Possible fun topic: tier ranking your own characters?

It’s surprisingly useful for me to see all these different thriller tropes displayed like this. It’s like a thriller-writing buffet 🤤

My first thriller had a guilty protagonist trope and I was sweating nervously the entire video because I wanted to know what Alexa thought about it, lol

What I really have a hard time with, with these ranking things is the use of the colours. Everyone knows red is bad and green is good. And these are backwards, it throws me off.

I think your hardly disliking any tropes only underlines how much you love thrillers!

Alexa, I laughed so often during this. You made it fun from beginning to end. I have to say, you and I are totally different readers. If I’m in a thriller mood, detective POV and gov/mil are go-to for me and I would stick a fork in my eye before reading a boarding school trope (with the exception, of course, of “The Ivies” which I have already pre-ordered.) What I love about your channel is that your advice about writing and the industry is almost entirely divorced from your personal preferences. I suspect you make that look much easier than it actually is. Thank you and take a well earned bow.

I fully know and understand why you don't, but I sooooo wish to hear examples of books of the "when it is done really badly" side of the house! Love the videos! Keep 'em coming!!!

Isolation trope!! :D I screamed YES at so many of these tropes haha, though I feel like most of them depend on how the writer executes them

Yesss!! Tropes tiers from the Queen herself! 🤩

I'm always excited for new content, but honestly, it's like you drop your videos on the days I'm having the hardest time with my job, stress levels, life... I appreciate your pick me ups always. ❤️ now let's talk about thrillers!!

Some tropes that I think you didn't mention, but I like when done well, are: - fake identity (pretending to be someone else) - outlaws/outcasts/misfits - fake death/dying trope (Agatha Christie style!) - wrongly accused trying to prove their innocence - running out of time (when executed well this is an absolute page-turner for me!) Thank you for this video! It was highly entertaining and helpful to me! :) xx

Looks like a really fun process with difficult decisions. I'd love to do a tier ranking.

This is such a fun video 👍 My least favorite trope is when a psychopath has the MC captive and they keep winning at every turn. I prefer whodunnit stories set in atmospheric locations or revenge quests or very awkward social situations where everyone has a secret. Also, the crime needs to be extra juicy.

I'm at work so I can't watch this yet but I loooove tier lists. Closing time can't come soon enough!

Thanks again for the great content! I am writing in this genre right now and enjoyed your ranking of the tropes!

Please please PLEASE rank genres in the same tiers as this

S-tier video!!! This was such a cool idea! But Alexa & I finna throw hands over cults 😩

Detective fiction a hard pass? I love this! My faves at the moment are Elly Griffiths' Ruth Galloway series, Jane Casey's Maeve Kerrigan series, Robert Galbraith's Cormoran Strike series, Peter James' Roy Grace series . . . plus more! I would recommend! :)

I loved this. I want to do this tier ranking. How fun!!!

POV detective is also a hard pass for me. Like, police and detectives always have all these fancy resources and I just love the average person who doesn’t have those resources needing to be creative to get to the answer. Another trope I would have added is New Job. I love when the protagonist is coming into a new job, especially like working for a rich household or something, and so it gets them involved in the situation and there’s a deep dark secret they slowly uncover. It sets the protagonist up as involved but also an outcast because they’re new and just trying to get along with everyone and do well in their job.

Moral of the story Alexa likes Thillers A LOT.

I wanted you to do thissss aaaaaa

I'm writing something with small town secrets and return to hometown, so I'm liking the love for the concept!

Hi! Love your videos I’ve been binging them lately! I have a question for you, when writing your books do you sit down and define what tropes your going to be using? Or is it just something that you know so you don’t need to necessarily think about it too much. (I’m new to writing so I’m just thinking of everything haha)

Agree on so many points, especially your trash it or treasure it! Thrillers are one of those genres where it's so easy to do it wrong but so satisfying to do it right when approaching hard and serious topics. Your Pervy Adult with Teen trope is such a great example. If the point of the narrative is how trash these people are for abusing minors and a commentary on our broken system - Amazing! "Sadie" by Courtney Summers comes to mind for what I consider a well done Thriller that points these out as atrocities and balances the graphic nature of the content by not being voyeuristic for the wow factor. It's when it takes a "Riverdale" spin that I want to set it on fire. (You know, where someone mentions that maybe it's bad but the adult just gets a slap on the wrist from another adult and they run away into the night to enjoy life and the teen is never brought to a counselor but is playing guitar next week 100% fine and in no way damaged. Also includes plenty of graphic sex scenes for the steamyness factor.)

