How To Write A Bestselling Thriller

When John Baldwin was co-writing The Eleventh Plague: A Novel of Medical Terror (HarperCollins 1998), he studied the plots of a number of best-selling thrillers. Out of that work he developed a list of rules for constructing the plot of a thriller so that it will become a best-seller. He's since shared them with the rest of us. Some of them are as follows: - the hero has a team of experts in various fields behind him - two or more on the team must fall in love - two or more on the team must die I'm not sure how valid these rules are in general, but it certainly worked for them; The Eleventh Plague did hit the bestseller list. You can see the complete list of rules here. Via Cliff Pickover's Reality Carnival.