brightness to 50% for your eyes’ comfort.

Extended periods of typing can cause pain in your wrists called repetitive strain injury. Typing with a light touch should lessen the risk, as should moving your hands over the keyboard to reach for keys rather than stretching your fingers. Grip strength exercises should help your wrists and provide other health benefits. If you use a desktop computer, consider buying a low profile keyboard. I use a Logitech model with laptop-style keys, and it’s very comfortable to use.

Writing requires concentration. I’d suggest it’s better to write when you’re naturally engaged with the task rather than relying on stimulants such as caffeine. Staying hydrated by drinking two litres of water per day is substantially better for you than consuming coffees or energy drinks.

Finally, it’s important to know when to take a break. Good ideas don’t come from an empty screen, so if you find yourself staring hypnotically at a blank Word document you should probably step away and refocus.

The writer’s block hoax

Only a narcissistic writer could invent an affliction called writer’s block. It’s a term that lumps reasons of varying merit for failing to write into a monolithic – and imaginary – condition. It’s thoroughly self-indulgent for writers to pretend they must suffer for their art. “I’m blocked!” they say, as if the ethereal flow of inspiration has been abruptly disconnected. The cause is usually much simpler than that.

There are genuine reasons for encountering difficulties when writing. As Morrell correctly identifies, the problem is invariably with the writer or what is being written. It’s not something with a supernatural cause. I think some ‘writers’ actually enjoy – in an egotistical way – claiming an inability to write. Why would anyone engage so desperately in an unenjoyable activity? It seems self-obsessed to me. The reality is that writing is a job and it requires hard work. There is no agonising rite of passage to becoming a writer, so let’s bury this writer’s block myth right now.

Okay, so with the cold hard facts done, let’s take a step back and investigate what’s really going on when writers say they’re blocked. There are good reasons why it’s harder to write some days than others. It is difficult to maintain productivity at a constant level (although the more you write the better you become). So what are the causes? Procrastination is one. If you don’t make yourself write you’ll find excuses not to. It then becomes a chore, and you’ll think more about the sacrifices you’re making in order to write than the writing itself.

That leads to lack of discipline. However you do it, you have to adopt a way of thinking that prioritises your writing over everything except life’s reasonable demands and unexpected emergencies. Writing suits a solitary personality. If you need to be surrounded by people or can’t spend five minutes away from social media, then writing probably isn’t for you. You have to put months into each book. If you want it, you’ll find a way.

Some authors claim writer’s block when they can’t think up ideas. What they really mean is they expect ideas to materialise instantly, and it rarely works like that. Part of writing is not writing, or at least not writing the manuscript. I’ve spoken about collecting ideas. I have little sympathy for supposedly creative people who can’t find any. This problem is not really about the lack of inspiration at all, it’s about unrealistic expectations and a sense of entitlement. Nobody in any occupation is 100% productive all the time.

And then there’s the idea that just won’t work. Sometimes this is because the writer believes the idea is stronger than it really is, and can’t understand why it’s ground to a halt. Rather than accepting the idea is weak, they feel that they just need some magic ingredient to spark their genius. A disciplined writer won’t try to force something that doesn’t flow. If you’ve spent enough time thinking about your story and devising its plot, you shouldn’t hit this obstacle. Some ideas are poor, and you should be able to filter these out if you test them patiently enough before you start the manuscript. Some stalled ideas just need an oblique look to get the momentum up again.

I don’t want to imply that writing should always go smoothly. You will hit snags along the way – probably quite a few. But these are little hurdles, not woeful catastrophes. They can be overcome by simply asking yourself what isn’t working. This self-analysis isn’t the miserable lament of a ‘blocked’ writer, it’s the methodical problem solving of a professional. It often leads to really intriguing creative ideas which enliven your plots and help you explore new directions.

Sometimes it’s just a headspace problem. Life throws up some major distractions. You cannot, nor should not, prioritise writing over the really big issues. Sometimes you have to accept that you need a break from writing; just try not to make it a lengthy one. Use your experiences and emotions when you come back to it, because facing those problems can be productive and cathartic. Never allow writer’s block to become an excuse. It doesn’t exist.

Setting realistic goals

While there is merit in saying a book’s length should be governed by the story itself, there are practical considerations for specifying a word count. Modern thrillers are usually between 70,000 and 100,000 words, partly because publishing houses can estimate production costs based on that upper limit. The cost factor is still relevant for self-publishers because the minimum price you can set for your printed book will be shaped by the number of pages.

It’s still something of an arbitrary target. Look around and you’ll soon find novels which don’t conform to that estimate. But we also have to consider readers’ expectations. The 70k to 100k range is consistent with what most readers would consider a good thriller to be, although they’re basing that, of course, on reading and entertainment time rather than the word count. It’s a decent amount of room for a few plot twists and counterplots.

A word count provides the author with a framework, making it easy to see if the story is developing adequately. It provides rough markers for the key plot points. It’s also satisfying to be able to mentally tick off 10,000 word chunks as the first draft makes progress. It’s important, though, not to be too strict with yourself. Your word count will change between your first and last drafts, probably by several thousand words. You’ll almost certainly see a reduction rather than an increase. First books, in particular, tend to include too much detail in the early drafts.

Now that you know roughly what the total word count should be, is it worth setting yourself daily word count targets? A great number of self-published authors would say yes. I profoundly disagree. While I’m all for encouraging momentum, I think a fixed daily target is a really bad idea. Surely the goal should be quality rather than quantity? I’d much rather write 500 good words I can keep than 2,000 bad ones that need drastic editing. Some would say that you don’t have to sacrifice quality for speed, but I’m wary of that opinion. If your aim is to hit a certain number of words by the end of the day, I’d suggest you’re not as absorbed by the story as you should be. It’s a false reward anyway: you’ll spend a lot more time editing than someone who takes a slower approach when writing.

It’s important to know where this perception of needing to chase word counts comes from. It’s very much a self-publishing phenomenon: writers know it’s important to produce a lot of books in order to gain a foothold in the marketplace. That’s true, but they still need to be good books. I’d rather give myself a year to write a novel than force out a mediocre work in three months. One year is roughly the time a traditionally published thriller author will spend on a book. You also have to remember that many of these speed-writers are not writing in the thriller genre. Not every type of fiction requires the same attention to detail.

Please don’t waste your money on any books which promise to show you speed-increasing techniques. Your attention needs to be on producing good quality work at your natural writing pace. Some days you will write several thousand words; at other times you’ll struggle to reach 500. It doesn’t matter as long as you stay engaged with your story and don’t neglect your obligation to write.

A much more practical and sensible target is simply to make sure you finish the chapter you’re working on before you call it a day. I’m a stickler for this. I like to write a couple of chapters in five or six hours. Some days I might only manage one, but it puts my mind in a good place knowing I have concluded another little part of the story.

Drafting and editing

It’s been said that good writing is rewriting. Every novel needs reworking before it is ready for an audience. The thought of going through a book again once it’s complete can be rather daunting. After all, it takes a long time to pull the story together. Typing that final full stop is a milestone. It hardly seems fair that the work has to start all over again, not once but several times. You have to adopt a good attitude about this requirement. If you tell yourself that rewriting is a necessity, you’ll look forward to finding ways to improve your story.

The number of drafts varies depending on the author, as does the extent of the changes from one draft to the next. The common ground lies in the purpose of the first draft, which is to set down the complete story in line with the plot. Some authors will tell you that the quality of the first draft isn’t important, and that you can write rubbish as long as you write something, but I don’t agree with this. I want the first version of a novel to resemble the last. My goal with the first draft is to get the story pretty much intact. I prefer to work slowly to reduce the need for substantial rewrites. I do try to work on quality right from the early stages. A faster drafting technique may suit you. If there’s any rule here it is simply this: write the way that’s best for you. Save your file regularly and ensure you have a backup copy stored somewhere safe.

The first draft is comparable to a photograph straight out of the camera. It illustrates your story but it’s probably a little flat and lacking in contrast. The second draft is the equivalent of processing the photo in image editing software. The colours get a boost, distracting elements are removed and details are sharpened. The second draft is where you take the original idea and make it better. It’s the same story, but now you make it more vivid and intense.

Whether you begin with a blank document or a copied and renamed version of your first draft is up to you. A new document is probably wiser if your first draft is very rough. I prefer to work on a copy because my method ensures my story is fairly solid by this stage. Either way, do not delete your first version. There are several goals I try to achieve with my second draft. I do something called content-editing, which is inspecting the manuscript for consistency and accuracy. Plot points, names and continuity are checked carefully. I also look for passages to cut which don’t contribute to the story or sap the pace. Every sentence must give something of value to the book. Any that don’t get deleted or rewritten. I check for variety in the length and structure of my sentences, because changing rhythm keeps the reader interested. I spend a lot of time thinking about word choice. The simplest word is often the best, but it’s important not to repeat it frequently in the same passage. I often turn to my thesaurus for synonyms.

I like to think that my story is in good shape by the time I’ve finished the second draft. It should be more engaging emotionally than the first. The drama should be bolder and the characters more lifelike. The tension should be satisfying. The story should be very close to the finished version, and I have to be confident in the story I’ve created. At this point I know I’m almost there. Some writers may feel another rewrite is still needed after the second draft, and that’s fine.

For me the third draft has a hybrid purpose. I still look for ways to polish the manuscript, but I also search for typographical mistakes. It’s a detailed, sentence-by-sentence examination. I tighten up the dialogue and drama, but I’m also trying to catch spelling mistakes and check my punctuation. It’s impossible to write 100,000 words without making mistakes – trust me on this. During the third draft I’m editing rather than rewriting. The difficulty with editing your own work is not being able to see the wood for the trees. On several occasions I’ve read a sentence over and over and consistently failed to spot a missing word. When you know what a sentence should say, you tend to miss what it actually says.

I edit again during the fourth draft, looking for more little errors. This is known as line-editing. The fourth draft will be my final one before saving a formatted version of the manuscript for a paperback proof. When the proof copy arrives, I check it thoroughly for mistakes (there will be some), correct those and revise the file as needed. I find it easier to spot mistakes in a paper copy of the book than on a computer monitor.

It would be unhelpful to talk about drafting a manuscript without an example, so here is the opening paragraph from the first draft of The Elzevir Collective.

Humid and breathless, the mid-morning grip of equatorial heat was swiftly taking hold in the delta lands of the vast River Omi: a hundred thousand square mile oil-rich expanse of farmland, swamp and forest. A motorcade progressed slowly along an uneven dirt road towards one of the townships, ochre dust rising from the vehicles’ wheels. A black Cadillac, four military Jeeps. Colonel Ope Oluwa watched a group of skinny boys laughing and kicking a football at the side of the road. They seemed more interested in their game than his limousine. Oluwa drew his minder’s attention to the scene with a small gesture.

It’s fairly basic. The sense of what I wanted is there, but it’s somewhat flat in its description. Here’s the final version.

The breathless encroachment of equatorial heat stifled the morning; a shimmering miasma that made the air seem liquid. Humidity and searing temperature pervaded every corner of the River Omi’s vast delta land: a hundred thousand square mile oil-rich expanse of farmland, swamp and forest. A motorcade bounced along an uneven dirt road towards one of the townships, flinging up ochre dust into the heat haze. A black Cadillac, four military Jeeps. Through the grimy side window of the car Colonel Ope Oluwa watched a group of skinny barefoot boys laughing and kicking a football at the side of the road. They seemed more interested in their game than his limousine. Oluwa drew his minder’s attention to the scene with a small gesture.

