So long as readers keep reading and my publishers keep publishing, I plan to keep on writing. I'd have to be an idiot to be burnt-out in this job.
Lee ChildRead
The way to write a thriller is to ask a question at the beginning, and answer it at the end.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Effective thrillers engage the reader from the start with a question, delivering satisfaction by answering it at the end.
This quote by Lee Child explains a fundamental technique in writing thrillers: starting with a compelling question that grabs the audience's attention, and then resolving that question by the conclusion of the story. This structure keeps readers engaged and eager to find out how the narrative unfolds, making the experience more rewarding as they seek resolution.
Themes
ThrillerWritingQuestionStorytellingNarrative
In practice
Example use cases
A writing workshop discussing structure in thrillers could use this quote to illustrate key techniques.
More from Lee Child
All quotes βPeople, Reacher was certain about. Dogs were different. People had freedom of choice. If a man or a woman ran snarling toward him, they did so because they chose to. They were asking for whatever they got. His response was their problem. But dogs were different. No free will. Easily misled. It raised an ethical problem. Shooting a dog because it had been induced to do something unwise was not the sort of thing Reacher wanted to do.
Lee ChildRead
Male authors always take care to make their heroes at least one inch taller than they are, and considerably more muscular. Just as female authors give their heroines better hair and slimmer thighs.
Lee ChildRead
Reacher said, "So here's the thing Brett. Either you take your hand off my chest, or I'll take it off your wrist.
Lee ChildRead
It gives me some kind of chance to survive the night." "How are those better odds? If you come back with me, you're guaranteed to survive the night." "No," Reacher said. "If I come back with you, I'm guaranteed to die of shame.
Lee ChildRead
Similar quotes
Genres aren't closed boxes. Stuff flows back and forth across the borders all the time.
Margaret AtwoodRead
Judge: And what is your occupation in general? Brodsky: Poet, poet-translator. Judge: And who recognized you to be a poet? Who put you in the ranks of poet? Brodsky: No one. And who put me in the ranks of humanity? Judge: Did you study it?...How to be a poet? Did you attempt to finish an insitute of higher learning...where they prepare...teach Brodsky: I did not think that it is given to one by education. Judge: By what then? Brodsky: I think that it is from God.
Joseph BrodskyRead
Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects, and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of colour. Imagine a world before the 'beginning was the word.'
Stan BrakhageRead
At one time, I was very angry. I even treated fashion like a kind of crusade: you were either with us or against us, that kind of feeling. Now I know we need ideas, not kicking down a door.
Vivienne WestwoodRead
You cannot own a symphony or a novel in the way you can own a Damien Hirst. As a result there are far fewer fake symphonies or fake novels than there are fake works of visual art.
Roger ScrutonRead
You have an absolute freedom in Mexican writing today in which you don't necessarily have to deal with the Mexican identity. You know why? Because we have an identity... We know who we are. We know what it means to be a Mexican.
Carlos FuentesRead