10 Commandments of the Thriller

I discovered Ronald Knox’s ‘10 Commandments of Detective Fiction’ in Benjamin Stevenson’s excellent Everybody in My Family Has Killed Someone. They are a list of all the common cheats authors shouldn’t use to get out of plot holes.

Here, I attempt to do something similar for thrillers.

1. All weird medical/psychological conditions must be clearly stated upfront — amnesia, multiple identity disorder, even fascinating ones like prosopagnosia — the inability to recognise faces. However, it cannot be the culminating deus ex machina. If there’s a medical condition, it must be upfront — à la Memento.
2. No psychopath children. Yeah, yeah, nature vs. nurture is a complex topic and all of that. But come on — preternaturally intelligent and evil children spawning in otherwise normal families is a deeply uninteresting choice.
3. 1 character, 1 perspective. When a novel is told from multiple perspectives, unless you’re using a timeskip or a source (like a diary, letters, etc.), a character cannot use multiple perspectives.
4. Everyman protagonists must act like Everymen. Aka, no blatantly accepting weird behaviour.
5. No miracle drugs. No drugs that specifically block out a singular event; no drugs that incapacitate a person in a very specific way but leave all their other faculties intact.
6. No weirdly helpful neighbours. I mean, come on, people — I’m all for loving thy neighbour — but helping them commit murder? I’m looking at you, Minka Kent.
7. No doppelgängers. Nuff said.
8. Stick to the framing. No random serial killers. If a novel is framed as more of a sober thriller, more murder-mystery type, then stick to the classic motives — money, love, and revenge. If it’s more of an FBI, Silence of the Lambs-type thriller, anything goes — but frame it.
9. Characters just have to do research. A character’s first attempt at murder cannot be perfect. They have to do their research, Amy Dunne–style.
10. Single-protagonist novel — no protagonist murderer. Yeah, everyone loves The Silent Patient. But when you have a singular perspective, and that perspective doesn’t incriminate itself until the very end, that’s blatant and shameless manipulation.