(How I Write Compelling Characters in Spy Thrillers.)

Can two people love each other and still betray each other?  InThe Poet’s Game, Alex Matthews and his wife, Anna Kuschenko, are trained to use lies and deceit in the course of their intelligence work, and they ultimately contend with a dark secret that will forever keep them from being entirely truthful with each other. How does a couple that uses deception in the normal course of their professional duties, approach intimacy in marriage?  

The Secrets in Three Fictional Marriages

The marriages portrayed in The Odyssey, Rebecca, and Berlin Game artfully depict the tension between love and deception, and I studied the texts to see how the authors succeeded.

Odysseus’s wife Penelope, often described by the epithet, long-suffering, is surrounded by suitors seeking her hand in marriage during her husband’s 20-year absence. He is gone and presumed dead. Penelope defends against the suitors’ entreaties, but it becomes increasingly difficult for her to remain steadfastly faithful. When Odysseus returns, he appears in disguise as a beggar, recognized only by his household’s elderly swineherd. He hides his identity from Penelope. Is he suspicious that she betrayed him and he doesn’t want to reveal himself while he investigates? His deception is one of the epic’s curiosities, but Odysseus’s withholding makes their ultimate reunion more satisfying and Odysseus’s deceit adds dimension to his character.

Odysseus’s behavior is a good example of what John Le Carré said of complex characters: “The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.”

Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier’s 1938 romantic thriller, uses suspense and deceit in a marriage differently. The unnamed first-person narrator, a naïve young woman in her 20s who is a companion to an older woman in Monte Carlo, happens to meet a vacationing wealthy Englishman, Maxim de Winter, a 42-year-old widower. They fall in love, marry, and he brings his new wife back to his estate in Cornwall – Manderley. Maxim’s household servants, and particularly his spinster housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, take an immediate dislike to the young wife—comparing her disparagingly to the first Mrs. de Winter, Rebecca, who died a year earlier in a sailing accident. 

At Mrs. Danvers’s suggestion, the new wife dresses in Rebecca’s clothes to please her husband, who mourns the dead Rebecca. But rather than please Maxim, he is angered. The new wife suspects something is not right in their marriage, but she is helpless to discover what is wrong. Only a freak storm one night that sinks a ship off the coast results in the discovery of the missing sunken sailboat, and Rebecca’s body. The discovery causes Maxim to confess to his new wife that his marriage to Rebecca was a sham. Rebecca was cruel and selfish, took many lovers, and on the night that he murdered her, Rebecca confessed she was with child from a beau.

Click to continue.

Layers of deceit are drawn back in the final scenes and all that was hidden from the narrator about Rebecca’s death comes to light, drawing Maxim and the narrator closer together. Jeopardy of the shared secret deepen their bond.

Len Deighton’s 1983 novel, Berlin Game, features the loving couple of Bernard Samson, a middle-aged British intelligence officer working for MI6, and his wife, Fiona, also an MI6 intelligence officer. They have two children, live a respectable middle-class London life that is filled with the demands of parenting, family and friend obligations, and office scandals of adulterous colleagues. Samson is charged with exfiltrating an important East German asset and in the process confronts uncomfortable evidence that there may be a KGB traitor among his MI6 colleagues. Samson’s suspicions of treachery are confirmed when he is arrested in East Germany as he helps his asset escape, and is confronted by his wife, Fiona, dressed in a KGB uniform. She joined the enemy as a young college student drawn to communist ideology.

The villain in Berlin Game is the wife. But, in spite of Fiona’s treachery, her relationship to Samson has all the appearances of an affectionate marriage with young children, an active social life, and the little intimacies of a hard-working couple. 

How the Secrets in Fictional Marriages Move Stories

In each of these marriages, one character’s lies and deceptions deepens the complexity of the relationship, and provide the surprises that make for a compelling story. One partner hides an important detail of their life, and the revelation of that detail operates to bring the couple closer together, or thrust them irreversibly apart. The reveal provides an insight into what a character wants from the spouse—Odysseus wants to test Penelope’s fidelity, Maxim wants to protect his new marriage, Fiona wants to hide her treason. Deception and a surprise reversal in the relationships propels the plots of these stories.

Exposition is helpful to establish scenes and context, but dialogue provides the beating heart of the relationship and deployed effectively reveals the dynamic between husband and wife. Dialogue is used to imply, suggest, and hide and always for the purpose of adding to the unstable relationship between spouses. When characters come in contact with each other, sparks fly and the reader is riveted by the uncomfortable arguments and unexpected intimacies. The appearance of trust masks the inconsistencies and lies that point to betrayal. The best scenes are laden with uncertainty.

