All language subtitles for 2. The Anatomy of a Thriller-[ddpanda]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I was excited to
learn as a young writer,

as I started to
put this together,

talking to other writers,
talking to great writing

teachers, that
there are elements

that must be in a good story.

Not just thrillers, all stories.

We're gonna talk about thrillers
here primarily, but all of this

is relevant to a storyteller.

Whether you're writing a
memoir or a screenplay,

this is about storytelling.

And there are elements
that all good stories have.

If you look out at
the highway, you

will see countless
kinds of cars.

You'll see minivans and
sports cars and tractors.

They all have a different
purpose, a different driver.

They're serving their
owners in different ways.

But if you take all of these
vehicles and you lift the hood,

you are gonna see
the exact same thing.

You're gonna see the
elements of an engine that

make this car run.

Now they may be
crafted a little bit

differently, put
together differently,

but they're all there.

The same thing with
stories that work.

They all have the same elements.

We're gonna talk a lot about
what those elements are

in this class.

In broad strokes, you
might have a world.

You might have the
sole dramatic question.

You've got to have a hero.

You've got to have a goal.

Your hero has to have something
he or she wants to accomplish.

You have to have obstacles
that make it impossible.

You have to have a moment when
the hero conquers the villain,

when good conquers evil.

These are all elements
that you're going

to find in stories that work.

And we're gonna
talk about them more

in-depth in a little while.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

When I sit down
to write a book, I

think in terms of
what I call the three

Cs that I think could be
very, very helpful to anyone

who's sitting down and trying
to outline and write a thriller.

I call them the contract,
the clock, and the crucible.

The contract is that
promise that you're

making the reader, this idea
that if you read this book,

you will find out the
following piece of information.

Will the young attorney
escape the corrupt law firm

that hired him?

Will Ahab catch the whale?

These sorts of things.

Will the jackal kill his target?

You make a contract
with the reader.

And you don't break it.

And no promise is small enough
that you don't have to keep it.

Every single promise you make
to the reader, you need to keep.

And I remember at the
end of "Da Vinci Code,"

I think I had three or four days
to finish the end of this book

before it had to go to press.

And we had a list of
17 unanswered promises,

an actual list
saying this is small,

but you've made a
promise to your reader.

You have to answer it.

And we went through
and we found ways

to give answers to
every single question.

And the reason
people are gonna love

your book is that when
you make a promise,

you're going to keep it.

And people will begin to
trust you as a writer.

The crucible is just this
idea of saying, don't

let your characters run away.

A crucible is something
that holds things together

and doesn't let them escape.

If you look at the end of
Peter Benchley's "Jaws,"

just a fantastic
thriller, you've

got a boat that's sinking,
a shark that's coming in,

and these people, if they
had two twin Evinrudes

on the back of the boat
and could drive away,

you don't have a thriller.

They're sinking.

They've got nowhere to go.

They're in a crucible.

They have to face the villain.

Your job is to give
your hero one path.

He can't escape.

He's in a crucible.

He's got one way out.

And guess what?

That way is miserable.

It's just filled with obstacles
and monsters and danger

and personal challenge.

That's what's gonna
make your hero heroic.

And that's what's gonna make
the finale of your thriller

exciting and satisfying.

And the final idea is
this idea of the clock.

This ticking clock
in the background

of every single thriller.

There is time pressure.

When I wrote
"Angels And Demons,"

I wanted Robert
Langdon to follow

the path of Illumination.

If he'd had his
entire life to do it,

it wouldn't have
been that exciting.

So I decided I'm going to
take an antimatter bomb,

a literal ticking clock--
not subtle, but effective--

put it in the Vatican,
say, well, you kind of

have to solve this by midnight,
or else there's a big problem.

These are the sorts
of things that you

want to do in your writing.

You may have an
idea for a story.

The second you can lay on
top of it a time pressure,

suddenly you're moving toward
the genre of a thriller.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

When you ask people what the
elements of a thriller are,

you'll probably get answers
like high stakes, suspense.

The truth is that these elements
of high stakes and suspense

are in every story.

Thrillers, classic myths,
there's always suspense,

because there are always high
stakes for the protagonist,

for somebody.

It may not be the
world's gonna blow up,

but it may be this question of
will this young woman overcome

her fear of her father
and find herself.

