I’m over 80% finished with my second thriller, which is a good thing. One of the reasons it’s good is I have other important writing plans for those obligatory two months when you set your first draft aside before revising it.

I’m looking forward to beginning writing the spicy romance novel my girlfriend and I have been plotting and outlining for quite some time. I’ll also be going back and rewriting portions of the first book, based on really good feedback I’ve gotten from an agent who thought about it a long time before passing, and from a few publisher’s reps who liked “Book 1” but couldn’t quite pull the trigger on it.

But first I need to finish “Book 2.” And I’ve reached a certain tipping point that I think is essential for any action/thriller regardless of the medium. The “quiet before the storm.”

Thriller readers all love the dramatic tension, the rising stakes, the good pacing, the blow-by-blow action, and the fallout. All building up to a fantastic finish where our heroes have their naked swordfight with a dozen aliens atop the flaming train that’s about to carry live nukes off the cliff … or whatever. Of course the payoff has to be good, but what doesn’t get talked about as much is what comes just before.

You see it in the best martial arts films. The hero meditates, or isolates himself for a while, or maybe just stares off into space. Thinking about what led him there and what he now has to do. The book/film/series takes one last proverbial deep breath before the mad sprint to the finish.

It’s important, because it makes the action realistic. The heroes need a break now and then. No one can go full throttle at anything indefinitely. And that includes the reader! Give the reader a chance to digest what happened once in a while. And especially do so just before the end, lest they lose track of the stakes and why the hero is fighting for them.

I find it’s a great place to resolve characters’ personal issues, or to create new ones. A moment of physical vulnerability can lend itself to terrific drama from emotional vulnerability. And it’s vulnerability than makes a hero likable. It’s his struggle that makes him relatable.