A character’s hidden motives make use of complex maneuvers to maintain the dark secret, all the while under cover of a gauzy film of intimacy and love. The layering of intimacy and artifice creates three-dimensional characters who come alive on the page. 

Check out Paul Vidich’s The Poet’s Game here:

Bookshop | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links)

The post Secrets We Keep From Each Other: Building Tension in Fictional Marriages appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(5 Things Writers Should Know About Criminal Profiling.)

In fact, right now, I’m going to share with you seven ways you can tell if someone is trying to deceive you, and you can start putting these methods to use immediately.

The 3-Second Rule

The first way to detect deception is The 3-Second Rule. Put simply, human beings are not born to lie. If you ask someone a question and they are telling the truth, they can quickly answer you. This is because their brain doesn’t have to pause and start coming up with a lie. 

So, if you ask someone, “Did you steal my wallet?” and they start hemming and hawing or they ask you to repeat the question, you know something is wrong. Here’s a real-life example for you. When I am interviewing people for my company I will ask them, “Tell me the last time you stole something?”

Most people answer honestly and say they stole candy from the supermarket when they were in sixth grade, or they stole money from their parents’ wallet in high school. However, one time, I asked this question to a woman, and she started stuttering and was clearly trying to buy time. 

She eventually admitted that she stole a significant amount of office supplies from her previous employer. I did not hire this woman. But the bottom line is, pay attention to the first three seconds of a person’s response and this will help you know if they are being honest or not.

Changing the Subject

Next, is Changing The Subject. For instance, if I ask you if you know why $10,000 is missing from the company bank account, it’s a yes or no answer, right? 

However, if I ask this to someone and they start telling me how they volunteer at the soup kitchen every Saturday and help the homeless every Wednesday night, what does that have to do with my question? Nothing. But they are trying to throw me off their scent by telling me good things they have done, even though they’re probably a thief.

Referencing Religion

The third tip you want to be aware of is if someone refers to their religious orientation. This is very similar to the “changing the subject” one I just mentioned. 

If I ask someone if they know where the missing money is and they say, “I’m Catholic, I can’t believe you would accuse me of that.” Or if they mention any religion at all, that has nothing to do with the question I asked. Honest people will give you a “yes or no” answer and won’t try to divert your attention.

Give Them Wheels

Fourth, if you are worried that someone might be being dishonest, put them in a chair with wheels. You will first want to ask them innocent questions such as about the weather or about how their family is doing or upcoming vacations. Then out of the blue, you hit them with the question you really want to know about the missing money or whatever it might be.

When you hit them with the uncomfortable question, do they start moving from side to side in the chair? Keep in mind, it’s not going to be a huge movement where they are doing a 360-degree turn or anything like that. It will be a slight movement from side to side, but you will definitely notice some discomfort.

Check out Jason Hanson’s Spy Secrets That Can Save Your Life here:

Bookshop | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links)

Look Down

Number five also has to do with the feet. You want to pay attention to the direction that a person’s feet are pointing when they talk to you. Are their feet pointing at you as most people do in a normal conversation? Or are the feet pointed to the side as if they are trying to get away from you? 

For this one, you definitely have to ask further questions. Perhaps they just have to go to the bathroom. Or maybe they did steal the money and they want to escape from your questions.

The Freeze

Number six is one of my favorites and it’s called The Freeze. When people lie, they don’t want to stand out and they don’t want to attract attention to themselves because they know they are guilty. 

Case in point: Let’s say I was teaching a seminar on lie detection, which is one of the things I do. And let’s say I went to the bathroom and came back and my wallet that was sitting on the front table was missing. I would obviously start asking if anyone saw somebody come up and take my wallet.

Most people would be exhibiting normal honest behavior and would be saying they didn’t see anyone take it or would offer to help me look for it and would be looking around the room already. But I would be looking for the one person who was almost frozen in their seat. The one person who was not exhibiting normal behavior and who didn’t want to stand out.

Here’s a true story of The Freeze in action. I was on an airplane once. And the politest way I can say this is that someone passed some gas and it smelled really, really bad. So bad, in fact, that I started looking around for a dead body and I noticed almost everyone around me was doing the same thing looking for that awful smell. However, to my left across the aisle was a guy just sitting perfectly still, barely moving, not looking around like the rest of us. My guess is, he was the culprit.

