Plot A Thriller Backwards! | How To Plot A Thriller

hello everyone Alexa done here and today I am going to be sharing how I plot a thriller which is backwards so this is my method for plotting a thriller from the end back and that's the amazing thing I am an unrepentant panther but the truth is I do technically plot my thrillers or I plot enough so that I can discovery write a lot of the thriller but I wanted to share how I have figured out how to plot thrillers so that I have enough substance and structure so that the writing process goes very well and everything kind of hangs together now I haven't invented the wheel here I got this great advice from a friend of mine of how she approached thrillers and I tried it and it worked super well for me with the IV's which is my debut wife thriller that's coming out in 2021 from penguin Random House and I've also used it to plot my next wife thriller that I've already started because this method gives me enough to get going and I'm also using it to plot and work on two adult thrillers so this is just my method and how I do it but I'm hoping it could help some of you cuz multiple of you have said how do you plot a thriller I know I at one point dreamed of writing thrillers and mysteries but I had no idea how to and I thought I could never pull it off because a good mystery thriller is so intricate and complex and it seemed beyond me but trust me if you do it this way if you start this way it helps you with those foundational building blocks because all good mysteries and thrillers have this base foundation and it's layering complexity on top of that that leads to that final product that we all have to start somewhere so the first tip / step is you start with the motive why would someone want to kill someone do something horrible commit a crime not all thrillers are gonna hinder on a murder but most of them are so you're answering the question what is a bonkers reason that someone would kill someone sometimes the motive is also your twist so really this step is twist slash motive both are very valid ways to work backwards on a thriller but essentially knowing the big thing around which your story will hinge helps you put together all the other pieces that I'm going to talk about it could be a Bunker's reason that someone would want someone to die it could be a crazy reason for someone to be killed it could be a really great twist for who has done something but usually the WHO and the why do go together but I have both started with a motive so on the Ivies I knew the reason that someone was going to die and I built the entire book around that because I was like that's a great mother for murder it's a boggers motive for murder how do I write a book around this whereas on my second thriller that I'm working on I actually started with a twist I knew the who I was like it would be pretty crazy if this type of person was a killer and then I had to work back on the why and the what and all of those things but you want to start there because essentially it is your big third-act twist and I believe that the end of a thriller is the most important part of a thriller I mean all aspects of a thriller have to work but a bad ending so a lackluster twist a poorly executed twist a motive that doesn't make sense can ruin an otherwise pretty good mystery or thriller I think we've all read those books where we were super on board and then the ending was just whatever so by working backwards and making sure you have a very very solid end point you can structure everything around that and and hopefully it all goes well I mean you still have to accomplish the craft to make it all work but that's a later problem this is just the beginning of plotting and structure so I talked about the why and the heart of a motive is a why and so in addition to having the real motive the real reason that someone has died you're gonna have to come up with a bunch of alternates additional reasons that a specific victim could be a victim because those Y's are going to become your red herrings because not just your actual villain is going to have that motive you need to have a bunch of other people in the story who equally have a very good twisty reason to want the person dead or to do the crime whatever to do the thing because those are going to become your mr. X your red herrings and they need to be good too they shouldn't be totally kind of in because if they're not equally as juicy or like almost as juicy as the actual reason they're not going to actually fool readers or they'll just disappoint them but be careful don't make someone else's motive juicier than the real motive generally you want to have your juiciest motive or twist saved for the end so from this motive slash twist your next going to come up with your third act set piece this is the scene the setting the series of events that are going to lead up to and comprised of your climax the climax of a thriller that third act moment when the motive is revealed the twist who the killer is etc that is what everyone reads a thriller for everything is building up to that big moment at about the 70 to 80% mark of your book and this again is where a book can really really fall apart so I find that it's really helpful to have a vivid idea in mind of where everything is going to go down and usually you're able to derive what would be ideal from the motive / the killer we're gonna talk about the killer you're like you haven't even mentioned figuring out who the killer is amazingly at least on the IV's I did all this other stuff first so I'm sharing my process and how it worked for me it is going to be a little bit different with every book on the second why thriller since I started with twists rather than simple motive I got twist and killer in the same step so these steps can kind of move around a bit but either way you're definitely starting with why flash twist slash who like they all kind of go together sometimes you will work back from a