My Process For Developing My Latest Thriller Ideas
A pantser's approach to story development
With Project Puzzle — aka: An Inheritance So Deadly — well and truly in the query trenches, I’m finally ready to throw myself into a new project.
I’ve been on a thriller roll the last couple of years, so I’ve decided to develop two new thriller ideas. These two ideas came to me in different ways and have taken very different planning and drafting approaches. As a pantser (someone who doesn’t plot their books before writing) I am just riding the wave of inspiration.
Idea #1 — small town mystery about a missing brother
You may have seen me mention this idea before. I currently have 17,000 words written on Project Home. I started writing this while waiting for beta feedback on “Inheritance”. With more revising to do and then querying, the story fell by the wayside. Now, I’m excited to jump back into it.
Despite the break, I love this story. It explores complex and messy relationships with flawed people and takes place in the Scottish Highlands. It’s raw and I suppose something of a slow burn.
Here are some quick insights:
Genres: mystery, probably more suspenseful than thrilling
Comps: What Lies In The Woods by Kate Alice Marshall and Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Narration: third person past tense
POVs: 1 (maybe 2, I haven’t decided)
Timelines: 1
How the idea developed
To be honest, I can’t remember if there was more to how this idea sparked. All I remember is thinking about a woman coming home to her small town and finding her brother missing.
I imagined that she hadn’t been home for ages and that her brother sent her a message: come home. But when she arrives, he’s gone.
Then I got thinking about why he was gone and why he needed her to come home.
How I approached planning
First, I toyed with the reason for the brother’s absence. Was it by his own design (ie: run away/escaping) or someone else’s: (ie: kidnapping/murder)? I thought through both possibilities and decided on the one that felt most impactful and most able to support an entire plot (I can’t tell you which one because spoilers!).
I also considered why he had called the protagonist home. Something had to have spooked him, but what? This was where I uncovered their backstory. I fleshed out an incident involving their father and something very illegal buried on their property. Through this, I discovered that the reason the brother summoned her home was because someone wanted to buy their land. If they did, all those buried secrets would be revealed. This then gave cause for the protagonist wanting to investigate her brother’s absence on her own rather than with the support of police.
With a big police investigation out of the question, I started developing the other characters and exploring the protagonist’s previous life in the town. How long had she been gone? Who did she know who was still there? What friends or allies might she have there? Which enemies might she have?
This led to the inclusion of a police inspector who works against her, her brother’s friend who supports her, and a police sergeant/love interest she ends up working with unofficially.
Idea #2 - dual timeline engagement party murder
I recently drafted the opening chapters to this story — working title: Project Suspect. Unlike Project Home, this idea is much more vague, the plot a bit unclear, and the characters not as well known. But, despite that, I really like the idea and want to see what I can do with it.
Quick insights:
Genres: mystery, probably more heavy on the thrills and suspense
Comps: How To Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie and The Guest List by Lucy Foley
Narration: first person past and present tense
POVs: 1
Timelines: 2 (past and present)
How the idea developed
This idea came to me as a first sentence. I think it happened one night while I was falling asleep and then for several weeks I mulled the sentence over and considered the possibility of the story. I can’t share what that first sentence is without giving away the crux of the story, but I hope when I am able to share it that you’ll find it enticing.
Based on that first sentence, I needed to figure out the plot and characters.
How I approached planning
My approach to planning Project Suspect was much shorter than previous books. Although I don’t like to plan too much anyway, I will at least have the idea for a few weeks and mull over the essential plot points and character relationships. For this story, I had just about nothing planned before I started drafting. While it was fun, it’s also quite problematic to write whodunits with no sense of who did it, why, or how.
The first character to investigate was my protagonist. I was toying with how unreliable to make her as a narrator. Once I knew whether she was guilty and how much she was truly hiding, I’d know how to write her voice and I’d be able to figure out the rest of the plot.
Then I needed to figure out who the victim was. How were they connected to the protagonist? What kind of person were they? Why did they die and how were they killed?
I knew there would be a police investigation in this book, which isn’t something I’ve really done in my other thrillers. So I needed to consider that the method of murder had to make murder the obvious cause.
That was how I settled on the engagement party weekend. This was a chance to group all the characters in one place, build on interpersonal relationships, and make the weekend revolve around something specific.
Planning for Project Suspect was definitely more scattered and I found myself figuring things out as and when they cropped up, or having to go back and rewrite scenes because I didn’t know the characters well enough and I’d written them the wrong way.
There is definitely no right or wrong approach to planning. However, what I have learnt is that some amount of planning is needed before I draft so I can make drafting as productive as possible without stalling to plan my way out of potential plot holes.
How do you like to develop your story ideas? Let me know in the comments!
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