The Head Nod

The final tip I want to share with you is called The Head Nod. In short, never believe the words coming out of a person’s mouth, always believe the direction that their head nods. For instance, there was a politician who had a very bad marriage. She was being interviewed on TV and the reporter asked her about the state of her marriage. She said it was going wonderful, but as she answered, her head was clearly moving to the left and right saying, “Nope.”

In another case, another politician was being asked about an affair. He stated he did not have an affair, but you could easily see his head moving up and down telling the truth of “Yes,” he did have an affair.

One important thing to note about these lie detection techniques is that you’re looking for clusters. Just because someone does one of these, it doesn’t mean they’re 100% guilty. But if they start doing several of these, you certainly want to probe further since that person likely is being dishonest with you.

And here’s a bonus tip for you: I’ve got seven kids and as every parent knows, little kids lie about everything. It isn’t until about age 8-10 (every child matures differently) that they fully understand the consequences of lying and they exhibit the signs above. 

The post 7 Lie Detection Tips From a Former CIA Officer appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(5 Things to Keep in Mind When Writing About Spies.)

But by the time I sat down to write the second book in the series, Dead Drop—where a suave Iranian spy manipulates events to turn Israel’s Mossad against the CIA—I had the benefit of reader reviews. In analyzing their feedback (oh, so much of it), I saw consistent comments related to various suspense. (Hint: They like it and want more of it). 

Based on these reader reactions, I’ve now distilled five critical elements of spy-thriller suspense that I use in my writing.

Put the ‘care’ in characterization.

If a reader cares about the people in a drama, then they’ll want to know of their fates. I think this should be just as true in spy thrillers as it would be in any genre. For example, in The Americans (based on the book Deep Undercover by real-world KGB spy Jack Barsky), it’s easy to end up caring about this band of KGB spies. 

Through strong characterization, Elizabeth and Philip Jennings have budget struggles, marital conflict, child-rearing problems, and questionable fashion choices in 1980s America. But they’re also about to be nabbed by the FBI, constantly. Every show put me on edge because I cared about these people. Their quirky, intimate details made them seem so real that I just had to know what would happen to them.

Barbecue a nice juicy stake.

You probably already know that one of the writer’s jobs is to “raise the stakes.” Put simply, it means that the events of the plot must have dire consequences—otherwise, who cares? In my view, this is where spy thrillers have a leg up since the characters can have government-scale resources, world-changing motivations, and the ability to impact thousands of lives. 

In the first season of Amazon’s Tom Clancy Jack Ryan, for example, our CIA hero is racing to keep a terrorist from setting off a dirty bomb… which we later learn is buried under a hospital, no less. Through good characterization, we’re already invested in Jack. But now we also care about the outcome of his mission. Go, Jack, go!

Check out M. P. Woodward’s Dead Drop here:

Bookshop | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links.)

Count on the countdown.

We all know that a novel is a little world in which something happens to characters who change as a result. Yes, the reader should sympathize with the characters and worry about the big thing at stake. But we can ratchet the suspense a little further with a ticking clock. 

As an example, think of nearly every Mission Impossible movie. Ethan Hunt must find the guy who knows the other dude who will know how to locate the crazed villain who has planted the nuclear bomb somewhere. But Ethan must unravel this challenging chain of ne’er-do-wells in the next 72 hours or the world will be immolated! Subtle? No. Illustrative? Hopefully. 

Whatever the important stakes are, the tension is high because there is only so much time to avoid the terrible outcome.

Unroll the eye-roll.

Suppose we’ve created sympathetic characters, massive stakes, and a timebound problem. If all of that is based on a plot that is just too hard to believe, then why bother? (Ref above—Impossible, Mission). In my opinion, readers enter genres with a preconceived set of expectations. When the writer crashes through them too harshly, then the eye wanders from the page in an ocular 360. 

(M.P. Woodward: On Authenticity in Spy Thrillers.)

Within the context of a spy thriller, my own eye flutters when any of the previous three elements above are blown too far out of proportion. For example, during the daring escape, our defecting spy just happens to know how to fly a helicopter? (Ethan Hunt again). Or, all along, the CIA director was the Russian mole? (Reminiscent of every single Scooby-Doo episode ever broadcast on a Saturday morning).

Weave a twisted twist.

In my view, a character-driven espionage/spy-thriller novel should be about betrayal. The double-cross of the hero should matter to us (characterization), have far-reaching effects (stakes), must be avenged quickly (timebound), and seem plausible (the pupil has stayed locked on the page). Still, if there are no surprises, then the book is hanging out in three-star-review-land. 