victim but it totally depends it's gonna be a little bit different every time and we're gonna talk about victims too so third act set piece so in the IVs for example well first of all I knew based on the kind of book I wanted to write I knew that it was competitive college admissions and murder and once I came up with a good motive I worked back and said a really great third act set piece in books like this that I really enjoy since it is set in high school this is why a you have to do a big house party bunch of teens in a house in has fairly secluded area and [ __ ] goes down this is just a great trope that you see not only in books but in movies it's the scream trope which took that from other things so I knew I wanted to have third act set peace be in a mansion house party from there I was able to work back because all of a sudden it's like okay well why are they there who owns this house and this helped me to start to piece together characters character relationships and so let's talk about killer and victim this is going to be your next step or as I mentioned sometimes it'll come a little before but you do of course once you know a motive and a twist and a third X that piece well who did the thing and who died so you're gonna do brainstorming to think up good victims sometimes you might have already been coming up with characters for iller and so you can work from that of well I have these who do I want to knock off but if you are truly working backwards without having come up with characters first you're going to think about archetypes and thrillers the good news is there are plenty or archetypes that fit women your story you're gonna have different character tropes and archetypes if you're writing a boarding-school thriller versus one of those domestic suspense for a year-old divorcee types obviously in something like that your cast of characters will in include things like the cheating ex possibly a new boyfriend depending on the situation there could be an investigator a cop character there's often a best friend or multiple kind of keeping up with Joneses Tech characters there's the person that the husband probably had an affair with so on and so forth there could be a therapist and a lot of adult thrillers so there's there's a cast of characters neighbors in a boarding school thriller of course it's going to be a collection of students there might be teachers there might be administrators at a school and so you have a cast of people and you need to decide well what is my greatest impact of I have this motive and twist in mind who can I kill where it would fit this motive and twist but also be high impact the victim is really really important enough filler because the reader kind of has to care certainly on the surface or it's a love to hate thing you can have a character that they actually don't like and they die and generally you always need to have your victim have layers have secrets that are unexpected a part of the investigation thread of a thriller you're always going to be uncovering secrets things that weren't previously known so having a really complex victim is important especially the type who seems like one thing on the surface or to the investigator character here we're going to talk about in a minute but was something different and in cases where it's not so much a murder book but it's more of those domestic suspense books where it's like something creepy is going on and it's leading up to there's a bad guy but it's not necessarily about murder you're gonna have that appearances aren't what they seem layer secrets kind of thing it just it's balls on to a different character rather than a victim character so the dance that you have to do is ideal victim a victim who is compelling enough to have the reader have feelings about them either oh I really liked them but then they had such dark secrets I don't know how I feel or I really hated that person I'm kind of glad they're dead but look at this rabbit hole of all the secrets and then you need to think well so who's my best killer you always want there to be a shock factor to the killer hopefully and if there isn't a shock factor because so many of us we read domestic suspense thalers for example where half the time it's probably the husband or the ex or whatever or the new boyfriend that's an expected trope it's not disappointing that it's not completely shocking but where you get the surprise factor and the shock factor is making sure you work a lot of complexity into secret's uncovered motive method you know for example when you have the trope in thrillers of the controlling psychopath type character you get a lot of the shock factor from motive you get a lot of the shock factor from method the things that this person has done so just bear that in mind but also in certain types of thrillers it's the killer who you least expect that's a very common choice that's been in thriller so you definitely want to think about the combination of someone who will have a lot of shock factor but where the motive slash twist is still going to be fully organic you never want it to come out of left field that this sweet loveable character is really a psychopath that's really hard to pull off but you do have to make a decision in this planning stage on victim for sure but honestly there's nothing wrong with starting off your thriller if you start writing and our discovery writer like me or even if you're a crazy outliner having a couple killer options and you can actually make the decision once you started writing don't you don't want to get too far into it and then change dreams but you get to at least act to and theoretically change your killer if you have those multiple motives going this is why I start with motive because if the motive is strong enough and your backup motives that support your red herrings are strong enough really anyone could be the killer so the next step is will who's your main character and again this is plotting a