This post has value, but for me, what would be more valuable would be a brief explanation of each trope, a brief example of each trope, and then a brief ranking of each trope. Otherwise, it's like watching someone walk through Baskin Robins, point to each flavor, and be like, That's Mint Chip Chocolate Chip. I like chocolate chips, and I like mint ice cream, but sometimes the mint flavor reminds me of toothpaste.

This is cool! I'm just surprised that you didn't include "Character who we thought was real/alive/shown on the page is actually dead/a ghost/a hallucination/the alt. personality of someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder". That one for me is the extreme version of trash or treasure; I feel like I can love or hate a book with that trope, but rarely be in the middle. There's exactly one exception I can think of where that plot twist was kinda neutral for me. There's another book that has it and is one of my favorite books, there's one that has it and I really didn't like it, and then there's one where I got a couple chapters into a free preview and was like "I bet this character doesn't exist", then went to GR to spoil it and was correct; that one I probably wasn't going to finish reading anyway, because I wasn't a fan of the first few chapters, but I was surprised that the twist was that obvious. (Then again, it was right after I read the aforementioned book I didn't like, so maybe I was primed to expect this particular twist.) This one definitely has to be handled with care, especially if it's about mental illness. How do you feel about this trope?

yayyy tier lists are fun

Oh good. I’ve been on an Alexa binge and just ran out of content 😂

This made me realize why I am not buying/reading thrillers that much despite loving and writing the genre. I actually seem to dislike most of the common tropes so much that they're a hard pass for me so there aren't many left for me to enjoy.

Ok so here's my thing I saw someone talk about suprise sibling that's evil trope and I would like some opinions; I have a sibling who isn't secret to their sibling, one of the protagonists, but he does come out as 'evil', which the sibling didn't know. So he's not like a secret sibling, they just hadn't seen each other for years due to parent divorce. Is this like a big no no? Because, like, he isn't secret. He just exists and they know he exists just not that he joined the 'dark side'. Sibling number 2 2 is different. My other protagonist didn't know she had a sibling, but the whole book revolves around she didn't know what happened to her family, so it's not completely out of nowhere like 'omg I'm adopted I never knew' like she openly admits she doesn't know who her family was really or where they are. But when 2 does come into the book, he is 'evil'. (I'm using evil and dark side bcs I rlly cbb explaining) But he's 'evil' because he remained with their birth father, who is corrupt, and he isn't truly evil he is just desperate to get his father's approval. At the end he does turn around in his ways and stuff, but is this a no too? Idek know. I am sensitive about the amount of siblings and family lines in my book, it's something I directly addressed in the book through a character, I'm just wondering about these two. (Yes there are also family who aren't 'evil', not all family is evil here lol) Feedback appreciated!

As someone who is trope sensitive (I tend to inherently dislike when I can detect a trope, although a good story can get around it) I loved this video. I notice that the tropes I dislike the most are the ones I have the least exposure to, most likely because I ASSUME it's going to be hacky. So hearing about some ways that tropes can be used but subverted or still be good is actually very interesting to me. (Plus helps me feel better about using them in my own work)

I love the multi-media trope!! It’s one of my biggest auto-buy tropes

16:25 Yup, thats Gone Girl haha

I avoid a lot of rankings but I liked yours! You made me realize I’m hard pass on the majority of thriller tropes 😂. I am the opposite in that I prefer more detective stories with a twist rather than domestic, school oriented, and love interest type tropes which I avoid. Lots of people love the boarding school trope though. It seems to be an auto buy for a lot of people.

Your name is pronounced the same as my own, and I also have a similar hair style. Scared me a little lol. Loved the video.

oooh let's go!!

You should pick up Emma in the night by Wendy Walker. One of the POVs is a detective POV but it was eventually well done and added an emotional layer that I don’t typically find with most detective POVs.

I don't warm to POV Detective except for The Dresden Files. That's a secret pleasure like listening to Daydream Believer by the Monkees.

What's with the tiers lately? 😂 I'm seeing them everywhere again! Aside from that, would like to see other genres from you! I mean I know you're predominately a thriller reader but still...

I want a site where there are books/thrillers tagged like this, because I'm not mad about spoilers ever (I gave up on that like 20 years ago). Would be much easier for me to get books that I like and want to tell my friends how good it is.

I'm currently revising a Gothic thriller novel that I can't help but think would work better as a dual timeline story. Do you have any good recommendations of dual-timeline stories that I could pick up and study how their authors found that perfect balance and transition between the two timelines?

the thing about detective POVs is that they focus more on the procedures of the crime investigations, which could be boring for some people. but for me, Karin Slaughter-her Will Trent series, as my prime example-is my automatic go-to when I wanna read something about detectives.

