By James Hannibal @jamesrhannibal

You can work a high-tech gadget into a cozy mystery, but that won’t make it a techno-thriller. To be a techno-thriller, a story must have distinct moving parts set up on a collision course that slam together into a perfect mesh.

The Vocabulary of Moving Parts

Last time I wrote about the language of techno-thrillers and spiral learning. The reader needs to learn military techno-speak to understand the story progression, and you the writer teach this language in gradual fashion by circling back to cover the same acronyms and lingual nuances chapter by chapter, in greater detail each time, until your reader becomes a master speaker, ready for immersion in the final action.

Back in high school or college, your language teachers broke the vocabulary into subjects. One day, you studied greetings. The next, you studied food and drink. And the next, you studied numbers. On day four, you might visit an imaginary restaurant, in which you greet the maître d’, order food and drink from the menu, and work out the numbers to pay the bill. The separate parts came together.

Techno-thrillers work the same in terms of both language and setting up the moving parts to mesh. Teach the reader the language of each moving part as you would teach them separate subject vocabularies in a language course. As you draw closer to the end, focus on overlapping language to prepare them for the mesh.

Writing Backwards?

Let’s be clear. I’m not an advocate of writing backwards, or even writing your ending first. But if you’ve read my other blogs, you know I’m big on planning and preparation. 

Good planning is as-or-more important in techno-thriller writing than any other genre. You cannot write a good techno-thriller unless you have a solid understanding of your final battle. The technical aspects are too important to your reader.

You absolutely must have a general idea of the technologies you are bringing together for the ending and how they mesh before you can go back and start their separate, merging paths. This allows you to steer the course as you write, and it allows you to work the overlapping technical language into each moving part. Ignore this advice, and you’ll likely add pain and a good deal of shoehorning to your later drafts. Readers will notice.

 A Visual Example: The Collision Becomes a Perfect Mesh

As an example, I’d like to use a video Lockheed Martin created to push their Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM). To help their customers see the benefits of the missile, Lockheed created a nice little visual story. But for our purposes, the story has those moving parts every techno-thriller reader loves.

Watch the video now and think of it as that final battle scene I mentioned above. Then come back, read how we’d write it as a techno-thriller, and go watch it again.

Have you watched the video? Good. Here we go. What you saw is the final battle of what must be a larger story. In this scene, the good guys identify the bad guys, and our hero missiles evade all threats and barriers to take them down. Of course, our heroes can’t be missiles, so we’ll change things up a bit. Now it’s time to break this final battle into our moving parts. Notice those moving parts look like they will collide but wind up fitting together in a nice mesh.

The video shows three distinct moving parts—the Blue Force (good guys) fleet, the Blue Force F-18 attack aircraft, and the hostile Surface Action Group (SAG—bad guys). The missile is the protagonist of the video story, linking these parts together. 

Moving Part One, the enemy tech: Your hero, John, is a corporate lawyer working in China. He notices something fishy. A classified American defense document is mixed in with his case files. The Chinese have stolen a key US defense technology and are using it to build a devastating weapon. A general high on the Beijing political ladder is just crazy enough to use it. You’ll need to teach the reader the vocabulary of this new Chinese weapon and the stolen tech that makes it possible.

Moving Part Two, the intelligence asset: John’s college sweetheart, Mara, works for the Director of National intelligence as a Defense Intelligence Agency liaison. Her expertise covers surface radar and alternative methods of threat detection (don’t worry about the jargon,—it’s just an example). Knowing his old girlfriend has a background in what we call “beeps and squeaks,” John seeks her help. She’ll wind up on board that Blue Force destroyer, trying to convince an admiral that her zero-military-training-lawyer-old-boyfriend can disable the enemy weapon and that the fleet shouldn’t launch the missiles. You’ll need to teach your reader the vocabulary of surface radars, alternative detection methods, this new American missile, and intelligence networks.

Moving Part Three, the pilot: Remember the battle video? The only human who gets anywhere near the enemy is that F-18 pilot, before he launches his missile. Call him Mike. You’ll need to teach your reader the vocabulary of navy attack pilots and carrier operations. Why? Because you’ve decided Lawyer John will wind up on board that enemy ship trying to disable the enemy weapon. 

The Collision/Mesh: Pilot Mike doesn’t like John much because he doesn’t like lawyers, and because Mike has built up his own love interest in Mara over the course of the story. But in that final battle, Mike and his F-18 become the communication link between John and Mara, enabling all three to work together to destroy the threat for good. Turns out, it’s a good thing the admiral launched those missiles, because zero-military-training-lawyer-old-boyfriends actually can’t disable enemy weapons. But John can delay the enemy launch long enough for the missiles to find their targets, jumping overboard just in time and taking the evil general with him. 

Boom. The missiles hit home. The team has saved the free world. The rescue helicopter deposits John and his captive on the deck of the carrier, where John and Mike high-five each other. “You can be my wingman anytime,” (or something like that). Mara, who came over from the destroyer, surprises both by slapping the evil general then spinning Mike around and pulling him into a kiss. Everyone cheers. And you, the author, made it happen, because you knew to plan the final battle ahead of time, teach your reader the vocabulary of each moving part, and steadily bring those moving parts together on a collision course that became the perfect mesh.

Check out On Target with Techno-thriller Readers Part One

As a former stealth pilot, James R. Hannibal is no stranger to secrets and adventure. He has been shot at, locked up with surface to air missiles, and chased down a winding German road by an armed terrorist. He is a two-time Silver Falchion award-winner for his Section 13 mysteries for kids, a Thriller Award nominee for his Nick Baron covert ops series for adults, and a Selah Award finalist for his Christian CIA thriller, the Grypyhon Heist. James is a rare multi-sense synesthete. Want to know more? Visit JamesRHannibal.com.