thriller backwards because you would think it would be illogical start with your main care of your POV character but what I like so much about working backwards is you end up selecting a POV character a main character the investigator character the person who propels the investigation part of the plot that the reader follows and is in their perspective and they go on the journey with that character you can pick the ideal character and POV based on your motive and or twist and your victim because you're working backwards going well who is the best character that I either already have or can invent for this story who will be a good reader insert someone that they can relate to someone that they can like or love to hate that works to someone who will have the motivation to push through an investigation sometimes this is the person who loved the victim and wants justice character and other times it's the person who also had a motive to hurt the victim and has to go through the investigation because they are a potentially guilty party and they have to get the investigation off of them you can go with different motivations for your investigator character and either way that you go you want to craft that character so that they're likable but imperfect because unless you give them fuzz it's not gonna add enough conflict to the investigation there's a reason that there's a trope in thrillers where the main character is like a borderline obsessive person with anxiety who makes that choices sometimes because that's how you propel forward in an investigation there's always this spot in the thriller where they do something really really stupid where you're like why did you do that but if they don't do it the plot doesn't happen so you really want to think about all of those factors when you pick your main character investigator character one good tip choice can be picking the outsider it's often an outsider from the world of wherever you're setting your thriller who is able to ask questions or give contacts to your reader that an insider character it would be inorganic and feel like info dumping if they did the same thing but what's nice about using an outsider is that it gives you some excuses for certain types of exposition so for example in the IV's I did go with an outsider an other character so my main character and this was a work back from the victim who is hey rich girl at a boarding school my other character my investigator character is the scholarship kid who is implicated and has to basically save her own butt but because she is an outsider there's a lot of reasoning for her to explain to the reader what this world is because this is a world that she's not fully comfortable in that she was new to a few years ago though she is on another level an expert character so having an expert character is another choice that you can combine with an outsider that is the character who's intimately familiar with the world that springs up around your mode of your twisted cetera usually the type of thriller you want to write and the motive will tell you what your world is much like with character domestic suspense about a 40 year old divorcee being different from a boarding-school thriller but a character who is intimately familiar with some aspect of the world so in those domestic suspense ones it often is the socialite who understands certain aspects of the world or it's the perfect housewife who understands the PTA landscape in my book even though my main character is an outsider to the privilege of the world she has learned the game of competitive college admissions which is a huge point of my thriller and so she comes with a level of arrogance and expertise about that aspect of the thriller world which brings me to setting which is the last and final step because once you have your motive slash twist killer victim work multiple killer options your third act set piece and your main investigator character you have a pretty good world where this is set so your next job is to flesh out build that setting and make decisions a good thriller has enough specificity and decisions that you've made before you start writing doesn't have to be rigid outlining I do not we outline these throughs but obviously I have a lot of elements that are pre-planned and set out that add structure to the world of the thriller and that's what you're doing when you're making specific choices about your setting I mentioned domestic thrillers well there's a huge difference between your woman and an unhappy marriage being in an unhappy marriage versus already being divorced there's a difference between making her a rich woman in Manhattan versus a PTA mom in Ohio and those choices about setting have ripples in why a the boarding school thriller at the rich school versus the small town secrets book or the normal us high school book flushing up the setting is actually also gonna help you with some of those motives so if you couldn't come up with all of the red herring motives first sometimes you start with just one good motive and it's actually the setting step that helps you figure out other ones other times it's the victim step that's gonna help you flush out that list but setting to setting can add a lot of good motives to things because when you figure out details of your world whether it's the rich Manhattanite the PTA mom in Ohio or the elite East Coast boarding school you come up with the list of okay well what are some social dynamics that happen in these types of settings and you get to make choices about the characters backstory where they are how they feel about their environment the other characters who fill out this environment and some of the rules and structure of the place where your thriller is going to take place this includes things like privilege part of that backstory how unreliable you want to make your investigator character because inevitably a choice you definitely are also going to have to make as part of the cast of