These are my notes from the Mckee Thriller writing course I attended early 2004. Robert Mckee is a well known and noted screenplay writer – for more on him see http://mckeestory.com/ This is part 1 of my notes.

Defining Thrillers

Thrillers are essentially about the battle of justice vs. injustice. Another defining characteristic is that there is often a price to be paid for the conclusion of the story. They can be defined by their Point of View (POV) e.g. those solving a crime (detective story), those perpetuating the crime (caper), a tough guy’s POV (film noir), a psychologist (psychodrama) or those prosecuting the law (court-room drama). Each possible protagonist in such a drama can have both major and minor character roles and an opposite; e.g. detective (minor - Jack Vincennes, Kevin Spacy's character in L.A. Confidential or major – Sherlock Holmes) and it’s opposite (minor - Capt. Dudley Liam Smith, James Cromwell's character in L.A. Confidential or major – Moriarty, Holmes’s nemesis).

The Thrill of Thrillers

People enjoy thrillers because the modern western world generates an attitude that means we easily identify with the victims. As well as this empathy with the victim, we can also be tempted to emphasise with the antagonist. As the attitudes of people have evolved over time, so the genre has evolved. Thrills come from dread – you know something terrible is about to happen and these is nothing you can do about it!

Conventions of a Thriller

A convention is not the same as a cliché – it differs in that a convention is a component something the audience understands and so will react well too – while a cliché is doing a convention in a tiered and well used manner. Conventions are good tools to connect with the audience. In the thriller genre, conventions include:

• Protagonist is at the mercy of the antagonist.
• Cheap surprise – an easy shock generated by an sudden unexpected action/movement/sound.
• False ending – where is appears the case is solved, but it is not. · Speech in praise of the antagonist – often done by the protagonist and is used to build up the villain, even if the speech ultimately dams the villain.
• Make it personal – where the crime/plans draws in aspects of the protagonists life/emotions to change the plot from a professional action to a personal quest. This can be taken even further by taking it from personal quest to making the protagonist also become the victim.
• Theatre of the Mind – don’t show everything to the audience, force them to image some things.

Action Thrillers

In this genre the protagonist (aka the hero) is up against an evil force/villain. In this genre, the force most often takes the form on a rational force (i.e. not supernatural). The value at stake that is being struggled for is that of survival (rather then justice, those it can be a secondary value in the plot): a matter of life and death. The trajectory of this genre tends to follow this path: In inciting incident will occur that uncovers evidence for a major attack. This throws out of balance the lives of the characters involved who strive to prevent the attack (matter of life and death). Such plots tend to have a positive outcome. It is also important that within the plot arc compassion is generated the hero/s so the audience care if they live of die (linked back to the matter of life/death value that motivates the plot.)

Antagonists

Often the key to a good thriller (and arguably more important than the hero/s) is a good antagonist (aka the villain). It is the antagonist who drives the plot and energises the story. Much of the protagonists actions will be as a reaction to the antagonists plans - thus the better the antagonist, the better the story. A good antagonist has some/all of the following characteristics:

· Mindset: Antagonists are often sociopaths and are so unencumbered by self-reflection and so become motivated in their plans not by right and wrong by does it achieve the aims or not (e.g. Hannibal Lector)
· Physical Power: Here the antagonist is endowed with prodigious strength/resilience. (e.g. Max Cady, antagonist from Cape Fear)
· Institutional Power: The power that comes from being rich, having access to the functions of a state, gang or similar institution. (e.g. Noah Cross, antagonist from Chinatown)
· Motivation in Shadow - while you can hint at the motivation of such evil you plan your antagonist to do, it is often best to leave much of it in shadow and so keep an aura of mystery around the character.
· Spirit of Evil: A touch of this makes the character that bit nastier; the character my take please from causing harm, may not be brought of by offers of money and power etc. (e.g. Louis Cyphre, who is the devil from Angel Heart).