For an example with at least two more stars, consider Le Carre’s classic The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Yes, we care about poor, suffering Leamas. He’s sacrificed everything on his clever mission to take out Mundt, the East German counterintelligence boss. Villainous Mundt has the capacity to completely undermine British intelligence and blow the whole damned Cold War. Come on, Leamas, get him. Only in the book’s final two pages, we learn of a twist. As it happens, poor, sympathetic Leamas had been operating under a double-cross all along by his boss, the famous spy-master Smiley, because it turns out that Mundt was….

Well, you see, you’ll have to find out for yourself. Because that’s the essence of suspense.

The post 5 Tips for Building Suspense in a Spy Thriller appeared first on Writer's Digest.

For every former special operations officer like New York Times bestselling author Brad Taylor, there’s a Tom Clancy who’s armed with nothing more than curiosity and a library card. To help you on your way, I’ve compiled a list of common mistakes to avoid.

(Using Real-Life Details to Ground Your Thriller Novel)

FBI Agent versus CIA Officer

If I had a dollar for every protagonist I’d seen described as a CIA Agent, I’d be a rich man! CIA employees are generally called intelligence officers while the subset of CIA officers who run and recruit assets are known as case officers or operations officers. To someone from the CIA, the term agent refers to a person who is actively spying or stealing information (more on this in the asset and source section below). Conversely, in the FBI, special agents, or agents for short, are the men and women who carry badges and guns and investigate federal crimes.

While the FBI and CIA are both members of the intelligence community and have overlapping interests, they are two very different entities. The FBI is a law enforcement organization meaning that its employees focus on gathering information through investigations. This information is then reviewed by a US attorney who decides whether to prosecute the investigation’s subject.

Not so with the CIA. Unlike their law enforcement cousins, the information gathered by CIA employees is never intended for court. Instead, the CIA generates intelligence products which aid the national command authority’s decision-making process. For instance, while the CIA and FBI might both be interested in a terrorist cell planning an attack on U.S. soil, the FBI will focus on gathering information in accordance with evidentiary standards so that the work product will stand up in court. The CIA does not have this concern. Instead, CIA officers pay special attention to the way in which the information they gather is disseminated to avoid inadvertently compromising the sources or methods used to obtain it.

FBI Source versus CIA Asset

Source is a term most often used in law enforcement and is usually short for confidential human source. A source is someone who has agreed to provide information to an investigator and/or potentially testify in court. For instance, if an FBI agent has recruited someone with information about a drug cartel, that person will be known as a source. From a CIA officer’s perspective, a person who provides information is called an asset or an agent.

In both the FBI and CIA lexicon, the person who interacts with a source or asset is known as a handler. Handlers build relationships with their sources or assets and direct their intelligence gathering activities through instructions known as taskings.

IndieBound | Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

Clandestine versus Covert

Like the confusion surrounding CIA officers versus FBI agents, the terms clandestine and covert are often used interchangeably, but they mean very different things. To an espionage pro, clandestine means hidden while covert means deniable or unattributable. Let’s illustrate this important distinction with a scenario.

Your protagonist surreptitiously enters the bad guy’s office to take pictures of a code book which has been conveniently left laying open on the bad guy’s desk. This would be an example of a clandestine operation because if your hero’s actions don’t remain hidden, the bad guy will simply change code books, rendering your protagonist’s hard won intelligence moot. With me so far? Good. Let’s jump to a second scenario.

Now the kid gloves come off. The bad guy in your novel is making chemical weapons and your hero is just the girl to put him out of business. Permanently. The next morning, the bad guy’s car explodes on his drive to work. In this case, the bad guy’s coworkers know that their boss was killed by a car bomb, but they don’t have a clue who planted it. In fact, since the bad guy had a lot of people who wished him ill, his surviving bad guy friends waste precious time trying to determine who killed him, and perhaps more importantly, which of them is next.

Maybe the surviving villains suspect that your heroine had a hand in the bad guy’s untimely death, but they can’t prove it. Planting the bomb was a covert operation because the action was either deniable, unattributable, or both.

Army Special Forces versus Special Operations

Speaking of blowing things up, let’s wrap up this article with a lesson on folks who epitomize the pointy end of the spear. Page through the back cover of half a dozen military thrillers and you’re sure to find a character or two described as “special forces.” While I love a good special forces hero as much as the next writer, these words carry with them a very specific meaning.

The greater special operations community, also known as special operations forces, includes everyone from Navy SEALS, to Army Rangers, to Marine Raiders, to Air Force Combat Controllers. The special operations community is a diverse one and fertile ground for many a barrel-chested protagonist. However, the title Special Forces is conferred on only one group of people—Army Green Berets.

