Let's get right to Part Two of those thriller authors. I've noticed Prologues serve a precise purpose in thrillers. They establish two noteworthy factors for the oncoming story. One: they can be used to depict something in the past responsible for something else which will be occurring in the future. Two: it might reveal the motive for vengeance, it might be considered a debt to be resolved, or it might present the reason for an unforeseen opportunity which has yet to be apparent. Considering thrillers are at some point action-packed, that action either begins in the Prologue or sets the stage for the onslaught. The reason for that preview is either quickly brought to the forefront or languishes in the reader's memory while other events hustle into the present.
Thriller authors keep an accelerated pace, as inferred by the genre title, but it does waver according to the story. If the author is involved in perpetuating a particular hero throughout a series, he's responsible for many circumstances threatening the hero's life. I've noticed that with most of the thriller series I've read, each novel attempts to hold open the possibility of making the book a standalone while trying not to be repetitious with necessary inclusions. I've also watched as the character development of the hero and those semi-peripheral characters included in the series expands to give the reader a view of all of them from the inside out, showing who they are through the life-and-death struggles within the chaos of the plot as well as slipping in the varying degrees of their relationships to each other.
Most of the heroes in the series thrillers I've read are insanely tough men, a cut above because they've wanted to be, they've trained to be, and they've had to be -- either to survive or to be an example to those who come with them or after them. Not all of them have that keen sense of good and evil, but all of them recognize the evil. They are more than "proficient" in weaponry of all kinds and how to kill another human being. Their personalities reflect the seriousness of their assignments, and most of them earnestly work against emotional reactions to their work out of necessity. The thriller author determines how their character will respond to what's placed in his path and that determines how the reader responds to the hero.
I'll do a Part Three on thriller authors' individual heroes next week.
Father, thank you for the wonderful art of writing characters and developing stories. So many gifted authors. Thank you for each one and may they know you, the real author of those gifts. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.