What makes a book a
thriller is the pace

at which the plot comes at you.

I like thrillers that hit
you on the first page,

hold on, and don't
let you go right

till the end, The kind of
thrillers I like to read,

and therefore the kind of
thrillers I like to write,

are thrillers that ask a lot
of questions very quickly,

and also give answers
very, very quickly.

And when you're
writing your book,

it's absolutely critical that
you put in as many questions

as you can toward
the front of a book,

but simultaneously
that you answer them

at a rate that doesn't
leave your reader confused

or wondering, am I ever going
to get the answer to this?

So it really is this
kind of patchwork

where you're asking a question,
giving an answer as you're

asking a new question, making
new promises all the time,

getting people to say, OK,
I just figured this out,

but now there's
this new question.

Keep them going.

Suspense is all about
making promises.

It's about telling
your reader, I

know something you don't know.

And I promise if you turn the
page, I'm going to tell you.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

If you want to write
successful stories,

you cannot overstate the
importance of reading.

Reading plays an enormous role
in the lives of all writers.

Writers read to
learn, to get ideas,

to gain knowledge so that they
have a perspective on whatever

they're writing about.

But the other
reason they read is

to see how other people do it,
to see how stories are made.

You as an aspiring
novelist should

be reading as many
thrillers as you can,

or as many memoirs as you can.

Whatever it is
you want to write,

see how other people do it.

And you are gonna
learn from people

who do it in a way you
love, but you're also

gonna learn from people who
do it in a way you hate.

It's not your taste.

You're gonna say, well,
I don't want to do that.

I wanna to do something else.

The more you read,
the more you're

gonna know how stories
are put together.

So I grew up reading the Hardy
Boys, these little mysteries

with a lot of cliffhangers.

I loved them.

And then when I went to
high school and college,

I just read classics.

And I really only read the
classics, a lot of old stuff,

and I enjoyed it.

I didn't really know the genre
of an adult thriller existed

until I was on vacation.

I was in Tahiti, of all places.

Found a paperback on
the dock that somebody

finished and left there.

And it was a book by
Sidney Sheldon called

"The Doomsday Conspiracy."

I didn't know who
Sidney Sheldon was.

I'd never heard of the book.

And I read the first page.

I thought, oh my god.

And I read the next page
and I read the next page.

And I just tore
through that book.

And I thought, I didn't even
know this genre existed.

This is like the
Hardy Boys for adults.

And I had this strange
moment when I thought,

maybe I could do
something like that.

I didn't right away.

But I also had
another experience

later on reading
the original "Bourne

Identity" by Robert Ludlum.

The thing I loved about
"The Bourne Identity"

is that one question, that
sole brick with which Ludlum

built the foundation was
so quiet and ingenious.

It's a man with amnesia.

Will he figure out who he is?

That's the whole book.

Will this guy figure
out who he is?

And, of course, you know
as the reader he will.

He will.

But you just want to
see how it happens.

And, you know,
Ludlum does something

so ingenious in this book
where you want to like him.

You sort of sense
he's a good person.

But the more he finds out about
himself, the worse he seems.

You know, he's a deadly killer.

You see his picture on the
paper saying he killed somebody.

And as a reader, you
say, I trust the author.

The author's going
to show me he's good.

But how is he going to overcome
all these obstacles that

say he's bad?

You can actually
write a book that's

entertaining from
which you learn

about all these
different worlds, all

these different skills,
different kinds of people.

And I became very, very inspired
to try that sort of thing

myself.

And I wrote the book
"Digital Fortress."

It's a young novel.

I look back and I
say, I'd change this,

I'd change that,
I'd change this.

But the bones of it
are thriller bones.

It's a simple hero.

He too is a professor.

I was finding Langdon.

Wrote a character
named David Becker,

who was a professor
of linguistics,

and he gets challenged.

He goes on this terrible journey
and all these ridiculous things

happen to him.

And he has to overcome them,
and, of course, he does.

And again, what you
will find when you read

thrillers that you enjoy--

actually any novel
that you enjoy--

is that you will get the
answer and the outcome

that you've hoped for.

But it will come to you, as
the reader, in a different way.

And your job as a
writer, give the reader

what they want in a way
they don't see coming.