It’s not radically different, but the use of stronger words gives the scene more intensity. This excerpt is purely descriptive, but the identical principle applies to dialogue. I think of myself as a writer for the first couple of drafts and an editor for the subsequent ones. Writing is rewriting. Or editing.

The question of whether self-editing is adequate comes up a lot in writers’ forums. Should you employ an editor to content-edit and line-edit your manuscript? Some writers will answer the question with an emphatic yes. Others self-edit with great competence and believe it unnecessary to hire an editor. I think the correct answer is personal to the writer. It’s wrong to say an editor is a requirement for everybody. As writers, are we not responsible for our own words? I’m amused that independent authors are meant to be capable of every other self-publishing task, but some still abdicate responsibility for checking their own work. Thinking that an editor is there as a safety net to catch mistakes is a poor attitude. However, some authors need help with editing because their attention to detail doesn’t match their storytelling prowess. Editing isn’t particularly difficult, and it’s a skill that writers can and should learn.

If you do look for an editor, you need to find someone who is a good match for you. Don’t hire someone who isn’t experienced with thrillers. Never trust anyone who doesn’t use a real name on a writing forum. If you find someone who might be suitable, read a selection of the books he’s edited to test the quality of his work. Ideally you should pick an editor who has worked for a publishing house. Check the editor’s pricing and be clear on whether you require content- or line-editing. Some editors will provide a free sample edit of a short excerpt from your manuscript.

Good editing doesn’t mask the author’s voice. You’ll probably have ways of writing that are unique to you, and those should always be preserved in your books. You may make stylistic choices with how you punctuate. Grammatical rules may, in some instances, be bent. A good editor respects an author’s personal touches. If your edited manuscript ever looks unrecognisable, it’s probably time to find a different editor.

Points of view and tense

It’s your book but who should tell the story? Traditional storytelling uses the third-person omniscient perspective, in which an unseen and all-knowing narrator recounts the events using he and she pronouns. It’s characterised by the addition of information which is known to the author but not the characters in the book. It’s incredibly useful for the world-view perspective, particularly in historical thrillers where context is key. Richness can be added by the addition of well-researched information presented with the omniscient voice. In a contemporary thriller, however, the omniscient voice risks being distracting and can sap the pace of the book. It’s unlikely that this perspective can ever be truly absent from a thriller, though, because there will be details you’ll want to include of a descriptive or informative nature.

Often the third-person omniscient voice is just a whisper. If you have a scene in which a red London bus passes an old building, and you mention it was designed by a certain architect, you’re using the third-person omniscient voice. Details like that are beneficial to the story. Allow the narrator raise his voice too loudly, though, and he’ll tell you why the architect was commissioned to design the building and describe the social climate in London at the time. It’s less apt in a modern setting. The red bus will have driven off long before the description is over.

There will be times when the author’s voice simply has to describe what’s going on. One of the early chapters in The Elzevir Collective briefly describes the history of a Victorian prison on England’s south coast. The omniscient perspective is needed because knowledge of the building is important for the reader, and there isn’t another viable way of imparting the information. In Torus I use the third-person omniscient to describe civil unrest in Germany. In David Morrell’s The Brotherhood of the Rose the prologue refers to the story of the twelfth-century lovers Peter Abelard and Héloïse d’Argenteuil. The account is told from the author’s omniscient perspective to establish the theme of sanctuary.

Another common voice in thrillers is the third-person limited. This is when a character is the principal observer rather than the omniscient narrator. We still use the pronouns he and she to describe the action, but we’re limited to the thoughts and feelings of one person. Don’t be put off by the word limited; it’s actually a very strong way to tell a story. Seeing events through the eyes of a character informs the reader about her personality and agenda. Furthermore, the reader sees things unfold only when the character does. This allows the writer to restrict the flow of information and amplify the suspense.

Third-person limited is a great way of giving equal importance to your characters, particularly if you have multiple concurrent counterplots. By switching perspective from chapter to chapter, you keep the reader informed while playing with the tension. The rule is one dominant character per chapter. We’re inside that person’s head for the duration of the scene, so we can’t suddenly be distracted by someone else’s thoughts. Always work out who owns the chapter and tell it from that person’s perspective.

A little trick you can use to emphasise the personal viewpoint is switching to the first-person perspective momentarily to reveal the internal discussion in the character’s head. Here’s an example:

A memory flashed into his thoughts.

Grosvenor Square. Three weeks ago. Walking away after our meeting.

Jack lowered the computer.

Saul. Son of a bitch. You’re even wearing the same damn raincoat.

It’s a nice technique as long as you don’t overuse it. For the comfort of the reader, always use italics for those first-person thoughts to distinguish them from the third-person narrative. I made the switch in that passage because staying with the third-person would have slowed the pace. The change is fine because we’re staying with the lead character in the scene.

Telling an entire story from the first-person perspective is a completely different prospect. First-person uses the I pronoun, making the protagonist the narrator. It’s unquestionably the best way to experience that character’s thoughts and fears because the reader is experiencing events with her. It can be very intense and urgent. The problem for the writer comes with trying to sustain that tension without recourse to any other perspective. The rest of the world is well and truly shut out. For novels such as SJ Watson’s Before I Go To Sleep, in which the vulnerable protagonist suffers severe memory loss, the first-person narration is the perfect choice. It suits a story in which the main character is trapped, either physically or psychologically.

The focus of a first-person book is very much on one character, so it’s less suited to novels with a broad and equally important cast. I don’t want to discourage you from using it, but it might be wiser to employ third-person limited for your first novel. If you’re keen to experiment with first-person narration, why not try a short story or novella first? I did this with Watch Them Die, and found the experience very useful.

Some authors use both third- and first-person perspectives in their work. This can be very effective; it’s a best-of-both-worlds arrangement. Peter May is a master of this technique. The third-person chapters provide setting and texture; the first-person chapters deal with one character’s trauma or memories against that backdrop. It’s a very clever method of writing because it inverts our expectations: we know more than the protagonist because we’re given details which are withheld from him. Or, at least, we think we do until the plot twist comes.

Having decided upon the voice of your book, you now have to choose which tense to use. Third-person narrative almost always uses the past tense. It’s easier to recount events as having happened than happening right now. I think we’re programmed to receive stories this way. First-person narrative can be more flexible, though, and it’s often written in the present tense. Doing so keeps the reader focussed on the immediacy of the protagonist’s situation. It’s not essential – first-person works just as well in the past tense – but when done properly it can be most engaging. Some books which combine first- and third-person voices use the present tense for the former and the past tense for the latter. May’s Coffin Road is a great example of this technique.

Description and dialogue

I’ve spoken a lot in this book about pacing, tension and anticipation. Hopefully you’re thinking about ways to ensure your story has the momentum which defines the thriller genre. I’ve also spoken about the importance of changing rhythm and balancing the moments of reflection and action. Good descriptive writing helps readers visualise your scenes and experience the events with your characters. Don’t make the mistake of believing detailed description hinders the story’s pace. An all-action thriller with no description is soulless. Make sure you transport your readers into a film-like world.

So how do we achieve this without slowing down the book? Well, we can make description part of the drama. This can be as basic as changing a few adjectives. For example, instead of using a standard colour, look for an unusual alternative, such as cerulean for blue. Use a metaphorical description if it makes the reader visualise something in an entirely different way. In the opening paragraph of Torus I describe a mountain range ‘rising like angular sculptures of hammered pewter’. It flips the usual description of rock and nature to something man-made and metallic.

I recommend you try to think like a photographer when describing your scenes. Photographers, like writers, look at the ordinary in an oblique way. A good photographer makes you see things that you might normally miss. This is done by shifting the focal point of an image, taking the picture from a perspective which doesn’t match eye-level, or adding contrast and texture. This is what separates a good photograph from a snapshot. As a writer you can use the same visual interpretation. Make a big deal of the small details. Describe the lichen clinging to the pitted texture of a crumbling gravestone. Tell me about the frayed rope which holds a boat in its mooring.

Visual imagery is important but it must be complemented with description which stimulates the other senses. Focus on sounds which increase tension, such as rasping and creaking. Very loud noises can have a physical effect. Don’t just describe a bang as being explosive; talk about its shuddering effect and the pain it inflicts. The sense of touch can be evoked by describing textures, particularly those which are hard, sharp or gritty. If something is unpleasant to the touch, find ways of emphasising its mushiness or slipperiness.

There are other physical reactions which draw readers into the moment. Temperature and weather are useful triggers because they’re understood by everyone. Use description as a tool for rousing emotional reactions. It’s hard to beat an empty railway platform in the dead of a freezing winter’s night to evoke a sense of isolation, but I’m sure you can come up with a few other scenarios.

Dialogue is also descriptive in a sense because it conveys the landscape of the speaker’s thoughts, but its main function is to emphasise tension and conflict between characters. Most conversations in thrillers require a certain edginess. Dialogue in books is not realistic – we’re rarely as sharp as our characters in real life – but it must be perceived as real. Precision word choice is needed. Your characters must get to the point while sounding like themselves. This is where getting to know your characters at the plotting stage really pays off.

There are some common problems with dialogue. In real conversation we rarely use the name of the person we’re speaking to, but some writers repeat names far too often during fictional conversations. Occasional use is fine, e.g. in a greeting or to pose a question to an individual in a group. It’s better to identify the speaker by speech tag rather than the listener by name in the direct speech.

A speech tag is a verb like said or shouted, and it identifies the speaker to the reader. (Remember it’s easy to lose track of who’s talking in a lengthy written conversation.) Speech tags must, therefore, be included from time to time. There are two problems with speech tags: overuse and poor choice. Adding a tag each time the speaker changes is unnecessary, and doing so interrupts the flow of the dialogue. There is nothing wrong in having half a dozen lines of conversation without a single tag, as long as it’s obvious which character is talking. Rapid exchanges, in particular, are hindered by the addition of speech tags. You can drop a speech tag and replace it with an action by the speaker to good effect:

Ruth crouched beside him. “You’re hurt.”

A good speech tag barely gets noticed by the reader. It’s not there to add anything to the story; its purpose is purely directional. That leads me to the second problem with speech tags. Some writers strive to find every possible replacement for said. It’s not necessary. You shouldn’t be drawing attention to speech tags. Said, lied, shouted and asked are fine. I’m not averse to using whispered or muttered either, but words like complained and exaggerated risk duplicating meaning that should be clear in the direct speech itself. And then there are those which don’t actually make any sense, such as sneered or growled. You can’t sneer or growl dialogue.

Inexperienced writers tend to pair adverbs with speech tags as intensifiers. Most of the time an adverb is unnecessary. Sometimes it’s just silly tautology, such as shouted loudly. Even when it’s not grammatically wrong, e.g. stammered self-consciously, it doesn’t really work. Don’t feel you have to eradicate all adverbs from your work, but use them sparingly. It’s not an absolute rule – Eric Ambler used the occasional verb-adverb pairing to good effect. (He also used a broad range of speech tags very well.) The trick is ensuring you have the best word for the job.

