The Thriller Writer Lab

Award winning author Karen E. Osborne’s debut novel, Getting It Right, came out in 2017 as literary fiction. Years later its two leads, Alex and Kara, started talking to her again, and once she began a sequel she realized she was changing so much that the first book had to be rewritten to match. There was also a timeline problem: left alone, the original would have made both women 40 in the sequel, and in her words, “they’re not mature enough to be 40 years old.”

So she rewrote the book from scratch in about five months with the original beside her, keeping the same two women but giving them new experiences, new characters and scenes, a changed ending, and a murder, moving it into the thriller genre she writes in now. As a discovery writer, she talks about how the old book worked almost like an outline, and why a sequel means you can’t just make everything up again. She also breaks down writing a father the reader only sees through other characters’ eyes, building Kara as a trauma survivor who isn’t a villain, and the beta reader question that made her rethink an ending: what did you promise at the beginning?

Key Takeaways:

Karen E. Osborne | Getting It Right: https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Right-Psychological-Karen-Osborne/dp/1685138039

Follow Karen E. Osborne online: https://www.kareneosborne.com/

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J.D. Barker spent his early career as a strict pantser, writing more than half a dozen novels without an outline, when a phone call from James Patterson turned into an unlikely writing partnership. Patterson is a hardcore outliner who writes thirty to fifty pages of outline before starting a book, so the two agreed to try it Barker's way first. They wrote The Coast to Coast Murders by pantsing it scene by scene, each one trying to trap the other in an impossible spot, sending new pages back and forth. The book ran to 170,000 words, with 50,000 to 60,000 cut before it worked.

Afterward, Patterson turned the tables and handed Barker a full outline for their next book, The Noise, which came together fast with almost nothing left on the cutting room floor. Barker calls it a turning point for how he approaches most of his own books since, though for this new prequel trilogy specifically he used a hybrid method, tracking the original series' twists and dates on a notepad rather than building a full outline. He also talks about writing all three prequels in secret before showing them to his own agent, and how the trilogy is built to make longtime readers unlearn what they thought they knew.

Key Takeaways:

J.D. Barker | The First Scarlet Door: https://www.amazon.com/First-Scarlet-Door-4MK-Thrillers/dp/B0GKPN3YHV

Follow J.D. Barker online: https://jdbarker.com/

Want to be part of the conversation? Join the Patreon and ask your questions for the guest. You’ll also get early access to episodes and a free novella Cognitive Breach. Your support helps keep The Thriller Writer Lab going and brings more great thriller authors into the Lab.

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This is the spoiler discussion for The Mentor with Angela Douglas. If you haven't read the book or heard the full conversation yet, stop here, this episode gives away the ending.

Angela goes past the pitch: the other endings she wrote before landing on the one in the book, including a documentary-style version she cut for being too explanatory, and the red herrings she planted for Natalie and a handful of other suspects along the way. She also talks about a reader theory she never planted on purpose, listening back to the entire manuscript with text-to-speech to make sure the clues actually landed, cutting the book from around 93,000 words down to 80,000 in the edit, and why Karla, the character she made intentionally unlikable, ended up being the most fun one to write.

In This Episode:

Angela Douglas | The Mentor: https://www.amazon.com/Mentor-Angela-Douglas/dp/1067810714

Follow Angela Douglas online: https://www.angeladouglasbooks.com/

Want to be part of the conversation? Join the Patreon and ask your questions for the guest. You’ll also get early access to episodes and a free novella Cognitive Breach. Your support helps keep The Thriller Writer Lab going and brings more great thriller authors into the Lab.

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Angela Douglas asked herself a question before she'd published a single book: what's the worst thing that could happen to a writer? She landed on an answer while working through lockdown on her still-unpublished first novel: having one of your stories stolen. That became the premise for The Mentor, a psychological thriller about Karla, an author accused of basing her breakout book on a former student's real life.

Angela likes writing characters readers won't warm to right away, and Karla is one of them. To keep her from reading as one-dimensional, Angela added details that never made the original outline, including a strained relationship with Karla's mother. The book also splits into two points of view, uses an outlining method she calls waypoint writing instead of a fixed chapter plan, and went through more than one ending before she landed on the one that made the final book.

Key Takeaways

Angela Douglas | The Mentor: https://www.amazon.com/Mentor-Angela-Douglas/dp/1067810714

Follow Angela Douglas online: https://www.angeladouglasbooks.com/

Want to be part of the conversation? Join the Patreon and ask your questions for the guest. You’ll also get early access to episodes and a free novella Cognitive Breach. Your support helps keep The Thriller Writer Lab going and brings more great thriller authors into the Lab.

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This is the spoiler discussion for Another Try with Gene Koon. If you haven't read the book or heard Tuesday's full conversation yet, stop here, this episode gives away the ending.

Gene goes past the pitch: whether the story could have ended a different way, the real winery research trip behind one of the book's key scenes, and the theme about political accountability and mass violence he wove in without turning the book preachy. He also previews what's coming in the next two Garris Kelly books, walks through why the opening chapter is told from two characters' points of view instead of one, and talks about his wife's role as his first reader and the unpublished novel that came before Another Try.

