Blog Post 1 - Thriller Conventions

Thrillers usually contain these aspects: fast pacing, frequent action, resourceful heroes which are frequently "hard men" accustomed to danger who have to over-power a villain with more power. Traditionally they are men but more recently women have more frequently become heroes. e.g. Lucy, 2014. Although she wasn't a hard man accustomed to danger she was just an ordinary person who was drawn into danger by accident. This characteristic can be used in thrillers also.

A thriller is a villain driven plot which usually takes place in exotic settings and use devices such as: suspense, red herrings and cliff hangers. Although they differ from mystery stories because of the two types of plot structures. In a thriller, the hero must thwart the future plans of an enemy, rather than uncover a crime that has already happened. A murder mystery would be spoiled by knowing the murderer's identity whereas in a thriller the identity of a murderer / villain is typically known all along. Thrillers occur on a much grander scale than Mystery Films: the crimes that must be prevented are serial or mass murder, terrorism, assassination, or the overthrow of governments. Danger and violent confrontations are standard plot elements of a thriller. The climax of a mystery is when the mystery is solved, a thriller climaxes when the hero finally defeats the villain, saving his own life and often the lives of others.

A flexible genre can engage an audience through a dramatic rendering of physcological, social and political tensions. Hitchcock said thrillers allow the audience "to put their toe in the cold water of fear to see what it's like." Not only do thrillers encourage different types of tensions but there are different types of thriller such as: legal thriller, spy thriller, action-adventure thriller, medical thriller, police thriller, romantic thriller, historical thriller, political thriller, religious thriller, high-tech thriller, military thriller.

But this wide variety of thrillers have one thing in common. They are thrillers because they all "thrill."