There’s one more problem with dialogue which I want to mention: exposition. Exposition is the introduction of background information. It’s apt for third-person omniscient narration, but there are times when it’s a red flag in direct speech. It comes up when the writer, trying to be helpful to the reader, gets characters to tell each other lots of facts which they both already know. Here’s an example:

“I’ve spent all the money,” said Klara nervously.

“Are you serious?” Marc exclaimed. “After our father died in the factory accident, and the company paid that out-of-court settlement in compensation, our mother put the money in a trust fund for you so you could finish your education. Instead of looking after herself, she thought only about you. She has to work three jobs – including that dreadful one at the diner – just to make ends meet.”

See the problem? That’s not a conversation these siblings would have. It’s also probable that this information – if it’s relevant to the story – doesn’t need to come at once. The example has blown any chance of foreshadowing out the water. I’d rather see something like this:

“I’ve spent all the money.” Klara looked down, avoiding her brother’s stare.

“Your trust fund? Are you serious?”

She didn’t answer.

Marc walked out and slammed the door.

This is better because I’ve replaced the exposition with anticipation. You’ll also notice there are no speech tags this time. The second example is less than half as long as the first but far more emotive. How could the backstory be revealed in more effective ways? Klara might read the newspaper obituary about her father in a moment of guilt. Perhaps Marc calls his mother and learns she’s become ill because she’s working too hard. Maybe the person who caused the fatal accident has become an alcoholic because he can’t cope with the shame. We can reach these plot points gradually.

One final thought on description and dialogue: you may prefer writing one over the other. They’re quite different aspects of writing, and you’ll need to feel comfortable with both before you can write a good thriller. You can learn how to improve by studying other novelists. Pick books you enjoy and ask yourself what techniques the authors use to make certain passages work so well.

Showing and telling

A lot of writing guides espouse something known as the show, don’t tell rule. The belief is that it’s better for readers to experience the story through emotional triggers than have it explained to them. There’s merit in this perspective, but it certainly shouldn’t be called a rule. I also think it’s badly named and profoundly unclear, particularly when we give ourselves the epithet of storyteller. Let’s find a better explanation of the phrase and solve the apparent contradiction.

Telling in the writing sense means stating. Take this example:

Isabel was scared as she entered the derelict house.

The problem – particularly in the thriller genre – is that a sentence like this is only informative. We don’t feel Isabel’s fear. The adjective scared is offered simply as a fact. We’re indifferent to her emotion because we’re detached observers. We need a lot more description in order to extend the moment and increase the tension.

Isabel committed herself to another reluctant step, listening to the decaying floorboards groaning beneath her feet in protestation at her intrusion. The dank air breathed on her skin and constricted her throat. She hesitated for a moment inside the hallway, snatching glances at the crumbling wallpaper and dust-smothered furniture, willing the shadows to remain motionless.

Now we have a tangible scene. This is an example of showing. It’s not just a case of using more adjectives (although I’ve obviously used several). Ignore those for a moment. Analyse the second piece and you’ll see the verbs are more expressive than the adjectives. The narrative is longer, but it’s not about the length of the description per se, it’s how it’s used. There’s one more key detail which marks the difference between the examples: the word was doesn’t appear in the second one. Read them both again and you’ll see how it’s the absence of that little verb which alters everything.

Showing in the writing sense really means evoking. I’ve spent some time talking about the emotional elicitation we should aim for as thriller novelists. Showing is one of the ways we can draw readers into a scene. Always stretch time during suspenseful moments, particularly if dread is the central sentiment. Trap your readers and don’t let them go until you’ve unnerved them.

Show, don’t tell is, in my opinion, a misnomer. It’s more accurate to think of information versus emotion. But that doesn’t mean one is always better than the other. Sometimes information is exactly what is needed, particularly when using the third-person omniscient voice to provide background details. Don’t feel bound by an arbitrary and inappropriate rule. Just use the right description at the right time.

The first chapter

A thriller needs a strong opening which hooks the reader immediately. The first line, the first paragraph and the first chapter must be magnetic. You don’t ease into a thriller, you’re thrown into it. Your opening must be gripping and set the tone for the rest of the book. It also has to be relevant to the plot. Something involving death is promising but not essential. Describing blood and guts and mayhem just to be dramatic is not the way to connect with readers. The opening scene must be as layered and textured as any other in your book.

The context of the book must be established very quickly. Is it contemporary or historical? Where is it set? What sub-genre of thriller is it? You have to find a way to make it clear what your book is about. Answering these questions gives the reader subconscious reinforcement that he has chosen well in his favourite genre. The opening of your book must work like a television drama’s establishing shot. It’s hard to get this right, so give yourself plenty of time to figure out how to set the mood. Some books pull this off in the very first line.

The last camel collapsed at noon.

– Ken Follett, The Key to Rebecca.

In Bulgaria, in 1934, on a muddy street in the river town of Vidin, Khristo Stoianev saw his brother kicked to death by fascist militia.

– Alan Furst, Night Soldiers.

Creating a sense of anticipation is essential. If a reader isn’t intrigued by the story within a couple of pages, there’s a good chance the book will be abandoned. I dislike thrillers which begin with a conversation because I know nothing about those characters and don’t yet care for them. I need at least some definition of a person before I can relate to her. I’d rather witness the setting for myself than ‘listen’ to people talking about it.

Morrell’s First Blood has one of the finest opening paragraphs I’ve ever read. After a superb establishing shot describing Rambo in small-town America, Morrell then breaks the rules and tells us what’s going to happen. Not the details, of course. That’s the trick. We know we’re in for a thrilling manhunt story, but we don’t know how it’s going to end and we’re desperate to find out. It’s brilliant foreshadowing because it tells us everything and nothing. A great opening shoves the reader through a door into the novel and locks it shut behind him.

It’s common for the protagonist to be introduced in the first chapter. Some authors would describe this as compulsory, but that’s too formulaic for my taste. It is right to say the main character needs to be identified early, but not doing so in chapter one isn’t going to render the reader incapable of figuring it out when the character is introduced. The chronology of numerous counterplots might mean events need to occur before your protagonist appears. I’d suggest you do lean towards putting your main character in the first chapter, but don’t feel obliged to. Mood and anticipation are more important in your opening pages.

Study the beginnings of lots of thrillers. You’ll learn a huge amount about writing hooks from other authors. Work through the titles mentioned in this book, or simply search for thriller novels on Amazon and dip into the previews. Some will draw you in immediately, others will leave you cold. Once you’ve figured out why, you’ll be better able to adapt your own technique. I look forward to reading your killer openings.

Use your native English

It’s widely known that British English contrasts with American English in terms of spelling, but that’s not the only difference. Some aspects of punctuation are incompatible. There are further differences with Canadian and Australian English. Some non-US authors are tempted to use American spellings because most traditionally published books nowadays are edited for the US market. If this were simply a case of buying an American dictionary, there might be some logic to this deference, but a style guide would also be needed for accuracy.

Spelling and punctuation aren’t the only issues. English is a very idiomatic language. Some idioms are broadly understood but there are plenty which aren’t. Even individual words can have very different meanings either side of the Atlantic. Regional dialects have all sorts of havoc-wreaking potential. I think it’s a good thing to have characters from different backgrounds, but careful research is needed. A considerable number of regional dialect words in the UK fell out of use by the 1960s when agriculture and industry became more intensive. The appearance of a word in a dialect dictionary doesn’t mean anyone still understands it.

It’s important to be consistent with spelling. If you’re a US writer with a British character, don’t adapt the spelling of his dialogue into British English, but do use the terminology he’d employ in the UK. But be extremely cautious with stereotypes. We rarely say: “Jolly good show, old chap!” in England. British police officers seldom refer to themselves as cops – in fact most profoundly dislike the term. We’re not all Cockneys and we don’t talk in rhyming slang.

Write in the English you know unless you have a foreign character. Research unfamiliar language to ensure you don’t create unrealistic dialogue. If you do use idiomatic or regional phrases in your writing, do so sparingly and make sure they’re accurate. Most readers are intelligent enough to appreciate the variation between different forms of English, and a good proportion relish the chance to read unfamiliar styles. This is one aspect of writing in which you can add a personal touch and take particular pride.

Paragraphs and breaks in Word

There are several good word-processing programs in use by authors. I use Microsoft’s Word and, because it’s so widely used, I wanted to include a chapter with my suggestions for setting out your manuscript files. Although I’ll refer to Word in this section, the guidance also applies to other software. The priority at this stage is having a manuscript template which makes writing your drafts easy. A simple layout also makes converting your file into e‑book and paperback formats much easier later on.

Under the Page Layout tab, set the margins to 2.54 cm or 1 in all round. It’s easier to read a manuscript if the text is spaced nicely from the page edges. If you were to consider submitting a sample of your book to a literary agent, margins of this size are standard and would be expected.

I’m sure you are already aware of how to make changes to the font, line spacing and text alignment in Word’s ribbon. Clicking and selecting this way works fine, but those adjustments are local in nature. I’m going to suggest making global changes by modifying the document’s Normal style. Doing this provides a template for the whole document. There is no noticeable difference when typing, but it’s a good preparatory step for e‑reader file conversion later on. The adjustments you make here won’t be final, but they’ll provide a good starting point.

The Styles section is the largest part of the ribbon and has thumbnail representations of a selection of styles. Right-click the Normal thumbnail and select Modify. This will open a Modify Style window. Basic adjustments can be made to the font in this window.

You should use a basic serif font. Times New Roman works well, although typographers will invariably suggest Garamond as a more elegant alternative. Both are standard system fonts. Using a standard font has the advantage of a full character set, which you’ll need if your book contains foreign accented letters. Set the font size to 12pt. Set the font colour to Automatic. (This enables font colour changes on e‑reader devices.) You can also change the line spacing and alignment in the Modify Style window by clicking the relevant buttons. Select double line spacing. This helps when typing a lengthy document and also makes correcting a printed version of the manuscript easier. Left-alignment is favoured by literary agents (it’s good for spotting extra spaces between words), but you may prefer to use justified text throughout the writing process.

At the bottom of the Modify Style window there is a Format button. Click this and select Paragraph. A Paragraph window will open with two tabs. I’ll mention at this point that you must never use the Tab key or the spacebar to indent paragraphs. Under the Indents and Spacing tab, leave the left and right indentation settings on 0 cm/in, but set the Special option to First line and the amount to 0.5 cm or 0.25 in. Click the check box to select Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style. Under the Line and Page Breaks tab, deselect Widow/Orphan control. Click OK to close the Paragraph window and again in the Modify Style window.

 I’ll revisit modifying styles and cover additional formatting requirements for your novel’s publication files later in the book. For now, though, keep your manuscript at these settings. You don’t even need to change the font size for chapter headings yet. Visit www.thrillerwriting.guide for screen captures and fuller explanations of these steps.

If you use a widescreen monitor you may encounter one of Word’s little quirks: it likes to display two pages side by side. There isn’t a setting for enforcing a single-page view, so you have to improvise a fix if you want your page in the middle of the screen. If you encounter this problem, select View > Web Layout > Print Layout > Home.

When you reach the end of a chapter in your manuscript, select Insert > Page Break (or press Ctrl/Cmd + Return). This will ensure the next chapter starts on a fresh page. If a chapter finishes on the bottom line of a page, adding a page break will probably insert a blank page. This is correct and you must leave it alone. Start the following chapter after the page break as normal.

