The Fear Conspiracy

Have you ever wondered what makes a thriller work? I mean sure, the better it is, the more it thrills you, but what are its nuts and bolts? What is that basic emotion that the author must manipulate in order to succeed? It all comes down to one dirty four letter word: Fear.

Fear is what pushes us to survive and survival is the chief human instinct. So fear can be no less than the most basic human emotion. I know love is way more fun, but in the human condition our sexual instinct is a poor second. Fear comes first. It might not feel good to be scared, people (like the military) may have made us think that it is something we ought to be ashamed of, but the truth of the matter is that fear is good. Take fear away from humans and you wouldn't have a human race. Take fear away from a thriller and you wouldn't have a thriller.

So when I sit with my laptop in a seaside hotel and make-up a story to thrill you, do you think that it sort of happens that the story will scare you? Would I leave the most important ingredient of my story to chance? Reader, I have a confession to make. Getting you scared is no accident. I conspire against you. I sit for hours on end to answer a single question: How can I make you shit in your pants?

If I came up with some green-eyed monster you would just laugh in my face. To really scare you, I must first convince you that the novel environment is real. That my characters are like your friends and acquaintances, that my setting is like places you live-in or have visited, that what happens in my story actually happens and that my cars, furniture and clothes are what you see around you. But to directly involve you, to literally put you in the story, I must use the first person narrative. In third person narration, you could slip in other people's minds and get comfort. But if I show you a sympathetic hero and put that 'I' in front, you put on my hero's boots and overcoat. You get trapped in another person's body. And now that I have you where I want you, I must let loose the green-eyed monster and let you have it. After all, that's what you've paid for.

Will it scare you? I really don't know, but I must make no mistake. The problem is that different people get scared of different things. That's why beyond my own fears, and the fears of my friends, I have kept my ears open to all who had a scary experience and by now I have a list as long as your arm. And in each book I write, I employ a variety of different fears just so I can hit one of your primal ones. Are you afraid of:

• Your doctor telling you that you have a few months left to live?
• Your wife emptying your substantial bank account and disappearing?
• Your friends turning their back on you?
• Your own mother not recognizing you?

Not enough? How about:

• Your lover turning out to be a homosexual?
• Hiding in an extremely confined space and getting captured as soon as you come out?
• Having your dog killed in front of you?
• Getting caught cheating in a university exam?
• Being left naked out in the street
• Being interrogated by an intelligence agency?
• Given a tour of a cemetery then being drugged and pushed into an open grave?
• Getting dropped into the sea from a yacht in total darkness, miles away from the nearest shore?
• Waking-up on a beach and not being able to even remember your name?

Am I overindulgent? Perhaps, but you have to remember it’s my job. The more I scare you, the better I am. Of course fear alone cannot thrill. You need to escape immediately afterwards. And it is really the escape from fear, and the quality of that escape, that gives you the thrill. You live intensely if you are a mouse and meet a cat. But you don't get a thrill until you get away. The joy of life over death.

Why do we buy thrillers? Why do we buy fear? Clearly because we don’t get enough of it in everyday life. Our ancestors' lives were drenched in fear and this got somehow written on our genes. Today we live safer and more protected (and boring) lives. Little happens to scare us and we should be happy. But we are not. As much as we dread fear we somehow need more of it. Why do you think there are amusement parks and extreme sports?

And for the more imaginative, confined or physically lazy who like books: The Thriller.