The Ingredients Of A Good Thriller (Paperback)

~ Chris Wood (Author)
Key Phrases: Good Thriller, Last But Not Least, Dirty Harry (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Ever wanted to write a thriller? Ever thought you had a story but didn't know where to start? This book gives you: - A detailed breakdown of characters. - Tips on getting the reader's attention. - Ways of effectively telling stories. - The impact of good dialogue. - Explorations of top thrillers. - Hints on how to give your story impact. "The Ingredients Of A Good Thriller" is a guide to an area that has huge potential and gives great pleasure. It's an easy to follow approach to writing and improving your story. It provides solid examples to show you what works - and what doesn't. Clear and easy to follow, this book is helpful for any thriller writer. Don't start without it!

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: LDB Publishing (November 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1906669007
• ISBN-13: 978-1906669003
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #106,111 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Keeping Readers Tense, December 16, 2008

By	Amos Lassen (Little Rock, Arkansas) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

Wood, Chris. "The Ingredients of a Good Thriller", LDB Publishing, 2008.

Keeping Readers Tense

Amos Lassen

There seem to be how to books for just about everything and now we can add "How to Write a Thriller". I doubt many people stop to think what an author needs in order to write a thriller. Chris Wood gives all the hints we need to be able to write a book to keep his readers on the edge of their chair. The book is short and goes right to the point. And it is not enough that he gives us what we need but he also gives us examples of books that are good thrillers--"The Godfather", "The Hound of the Baskervilles", "The Choirboys" and others and examples of movies that bring tension to the viewer---"Scarface", "Dial M for Murder", etc.
This is not the kind of book that I usually read or review but something about it spoke to me--maybe because I teach writing. The book is an interesting guide but it is by no means a complete guide as all of the various types of thrillers are not included. The ingredients are indeed here nut just not all of them. There is some good and worthwhile advice but I found the book not to be very helpful because of the way it is arranged and the fact that this book alone will not do the job. If there is no imagination, no book can tell you how to find one. A lot of what is said here is just common sense and therefore no book is really necessary. However I must reiterate--if there is no kernel in the brain it does not matter how many how to books exist.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Keeping It Real" ~ Situation, Characters And Setting, March 14, 2009

By	Brian E. Erland "Rainbow Sphinx" (CA - USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Chris Wood's slender 221 page soft cover book `The Ingredients Of A Good Thriller' is a highly readable and surprisingly entertaining exploration of the necessary elements the would be novelist must consider when sitting down to write a good thriller. Understanding our human fascination for mystery, intrigue and justice he succinctly covers the major and minor categories found within this literary genre pointing out the necessary, optional and open-ended components to producing a successful and memorable novel.

Positing the all important question "what grabs the attention", Mr. Wood enhances his ideas and concepts by comparing the material with examples from well known books, feature films and television series. Personally I enjoyed this approach and believe in doing so he successfully illuminated and brought to life his ideas. It also served the purpose of keeping the reader focused and interested from beginning to end.

`The Ingredients Of A Good Thriller' is a useful, pragmatic, insightful and enjoyable read whether you plan to become a novelist or not. Maybe it's not the ultimate sourcebook for the novice writer, but it's certainly a solid place to begin.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars MORE ADVANCED ART OF MURDER, December 25, 2008

By	DAVID BRYSON (Glossop Derbyshire England) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The last theoretical manifesto of thriller-writing I read was Chandler's `The Simple Art of Murder'. Chandler was blowing his own trumpet and uttering a blast of it against the monstrous regiment of women (Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers etc) who dominated the genre in his time. What he produced became a famous piece of literary criticism, maybe indeed a piece of literature in its own right. What Chris Wood is doing is both less and more ambitious. This book has no pretentions to being literature, but the thriller genre has come on a lot since the day of Philip Marlowe, and Chris Wood offers would-be authors a handy manual of tips on what to try to achieve and particularly what to avoid.

He casts his net quite widely, including James Bond stories, the Godfather series, Graham Greene's Brighton Rock and other productions outside the `whodunit' category that Chandler restricted himself to. I suppose this is only realistic - it would not make much sense these days to try to exclude so much of what has become the mainstream. If the consequence of that is that a good deal of the advice offered could apply generally to novels that are nobody's idea of `thrillers', then that is a consequence we just have to accept. Chris Wood proceeds mainly by examples, and without actually having counted the examples I'd guess that more than half of them are taken from films. Even assuming that his advice is aimed at authors and not film producers or directors I still have no real problem with that until he raises the matter of background music, which surely should have been restricted to a footnote at the most. On the other hand, if films can feature so prominently, why is there not more about detective series on television? Some of these, e.g. Morse or Inspector Frost or my own beloved Taggart series, are genuine pukka `mysteries' as we used to say, and those should at least form the basis of any treatise on `thrillers'.

The points made seem sound and sensible for the most part to me. I am not about to write any thrillers myself, but I have read plenty of them in my time, and I could certainly consider adding to my experience any thriller written to the Chris Wood quality assurance standard. We should probably be grateful that he has put the effort into pulling the threads together even to the extent that he has. Chandler followed his own advice and produced out-and-out masterpieces. Perhaps Chris Wood will do the same. Meantime by way of practical assistance I can offer him a few corrections he might like to make when the book is reprinted. Surely it is Hannibal Lecter, not `Lector' as he has it throughout? On p 47 I also think he probably means Nigel Stock. Starting from p 29 when I started to notice there are the following errata -- p 29 `in's'; p31 `inciteful'; p 33 `mains'; p 64 `who's'; p 65 `gargantuum'; p 71 `mislead'; p 90 `reigns'; p 131 `Potempkin'; p 142 `breath'; p 159 `plaigarism'. Among the many helpful don'ts, don't neglect accuracy.