January Thrills...

And a mini-lesson on thriller writing!

I started a new project in January: actually keeping track of what I’m reading. Since I’m on Goodreads as an author, I don’t feel comfortable rating other authors’ books—especially if I didn’t like or didn’t finish the book! But I did start a good old-fashioned spreadsheet with columns for notes and star rating. The whole nine. Very old school, but there’s still time in the year to figure out a glossy system. For now, I’m just happy to have started a system!

With the work I do, I read a LOT. Hundreds of thousands of unpublished words a year. Client work that will be published. And, as you can imagine, a heck of a lot of books. While romance dominates my TBR (to-be-read list), I read nonfiction, classics, and almost every sub-genre of fiction.

I’m writing this in the last week of January, so my data is far from complete, but as I looked at the books I read this month, I realized I finished seven books and did not finish (mostly because I ran out of time!) 13 others. I will push through some of the 13 I didn’t finish—and others will go onto the permanent DNF list.

But of those I finished, I read three thrillers. I ranked them very, very differently, and as I always do, I got to thinking about what separates a five-star book from a three-star.

Understanding story beats is a critical skill for authors, whether you’re a pantser or a plotter. Pantsers or discovery writers may find that having the structure in their heads helps them find what happens next more easily, while plotters might use these beats to pull together an effective outline for a well-paced story.

I broke down some of the essential beats of a thriller novel so you can see what I’m referring to when I talk about the rank for each book. Now, not every book needs every single one of these beats, but they are incredibly helpful as a roadmap to what should be in a book. Let’s look quickly at the beats, and then I’ll share the books I read!