In addition to their distinctive green head covers, Green Berets are easily recognizable by a tab worn on their left shoulder emblazoned with the words Special Forces. In army parlance, this is known as the long tab and Green Berets are sometimes called Long Tabbers. This is different from the Ranger Tab worn by men, and the one hundred or so women, who have graduated from the Army’s grueling Ranger School and are now considered Ranger Qualified.

Besides their head gear and uniforms, Green Berets stand unique in several other ways. Every Green Beret learns a language as part of their initial training and receives one of the eight 18 series skills designations. For instance, a special forces sergeant who specializes in communication is designated as an 18E, or Echo, while a special forces medic is an 18D or Delta.

Also, unlike say Army Rangers who concentrate on direct action missions, Green Berets are masters of unconventional warfare. This is a fancy way of saying that Green Berets specialize in training and fighting alongside indigenous armies. This was why it was Green Berets, not Army Rangers or Navy SEALs, who embedded with the Northern Alliance during the early days of the Afghanistan invasion and famously called in airstrikes from horseback.

Okay, now that you’ve got the basics, the rest is up to you. Get cracking on that novel! If you enjoyed this article, I think you’d like my protagonist, Matt Drake, who just so happens to be a former Army Ranger and current Defense Intelligence Agency officer. You can see him in my newest book, Hostile Intent, which dropped earlier this week. Either way, I’d love to hear how things are going for you. Stop by my website at donbentleybooks.com or drop me a line at donbentleybooks@gmail.com.

Best of luck!

Click to continue.

The post 4 Things Every Military/Espionage Thriller Writer Should Know appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this post, Paul discusses the inspiration behind his new literary spy novel, The Matchmaker: A Spy in Berlin, the drafting process and his beta readers, and more!

Name: Paul Vidich
Literary agent: Will Roberts, The Gernert Company
Book title: The Matchmaker: A Spy in Berlin
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Release date: February 2, 2022
Genre/category: Literary spy novel
Previous titles: An Honorable Man, The Good Assassin, The Coldest Warrior, The Mercenary.
Elevator pitch for the book: In the vein of Graham Greene and John le Carré, The Matchmaker delivers a chilling Cold War spy story set in West Berlin, where an American woman targeted by the Stasi must confront the truth behind her German husband’s mysterious disappearance.

IndieBound | Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

What prompted you to write this book?

I knew I wanted to set this novel in Berlin. During my research, I came across the autobiography of Markus Wolf, the legendary chief of East German counterintelligence, and I was fascinated to read how he used the human need for affection to create a network of “Romeos,” men who married innocent women as a cover for their spying. Essentially, Wolf turned love into tradecraft.

I was fascinated by the idea of a vulnerable American woman living overseas in love with a husband, only to discover everything she had come to know about him was false, everything was a lie. How do you recover from that?

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

Once I settled on Berlin as the novel’s setting, I did six months of research. In that time, I sketched the characters and the situation, and from there, a story took shape. I had a chapter-by-chapter outline before I started writing. My first hand-written draft usually takes about two months and two more hand-written drafts follow before I am confident about the work. I finished a typed-fourth draft about 12 months after starting. My wife reads that draft, as does my writer’s group, and a revised version goes to my agent. After I have incorporated his comments, I send it to my editor. I write every day for three to five hours.

The novel’s initiating situation and the premise of the story don’t usually change, but it’s everything in between that takes on shape, acquires details, and becomes vivid. It takes a year from the time my editor approves the manuscript to the book’s release. The long gap can create a “who’s on first” situation: A friend recently told me he’d just read my most recent book. Yet, in my mind, my most recent book was the one I was in the midst of writing; my penultimate book was the one forthcoming in two months. The book he was referring to had already been in bookstores for nine months, but because of the timeline, it didn’t quite make sense in our conversation!

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

I don’t like surprises. My publisher, Pegasus Books, is a great publishing company and they spared me whatever surprises they might have encountered behind the scenes.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Two of my characters changed in unexpected ways during the course of writing the novel. I always start with a dossier on each character that contains all the tidbits of life that make a person unique—birthplace, habits, concerns, fears—and I have a detailed chapter outline.

In the midst of the novel, I discovered different things about the two characters. Both are sinister, but are spies, both evil: and more complex than even I realized at first. I learned that good men often do bad things, and that evil men can have a complicating humanity.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope readers find the character, Anne Simpson, as interesting as I did while writing the book and can sympathize with the moral conflict she was living with.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

The one best bit of writing advice I ever received, which I offer to your readers now, came from Isaac Bashevis Singer, a brilliant storyteller not as widely read as he should be. He said that the writer’s obligation is to entertain and to instruct. A writer needs to get the reader’s attention, and to keep it long after the reader has put down the book.