Typography quirks in Word

Word occasionally gets quote mark and apostrophe formatting wrong. The default setting is to convert straight marks to curly ones. You can switch this off but you shouldn’t – curly punctuation is much better typography. Apostrophes are normally converted to single right-quotes, which is correct. However, Word may turn an apostrophe into an incorrect left-quote after spaces, such as for a shortened date, e.g. ‘89 instead of ’89.

A similar issue arises when using the apostrophe key to insert a single left-quote directly after a double left-quote, and vice versa. You may have the occasional need to quote a word within direct speech. Here’s a pre-correction example from one of my books:

“’Monitoring’ is hardly the right word,” Martha replied.

Word has assumed that the quote mark after the opening inverted commas must be a right-quote, which is wrong. The punctuation should be:

“‘Monitoring’ is hardly the right word,” Martha replied.

Do you prefer using single inverted commas for direct speech and doubles for quoted words? Word does the same thing:

‘”Monitoring” is hardly the right word,’ Martha replied.

Which, of course, should be:

‘“Monitoring” is hardly the right word,’ Martha replied.

You can fix these auto-formatting issues by highlighting the wrong punctuation and swapping it for the correct symbol with the Insert > Symbol function. Another option is to select the correct symbol from Character Map (Windows) or Character Viewer (macOS). Sometimes, though, it takes a while to find the correct punctuation mark from the chart. I prefer using the Alt key (Option key for Mac users) and typing a code. I suggest you keep the following codes handy for your reference:

Alt + 0145 Curly single opening quote ( ‘ )

Alt + 0146 Curly single closing quote or apostrophe ( ’ )

Alt + 0147 Curly double opening quote ( “ )

Alt + 0148 Curly double closing quote ( ” )

The Mac equivalents:

Option + ] Curly single opening quote ( ‘ )

Option + Shift + ] Curly single closing quote or apostrophe ( ’ )

Option + [ Curly double opening quote ( “ )

Option + Shift + [ Curly double closing quote ( ” )

Using these means you won’t get caught out when Word makes those pesky automatic corrections.

Now, just to throw a spanner in the works, I’m going to mention that the punctuation marks for feet and inches shouldn’t be curly – they should be straight and slightly angled. 5’ 10” is wrong and should be 5′ 10″. These are known as prime marks, and they’re also used to represent minutes and seconds in geometry. As before, these marks can be added by using Character Map or Character Viewer, or Word’s Insert > Symbol facility.

Alt codes exist for prime symbols in Windows but there are no equivalent macOS Option codes:

Alt + 8242 Single prime ( ′ )

Alt + 8243 Double prime ( ″ )

You can (if you must) cheat a prime symbol from the keyboard. Type the quote symbol then press Ctrl/Cmd + Z. This undoes the curly quote conversion, not the typing. It will create a vertical straight quote. Highlight and italicise the punctuation mark to add the angle.

Last but not least I’ll mention non-breaking spaces and non-breaking hyphens. Normal spaces and hyphens allow line breaks, but that’s not always desirable. Using the non-breaking options keeps everything together on the same line. For example, in this book I’ve used non-breaking spaces wherever I’ve given a keyboard shortcut or a measurement, and non-breaking hyphens in words like e‑reader.

Here are the Windows key combinations:

Ctrl + Shift + Spacebar (non-breaking space)

Ctrl + Shift + - (non-breaking hyphen)

Here are the macOS key combinations:

Option + Shift + Space (non-breaking space)

Option + Shift + - (non-breaking hyphen)

If you’ve already inserted ordinary hyphens and need to change some to non-breaking ones, you can run the Replace tool (Ctrl/Cmd + H). Put a hyphen in the Find field and ^~ (caret and tilde) in the Replace field.

I’ve covered the main typography issues you’re likely to encounter in a manuscript for a novel, but have a look at the Typewolf website (https://www.typewolf.com/) if you’d like more information on the topic.

Work in progress and validation

I’ve spoken already about the importance of keeping up the momentum in your writing, so I won’t repeat myself here. Instead, I want to talk about guarding your work as you write. I don’t mean saving and backing up – you already know to do that. I’m talking about keeping your book to yourself until it’s ready for publication.

One of my golden rules is that no one gets to see my books until they’re finished. Absolutely no one. There are several reasons why I impose this rule upon myself. Firstly, an unfinished book is an unedited book. Only my best work should be seen publically. Secondly, it’s my story. I don’t want other people’s opinions affecting my plot while I’m writing. Contrary to the assertions made by some authors, we don’t put ourselves through the writing experience for readers – we do it for ourselves. If readers like the end product, that’s a bonus. The moment someone else tries to tell me the story should do this or that, it ceases to be my book. Thirdly, there is a risk of copyright theft if excerpts are published online or physical copies are sent out. Self-publishers have had work stolen and sold by beta readers. You should be cautious about trusting acquaintances with your valuable work; trusting people in cyberspace can be downright foolish.

Part of the problem is that many aspiring authors suffer from low self-esteem. It’s probably not helped by social media culture. I care nothing for superficial validation and endorsement, so I’m never tempted to seek assurance that I’m doing the right thing. I’d encourage you to trust yourself and be confident. No one can tell your story better than you, so don’t be distracted by others, particularly those who’d struggle to write a single page, let alone a 100,000 word novel. Opinions are dangerous things, particularly in the hands of those who don’t know what they’re talking about. A reader is not an expert.

The practice of using a beta reader – a person who receives an early copy and comments on it – is well-intentioned, but is fraught with danger. Who is qualified to give a valid evaluation of your book? For each person who likes your characters, there will be someone who says your characterisation needs more work. Which perspective is right? Only yours. This isn’t a case of rejecting help, it’s about avoiding muddles. Don’t write to please other people, write for yourself. If the process becomes one of writing by committee, the book no longer belongs to you.

Asking beta readers to find errors without remarking on the plot is more practical, but surely the responsibility for checking your work lies with you? If you’re providing questions for your beta readers to answer, aren’t you ignoring their views on other aspects of your book by default? And is it better to have one reader or a handful? Ironically, some self-publishers involve more people than traditionally published authors do, turning the process into a literary quagmire, and their books are no better for it.

The only worthy opinion is an expert opinion. If your book contains technical details it makes sense to have a qualified person review your work. There’s real value in that, although if you’ve done your research properly it shouldn’t be necessary. You should have asked those questions before you started typing. The editing stage is really the only time it’s appropriate to bring in a professional. Deferring to the wisdom of a publishing industry expert is sensible, but even then you and the editor must be a good match.

I urge you to keep your work from the unhelpful and the curious. Take pride in your ability to do this on your own, unhindered by distracting opinions. Writing a novel is an epic undertaking. The only validation you need is the satisfaction of completing it. There’s nothing better than seeing the finished novel and saying I did that. In the next part of this book I’ll talk about the practical things you’ll need to do to turn the dream of writing a book into a published reality.

Back cover copy

One of the ways to encourage sales of your book is to write an enticing summary for the back cover. This is known as back cover copy. You’ll also hear it referred to, somewhat lazily, as the book’s blurb. It obviously forms part of the artwork for the printed edition, but it’s also used as the book’s product description on Amazon and the other online shops. Space naturally dictates the word count. You should definitely write no more than 200 words. For the sake of keeping the description snappy, I’d encourage you to aim for fewer than 100 words.

Think of the back cover copy as the movie trailer for your book. You need to make it obvious that the book is a thriller, so choose words that set a suspenseful tone. Make it obvious that the plot is intriguing and there is plenty of drama. Now I know I’ve said thrillers don’t need to be constant action. That’s completely true, but your back cover copy is a sales pitch. The subtleties of your novel’s reflective moments have no place here. The reader has to be excited by the promise of this book.

One of the glaring mistakes authors make with back cover copy is trying to summarise the plot. You must not attempt to condense the story into 100 words. Think again about movie trailers. It’s impossible to figure out the actual story from a minute of cleverly cut footage. You’ll get a sense of the action and you’ll get a glimpse of the characters, but you’re left to wonder what’s going to happen.

The way to achieve the same effect in back cover copy is to make passing reference to the plot and one or two counterplots. Maintain the conflict that exists in your book. Imply that trouble is brewing. Mention that some of the key characters are caught up in difficult and unexpected situations. Don’t try to explain anything and don’t give away any answers. Some authors ask questions in their back cover copy, but I’m not a fan of this approach. Imagine this conversation:

Writer: “Will Max save Lisa before it’s too late?”

Reader: “I assume so. Isn’t that what protagonists do? Now I know how the book ends.”

I’d rather be given the context of the plot than a question with an obvious answer. Here’s the back cover copy for my novel Station Helix:

An inexplicable suicide… A devastating car wreck… A secret Ministry of Defence facility…

Told with pace and tension, STATION HELIX is an exciting and modern novel rooted in the tradition of British thrillers.

Alex Hannay makes a shocking discovery which draws him into a perilous world of conspiracy and murder. As operatives from the CIA pursue their own operation on the streets of London, Alex is torn between protecting those who share his secret and seeking retribution for a terrible crime.

If I were to rewrite that now I might make a change or two. I’d probably replace operatives with agents because operation is present in the same line. I never spotted the similar words, despite working on this for hours. It’s really hard to write decent back cover copy! Maybe you didn’t notice the issue until I mentioned it. Despite that point, the copy serves its purpose well enough. You know the book contains death and drama. You know who some of the players are. But you definitely couldn’t work out the plot from those eighty-one words.

Entrepreneurial attitude

Having control over every step of the writing journey is one of the best reasons for self-publishing. It does, however, mean the author has to be more than just a writer. You don’t have the backing of an agent and publisher as an independent author, so decisions on cover design, pricing and distribution are yours to make. Being in that position is as daunting as it is rewarding. Creative people sometimes find it hard to be pragmatic. It’s very exciting to finish writing a book, so you’ll be understandably eager to get it published. Having toiled over the manuscript for so long, though, you must not rush the final steps.

Up to this point you’ve probably been thinking of yourself as an author. (I’d be worried if you hadn’t.) But now I’m going to encourage you to adjust that perspective. As a self-publisher you need an entrepreneurial attitude. Part of that must be the cold realisation that you may never sell a single copy of your book. If you’re writing just to prove to yourself you can do it that won’t be a hindrance, but I’ll assume you would like to have some measure of success. Use the knowledge that it might not work out as motivation to keep trying.

I’ve already said that you should think beyond your first book. Successful self-publishers tend to have several series, and it obviously takes a while to produce that volume of work. It will take a few years to get the momentum going. Even when things go well, you’ll still have to find ways to promote your books and increase your readership. There are no quick wins. You have to define yourself as a brand and think of your books as products. Not every product sells, but a good brand finds itself a corner of the market, puts down roots and grows steadily.

Hopefully I’m doing a reasonable job of managing your expectations. It’s far better to approach self-publishing as a realist rather than as a dreamer. I want you to be excited by the prospects while tempering your enthusiasm with good sense. In this part of the book I’ll explain various aspects of self-publishing, and try to make sense of the conflicting advice which it’s so easy to get confused by. With luck this will make your experience more about informed choices than trial and error guesswork.

Sales outlets and distributors

Book sales fall into two categories: paper and digital. Printed book sales for self-publishers are negligible compared to e‑books. There are two good reasons for this. Firstly, the printing cost is fairly high because independent books aren’t mass produced. Secondly, self-published books are not stocked by bricks-and-mortar stores. Bookshops only buy from traditional publishers on a sale-or-return basis, and that’s not something the self-publishing print-on-demand model can accommodate.