I’d love to start reading thriller books. Which book(s) would you recommend starting with?

Have you tried any Tana French? I'm also a bit put off by detective POVs, but I think she does a pretty good job with her Dublin Murder series, considering.

I Looooooooooooooooooove unreliable narrators and gothic. :)

Fun video, but a few of these tropes were unfamiliar to me. What is a dual timeline? If you do one of these again, please explain each trope a tiny bit.

Do you think 'write what you know' works for writers to write more seriously with a low skill set? Is writing a story (basically laying out the plot/base) in basic sentences and then refining your work afterwards a suitable method to use in your opinion?

The contrast between her hair and her dress goes well together .

Oh! And! Have you ever read a high twist story like, the POV detective is the antagonist?

A trope that you missed, not exclusive to thrillers but it occurs in them more than in other genres: the first person POV dies trope. For instance a thriller where a spy is found out and about to be executed, but does a recording of his life and spy story while awaiting his end, and then his story is reconstructed by others, Not sure if I like this trope.

Does anyone have some good shouts for their favourite books with POV timeline trickery?

*SPOILER FOR THE VIDEO GAME LITTLE HOPE* Mental illness twists are so hard to be good because most of the time they either make the mentally ill person out to be dangerous to others or completely disregard their voice as “crazy”. The only time I’ve seen it done somewhat well was in the horror video game Little Hope because the scary-survival journey was used as a way for the main character to come to terms with his survivor’s guilt and did it in a way that showed he was a person who was dealing with an illness instead of just a “crazy” person who you’re meant to dismiss and fear. You really felt for him and it showed that mentally ill people are more a danger to themselves than anyone else; the horror came from how much your own mind can torture you opposed to how much you can torture others. I’d love to see more well done executions of this trope. Do you have any recommendations (I don’t mind that a recommendation in itself would be a spoiler, haha)? Also is it bad I feel bad for the psychopaths/sociopaths when they’re always portrayed as evil? I mean, it might just be because I’m pretty high up on the spectrum there but still try my best to be a good person, and there are many functional full psychopaths/sociopaths who are good people too, but they are fighting their programming to do so. I don’t know, I’m rambling, haha

Is illegitimate child/ secret heir revenge a thriller trope? Maybe that's more soapy? I feel like it's such a wild card twist and difficult to properly thread through the narrative.

I'd like to add the killer who is chasing the next victim and the victim is running like mad to get away while the killer is just walking along and somehow catches up to the victim. Now where I'd put it on your tier list, I can't decide.

Have you read Airhead by Meg Cabot? I think you'd like it maybe?

Where did you find those trope icon images for this tier maker? Are there others on all other fiction tropes?

...so there I was taking in your extensive tiermaker and I found it to be a bit of a tearmaker. Why? I'm wrapping up the first draft of thriller I'm writing, and you didn't mention something I'm using. You didn't bother with that beloved old standby, the bad guys are the good guys. For my purposes I wrapped it in a protagonist's journey structure. Despite your dislike of the detective trope, I'm not burning my Raymond Chandlers or my Dashiell Hammetts. Well, what do you expect? I'm an old guy.

It's 100% about execution. I'm thinking about Cracks, specifically, it was executed as a love story, not as the predatory thriller it is,because the characters were "lesbian " (air quotes because I don't think of either as actually gay, but the predatory character is the same gender as the victim. )

A facet of “secrets from the past” I hate, which could be its own trope really, is “surprise relatives”. Massive hard pass.

I know you said it partially as a joke, but are there actually any thrillers that follow a bunch of rich assholes on a yacht and one of them is murdered? Because if there is, I will read it. And if not, someone should write one. 😂It's the rich assholes trope and the isolation trope combined together in one thrilling package

As for as satanic culture stuff ruini g stuff... I read a book where they sacrificed a poor cat ON THE FIRST PAGE

Spoiler!!!!! I hear the book hidden pictures uses the trans twist. I’m so shocked is getting such high reviews.

First!!!

A good thriller should be based on _real_ experiences. If you have never had thrilling moments in your life, then making them up will come over as trite. If you write from _experience_ then your stories will be convincing. Your job - as a writer - is to _embellish_ your stories to make them compelling and entertaining.

You hate government stuff? DON'T YOU LOVE THE HUNGER GAMES THOUGH??

You rank content by the moralising nature of the text? No thanks

Kind of a pointless video. "I like this, I dislike that." You could have spent this time writing. And it's time to stop calling everything a "trope". It's getting a bit silly.