Click to continue.

The post Paul Vidich: On Romance in Espionage appeared first on Writer's Digest.

“No one is born to do spy work—it must be learned.”

-Jacob Golos, A Most Clever Girl

Elizabeth Bentley’s handler in A Most Clever Girl may have laughed at her for digging through her boss’ trash for important papers—she had yet to learn that important papers get burned, not saved—but there’s a learning curve to being a spy, or writing one, for that matter! For those interested in a career in espionage, or perhaps just writing a character who happens to be a spy, here are a few things to keep in mind.

(Essential Versus Non-Essential Mystery)

5 Things for Writers to Keep in Mind When Writing About Spies

1. Being a real-life spy isn’t always James Bond-glamorous.

I hoped when I set out to write about a real-life spy that I’d get to write high speed chases and daring shoot-outs, but in fact, the job of a spy—and especially that of a handler—mostly involves visiting contacts and sifting through a lot of static, like a pre-Netflix television station gone off the air. However, spies are typically brilliant when it comes to reading people—your spy character needs to be curious and patient, especially since a former-CIA handler informed me it takes seven years for a spy to get their footing!

2. Normal people make the best spies.

In real life, handlers are looking for a Regular Joe or Plain Jane with access—they don’t want someone who sticks out in a crowd or whose life is in disarray. They also want someone who is honest and immediately willing to own up to any mistakes they might have made. (Elizabeth Bentley may have had problems with this.) So, having a character who is bland as vanilla (at least on the outside) may work well in your favor.

IndieBound | Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

3. Your spy could be overheard at any moment.

I made the mistake in an early draft of having my spy argue with her handler in an apartment hallway, which was a total rookie error, especially given that they were arguing about a contact. (For the record, I would have made a terrible spy.) It’s a good idea to have your spy flip on the radio to cover important conversations, or meet in a loud restaurant. (Which also solves the problem of having a potentially bugged apartment.) Even better is to meet near a water feature—the sound of falling water is unique and difficult to filter out even in modern-day recordings.

4. Spy gadgets are really cool. Ticking off the KGB is not.

Let’s be honest—shoe phones and umbrella guns are just plain nifty. Over the course of writing A Most Clever Girl, I got to include clandestine watch cameras, chess boards with secret compartments, and Russian one-time pads. However, if your spy character runs afoul of the KGB (or one of its many predecessors), be prepared for creative assassination attempts that may or may not make use of more lethal spy gadgets. (Just ask Bohdan Stashynsky, a KGB officer who used a cyanide spraying spray gun to assassinate two Ukrainian nationalist leaders.) In a pinch, the Russians might resort to a tactic like Leon Trotsky’s ice pick to the face, but either way, it’s not going to be much fun for their target.

5. You need a good reason to be a spy.

While being a spy ranks on the coolness factor with being a ninja or an assassin (or better yet, an assassin ninja), it’s a dangerous gig, and not just anyone is going to sign up. (Or make the cut, for that matter.) Idealists often make the best spies, but there are other motivations that might get your character to join up with the CIA, KGB, or some other spy organization. Does your character need the money being offered? Are they looking for a sense of purpose or belonging? Do they have an axe to grind with the government? Also, remember that the CIA doesn’t coerce people into informing for them. The Russians, on the other hand… Well, they’re a different story. 

Click to continue.

The post 5 Things for Writers to Keep in Mind When Writing About Spies appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(Alma Katsu: On Where to Put the Big Reveal in a Thriller)

If you’ve got your heart set on being the next Ian Fleming or John le Carré, the following five tips should give you food for thought.

5 Tips for Writing a Spy Thriller Novel

Character Is King

Spy thrillers are, first and foremost, stories, and that means your characters are going to carry the day. Readers fall in love with characters, so take no shortcuts here. Make sure your protagonist is interesting and complex, not just an amalgam of stereotypes. Give him or her a rich backstory, a flaw or two, and the two most important attributes you can have in the spy business: a conscience and a moral compass.

In Red Widow, the main characters’ moral compasses are severely tested. Lyndsey Duncan is a case officer at CIA tasked with finding the mole who is handing over the Agency’s best assets to Russia. Theresa Warner is the Red Widow, wife of a CIA officer who died during an operation inside Russia. The two officers’ lives become entwined over the mole hunt, ultimately causing both women to question what it means to work at CIA, what you owe to your country, and what you owe to yourself.

