Psychological thrillers rely on crafting a thriller around the human psyche, exploring complex themes and blurring the lines between the concepts of sanity and insanity. Although psychological thrillers follow the same ideas as regular thrillers with suspense, an action-packed plot, and constant mixed signals to keep the audience strung along, there are still things that make a psychological thriller more defined and interesting. So, here’s how you can write your own amazing psychological thriller that will leave your readers wanting more.
What is a Psychological Thriller?
A psychological thriller is basically a thriller that focuses more on the mental and emotional side of the characters than a standard thriller does. Stories that fall under psychological thrillers often dive into the fears, obsessions, internal conflicts, the blurred lines of reality, and more. Traditional thrillers tend to focus heavily on the idea of an external threat, but psychological thrillers tend to emphasize the internal threats of the characters, with the psyche being the primary threat of the story.
Essentially, a psychological thriller tends to use the conflict structure of person vs self, and if you want to learn more about the different types of conflicts, you can check out this post.
There are many things that are present in the psychological thriller world, including the unreliable narrator, the idea of mind games, deception, a tense atmosphere, and plenty of plot twists. I find that psychological thrillers tend to do a great job of inducing fear in the viewer to the point where they may feel like even horror stories.
How to Write a Psychological Thriller
Start With a Concept
The first thing you need to do when you go to write a psychological thriller is to think about the concept that you will build your story around. When you create your concept, you want to think about what your ultimate goal is and what ideas you want readers to take away from your story when they’re done reading.
I think it’s also important to think about what psychological angle you want to take the story from, such as mental illness, ethical/moral dilemmas, or something similar.
Work on Your Characters
The next thing you want to do after you’ve come up with a concept is to think about your characters and what your goal is with these characters. Developing and creating memorable characters is something important for any psychological thriller, as these stories tend to be more character-driven.
If you want readers to feel engaged with your story, you want to add interesting characters and work on their development, so if you want to learn about writing great characters, check out this post.
You’ll want to think about who your protagonist is and why this particular character is the main narrator/voice of the story. What makes this character intriguing? What internal conflicts do they face throughout the story? You also want to think about the antagonist of the story, and what conflict type you’re going to be using: Person vs person, person vs self, etc… The antagonist could be the protagonist’s own mind, or someone close to them, but it has to serve the dark plot that you’re building in order to write a proper psychological thriller.
Furthermore, you can consider turning your protagonist into an unreliable narrator. An unreliable narrator is something that I’ve discussed before on my page and it’s a very powerful way you can tell a story. The unreliable narrator has the ability to essentially make the reader question reality from the narrator’s mind, thus adding a level of mystery to the overall story.
Work on Your Plot Outline
After figuring out your characters, you want to work on the outline for your actual plot. I’ve discussed this in-depth on my blog before, so you should go check that out for extra information.
What you want to think about is the major points of your story, the climax, how the characters will change throughout, and more. You can also follow the three-act structure, which I have a diagram of below:
Work on the Setting and its Tone
The setting is an important part of any story, but it’s very important in a psychological thriller because it can represent a symbolic piece of the story. The setting can reflect the psychological state of the characters. With the right tone and mood for your story, you can show how the setting is eerie, dark, and possibly changes as the character goes throughout the story.
The setting is a pretty big deal in a psychological thriller, and if you need help figuring out how to pick a setting, check out this post.
Suspense and Plot Twists
Suspense is a big deal in any thriller, and it’s very vital to the way a psychological thriller is written. Suspense helps to build a level of mystery in the story, causing the reader to feel on edge as they read, unsure of what’s going to happen next. Plot twists are also a great way to surprise readers, and these are enhanced greatly by including suspense.
You want to also place clues and red herrings–or false leads–in the story in order to add even more to the suspense and mystery of what’s going on. You’re playing on psychology in a psychological thriller, so it’s important to use the unease and dread of a thriller to your advantage.
Play with the Pacing
If you want to enhance your story even more, you’ll want to play around a bit with the pacing of your story. I’ve talked about pacing in other situations before, such as writing a chapter, but pacing is an important concept to story-writing overall.
Striking a balance between fast and slow paced scenes is an important one in writing a great psychological thriller story. Exchanging speeds allows for you to build suspense and add in action that actually has some sort of meaning for the story.
Slow pacing provides great suspense and builds tension while quick pacing is great in moments of action or horror.
Choose a Point of View
For your story, you’ll want to figure out what point of view you want to include in order to enhance the psychological thriller’s effect on the reader.
First-person point of view is typically more intimate and connects the reader in a great way with the main character(s) of the story. Additionally, first person makes it a bit easier to convey the unreliable narrator, should you choose to go for that style.
Third-person comes in the omniscient or limited form, and can be a bit different and a bit similar to first-person, depending on which form you pick. Omniscient means the narrator describes everything, not just the main character’s view of the world in that moment. Limited focuses on one character or just a few characters, and only those characters. The limited version doesn’t bother much with side characters’ points of view in the story.
By choosing a point of view, you can determine how the reader can interact with the story. It depends as well on your story’s goal and what themes and messages you want to convey.
Conduct Proper Research
Doing the right amount of research is a really important thing in writing a story that has elements of psychology in it. Psychological thrillers revolve and focus heavily on the idea of the human psyche and what goes on in and around a person and their view of the world.
Researching psychological conditions, what it’s like to have certain mental illnesses, as well as other things like places, concepts, themes, ideas, etc… can help really enhance your story. I’ve discussed research techniques before on my blog, so you should go and check that post out for more information.
Ultimately, a psychological thriller does a lot in terms of building intense moments and has a high emphasis on the state of a human’s mind. By including things you’ve researched, as well as including things like suspense and an unreliable narrator, you can really show off your writing skills and keep readers hooked along with your story.
I read one book called Th1rt3en by Steve Cavanaugh and that thriller is a perfect example of what a thriller should be like. It’s dark, balances the pacing well, works heavily with human psychology, and includes a lot of page-turning moments. I picked this book up and finished it in one day and gave it 5-stars immediately.
And before you head on out, check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga, which includes a lot of elements from this post in it. Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter to get updates on my posts, book releases, WIPs, and more!