characters and setting is how law enforcement is going to play a part sometimes your investigator character is law enforcement and that brings up a whole set of setting and world building things that you have to consider of the main character be being as literal cop FBI agent that sort of thing because that's going to change their relation to everyone that'll change the kind of set of circumstances and rules for that character or inevitably again in books for those murders or crimes taking place unless things are really shady for specific reasons there's probably gonna be some kind of law enforcement who comes into play at some point so I do think it's important to decide early on as part of your structuring your thriller how you want to approach this a very common approach in trope again is where the main character is a potential suspect like they would have a reason to kill the person or do the thing and the cops are kind of off balance with them and they start to think maybe they're a suspect and you create an adversarial relationship between your main character and your cop character and so thinking about how the law enforcement elements plays in your book there's a difference between small-town local cops and big-city cops there's a difference between the FBI versus cops you have to decide on how competent your cop slash investigator character is and kind of the stretch of kind of disbelief if you make them less competent in order to help out your character so I do think it's a good idea to make a few basic decisions about this before you start because brushes with law enforcement is a pretty expected beat in your average thriller even if it's the bog-standard the character goes to the cops to try to get help and they won't help them that's a common one in kind of the thrillers where there's a lot of gas lighting unreliable narrator for example where maybe a crime has taken place so people don't believe someone so you need to think about kind of how Authority how legal authority or other types of authority works in your world another example so the woman in Cabin 10 where a character's convinced that someone's been murdered and no one believes her there's no cop on board there's no FBI she's on a boat but there are characters of authority the captain on the boat that she goes to for help and there are brushes and interactions there so you want to kind of think about that aspect of the structure of your world and this is all going to bring you to figuring out your first act so this is the closest I get to outlining bearing in mind remember I know my third act set-piece so I know ahead of time the climax of my third act and then I structure and outline my first act because I have all of these elements and it all leads up to a murder so again you can work backwards you know that someone has to die or something terrible has to happen typically this is your inciting incident depending on what type of theater you're writing so we're backwards think of a creative fun way that a body can be discovered or something can be overheard there can be a witness situation or something really really terrible can happen and then work backwards from that you're going to need a few points of setup you want to establish the world that the characters live in kind of the status quo the before everything goes crazy moment and you want those scenes to be appropriate to both the world and the character so you want to plan a few beats that are gonna lead up to whatever that inciting incident is and from the inciting incident I also do recommend planning as much as you can before you start the series of mini beats that come after that there are going to lead to typically it's called the break into two band in a thriller it's the literal decision to investigate its that crisis point that decision point with your main character the investigator character to basically propel forward to solve the thing to fix the thing I like to plot up to that point whenever possible before I start I'm going to do a whole separate video on thriller beats because there are specific thriller beats that work with traditional book structure but also some special ones beats / tropes that can really help you to structure your thriller but this has been your guide to how to plot your thriller backwards how to start at the end and work your way back to hopefully come up with a sound structure for writing a mystery or thriller again this is based on my personal experience I hope I did an okay job at explaining this it's very complicated especially because there's so many different kinds of and mysteries obviously I'm hinged on motive and murder but as I tried to cover there are all sorts of different kind of story structures but generally there's always gonna be a motive for doing something bad there's always going to be an antagonist of some kind and a victim of some kind since sometimes the victim is the investigator character you always do need that main character who thrusts the plot forward who does the main investigating or plot propulsion of your thriller so that's how to plot a thriller backwards let me know down below in the comments did this help you have you plotted books like this before how do you pot thrillers if you're a thriller writer and give this video a thumbs up if you like and I will make more videos all about writing thrillers if you're not are subscribed to the channel go ahead and do that I post new videos two to three times a week and as always thank you so much for watching and happy writing

Channel: Alexa Donne

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Keywords: alexa donne, author tube, writing advice, how to write a book, publishing advice, Plot A Thriller Backwards!, thriller plot, thriller plotting, how to plot a thriller, how to write a thriller, thriller writing

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Length: 25min 19sec (1519 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 17 2020