{"id":4185,"date":"2015-03-24T07:26:27","date_gmt":"2015-03-24T11:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4185"},"modified":"2015-03-24T07:26:27","modified_gmt":"2015-03-24T11:26:27","slug":"capturing-the-thrills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4185","title":{"rendered":"Capturing the Thrills"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"security

(photo: takomabibelot, creative commons license)<\/p><\/div>\n

Among the workshops at the Liberty States Fiction Writers\u2019 annual conference last weekend were two directed specifically to writers\u2014and readers\u2014of thrillers, led by highly-rated author Melinda Leigh<\/a> and featuring Dan Mayland<\/a> (espionage) and Ben Lieberman<\/a> (financial thrillers). The first was on \u201cTechnical Difficulties\u201d\u2014and the three experts described how the ubiquity of cell phones (especially their GPS capabilities), public and private security cameras, and increasingly sophisticated facial recognition software make it harder and harder for urban bad-guys to evade discovery. (Here\u2019s an example<\/a> of the many websites and articles focused on defeating facial recognition technology.) While security and cell phone cameras were key to finding the Boston Marathon bombers<\/a>, they are a black hole for story ideas, if authors want to write an accurate and believable modern-day thriller or crime story.<\/p>\n

Similarly, a photo posted on social media<\/a> may well have embedded geotags that reveal where it was taken\u2014at the crime scene, at the perpetrator\u2019s home, at his\/her favorite hangout. This explains, I think, why so many mysteries are set in past decades\u2014even centuries\u2014or in small towns, where such capabilities don\u2019t impose plotting impossibilities for their creators. I\u2019ve had to let a protagonist\u2019s phone battery run out, for example\u2014imperfect, maybe, but we\u2019ve all done it.<\/p>\n

Understanding how such technology works, in order to construct a plausible 2015 plot requires research, and, like many authors, I\u2019ve confessed<\/a> to really loving the research I do for my books. These presenters\u2019 second workshop\u2014\u201cThe Thrill of Thrillers\u201d\u2014discussed restraining the impulse to put all that research in the actual book. Technothrillers<\/a> (of the Tom Clancy\/Frederick Forsyth\/Michael Crichton variety, to which I am addicted ) are an exception. Too much background research slows readers down, and when they\u2019re skipping over as much as they\u2019re reading, face it, the thrill is gone!<\/p>\n

Another advantage of leaving any type of too-detailed information out is, of course, that the reader can imagine a technology (likewise torture) that is more vivid, scary, or powerful (or gruesome) than the author can. You need just enough to jump-start their own creativity.<\/p>\n

A side issue<\/em>: I noticed how Amazon\u2019s author pages for Leigh, Mayland, and Lieberman provide \u201cCustomers also bought books by . . .\u201d information, and there is almost 100% gender concordance between the authors\u2019 gender and that of the other authors customers reportedly purchased. Is that true? I like books by men AND women, if they are well done, and most other readers I know are the same. So, do these lists reflect real reader preferences, or just Amazon\u2019s marketing assumption? Signed, Wondering . . . See this related post<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Among the workshops at the Liberty States Fiction Writers\u2019 annual conference last weekend were two directed specifically to writers\u2014and readers\u2014of thrillers, led by highly-rated author Melinda Leigh and featuring Dan Mayland (espionage) and Ben Lieberman (financial thrillers). The first was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Capturing the Thrills - thriller writers are challenged by info-tech and have to get the details right!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[62,193,40,174,32,29],"tags":[31,412,30,415,99,28,414],"class_list":["post-4185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-espionage","category-fiction","category-first-draft-blog","category-thriller","category-writing","tag-author","tag-mystery","tag-novel","tag-thriller","tag-urban-life","tag-writers","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-15v","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4185"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4187,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4185\/revisions\/4187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}