Domestic thrillers have been a big part of the market for years, but there was definitely an explosion in the market after the success of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. Made especially famous for its big midplot twist, it has gained something similar to the status to M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, where it’s such a big piece of pop culture that most people know what the twist is—but you’d better not say it out loud just in case! 

Even so, an enormous plot twist isn’t a defining feature of domestic thrillers, even if it’s a pretty popular trope in the genre. Domestic is really the defining word in setting apart these thrillers from the rest of the group. 

The Domestic in Domestic Thriller

The thriller genre is a big umbrella with lots of subgenres. The biggest feature that sets domestic thrillers apart from the rest is just that: they’re domestic. 

Domestic thriller heroes are not international spies. Or, if they are, maybe the hook of the book is that the jet-setting spy discovers a devious plot going on in their very own neighborhood. And often, domestic thrillers narrow the sphere of action down to a single household. A family member mysteriously goes missing. A woman begins to suspect that her husband is up to something nefarious. A couple worries that their new nanny is too good to be true. 

Even if there are wider stakes in the picture—maybe that missing husband is some kind of diplomat—those threats will be secondary to the relationships between individual characters. 

Centering Female Antiheroes, Heroines, and Stories 

Half of Gone Girl is told from her husband Nick’s perspective, but Amy Dunne is who stands out as one of the most iconic thriller characters of all time. It’s not a universal rule of the genre, but domestic thrillers often feature women as the main characters, if not the main protagonist. And unlike some kinds of writers, domestic thriller authors understand that relationships in the home have stakes that are just as serious as international espionage. 

What’s more important than the person you hired to take care of your children? Your relationship with your spouse is the most intimate one in your life, so imagine how terrifying it would be to think that you can’t trust that person.

Lots of domestic thrillers deal with characters whose biggest obstacles come from other characters not believing them. Their instincts are dismissed, their emotions are downplayed, and their concerns are ignored. This is a great mechanic for an author to force their protagonist into action. Sure, the regular mom off the street wouldn’t normally get into a murder investigation, but if no one believes her when she says her husband has been acting strangely, and that she’s sure her beloved babysitter wasn’t at risk of suicide despite everyone else calling her hysterical, she might have to take matters into her own hands. 

Any woman will immediately recognize and relate to being in a situation where she can’t convince the men around her to take her seriously or is conveniently overlooked because she’s just a mom. So domestic thrillers have earned a loyal fan base among female readers.  

Stretching the Label

Like any genre label, domestic thrillers can encompass titles that also fit in other categories. 

Of course, the easiest cross-genre connection arguably isn’t really cross-genre at all: mysteries. Not all thrillers focus on a puzzle at the center, but go to any mystery bookshop or convention and you’ll find not just a little pocket of thrillers but shelves upon shelves dedicated to them. Depending on whom you ask, if domestic thrillers are a subgenre of thrillers, thrillers themselves are a subgenre of mysteries. 

Horror/thrillers are also a fantastic way to blend elements of different genres. If your thriller is centered in the home, why not make it a haunted house? Maybe the wife who has started acting like a different person has become possessed. Or maybe the heroine discovers that her husband wasn’t just murdered, he was killed by a twisted serial killer who wants her as his next victim. 

Thriller romance stories are also a great idea. Heightened emotions like fear and adrenaline flow naturally into heightened emotions like love. Does the heroine work with a sexy detective who’s the only person to take her seriously? Or is she both attracted to and suspicious of her strange new neighbor? 

You could certainly write a thriller type of story as a fantasy, but it would probably sit on the fantasy shelf, not the thriller one. The same goes for science fiction, unless you’re working with a very near future world that is very similar to our own. 

Play with Building Blocks

Genre rules aren’t rules: they’re prompts! Let them spark your imagination and use them as springboards. If your finished book doesn’t end up as a strict domestic thriller, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have used it as your starting point. 

Chelsea Ennen is a writer living in Brooklyn with her husband and her dog. When not writing or reading, she is a fiber and textile artist who sews, knits, crochets, weaves, and spins.