Thriller Time
BY JASON GANTENBERG I January 24, 2009
Chris Wood. The Ingredients of a Good Thriller. LDB Publishing, 2008. 223 pages.
ISBN 978-1-906669-00-3
I've just finished reading The Ingredients of a Good Thriller by Chris Wood, an affair littered with brigands and scoundrels, lechery and deceit, a book that reads as if it has been lashed together with corroded metal and rotten twine only to be born hence across some unforgiving border in the bowels of a coke mule. Or at least that's what the author wants his readers to be mulling over as they work their way through the various elements of the thriller genre.
As an old English major/Cinema minor, I'm not a stranger to literary/cinematic how-to books. Most tend to be saturated with jargon and complex explanations designed to instill in the reader a masturbatory self-reverence at having [potentially] understood each little cryptic description. In a word, they trend toward the niche.
Chris Wood doesn't write like that. In fact, he calls himself pretentious at one point for using the term "hyperviolence", hardly the most egregious example of hipster critic speak out there. That should tell you something about the humilities of the author.
Indeed. The Ingredients of a Good Thriller is an accessible piece of work and should present no more challenge for a new reader than it would for a seasoned professional, and this is to the book's credit. What results is an expansive starter's kit for anyone looking to begin writing a thriller, be it cop, gang, or other, and though it is geared more toward those writing screenplays, Wood's suggestions about crafting characters, plots, and settings are applicable to those looking to pump out a novel or short story as well. The book is primarily about imagination, after all, and what better element to stress when encouraging people to go out and get creative?
Wood's biggest success is his genuine approach to providing all this advice. You won't find many restrictions in his assertions unless the pitfall he is outlining proves crippling to your work. Whereas many other authors might lay out rigid ground rules, Wood skirts insinuations of genre-based dogma, favoring instead the truth that imagination is fluid, and as the numerous examples he provides indicate, there are no rules per se, only suggestions to be used at the reader's discretion.
At its heart, Chris Wood's book is an essential checklist for writers who might be having trouble fleshing out the subtleties of their thriller. His suggestions for mapping out character relationships, idiosyncrasies, set pieces, moods, soundtracks, etc. are well taken and provide an indispensable catalogue of thought points that writers would ignore at their own peril.
Most of the time, Wood has plenty of examples to illustrate just what he's on about. From Se7en to The Hounds of the Baskervilles, he provides instances in which he found himself revolted, excited, or tense and why the devices used elicited their desired effects, and like a kid charged up on one too many Pixie sticks, you get the sense that Wood really likes thrillers.
It should be mentioned that the definition of "thriller" used in the book is not so tight as one might expect. As far as Wood is concerned, almost anything containing elements of the thriller genre is fair game, which even leads him to cite The Big Lebowski at one point. (Honestly, this one pleased me to no small extent. Around page 100, long before he mentions Lebowski, I was thinking it might make a nice appearance in his book. Chris Wood, apparently, does not disappoint.) It's nice to see the book written with a bit of a wider palette, and the way he works through a few films that couldn't be considered the conventional thriller allows the reader to better visualize some of elements of the genre.
Perhaps one of the most useful achievements of the book is to provide its reader with a library of source materials. As I said, Chris Wood has certainly seen his fair share of movies and read his fair share of books, and he provides a list of recommendations toward the end. Having seen/read many of the works he lists, I'll second his nominations (and added some of them to my own personal To Do list).
All in all, The Ingredients of a Good Thriller is a well-reasoned and fairly well-organized book that is (most importantly) truly helpful. It is written by an author who has spent a good deal of time thinking about the thriller genre and who himself writes with a good hand. This is probably a must-read for anyone who feels they might be biting off a little more than they can chew.
Coming soon from Chris Wood:
The Ingredients of a Good Horror, LDB Publishing, 2009.
Sherlock Holmes and the Underpants of Death, LDB Publishing, 2009. (First appeared right here on Sloth Jockey. Read it now.)
Read Shelly Bryant's review of The Ingredients of a Good Thriller.
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