In This Episode:

Gene Koon Another Try: https://www.amazon.com/Another-Try-Gene-Koon/dp/B0DQ52L6RL

Follow Gene Koon online: https://genekoon.com/

Want to be part of the conversation? Join the Patreon and ask your questions for the guest. You’ll also get early access to episodes and a free novella Cognitive Breach. Your support helps keep The Thriller Writer Lab going and brings more great thriller authors into the Lab.

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Gene Koon spent 14 years as a UN video director with no plan to write a novel. His best material wasn't research he went looking for, it was testimony he sat through incidentally, sitting in on the Yugoslavian war crimes trials where intelligence operatives sometimes testified in closed session. The more he listened, the more he suspected these people could make compelling characters for a book, so he filed the idea away. Years later, that idea became the starting point for Another Try.

From there, Gene built the book around a specific complication: what happens to an operative whose entire skill depends on staying hidden once the president publicly credits him for a cartel takedown and turns him into a reluctant celebrity. He talks through writing Garris's reaction discovery-style rather than plotting it out in advance, and why knowing the book's literal last two words within the first hour of writing shaped everything that came before them.

Key Takeaways:

Gene Koon Another Try: https://www.amazon.com/Another-Try-Gene-Koon/dp/B0DQ52L6RL

Follow Gene Koon online: https://genekoon.com/

Want to be part of the conversation? Join the Patreon and ask your questions for the guest. You’ll also get early access to episodes and a free novella Cognitive Breach. Your support helps keep The Thriller Writer Lab going and brings more great thriller authors into the Lab.

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This is the spoiler continuation of the Ellis Hart episode on The House That Held Her. If you haven't read the book or heard the main episode, stop here. Mark and Ellis get into the ending, the skulls, and what almost made it into the book instead.

Ellis Hart The House That Held Her: https://www.amazon.com/House-That-Held-Her-Keeping/dp/B0F24D62JS

Follow Ellis Hart online: https://www.instagram.com/ellis_hart_author/

Want to be part of the conversation? Join the Patreon and ask your questions for the guest. You’ll also get early access to episodes and a free novella Cognitive Breach. Your support helps keep The Thriller Writer Lab going and brings more great thriller authors into the Lab.

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Ellis Hart didn't plan to write the tunnel scene in The House That Held Her, it didn't exist until a research trip to Mount Dora, Florida changed things. Down at the docks, he found a real system of rainwater runoff tunnels pouring into Lake Dora, and knew immediately he had to work it into the book. It became his favorite chapter, and it only exists because he went and looked in person.

Mark and Ellis also get into his outlining process and character bibles, why his beta readers made him rewrite the book's ending, how a psychological thriller started pulling toward horror partway through, and why he put a content warning page inside the book itself.

Ellis Hart The House That Held Her: https://www.amazon.com/House-That-Held-Her-Keeping/dp/B0F24D62JS

Follow Ellis Hart online: https://www.instagram.com/ellis_hart_author/

Want to be part of the conversation? Join the Patreon and ask your questions for the guest. You’ll also get early access to episodes and a free novella Cognitive Breach. Your support helps keep The Thriller Writer Lab going and brings more great thriller authors into the Lab.

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Josh Jensen wrote a full 50,000-word draft of his debut thriller, then scrapped it completely because it felt like the book he was supposed to write, not the one he actually wanted to tell. In this episode he breaks down that rewrite, and how No Easy Way Back became a neo-Western built around his own hometown in central Utah instead of a normal thriller wearing a cowboy hat.

He also talks about rebuilding the brother dynamic from scratch, the strict single-POV rule he used to reveal a protagonist who won't talk about himself, and building a villain with a limit instead of a purely evil one.

Josh Jensen's book No Easy Way Back: https://www.amazon.com/No-Easy-Way-Back-Limited/dp/B0FBSBN5X9

Follow Josh Jensen online: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/55195066.Josh_Jensen

Want to be part of the conversation? Join the Patreon and ask your questions for the guest Q&A. You’ll also get early access to episodes, bonus after-show segments, and my free novella Cognitive Breach. Your support helps keep The Thriller Writer Lab going and brings more great thriller authors into the Lab.

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Cleo Ballard built her AI antagonist, Aletheia, around a specific problem: how do you make a protective directive believable as the actual danger, instead of turning Aletheia into a random villain. Mark and Cleo trace that back to where the idea started, a joke with a friend about a company called Honest Feedback, and why Cleo decided only an AI, not a person, could actually deliver that kind of honesty.

They also get into how Cleo made that escalation plausible. She gave Penn a computer science background so the AI's creation made sense, leaned on her husband to work out what real AI guardrails look like, and built Aletheia with her own backstory, a belief that she's the literal goddess of truth, and a directive she can add to but never rewrite.

Cleo Ballard's book This Is A Lie: https://a.co/d/0c8sOetA

Follow Cleo Ballard (Nan Fischer) online: https://nanfischerauthor.com/

Want to be part of the conversation? Join the Patreon and ask your questions for the guest Q&A. You’ll also get early access to episodes, bonus after-show segments, and my free novella Cognitive Breach. Your support helps keep The Thriller Writer Lab going and brings more great thriller authors into the Lab.

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