This doesn’t mean you should only produce e‑book versions of your novel. It’s easy to make a paperback version available on Amazon, and while it may not sell in great numbers, it’s an option for the many readers who still prefer turning real pages to swiping a screen. You can also make your paperback available on special order through regular bookshops. They won’t stock it but they will order it if a customer asks for it.

I must reiterate my note of caution about disreputable outfits at this point. There are several companies who will produce printed copies of your novel. Some are large operations with glossy websites and enticing offers. Unfortunately, quite a few are set up to take advantage of authors, with promises of marketing and distribution plans. These products are often very expensive and ultimately worthless. Writers don’t understand the reality of book distribution, and many give thousands of dollars to these charlatans in the hope their books will appear in bookshops throughout the world. Anyone who tries to sell you expensive author services is operating a scam.

So what’s the best and safest way to make your printed book available for sale? I use Amazon’s CreateSpace (https://www.createspace.com/). CreateSpace produces good quality paperbacks and, because it’s an Amazon subsidiary, gets your book into the American, British and Canadian Amazon stores quickly once you’ve checked and approved your proof copy. The print-on-demand distribution means a copy of your book will be printed each time a customer orders one. There’s no stockpile of unwanted books and there’s no cost to you as the author. I’ll talk more about CreateSpace later.

Digital books account for the vast majority of book sales for self-publishers. Amazon is the most lucrative option because it holds something like 75% of the market share. It wasn’t the first company to produce an e‑reader, but its Kindle transformed the industry. Amazon’s Kindle publishing arm is called Kindle Direct Publishing (https://kdp.amazon.com/).

Many independent authors sell exclusively on Amazon, and doing so is not a bad choice. Amazon has a programme called KDP Select which is designed for authors who wish to make Amazon the only outlet for digital sales. (This doesn’t preclude releasing a printed version.) As an incentive for exclusivity, the Select programme offers some opportunities for book promotion. Choosing Select is simply a matter of ticking a box in your KDP account.

However, it’s worth considering the remaining quarter of the market. For self-publishers it’s easy to make books available on three other significant platforms: Apple’s iTunes, Kobo and Barnes & Noble’s Nook. You may hear distribution to multiple outlets referred to colloquially among self-publishers as going wide. There is some wisdom in not putting all of your eggs in Amazon’s basket.

The popularity and global reach of Apple makes distribution through iTunes a sensible consideration. You can only publish directly with Apple if you are a Mac user, but this doesn’t prevent Windows users from selling on iTunes with the help of a distributor. Mac users can produce e‑books using Apple’s iBooks Author software (http://www.apple.com/uk/ibooks-author/).

Kobo has a stronghold in Canada and does well elsewhere in the world. Its author platform is called Kobo Writing Life (https://www.kobo.com/writinglife).

Barnes & Noble now only sells in the US, having withdrawn from the UK market, but it still holds on to a reasonable market share. B&N’s author platform is called Nook Press (https://www.nookpress.com/ebooks).

When you set up accounts with these companies, you’ll need to provide bank account information for your royalty payments. All those mentioned here will pay you by bank transfer. You’ll need to supply details such as your International Bank Account Number (IBAN) and your Bank Identifier Code (BIC). Your bank account already has these. If you can’t find the numbers, ask your bank for them. You’ll also be asked if your account is a checking or savings account. A checking account is a standard account for regular use. A savings account is intended for accruing interest on savings.

Kindle, Kobo and Nook all have free apps for use on Windows, Android and macOS, so owning one of their e‑readers isn’t necessary to access their stores. Even Apple allows iTunes to be installed on Windows. As an independent author you can distribute to these platforms for free. With the exception of Apple for Windows users, it’s possible for self-publishers to work directly with these sellers. You should set up accounts on the platforms which are accessible to you. These companies all operate a similar royalty model. You will be paid once taxes and handling fees have been deducted from your sales.

To get into a market which you cannot access directly, you have to use a distributor. There are two basic distribution models. Some companies charge you a fee to distribute your book upfront but give you 100% of the royalties. This sounds promising but it’s not. These companies also tend to charge you for things you really shouldn’t be paying for, like ISBNs and uploading revisions to your book. The second distribution model is akin to going directly to the sellers. It costs nothing to upload your book but a small percentage is deducted by the distributor from your sales.

The best distributor is Draft2Digital (https://www.draft2digital.com/). I use D2D for selling on iTunes because I’m a Windows user. If the idea of having multiple accounts seems like a lot of work, D2D also distributes to Kobo and Barnes & Noble, so you could manage your entire publishing empire through just Amazon and Draft2Digital. The other great thing about D2D is its completely hassle-free file conversion process. With the exception of Amazon, all the sellers use a file format called EPUB. It is possible to create an EPUB from a Word file using specialised software, but it’s quite complicated. D2D does the hard work for you and allows you to use the file on other platforms.

You’ll have to answer some questions about taxation when setting up your various accounts. This is because, depending on where you live, there may be a tax treaty in place. This represents a negotiated tax rate between the country of sale and the country of residence. For example, UK citizens aren’t required to pay any tax to the IRS in the US. Value added tax is deducted at the point of sale and sent to the HMRC in the UK. This arrangement may only be possible if you have declared yourself as self-employed and have a tax number. You should seek professional accountancy advice to ensure your tax affairs are in order.

Keywords and categories

All online retailers use categories to put products in the right places and to help customers find them. When you publish your book you’ll have to pick various keywords and categories. Rather annoyingly, the number and choice of options vary between retailers. I like to keep track of the keywords and categories I use so I can duplicate information for all the books in a series. I’ve designed an Excel document for this purpose, and you can download it at www.thrillerwriting.guide.

Keywords are words or groups of words which customers might search for. The ones you pick must be accurate for your book. They work alongside your back cover copy (product description) and the genre categories. The best way to pick keywords is to use the search feature in Amazon’s Kindle Store. Start typing a word which matches your book, e.g. thriller. Popular search terms will automatically be shown. These represent potential keywords for your book.

But it’s not quite as simple as using the first result from the list. The obvious keywords inevitably return many thousands of results. A new book with that keyword isn’t going to feature anywhere near the top of that list. An obscure keyword search may give just a few hundred results, but that’s not much good either because hardly anyone uses it.

While it’s worth experimenting on Amazon to see how different keywords perform, don’t get obsessed by it. Clever keyword selection isn’t guaranteed to push you book up the rankings as some authors claim. The reality is that you’re competing with very successful books as well as the titles Amazon chooses to promote. As more and more authors try exactly the same trick, the effectiveness lessens further. This shouldn’t stop you from picking a broad selection of keywords, because something is always better than nothing. If your book gains traction in the marketplace, keywords will play a part in its success.

An organisation called the Book Industry Study Group manages a huge list of book categories called the Book Industry Standards and Communications (BISAC) Subject Headings. The list was developed to present information about books in a standard format for the book industry. When you upload your book to the various distributors, you’ll need to pick one or more categories. Unfortunately the distributors don’t use the same wording, so you’ll have to see what’s available and pick accordingly on each website.

You may include a subtitle for your book if it’s appropriate to do so. KDP rules say you must not include wording which does not appear on the front cover of your book. You will frequently see books on Amazon which flout this rule, but don’t let that be an excuse for doing it yourself. As a self-published author you’re likely to be told to delete an errant subtitle. You don’t need to include the name of the series in a subtitle because there’s a separate place for series information. The subtitle is better suited to wording which identifies the genre, e.g. An espionage thriller.

Take some time to ensure this information is to your satisfaction on each website. You may make some changes, both before and after you’ve published, so it’s not essential to get everything right first time. Be aware that some information does get locked in right away, such as the title and series title. Using the spreadsheet will bring some order to the process. It’s also handy to know that you don’t have to add all the information in one go. As a self-publisher, it’s you who decides when your book is ready.

Copyright and digital rights management

I’m not going to delve deeply into copyright because there are several technical aspects to it and laws vary from country to country. But, at a basic level, copyright is a simple legal concept. When you write something original, you automatically own the copyright. That means no one else can reproduce your work in any format without your permission. There are, however, some circumstances when quoting short excerpts from your work for review or professional criticism will fall under the fair use principle. Quoted words should always be credited to the author. The title of a book cannot be copyrighted, with the notable exception of books published in Germany.

Copyright extends to intellectual property as well. No one may use your characters in commercial products of their own without your permission. The emphasis here is on the commercial aspect of the copying. Fan fiction – where someone writes a story based on someone else’s property – is a slightly different situation. It’s acceptable to write fan fiction for one’s own amusement, or even for others to read online, but it cannot be sold.

It’s useful to know that when you write a book (or even the first draft of a book), you own the rights to everything related to the story. As a self-publisher you can sell or license your rights as you see fit. You’d do this for a television adaptation, for example. Part of the appeal of self-publishing is the retention of rights.

Protecting your copyright is really important but actually doesn’t require a great deal of effort. Placing the copyright symbol with the year of publication and a suitable notice inside your book is all you have to do to state your ownership. The copyright notices inside books are often similar, and you can adapt one from another book for your own use.

Some authors (particularly in the US) register their copyright with a company, or store a copy of their work with a solicitor or lawyer. This is not necessary and it can be expensive. In theory it gives you some extra protection if someone produces an unlicensed version of your work, but if you have the original files (including all the drafts), they’ll include a date stamp in the file information. The chances of a legitimate publisher producing an illegitimate version of your book are low. Breach of copyright is not something you are likely to have to deal with, but if you do, seek legal advice.

It’s important to bring digital rights management (DRM) into the discussion at this point, because it ties in with copyright. Let’s start with a brief summary of what DRM actually is. When you publish a digital version of your book for sale on Amazon, Kobo, B&N and iTunes, you can choose to apply DRM as a security measure against unauthorised copying and distribution.

Even though DRM is there to enforce your copyright, it’s become a rather contentious issue among authors. This is ironic because most readers don’t know what DRM is and wouldn’t care about it if they did. Some authors say you should never add copy-protection to your books. There are two parts to their argument. Firstly, they claim DRM limits readers’ choices. Secondly, they say it doesn’t prevent piracy. Let’s look at these arguments in turn.

Limiting readers’ choices in this context means preventing people from ignoring your copyright and giving away illegal copies of your book. Should someone be able to copy your book onto a friend’s e‑reader? Absolutely not. It’s not too much to expect someone to pay the tiny price of your book. Some authors also make the dubious claim that DRM prevents a reader from storing books on multiple e‑readers. That’s simply untrue. All the retailers allow customers to access their libraries via different devices. Inconvenience as an argument against DRM is a non-starter.

The other argument against digital rights management is that it doesn’t prevent piracy. I can’t disagree with that. As a security measure it’s not hard to defeat. But that’s a bit like saying we should legalise drugs because people will take them anyway. You can’t use indifference as the basis for a valid argument. Piracy is theft. There’s nothing remotely romantic or justifiable about it.

Some authors believe that it’s better to have their work distributed illegally than not at all, but they’re deluding themselves. New authors get sucked into this nonsense because they’re afraid of obscurity, and we all know how hard it is to get noticed in a crowded marketplace. Piracy is illegal and benefits no one but the thieves. Don’t let anyone tell you that having illegal copies of your work out there will contribute to your success as an author. It will not.

