Life is a thrill. I´ll take an everyday situation and ask the question what if. What if someone turned up, something happened, and the world is a changed place already. Then I will take the genre relevant ingredients and mix together a story worth reading.
A story that takes my readers to a fictional place in a fictional world. A story that allows them to dream themselves away on a journey of thrills, twists, and turns. A story that feels like riding a rollercoaster on the loose.
The elements of the psychological thriller are both gripping and subtle. In the human mind, there are many shadows. I want to explore some of the shadows in the human mind. Maybe just to remind me that we are all fragile inside as well as in touch with evil.
But most of all, to let the horses finally run free, to let my fingers dance across the keyboard to the music in my ears, to let my imagination and my experience form a story like none written before. A high aim it is, I know.
The doubt in me disappeared with the discovered love for writing, reading, and creating little stories worth reading. I´m not into the fast action scene with gory details over and over again. I have read enough about, seen enough of it.
Psychological violence is just as dangerous, action-packed, and scary. The way manipulative people have ways to get under our skin. Little by little, seemingly innocent little clues to something going really wrong, really fast, and really serious.
Life has taught me to handle my life experiences well so that they do not show in my writing too much. I keep personal scars to myself for they serve no longer anyone. But I watch and notice people around me. People are capable of anything under the right circumstances.
To try to stop evil from winning the cat-and-mouse game is also an inner moral struggle. Humans share both good and evil. We live with inherent evil in ourselves. But there is a huge leap into the abyss of mental distortions from that.
It raises a question: Are some people born evil? And if so, how do we handle them when we come across them? What is right, and what is wrong? Below, I have listed some of the elements of the psychological thriller that I´m currently working with in my novel:
- Fear and anxiety in unpredictable ways, unstable characters, and distorted perceptions
- Unreliable narrator, third-person limited, and past tense
- Conflict between the minds of the villain and the hero, high stakes, backstory with present effect, and dual climax
- Ticking clock, MacGuffin, and surprise effect in the end
- Dark foreshadowing, the threat of the story, and all about the villain vs. the hero
- Side-kicks with inner conflicts and baggage, character growth/lack of growth, and moral dilemmas
There are many more to pick from because a psychological thriller is almost always present in some form in a thriller as in the term of genre expectations. I will update this blog post when I pick something else to work with from the many tropes of the thriller genre.
At the moment, I´m transferring my handwritten notes to the laptop. I have chosen to create a folder only for my novel. So it is a kind of melting-pot from which I can pull background information when I´m writing my novel.
I´m also contemplating the plot, but it takes time and many considerations before I´m truly ready to write freely. I will write both a short and a long synopsis, perhaps try out the Snowflake Method where you build on first a sentence, then a paragraph and so on.
My novel structure will be like this: minimum exposition to present characters, setting, and conflict, rising action and the calm before storm, climax, falling action with surprise, denouement and the least of two bad choices with a twist and a surprise ending.
My husband and I have long conversations where we discuss the novel in details. After that, I write on the journal entries of my characters and my other detailed folders. Every time, there is a new layer to deal with. One thing is to describe people, another matter is to show it in the writing.
So for my novel, I will work hard with my descriptions so that my characters show what they feel and think about their situation. I like the idea of an unreliable narrator who engages the reader in the story if told well.
In the psychological cat-and-mouse game, it is all about outsmarting the villain. It is also about having believable and relatable characters. My novel deals with the unnoticed dramas in the everyday. Where psychological violence is often overlooked and almost tabooed.
We humans don´t like to look ourselves in the mirror and find the inherent evil that all humans share. We are afraid of evil. We should be. But we should also be better to deal with the effects of evil, especially in everyday circumstances.
Maybe then we could learn to understand and help the victims of manipulative people much better than we do today. To recover from the chaos after psychological violence is both a matter of choice and a long path to walk.
It is a matter of choice because we must learn to say nay to dominating and manipulative people in due time before they get under our skin and hurt us for life. It is a long path to walk for often the manipulation is deeply rooted and not easily exchanged with a more positive outlook on life.
Now it is time to end this blog post with my best wishes for the weekend and the coming week to my readers and followers. May you be able to outlive your dreams and make the best out of everything. And may creativity and joy of life be a growing part of your lives. Yes, So Mote It Be.
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