I have finally worked out what my wip's genre is and find it is a thriller (a spy one).

I wondered if anyone had read any good books/essays on writing in this genre?

So far I've been recommmended an essay by Umberto Eco, but am hoping to track down a bit more. Does anyone have any they found particularly useful?

I think I'm just nervous about pulling it off and should probably just write it.

Thanks so much!

Not a clue as to anything to recommend but it does occur to me that my favourite spy story is John Le Carre's A Perfect Spy and that this, so far as I can see, is one that he wrote not as a spy-genre story but simply as a novel which happens to have that subject matter. It goes to the heart of the characters much more than his other books and is all the better for it.

Maybe there's a case for avoiding spy-genre guidance and, as you say, 'just writing it'.

Chris

It's worth deconstructing a few thrillers off the bookshelves. Map out the plot threads and see how everything's interconnected so there are no wasted characters or other plot devices (although, saying that, one reader asked Raymond Chandler about a driver he'd left waiting in a car to pick someone up, and he said 'oh, I'd forgotten about him'. Avoid making it episodic, where each action scene is tidied up at the end of the chapter. Make it successively worse for main character as you head for the big denoument. Give everyone hidden adgends and secret motives, so no-one can be trusted.
They're strongly plot-driven, so it's usually best to plan it out, rather than just plunging into writing the chapters. It's man-fic, so go heavy on technical detail.



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Worth checking out the Crime Writer's Association site for tips: http://www.thecwa.co.uk/index.php

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They are also largely Show, so avoid explanatory Tell unless it's in retrospect, just to bring the reader up to speed. Usually the role of the side-kick.

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The other thing is, now the Cold War is over, US-USSR spy thrillers are out of fashion. These days it's Corporate spying, or anything featuring Iraq or the Middle East.

Thank you very much Chris and Naomi -that's a big help. I will get a copy of The Perfect Spy and look at Crime Writers' site. This is, as you said, a novel which suddenly has the mc having to play spy which was a little unexpected and not my area really, so just wanted to look at how the experts did it. Thank you again - really useful!