Be aware that the Intelligence Community (IC) has made great efforts in the past couple of decades to diversify its workforce. This wasn’t to be politically correct: it’s because a diverse workforce is a stronger, smarter, and more resilient workforce. Let your imagination run wild as you build your characters.

IndieBound | Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

Political Science Should Take a Backseat

You might think what differentiates spy thrillers from their mystery, crime, or suspense thriller brethren is the political angle and while that’s true, it’s important to remember not to go crazy with it. Don’t think you have to impress everyone with your knowledge of Soviet-era history or use everything you learned while earning your doctorate in Chinese military strategy. As with other types of exposition, a little bit (judiciously placed) goes a long way.

The exception here is a novel that’s completely immersed in a foreign country. You truly must be an expert in another country or region and have deep knowledge of the culture, language, and history to be able to pull this off. The “Inspector O” novels, set in North Korea, are an outstanding example of this type of novel. Written by James Church, the pseudonym of a former career North Korea intelligence analyst, these novels perfectly balance subject matter expertise with plot, character development, and everything else it takes to make a story.

Timing Is Tricky

In real life, political situations change quickly and if your novel is tied to a specific political sub-movement or breaking cult figure, the moment could be over before your book gets to the printers. Better to pick something evergreen—the Russians embrace of propaganda as a means of state power, say—and then riff on an aspect of this for your plot. Spy thrillers, possibly more than other genres of commercial fiction, are vulnerable to the news cycle. It might be hard to get publishers or agents interest in a story based on a political or military conflict that took place even as recently as 10 years ago unless it’s got a killer, evergreen hook to it, or is clearly meant as historical fiction.

(7 Tips for Writing Police Procedurals That Readers Love)

Know How the Intelligence Community Works

There’s no excuse to base your knowledge of intelligence work on TV, movies, and other novels when there is such a wealth of research materials, a lot of it coming straight from the horse’s mouth. CIA’s own website (cia.gov) offers a treasure trove. Next, visit the Center for the Study of Intelligence (https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/), the Intelligence Community’s own think tank. It can point you to great research, papers, and monographs that can provide both broad information on tradecraft (that’s how the spy business is done) and specific historical events.

And while we’re at it, CIA is not the only spy agency in the U.S.—there are now 18 federal agencies in the IC (its newest member, the U.S. Space Force, joined in January 2021). Learn more about the IC at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and maybe you’ll be inspired to place your protagonist at one of the lesser-known but vital agencies that also protect American citizens and interests.

Working in the Field Is Not Necessarily a Prerequisite

I’m often asked if you must have worked as a spy to write a good spy novel. The answer, in my opinion, is that while having worked in the field gives you a big leg up in terms of tradecraft, it’s not the be-all-end-all. You know how the work is done and you’re familiar with all the foibles of the business, that’s true. But affiliation with the IC is a double-edged sword.

There are two drawbacks. First, you can fall into groupthink on a topic or target very quickly, which makes it hard to come up with the fresh ideas you need to write a book. Secondly, when you get a security clearance you take on a life-long obligation to let the IC review anything you write that has to do with your intelligence work before it’s published. It’s called pre-publication review and the IC takes it very seriously, and if you’re not diligent in your writing process you can trip yourself up by straying too close to classified information.

Click to continue.

The post 5 Tips for Writing a Spy Thriller Novel appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this post, Katsu discusses what it was like to write her latest thriller Red Widow, how she made the difficult decision of where to place the novel’s big reveal, and more!

****

Click to continue.
****

Name: Alma Katsu
Literary agent: Richard Pine, Inkwell Management
Title: Red Widow
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Release date: March 23, 2021
Genre: Thriller
Elevator pitch for the book: Theresa Warner lost her husband when a CIA operation in Russia went horribly wrong. She has every reason to hate Russia—so why does Lyndsey Duncan suspect she’s the traitor handing CIA assets over to Moscow? Two women agents are caught in a deadly cat-and-mouse game in Red Widow.
Previous titlesby the author: The Deep, The Hunger (historical horror); The Taker, The Reckoning, The Descent (fantasy/paranormal trilogy)

IndieBound | Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

What prompted you to write this book?

I’ve worked most of my life in intelligence and have been dismayed that spy fiction is so heavily slanted to male readers. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy a lot of it; I’m a huge fan of John LeCarre, for instance. But there’s a lot of it that doesn’t jibe with what I’ve experienced and that seemed a shame, because the job and the life you end up having is pretty amazing. There’s a lot less running in heels with guns than TV and movies lead you to believe, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less thrilling, challenging, or rewarding.

