I spent some time this weekend studying notable thriller movies as a genre.
I rented Freedomland starring Samuel L. Jackson and Julianne Moore. It's a two hour movie with a powerful message--sometimes, the truth really, really hurts.
The 113 minute motion picture is based upon the 672 page Freedomland novel, by Richard Price.
Julianne Moore gives a powerful performance in a role that is a little darker (for me) than I expected, but in the end I emphathized with her character a lot.
I'm so frustrated today.
I've been working on a new effort for several months and everything was moving along nicely, but over the course of the past couple of weeks I've become "stuck".
It appears that in my attempt to avoid writing about murder and killing in my thriller/suspense story, I've ended up with a boring and anti-dramatic story that is not really believeable.
In my story, the main character kidnaps an old girlfriend and then releases her a couple of days later. He did the kidnapping to see what it was like and as practice for future kidnappings. Later in the story he kidnaps a young child with intentions of receiving a ransom from his old employer, who is also the child's grandfather.
I'm becoming more and more convinced that this particular plot line will not hold a reader's attention for very long. In my attempt to eliminate violence and murder from my story, I've ended up with a boring story.
Don't get me wrong, I read a lot of suspense/thriller novels that include killing and murder (all of them actually). But, I would like to write a novel that is a suspense/thriller genre that doesn't contain murder and killing. Is it even possible?
