7 ½ WAYS TO WRITE A GENRE-BENDING THRILLER: Suspense, Sci-Fi, and Beyond
When I set out to write my latest thriller A WOMAN ALONE, I found myself facing a unique challenge. I was absolutely stoked about the premise: a futuristic SmartHome that may or may not have killed its previous inhabitants. But it also meant that I had to incorporate the elements of sci-fi into my psychological suspense in a way that felt natural and didn’t take over the plot. Sure, there are many sinister techy gadgets in A WOMAN ALONE, but at its heart, it’s still very much the story of Cecelia, its protagonist.
I’m far from the first to blend genres in my thriller. Black Mirror comes to mind when you think of sci-fi-flavored suspense (and romance and drama and…) but one major inspiration behind A WOMAN ALONE was the 2008 Lauren Beukes novel Moxyland, which foresaw some of our current excesses with frightening accuracy. Beukes is a master of the genre blend; all her follow-up novels have at least one genre crossover in them. There’s time travel in The Shining Girls, urban fantasy in Zoo City, and the truly strange and hard to label evil entity in Broken Monsters. In the same vein, Ben H. Winters expertly blends dystopian elements with suspense in Golden State, where society is obsessed with truth (It could be worse, you think? Wait until you read it…) and The Last Policeman, which is straight-up pre-apocalyptic noir.
For something with a lighter sci-fi touch, I recommend Wendy Walker’s excellent All Is Not Forgotten. At the center of the premise is a controversial, experimental procedure that allows traumatic memories to be erased. But just because the memory is gone doesn’t mean the fallout will be erased too.
If sci-fi isn’t your thing, why not try a historical thriller? A gritty option for those of us who enjoy the gruesome, The Alienist is a classic serial-killer thriller set in turn of the century New York. You’ll like it even more if, like me, you sometimes find yourself wondering how any criminals got caught at all without modern forensics. For a lighter pick, Stuart Turton’s The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is like Downton Abbey meets Agatha Christie. Oh, and to make it interesting, there’s also a Groundhog Day-like time loop for extra genre-blend points.
Another genre that mixes well with psychological suspense is women’s fiction. No wonder so many of these books deal with bad marriages and dark family secrets! Here, there’s a wealth of options. Lionel Shriver’s We Need To Talk About Kevin is a slow-burn thriller with a twist that has since become iconic. But don’t read this lengthy novel just for the twist because you’ll be missing out on Shriver’s exquisite attention to detail and gift for characterization. The book centers on a teenage school shooter, narrated from the point of view of his mother, and it tackles some heavy subjects—sociopathy, motherhood, marriage—but at the same time, it’s more than the sum of its parts. By the end of the book, you’ll walk away with a deeper understanding of humanity.
So what do these examples teach us about blending genres?
First of all, every genre comes with its own expectations, tropes, and beats. The difference between a sci-fi thriller and a sci-fi with thriller elements, for instance, is which genre expectations are being fulfilled first. Ignoring genre expectations will result in frustrated readers. And to know genre expectations well enough to write a book (that said, almost on an instinctive level) takes a lot of reading. I’m definitely more well-versed in suspense so I knew from the start that A WOMAN ALONE would be domestic suspense at its core.
Another thing to remember: you must establish the rules of the world from the start and stick to them religiously until the end. This is something that writers of speculative fiction might be more familiar with. For writers of realistic fiction, real life writes the rules so we don’t have to think of it too much. But the worst thing you can do is bait and switch your reader. You can’t have a classic police procedural for 300 pages only to reveal that the killer was a vampire on page 301. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle sets up the premise right away. First, there’s a party invitation, and the next thing we know, the narrator snaps awake in the body of one of the guests. Likewise, I decided to start A WOMAN ALONE with a scene that shows off all the futuristic perks of the SmartHome, which are closer to sci-fi than to reality (at least… for now). Placed in this high-tech paradise where everything is done for her by machines, the protagonist, Cecelia, has to face this change in her life—and soon enough, the secrets start creeping to the surface.
Everyone who writes thrillers knows it can be challenging to stand out. Adding elements of other genres is a great way to innovate. No matter which genre or cross-genre you choose, you will end up with a truly unique and captivating story.
Nina Laurin studied Creative Writing at Concordia University in Montreal, where she currently lives. She arrived there when she was just twelve years old, and she speaks and reads in Russian, French, and English but writes her novels in English. She wrote her first novel while getting her writing degree, and Girl Last Seen was a bestseller a year later in 2017. The follow-up, What My Sister Knew, came out in summer 2018 to critical acclaim. Nina is fascinated by the darker side of mundane things, and she’s always on the lookout for her next twisted book idea.