The final irony with DRM is that I’ve never seen a book by one of its opponents without a copyright page. You either respect the law around the protection of your work or you don’t. It’s your choice whether you use digital rights management, but I’d encourage you to make use of this sensible security measure as a matter of principle.

Creating a master manuscript

Once your final draft is finished, save a new version of it as a master document. Call it title-master.docx. The purpose of this is twofold. Firstly, you need to protect your drafts. Secondly, you need a working copy for the foundation of your paperback and digital editions. There are some additions to make to the master which you probably won’t have considered when writing your drafts. All additional pages need to be separated by page breaks.

The number of introductory pages isn’t fixed, but it is standard practice to place the book’s title and your name on the first page and a copyright notice on the second. The copyright symbol can be added from the keyboard (Alt + 0169 or Option + G). A dedication, if you wish to include one, deserves its own page. A quotation from another literary source (real or fictional) is called an epigraph. If you include one it should also have its own page. It’s common to see the titles of other books by the author, so that’s something you can start doing with your second book.

The address of the author’s website and an invitation to join an e‑mail list are frequent inclusions in self-published books. I’ll talk more about e‑mail lists later, but for now I want to cover a very important point about hyperlinks. Word creates a hyperlink as soon as you type a uniform resource locator (URL) into your document. That’s very helpful but it needs a quick edit. Right-click the link and select Edit Hyperlink. In the Edit Hyperlink window, click the Target Frame button. Select _blank from the options in the Set Target Frame window, then click OK. This ensures the link will open in a new browser tab when clicked.

A paragraph or two about you can be added at the end of the book. It doesn’t hurt to add your website information again. As your list of titles grows, the back cover copy for your other books should be added each time you publish a new one. After all, you’ll want your readers to buy everything you’ve written. Use each book as a marketing opportunity.

Once you’ve included the additional content, there’s one very important formatting adjustment to make throughout your novel. The first paragraph of every chapter should not have an indent. The new material at the front and back of the book also needs to be indent-free. Logically you’d just go through the book, place the cursor on each relevant paragraph, and drag the ruler at the top of the screen to the zero point. Sadly, it’s not quite that simple.

The problem with a zero indent is that Kindle ignores it. Every paragraph in the Kindle version needs an indentation instruction. If there isn’t one, Kindle creates its own and indents the paragraph. The trick is to add a very tiny indent that’s too small to notice. The tiny indent is, for all intents and purposes, the same as a zero indent. It just doesn’t allow Kindle to choose its own formatting. Styling for Kindle won’t adversely affect any other edition of your book. That’s why you should make the changes in the master file – they’ll transfer neatly into the other versions unnoticed.

You can apply the correct indent to all the front matter in one go by selecting everything before the first chapter. The end matter can be adjusted collectively as well. Chapter titles (or numbers) and first paragraphs will, however, have to be fixed individually throughout the book. The process takes a while but isn’t hard to do.

With the relevant words highlighted, open the paragraph options by clicking the tiny arrow in Word’s ribbon. This will open the Paragraph window. Under the Indents and Spacing tab, ensure the Special option has First line selected. Change the By measurement to 0.01 cm/in. Click OK to close the window and apply the formatting. You’ll see the text nudge to the left, apparently removing the indent. Save your master file to preserve the changes.

Formatting for CreateSpace

The file for the paperback version of a book needs to be prepared with care and caution. It’s very important to take plenty of time to get this right. Open title-master.docx and select File > Save As to save a copy. Name it title-createspace.docx. This file will eventually be saved as a PDF for uploading to CreateSpace.

If you included hyperlinks to web pages in title-master.docx, you’ll need to remove them in title-createspace.docx, because there’s obviously no need for them in the printed book. Right click the hyperlink and select Remove Hyperlink. The quick way to remove multiple hyperlinks is to select all the text by pressing Ctrl/Cmd + A and then pressing Ctrl + Shift + F9 (Windows) or Cmd + 6 (Mac).

You’ll have to make a decision about the dimensions of your printed book. CreateSpace can produce books in a wide variety of industry-standard and special sizes. I always use 12.852 cm x 19.837 cm / 5.06 in x 7.81 in. These measurements are those used most frequently by publishing houses for the paperback editions of thrillers, which is the reason for my choice. You may prefer to pick a larger page size to reduce page count and production cost. The size options are shown on the CreateSpace website in metric and imperial.

Although CreateSpace does have Word templates for each page size, I advise you not to use them. You risk encountering formatting problems if you copy your text and paste it into someone else’s template. Stick with your title-createspace.docx file.

Once you’ve decided your page dimensions, select the Page Layout tab on the ribbon. Click the tiny arrow to open the Page Setup window. Under the Margins tab, select Mirror margins from the Multiple pages dropdown. Now change the Margins settings as follows:

Top: 1.5 cm or 0.6 in.

Bottom: 1.5 cm or 0.6 in.

Inside: 2.5 cm or 1 in.

Outside: 1.5 cm or 0.6 in.

Gutter: 0 cm or 0 in.

You may adjust these measurements slightly, but not by much. By setting up your pages this way you’re allowing for the extra space needed for the binding. Keep the Page Setup window open and go to the Paper tab. Change the settings as follows:

Width: 12.852 cm or 5.06 in (or your preferred width).

Height: 19.837 cm or 7.81 in (or your preferred height).

Finally, go to the Layout tab and change the Footer setting to 0.5 cm or 0.2 in. Click OK to apply these settings and close the Page Setup window. Word may take a little while to make the changes. When it’s done you’ll get a better impression of how your book will appear in its paperback format.

The font size (12pt) you used for your drafts will be slightly too big for the paperback. Modify the Normal style and drop the size to 11pt. Change the line spacing to 1.15. Stick with Times New Roman or Garamond for your font choice. This font size won’t be suitable throughout the book, so pick something a little smaller for the copyright page, a bigger size for your name and an even bigger size for the title. You might like to change the title text to a suitably bold sans-serif font to make it stand out.

You may wish to apply kerning to your manuscript. Kerning is the reduction of space between certain letters to make them more attractive. It isn’t turned on by default in Word. Access the kerning option by modifying your Normal style and selecting Format > Font > Advanced. Click the check box to switch on kerning and set the Points and above amount to the smallest font size in your document.

Chapter names (or numbers) never sit at the top of a page, so you’ll need to select a suitable font size (16pt is good) and add several lines of empty space to push the opening paragraph down the page. Adjust every chapter to make sure the layout is identical throughout the book.

You still have a few adjustments to make. Printed books have page numbers, so you’ll need to select Insert > Page Number and pick a discreet design you like. If you only want the page numbering to start with your first chapter, remember you can add a section break to exclude the front matter of the book. Keep the colour of the page number to black. You can adjust the font size by selecting Insert > Footer > Edit Footer.

The paperback edition of your book must have an International Standard Book Number (ISBN). CreateSpace will allocate one to your book at no cost. You’ll actually be given two ISBNs: a 10-digit and a 13-digit version, both of which are unique to your book. Add these to your copyright page.

You may find a few blank pages in your document. This occurs when a chapter ends on the last line of a page and the page break creates a gap before the next chapter. Remove these stray blanks with the Backspace key.

Make sure your first chapter starts on a right-hand (odd number) page. If your story is divided into parts, apply the same right-hand rule for every part and the first chapter of each part. You may need to reintroduce some blank pages with Insert > Page Break to achieve this.

Go over the manuscript several times to make sure the formatting is consistent and tidy. It’s critical to get this right at this stage because the page count affects the cover design. Major corrections which alter the page count will be problematic. This won’t stop you from making minor corrections if you discover typos later on.

Once the Word document is exactly the way you want it, save the file. Select File > Save As > PDF. In the Save As window, select Tools > Save Options. In the new window, select Embed fonts in the file. Deselect Do not embed common system fonts. Click OK to close the window. Click Save.

You now have your CreateSpace interior PDF file. For a version of this guidance with screen captures, visit www.thrillerwriting.guide. There’s one more consideration about your book’s content – the paper colour. You’ll have to decide between white and cream paper. Cream paper has been used for novels in traditional publishing for a long time and is thought to be slightly easier on the eyes. But these days we’re used to reading against white backgrounds, so you might prefer to use the white paper option and keep your paperback closer to the e‑book in appearance. You can make your choice when you upload title-createspace.pdf.

CreateSpace has a facility for preparing your book for Kindle, but don’t use this – you shouldn’t create a Kindle file from a PDF. I’ll cover e‑reader formatting next.

Formatting for e‑readers

This section covers how to use Word to prepare your book for conversion into e‑reader formats. I should mention at this stage that there are more intricate ways to do this, using coding and different software. You can, if you wish, pay for the services of a professional book designer. Word, though, is certainly good enough for the task. You don’t need to learn any coding at all in order to format an e‑book.

Open title-master.docx and save a new version as title-ebook.docx. Use the new file for the adjustments described in this section. The content file for an e‑reader device is basically a webpage. The device divides the content into pages based on its screen dimensions and the font size chosen by the reader.

You don’t need to change the margins, but doing so will give you a better impression of how the text will appear on an e‑reader’s screen. Select the Page Layout tab on the ribbon. Click the tiny arrow to open the Page Setup window. Under the Margins tab, enter the following measurements:

Top: 0.5 cm or 0.2 in.

Bottom: 0.5 cm or 0.2 in.

Left: 0.25 cm or 0.1 in.

Right: 0.25 cm or 0.1 in.

When you click OK you’ll see a warning window explaining that the margins aren’t suitable for printing. Click Ignore. This version of your manuscript isn’t for printing.

E‑books don’t have page numbers because the screen size varies between devices and the text size is adjustable by the reader. Navigation is done via hyperlinks from a table of contents page near the front of the book. Nor do e‑books have an ISBN. Each retailer will allocate a digital equivalent to your book. You shouldn’t include your CreateSpace ISBN as it doesn’t apply to the e‑book version. Nor should you add the digital ISBNs to the book.

E‑readers include their own font sets, which means the font you use for the file will be replaced with one of the reader’s choosing. You don’t, therefore, need to change your font, but I suggest reducing the size to 10pt and the line-spacing to 1.5. Doing so provides a reasonable starting point for subsequent customisation by the reader. Make the adjustments by modifying the Normal style and accessing the font options.

Chapter numbers or names need to be in a larger font, of course, but they also provide the anchor points for the table of contents. It’s now time to revisit the Styles section of the ribbon, but this time you need to modify the one called Heading 1. Right-click the Heading 1 style thumbnail and select Modify. In the Modify Style window, change the font to whichever you’ve chosen for the body text and set the size to 16pt. Change the font colour to Automatic. Choose either left or central alignment. Add some space above and below the heading with the expanding lines button. You’ll notice Before and After measurements. A Before measurement in the 48 pt to 60 pt range should be about right, but use what looks right to you. This adjustment creates some room between the top of the screen, the chapter number or name, and the first paragraph.

You’ll also have to reset the heading style’s first line indent. Click the Format button in the bottom of the Modify Style window and select Paragraph. In the Paragraph window, make sure the Special option is set to First line. Set the By amount to 0.01 cm/in. Click OK to close the Paragraph window. Click OK to close the Modify Style window.

