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I'm in a bit of a quandary.
My WIP is, I guess, a thriller, or suspense, or whatever. However, all the deaths and dying - and there's a lot of it - occurs in the fourth quarter. Up to that point, from the very first word, it is all foreshadowing. I have an MC who is figuring things out, investigating, trying to solve a puzzle; the threat of something terrible about to happen hangs over all her work. She interviews people, she discusses possiblities, a lot of sleuth work. However, the reader knows in advance what is going to happen - which is horrific in its own right (the 1978 Jonestown mass suicide).
Most of the book is simply a build up to that climax. It's very character driven - the MC has issues of her own, which are resolved during the climax, and there's a romantic subplot. Basically, though the suspense is all psychological, and it's based on the fact that the reader knows, more than the MC, what it's all leading up to. I guess I'm depending on the reader's curiosity into how a thing like this could happen. It is and was a big story, and never really understood. This is really the fictionalised inside story of what really happened.
I have my eyes open for talking heads. But there just is not a nice juicy murder up front to draw in the thriller crowd, and yet it's too horrific to count as mainstream. I think. A lot of atmospherics, however. What do you think? At the moment I'm believeing it's all crap.
My WIP is, I guess, a thriller, or suspense, or whatever. However, all the deaths and dying - and there's a lot of it - occurs in the fourth quarter. Up to that point, from the very first word, it is all foreshadowing. I have an MC who is figuring things out, investigating, trying to solve a puzzle; the threat of something terrible about to happen hangs over all her work. She interviews people, she discusses possiblities, a lot of sleuth work. However, the reader knows in advance what is going to happen - which is horrific in its own right (the 1978 Jonestown mass suicide).
Most of the book is simply a build up to that climax. It's very character driven - the MC has issues of her own, which are resolved during the climax, and there's a romantic subplot. Basically, though the suspense is all psychological, and it's based on the fact that the reader knows, more than the MC, what it's all leading up to. I guess I'm depending on the reader's curiosity into how a thing like this could happen. It is and was a big story, and never really understood. This is really the fictionalised inside story of what really happened.
I have my eyes open for talking heads. But there just is not a nice juicy murder up front to draw in the thriller crowd, and yet it's too horrific to count as mainstream. I think. A lot of atmospherics, however. What do you think? At the moment I'm believeing it's all crap.
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