Random Quotes on Crime & Thriller Writing

Fans of crime and thriller fiction will love this collection of quotes curated by the ImagaHub review team on their favourite genre.

‘The way to write a thriller is to ask a question at the beginning, and answer it at the end.’ Lee Child

‘Place the body near the beginning of your book—preferably on the first page, perhaps the first sentence.’ Louise Penny

‘I’m interested in starting stories at the moment of some crisis to see how the character deals with it.’ Paul Auster

‘Figure out what exactly is at stake, and how to establish it quickly. That’s your conflict.’ Katia Lief

‘I’m always pretending that I’m sitting across from somebody. I’m telling a story, and I don’t want them to get up until I’m finished.’ James Patterson

‘Life is about working out who the bad guy is.’ Sophie Hannah

'I can't start writing until I have a closing line.' Joseph Heller

‘I often know how the book will end and have imagined a number of major scenes throughout, but not always how I will get there. When I’m about two-thirds done I reoutline the whole book so I know that I’m delivering on all I promised.’ Jeff Abbott

‘The only writers who survive the ages are those who understand the need for action in a novel.’ Dean Koontz

‘People don’t read books to get to the middle. They read to get to the end.’ Mickey Spillane

‘I like to come up with a massive scale concept and throw in very ordinary characters because I think if you have a massive scale concept with massive scale characters they tend to cancel each other out. People have more fun if they can imagine how either themselves or the type of people they know would react in a bizarre situation. It’s a bit boring if you know how some highly trained soldier is going to react to a situation. It’s not very interesting compared to how someone who is an electrician or a schoolteacher might react to a situation.’ Christopher Brookmyre

‘The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.’ Mickey Spillane

'Readers have to feel you know what you're talking about.' Margaret Murphy

‘A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.’ Edgar Allan Poe

'Chapters are shorter than they used to be, and I have to be creative about ways to keep the pace moving: varying my sentence length, making sure each chapter ends on a note of suspense, keeping excess narration to a minimum.’ Joseph Finder

My idead? ‘Headlines. The human heart. My deepest fears. The inner voice that says: if it scares you, it’ll scare readers too.’ Meg Gardiner

If you love a good thriller, you will love the content you can find at ImagaHub.