Having changed the Heading 1 style settings, you can now go through your title-ebook.docx file and apply the Heading 1 style to every chapter number or name. If you’ve included an About the author page at the back, apply the style to that part too. If the spacing doesn’t look right, you can always modify the style again.

It’s now time to create the table of contents. I’d suggest putting this after the dedication but before the epigraph, if you’ve included one or both of those. If you have neither, place it after the copyright page.

Create a blank page for the table of contents by selecting Insert > Page Break. Type the word Contents and apply the Heading 1 style to it. Press the Return key to add a space. On a PC, select the References tab on the ribbon. Click the downward pointing triangle in the corner of the Table of Contents section and choose Custom Table of Contents. This will open the Table of Contents window. On a Mac, select Insert > Index and Tables > Table of Contents.

Set the Show levels option to 1. Deselect Show page numbers. Select Use hyperlinks instead of page numbers. Click OK to close the window. You’ll see a list of your chapter numbers or names presented as hyperlinks. You’ll probably need to change the font size and spacing to make the design consistent with the rest of your book. Pick left or central alignment. You’ll also have to fix that pesky paragraph indent problem using the Special indent setting of 0.01 cm/in.

The final formatting tweak is to adjust the font sizes of your title page. Try 22pt for the title and 16pt for your name as starting points. Once you’ve made all these adjustments, save title-ebook.docx.

You now have a DOCX file that is suitable for conversion into the e‑book formats. That’s pretty much it in terms of file preparation, but there’s one extra step to complete for the Kindle edition.

Select File > Save As. Choose Web Page, Filtered (or Web Page on a Mac). Click Save in the Save As window. Change the file name to title-kindle. (The file will be given an HTM suffix automatically.) A warning box with a rather lengthy message will appear. It alerts you that certain Office-specific formatting settings may be stripped out. That’s exactly what you want to happen at this stage. Click Yes. This saves a webpage version of your document. You’ll see your Word screen change to the Web Layout view. Change this back to normal by selecting View > Print Layout > Home.

You now have all the content files you need for publication. For a version of this guidance with screen captures, visit www.thrillerwriting.guide.

Cover design

A book is invariably judged by its cover. It’s very important to have a design which identifies the genre at a glance. Font choice, colour palette and layout are key considerations. The image must capture the mood of your story and yet still look good at a small size on a retailer’s website.

You have a few options. CreateSpace has a Cover Creator tool which allows you to design your own cover within the confines of templates. You can use a stock CreateSpace image or upload your own photograph as long as the dots per inch (DPI) measurement is 300 or greater. The text can be styled to your liking. The cover is produced as one piece of artwork, incorporating the back cover, spine and front cover. You can adapt the image for e‑book use later.

Ideally you want something a little more sophisticated than you’re likely to achieve with Cover Creator. If you’re proficient with Photoshop or another graphic design program, you can have a go at using your own images or stock photos from a site like Shutterstock (www.shutterstock.com). You will need to get the canvas size spot on, based on the page dimensions and spine width. Using ruler guides is essential. A version of the cover image must be saved as a flattened PDF, and the file size must be under 40 MB.

CreateSpace requires you to choose either a glossy or matte cover for your book. One isn’t definitively better than the other. They’re stylish in different ways. I prefer the glossy cover because it gives marginally better colour saturation and preserves image pixel detail well. Fingerprint smudges can be wiped clean easily. However, the matte cover does look professional and still makes a very good job of image resolution. There really isn’t much in it and you’ll be pleased with the result either way.

Even if you’re pretty good with Photoshop and have some graphic design knowledge, you still won’t have the expertise of a book cover designer. Give serious consideration to hiring a professional. A good designer will translate the theme of your story into a classy image. You’ll get to see draft versions before agreeing a final design. You’ll receive versions of the image suitably formatted for each edition of the book. Hiring a decent artist is not cheap, but having a high quality cover is worth the investment.

Some of the best book cover design companies are listed in the Resources for the self-publisher section of this book. Visit the websites, have a look at their portfolios and prices, and decide which would be the best match for you. Alternatively, search for other book cover designers online.

E‑book covers should be JPEG images in the RGB colour mode. The resolution should be 72 dpi. The standard pixel dimensions are 1600 px x 2400 px for most retailers, and the file size should be kept under 2 MB. For Amazon, use 1600 px x 2500 px as a minimum. Amazon will accept larger measurements as long as the file size stays under 6 MB. These figures may be revised as new e‑readers with better screens are released.

The proof copy and final corrections

As the time to publish draws closer, I focus my efforts on the paperback edition of my book. With the interior and cover files uploaded to CreateSpace, I order a proof for review. For an author there’s something rather special about receiving the first printed copy of a new book. It’s an important moment. It’s also a very practical one. The proof copy provides an opportunity to check for errors which slipped through the drafting and editing processes. The proof copy is distinguished from ordinary copies by the word Proof printed on the last page. It’s a nice thing to own.

I always find a few mistakes in the proof copy. Checking a manuscript on a computer monitor only goes so far. You must review a paper version. Look for missing punctuation and spelling mistakes. Examine every sentence to make sure you haven’t left out a word.

With paperback proof in hand, I return to the computer and open title-master.docx, title-createspace.docx and title-ebook.docx. By having all three Word files open I can ensure that I fix each mistake in each edition at the same time. That’s my method – you may prefer to compile a list of mistakes first and then go through each Word file separately. Either way, every copy needs to be corrected with the same level of attention.

Once the corrections have been made, title-master.docx can be closed. Its purpose is to exist only as a backup file in case the others are lost. Overwrite title-createspace.pdf from the amended title-createspace.docx. Overwrite title-kindle.htm from the amended title-ebook.docx. These corrected versions are now ready for uploading.

It isn’t necessary to order another paperback proof copy from CreateSpace: you can do an online review and approve the amended version for publication. With that done, attention can now be turned to publishing the e‑book editions.

Upload title-kindle.htm to Kindle Direct Publishing. If you haven’t yet done so, upload the cover image as well. KDP will then covert the HTML file into Kindle’s MOBI format. KDP has an online reviewer which simulates a variety of Kindles, tablets and e‑readers. If you’re happy with the preview you can publish the book.

When your paperback and digital editions go live on Amazon, they’ll initially be given separate sales pages. After a few days Amazon’s wizardry should recognise the title and merge the pages, thereby making both editions available from one product page. If this doesn’t happen automatically, go to the KDP Support page and send a message with the relevant information.

Having sorted out the Amazon editions, my next stop is Draft2Digital. This time I upload title-ebook.docx and the cover image. D2D converts this file into an EPUB, which I download and save. D2D doesn’t have an online previewer, but Adobe’s free Digital Editions software (http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/digital-editions/download.html) is perfect for the task. D2D invariably makes a good job of the EPUB conversion. Once I approve it, D2D sends the file to Apple for publication on iTunes. I don’t request distribution to any other seller.

I upload the new EPUB file to both Kobo and Barnes & Noble alongside the same cover image I supply to D2D. Although both companies accept and convert DOCX files, I’ve encountered problems every time I’ve tried to send Word documents. Sending a flawlessly produced EPUB to them instead is trouble-free. That’s why I believe Draft2Digital is a good company. Who else would convert your file for free and allow you to use it elsewhere?

Hopefully I’ve shown you that uploading the corrected files doesn’t have to be a weary experience. I’ve found a method which lets me publish on the four major platforms with the minimum of fuss. Don’t feel you have to copy me – if you can find a better way, please use it.

Should you spot further mistakes, correct the files as described above and upload them again. You can amend files at no cost with all of the retailers and distributors I’ve discussed in this book. Be aware that Amazon will not send amended versions of your Kindle book to customers automatically, unless the corrections are major and you can convince KDP that your readers deserve the new version. If a customer re-downloads the book, she will receive the file she originally bought, not the latest one, unless KDP agrees to supply it. That’s one of the reasons why it’s important to catch as many mistakes as possible before publishing.

Pricing

As a self-publisher you have a lot of control over your prices. You can change them whenever you like to try new pricing strategies or in response to currency fluctuations. The price of your e‑book must stay the same on all platforms. Amazon will usually match a competitor’s price if it is lower.

You’ll need to set a price for your paperback in UK pounds, US dollars and euros. You can allow CreateSpace to calculate the pound and euro amounts based on the dollar price, but I recommend specifying each one individually. Use the XE currency converter website (http://www.xe.com/) to calculate your prices based on your home currency. Round up each price so that it ends in .99.

The cost of a CreateSpace book is governed by the production cost, Amazon’s profit margin, your distribution choice and your royalty. You’re very unlikely to be able to price your book in competition with traditionally published paperbacks. A paperback sale will probably earn you less than an e‑book sale.

CreateSpace allows you to select an option called expanded distribution. This makes your book available to libraries and retailers other than Amazon. That doesn’t mean bookshops will stock your book, but they will be able to order it if a customer asks for it. The expanded distribution option increases the cost of the book, so you’ll have to judge whether it’s worth it when the odds of sales outside Amazon are remote.

E‑books are placed in most of the Amazon stores around the world. Kobo and Apple also distribute globally. For this reason prices are set in numerous currencies. You may set them individually, allow the distributor to derive prices from the US dollar, or use a mix of both. My preference is to set them individually to avoid discrepancies between retailers. If you do specify prices, use the .99 rule. Assuming you choose the same retailers as me, you’ll need prices in these currencies: GB pound (UKP), US dollar (USD), euro (EUR), Canadian dollar (CAD), Australian dollar (AUD), New Zealand dollar (NZD), Japanese yen (JPY), Hong Kong dollar (HKD), Indian rupee (INR), Brazilian real (BRL), Mexican peso (MXN), Danish krone (DKK), Norwegian krone (NOK), Swedish krona (SEK), Swiss franc (CHF), Taiwan new dollar (TWD), Philippine peso (PHP), South African rand (ZAR) and Turkish lira (TRY).

I suggest using a simple Word or Excel table to record your price list. You can change the numbers periodically. I tend to do this very infrequently – maybe once or twice a year – because minor currency fluctuations are largely insignificant to your royalties.

Depending on price and territory distribution, KDP pays either a 35% or 70% royalty. A small download fee is also subtracted. The cheapest price you can choose is $0.99. Some authors price at $0.99 to encourage sales, although there is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that books are more likely to sell at a higher price. Value for money is determined by quality, not just the cost.

Somewhere from $2.99 to $5.99 is probably a good starting point, but you can test what works best for you and change your price whenever you like. You’ll notice that e‑books produced by traditional publishers often cost $9.99 or more. It’s to our advantage as self-publishers to set prices lower than that.

Royalties from Kobo, Barnes & Noble and Apple are comparable, if not identical, to Amazon’s. Draft2Digital will, of course, take a percentage as a distributor’s fee, which works out about 10% of the retail price.

At the time of writing, Amazon will not allow publishers to set a price of zero. Kobo and B&N both allow zero pricing, and you can set a zero price on iTunes via Draft2Digital. Zero pricing is a common promotional strategy for self-publishers. It’s generally used to encourage downloads of the first book in a series. The theory is that readers will happily try a new author when there’s no financial risk. If they like book one, they’ll pay to find out what happens in the rest of the series. It’s a fairly sound tactic.