I kept thinking it would be great to write a spy book with a female protagonist, a book that would hopefully appeal to readers of both sexes but would be told from a female officer’s perspective. With the popularity of TV shows like The Americans and Homeland, which have huge female audiences, it seemed like the right time for a spy book with a strong female lead.

Up to this point, however, the novels I’d written have been in the horror/fantasy realm, all with a heavy historical element requiring tons of research, about as far as you can get from a contemporary espionage thriller. I liked writing these stories and wasn’t ready to leave it all behind. I probably wouldn’t have taken the plunge if my editor at Putnam, Sally Kim, hadn’t urged me to give it a try.

(Writing Fiction: A Good Story Must Be Disturbing)

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? 

The idea for the plot came to me right away, based on an incident that happened in real-life but has never been publicly associated with the CIA. (I completely changed all the facts to protect the secret, so trust me, you’ll never ever figure out the event that serves as the basis.) I took that idea and played the “what if” game, ratcheting up the stakes and making it twistier and twistier.

In general, the book was easier to write than my previous books, all of which—having a historical component—required a ton of research and constantly pinning plot points and story developments to historical events and actual people.

Compared to some writers, I’m fairly fast. A first draft will take me between three to six months to complete, including research. This speed comes from thirty years as an intelligence analyst, I think, which teaches you to efficiently marshal facts and work towards solutions. Red Widow was a comparatively easy book to write because the world of intelligence was still fresh: I’d only just retired from government when I started it. Nothing at all like writing a book set on the Titanic, with 2,300 potential characters to sort through!

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

Red Widow is my sixth novel. You might think that after five books, it would’ve settled into a routine—and you’d be wrong. For one thing, there’s COVID. I was on tour for The Deep when lockdown started in the U.S. and since then, we’ve seen the book business turned upside down for publishers, bookstores, authors, and readers. The good news is that we—booksellers, publishers, authors—have figured out a bunch of new ways to connect with readers. (For instance, I did a series of videos answering readers’ questions about what it’s really like to work in intelligence). COVID has forced us all to put on our thinking caps.

The second wrinkle is that I’m trying to break out in a new genre. There doesn’t seem to be a good roadmap for this. While there are pluses—my name is known to some readers and people in the industry—there are also minuses. Readers might not trust that an author can write well in a second genre, not aware that I’m writing from personal experience. Will my readers follow me? Will booksellers give the new genre a chance? I’m waiting to find out.

(5 Features for Writing Psychological Thrillers: A Checklist for Writers)

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book? 

The hardest thing about writing this book was figuring out where to bring in the second POV character. The second POV character introduces a huge reveal. The introduction of the bombshell forces an abrupt change of direction in the book, disrupting the forward momentum, but this character’s voice is so engaging and her story so compelling that it seemed a shame to withhold it for too long. I moved the introduction of the second POV forward and back in the manuscript, trying to find the sweet spot. Every move required a million tiny changes throughout the manuscript. It was an incredible amount of work, but Sally was unfailingly patient and supportive, and the painstaking tinkering paid off in the end.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope it will give readers a sense of the patriotism that motivates the people who work in intelligence. It’s a kind of patriotism that’s not schmaltzy or (as we’ve seen too much of these days) toxic selfishness: it’s a quiet, personal resolve to protect Americans and honor the vow they took the first day on the job.

At the same time, I wanted to show that there are aspects to working at the Agency—at all federal intelligence agencies, really—that are kind of dark. Working an intense mission under high pressure can sometimes bring out the worst in people, especially the highly competitive. When one of these people has you in his sights, it’s like having a shark bearing down on you. They’ve been trained to be ruthless and uncompromising, and to compartmentalize their emotions, so they no longer see you as a coworker or friend, only as chum in the water. Suddenly, you’re in danger and management is not really protecting you, and you realize loyalty is not always a two-way street.

If you could share one piece of advice with other authors, what would it be?

I became a published author later in life than most, selling my first book at fifty. Every time I start to stress—why is it not getting easier to write a book, what if sales don’t meet expectations, how do I compare with my peers—I try to remind myself that all of life is a journey, and that writing is only part of it. In my intelligence career, I often volunteered for assignments that pulled me out of my wheelhouse and each of them made me a better, more knowledgeable intelligence officer and contributed to the person I am today. Try not to worry about holding onto things that you already have in your hand and think instead of what to reach for next. 

The post Alma Katsu: On Where to Put the Big Reveal in a Thriller appeared first on Writer's Digest.