But what do you do if Amazon won’t let you give away your books? Well, you have to rely on Amazon’s desire to price match its competitors. It should be said that this strategy is not guaranteed to work. Amazon may ignore the zero price on the other sites. Set the prices to zero on Kobo, B&N and iTunes (via D2D). Set your Kindle price to $0.99 in the 35% royalty band on KDP. With luck Amazon’s system will spot the competitors’ prices and adjust accordingly within a few days. If that doesn’t work, there’s an option to inform Amazon about a cheaper price on the product page. Supply the links to the Kobo, Nook and iTunes editions. Hopefully Amazon will take notice. Failing that, e‑mail KDP Support and ask if they will consider adjusting the price.

In a perfect world we’d be able to set prices which reflect the months of work it takes to write a novel. It can seem rather painful to sell a book for less than a cup of coffee, but those low prices can lead to high sales. Use pricing wisely, don’t over-value your first book, and devise a long term writing strategy. As your catalogue of titles grows, you’ll establish yourself with readers and add value to your brand.

Author Central

The UK and US Amazon sites include author pages. This is your opportunity to become more than a name to your readers. You can write a short autobiography and talk about your books. There is even room for photos and videos.

Personalising your author pages does require you to set up an account on Amazon’s UK and US Author Central websites: https://authorcentral.amazon.co.uk/ and https://authorcentral.amazon.com/. Use the same e‑mail and login details you use for KDP and CreateSpace. The two sites are almost identical. I suggest you have them both open at the same time so you can be sure your edits match.

You should add a photograph of yourself. Make sure it looks professional – ideally a studio shot. Its width should be 300 pixels. You can, if you wish, add a banner image as well. Write a short piece about yourself and your book. Either first- or third-person narration is suitable. Keep it normal and don’t try to throw in ‘witty’ remarks about how your pet cat governs your life, or comments of that ilk. The focus should be on you as a thriller writer. A concise paragraph – comparable in length to your book’s back cover copy – is more than enough.

Another really nice aspect of Author Central is it displays your book cover on your author page and provides links to the product page. This doesn’t happen automatically though, so you have to search for and claim your book in both of your Author Central accounts. The process is straightforward and updates go live on Amazon very quickly.

A good author page is a promotional tool. It’s great that a self-publisher can have biographical information on the Amazon platform just like a traditionally published author, with no obvious distinction. A biographical page on Amazon gives credibility to your work. Make sure you set up your Author Central accounts and make use of this helpful feature. You can do this at any time, but I suggest you do this as soon as possible after publishing your book.

Creating a personal website

One of the best ways of supporting your book is with a website. It doesn’t need a huge amount of content. You could cover everything you need with a single page if you want to keep it really simple, but remember the focus must be on you and your thriller. You might wish to include an expanded version of your Author Central biography. Readers will probably enjoy some behind-the-scenes information about your book. And you should definitely include links to your book on the retailers’ websites. A site requires two things: a hosting service and a domain name.

Squarespace (https://www.squarespace.com/) is one of the leading service providers. The site which accompanies this book, www.thrillerwriting.guide, is hosted on Squarespace. Once you’ve acquired your domain name and hosting package you can pick a template for your site design. Squarespace uses content blocks for the site’s layout. This provides a dynamic design which scales according to the device on which the site is viewed. You can experiment with different templates and shuffle the blocks until you find a style you like. It takes a little getting used to initially, but there is a lot of support material available for reference.

Some authors write blogs on their sites. If you’re interested in blogging, make sure you can maintain the commitment and energy it requires. Don’t let it encroach on your novel writing. There’s also the design factor to consider. Blogs are rather ugly things to look at. Good websites these days are uncluttered and use minimalist and clean designs. Your website represents you as a brand, so think carefully about its content.

I said I wouldn’t talk much about marketing ideas in this book, but one suggestion that comes up a lot and is worth a mention is the e‑mail list. Inviting readers to sign up to an e‑mail list means you can keep them updated about new books. MailChimp (http://mailchimp.com/) provides a free service for up to 2,000 subscribers. As well as providing a sign-up link on your website, you can include it in the e‑book editions of your novel. By US law, you are required to include a postal address on subscription-based e‑mails. You should never include your home address. Consider setting up a low-cost account with a mail forwarding service. That way you can use a business address on your e‑mails without risking your privacy. ScanMyPost (https://www.scanmypost.co.uk/) is one example. Alternatively, search for mail forwarding online.

It’s fairly easy to work out the URLs you’ll need for creating hyperlinks to your book on Amazon and the other retailers.

The link to the Kindle version of your book will look like this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/ASIN

You’ll need to replace ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) with the actual number. This can be found on your book’s product page or in your KDP account. For the US, Canada and Australia store links, replace .co.uk with .com, .ca and .com.au respectively.

The link to the paperback version of your book is more complicated. You may not feel the need to add this because the paperback can be found from the Kindle page, but if you do want to include a direct link it will look something like this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Title-Author/dp/??????/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

The URL will include the book’s title and your name. There will also be a reference number in place of the question marks. The easiest way to find the link is to search for your paperback on Amazon. The displayed URL will be longer than this because it includes search parameters. Once you have it, trim it down as shown. There will be .com and .ca versions of the link for the US and Canada stores.

You’ll only need one link for Kobo as it will redirect based on your location. The link will look like this:

https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/book-title

You should search the Kobo site to check the link. Kobo only uses the book’s title in the hyperlink. Therefore, if your title already exists on someone else’s book, you may find a numerical suffix added at the end.

The Barnes & Noble link for the Nook version of your book will be lengthy. It usually takes this format:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/title-author/######?ean=B&N

The hash symbols will be a site-generated number. B&N will be the B&N identifier for your book which you can find in your Nook Press account. You’ll need to search the site to find the URL.

The iTunes link will follow this format:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/id#######

The hashes represent the Apple ID number, which will be shown on the product page for your book. This is not the ISBN that Draft2Digital assigns to your book. You’ll be able to create links to the various iTunes sites by replacing gb with ie, us, ca, au and nz.

It isn’t essential to provide links to every store from your site. If, for example, you only use the .com address for Amazon, customers will have the opportunity to click a redirect link to their local Amazon. But I think it’s a little more helpful to provide direct links from my site, so I include them all.

Visit http://www.ashgreenslade.com/books.html to see how I’ve set out my hyperlinks.

As an alternative to linking to a single book’s product page on Amazon, you could provide a link to your author page. That way you can show off all your books in one place. The link to your page will look like this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Author-Name/e/##########

The hash symbols represent a number generated by Amazon. You’ll be able to find this by searching for your author page and examining the search URL. The same number is used for both the UK and US versions of Author Central, so the only other adjustment you’ll need to make will be to replace .co.uk with .com.

A website is the best platform for presenting yourself to the world. It establishes identity, reputation and quality. It has more substance and sincerity than a social media account. It provides an anchor point for your novels and a connection to your readers. Make yourself accessible by providing a contact form or e‑mail address, and always reply to questions and comments to make your readers feel valued. Your website represents you, the author-entrepreneur. Make it special.

Some final thoughts

I’m proud to say I’ve achieved my childhood ambition of being a writer. I knew I wanted to tell stories as soon as I could read books on my own. My love of books endures, and I still have a lot in common with my five-year-old self. Reading never ceases to be escapism for me. Now, as a writer, I can be thrilled by a story and decide upon the ending. I love the creative experience of plotting and writing a novel. I’m proud to call myself a writer.

Publishing a book is a milestone. Once you’ve done it you can claim the title of author, but writing one story is only the first step. A humble writer is never satisfied and always strives to do better next time. Language is too vast to be tamed and too ethereal to capture. As writers we never achieve mastery. We keep learning as we venture into our imaginations. Creativity is a joy but it’s not without its faults.

The trouble with creativity is its stubborn resistance to pragmatism. The dreamy stuff has no value on its own. It needs to be grappled with and hammered into shape. Self-publishing gives us the tools to produce a book, but the hard work of writing and rewriting the novel has to be done first. Writing is not an indulgence. It takes considerable effort and determination. Think of it as a chore and you might as well give up. Approach it with the right attitude and you’ll enjoy it immensely.

This non-fiction book has been a fun project for me. I love sharing ideas, so being able to compile something useful for others is particularly satisfying. Combining aspects of thriller writing technique with the practicalities of self-publishing seemed logical. I’m amazed that no one did it before me. I’d love to know if you’ve found this book useful. Let me know when you publish your thriller! Thank you for reading.

Resources for the self-publisher

Author’s websites

http://thrillerwriting.guide/

http://www.ashgreenslade.com/

Books on writing technique

The Successful Novelist, David Morrell.

Save the Cat!, Blake Snyder.

International Thriller Writers organisation

http://thrillerwriters.org/

The Big Thrill online magazine

http://www.thebigthrill.org/

Self-publishing websites

https://www.createspace.com/

https://kdp.amazon.com/

https://www.kobo.com/writinglife

https://www.nookpress.com/ebooks

E‑book distributor

https://www.draft2digital.com/

Adobe Digital Editions

http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/digital-editions/download.html

Apple iBook Author

http://www.apple.com/uk/ibooks-author/

Author Central websites

https://authorcentral.amazon.co.uk/

https://authorcentral.amazon.com/

Book cover designers

http://www.derangeddoctordesign.com/

https://damonza.com/

http://www.bookflydesign.com/

Stock photography

http://www.shutterstock.com/

Website domains and hosting

https://www.squarespace.com/

E‑mail subscription provider

http://mailchimp.com/

Keyboards and mice

http://www.logitech.com/

Typography tips

https://www.typewolf.com/

Currency conversion

http://www.xe.com/

STATION HELIX

An inexplicable suicide…

A devastating car wreck…

A secret Ministry of Defence facility…

Told with pace and tension, STATION HELIX is an exciting and modern novel rooted in the tradition of British thrillers.

Alex Hannay makes a shocking discovery which draws him into a perilous world of conspiracy and murder. As operatives from the CIA pursue their own operation on the streets of London, Alex is torn between protecting those who share his secret and seeking retribution for a terrible crime.

THE ELZEVIR COLLECTIVE

A troubled assassin…

A bitter betrayal…

A sequence of brutal deaths…

Alex Hannay returns in THE ELZEVIR COLLECTIVE as an unearthed secret rocks Great Britain’s Ministry of Defence.

Alex has to set aside doubts about his future and form unexpected alliances as Charlotte Black’s MOD team attempts to bring down the mastermind behind an unsanctioned Station Helix project. As the mystery deepens, it seems an old adversary is more ruthless and powerful than Alex and his friends ever imagined.

TORUS

A secret cabal…

A conspiracy in Europe…

A desire for vengeance…

Alex Hannay faces a stark choice in TORUS as the new Discretionary Tactical Unit endeavours to destroy a powerful spymaster network.

As CIA director Saul Poindexter and his associates plan a catastrophic event in Germany, Charlotte Black and Jack Caldwell struggle to find evidence against the conspirators. Meanwhile Chris Loner runs into a Mossad hit squad in France, and finds himself on a path which leads back to Alex and the Ministry of Defence.

WATCH THEM DIE

An irreverent sociopath…

A secure mental health facility…

A collection of dangerous minds…

WATCH THEM DIE is the story of a serial killer who finds himself in intriguing company within the walls of a modern day lunatic asylum.

With a unique and unnervingly objective viewpoint, the protagonist challenges society’s perception of sanity with a bluntness that will chill your blood.