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Ian Fleming explains how to write a thriller (2019)
- thomasfl 4y agoIan Fleming described James Bond’s breakfast with egg and bacon in the hotel, in a way that it makes you feel you are there. I am proud to have Flemming as my last name.
- beachy 4y agoMy Dad (rest his soul) turned me onto Bond books. I'm surprised by the lack of appreciation in these comments - wondering if many people are going off the films rather than the books. The thing I love is the detail he uses. Mundane objects - his watch, his meal, his car are intensely described in a way that adds to the narrative. And Bond is human - he's sometimes petty, vengeful, lustful, lazy, but appealing - our heart feels for him when his wife is killed.
- antiviral 4y ago"I am excited by the poetry of things and places, and the pace of my stories sometimes suffers while I take the reader by the throat and stuff him with great gobbets of what I consider should interest him, at the same time shaking him and shouting “Like this, damn you!” about something that has caught my particular fancy. But this is a sad lapse, and I must confess that in one of my books, Goldfinger, three whole chapters were devoted to a single game of golf."
- mistrial9 4y agoI read every James Bond book as a school kid (eight of them, ten?).. they were fun! the Cold War themes and international mobster stereotypes were not a big deal for me at that time of life.
- gumby 4y agoInteresting perspective to think that the point of each page is to get the reader to turn to the following page. It's like a pitch deck: the point is to keep it simple but show enough ankle that the reader asks for a meeting. But really I should look at each page to see: how do I keep the reader from stopping here?
- angst_ridden 4y agoInteresting contrasting Fleming's work to that of Le Carré. A lot of Le Carré's work contains the kinds of details Fleming talks about, but the plots are more complex and the pace is slower. I also personally find that there's an emotional impact from Le Carré that's lacking in Fleming, but perhaps that's just me.
- thomascgalvin 4y agoCounterpoint: I know who Ian Fleming is, but I had to Google Le Carré. I am aware of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and some of his other works, but they aren't lodged in my head the way James Bond is. And I think that's the point of Fleming's essay. He wasn't writing to be high art, he was writing to make money. Fleming avoided deep plots and emotional exploration, because those detracted from the guttural response he wanted out of his readers.
- angst_ridden 4y agoI don't think Le Carré was trying to write high art either, but I think they were interested in different things. Fleming wanted a fast-paced popular thriller, while Le Carré wanted a realistic depiction of spycraft.
- tptacek 4y agoLe Carré does provide a much more realistic depiction of tradecraft than Ian Fleming, of course, who is to tradecraft what the 60s Batman TV show is to realistic detective fiction. I would not say that the point of le Carré is to realistically depict tradecraft. He's not a realism antidote to Ian Fleming. There's not really all that much tradecraft in a Smiley novel; they're much more about human relationships, and about the moral bankruptcy of the Cold War enterprise. Le Carré is much closer to literary fiction than Fleming, who is a genre hack. Not so close as to be tedious; the books are all fun to read. I'd push back on the idea that le Carré wasn't aiming for art, though. (If tradecraft is what you're after, by the way, what you really want is Hoffman's "Billion Dollar Spy".)
- 4y ago
- pdntspa 4y ago> [I] lost my virginity like so many of us used to do in the old days What's he referring to here?
- jgrahamc 4y agoI would assume with a prostitute.
- tezza 4y agoI read it as a swipe at the non-consensual buggery that was de rigueur at top English schools. I looked at Wikipedia about Fleming’s schools and Eton and Sandhurst werelisted there… archetypical venues for that ingrained behaviour. Fleming in that section of the article was highlighting that he personally had some axes to grind but kept them firmly out of his novels. I don’t think paying for sex quite has the sting
- jgrahamc 4y agoThis is Fleming writing not Le Carré.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nemo44x 4y agoHe was in the war though. The majority of guys who fought probably lost their virginity during the war to a prostitute. You're facing death every day, you might as well.
- DaedPsyker 4y agoHe was but he wasn't a front line soldier, as far as I know his role was initially bureaucratic, then later operations planning.
- RajT88 4y agoIn period fiction, I have seen a few times a father or other older male taking someone to a prostitute to lose their virginity. Common enough that it can't come from nowhere. Sometimes they watch. It is almost always shown as traumatic. The buggery angle is also viable.
- more_corn 4y agoWhen I encounter the phrase “full stop” I’m inclined to immediately stop reading. It ranks up there with misusing literally.
- ajkjk 4y agoMaybe work on that. Stopping reading something over a phrase would be petty.
- cafard 4y agoDo you have the same reaction to the American equivalent, "period"?
- nemo44x 4y agoIt's annoying when Americans say "full stop" after something they think was powerful or something. It's like dude, just say "period", please.
- recuter 4y agoLiterally full stop.
- BeetleB 4y agoYou literally don't know what literally means. Literally!
- burkaman 4y agoSame, I stopped reading at "I recently stumbled across an essay". Really, did they trip over the essay on the floor? Ludicrous, all word definitions should be frozen in time to whatever they meant when I was in school, and let's get rid of all these confusing "idioms".
- dang 4y ago"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- nyc111 4y ago"I never correct anything and I never go back to what I have written, except to the foot of the last page to see where I have got to." I think this is tough to do, but a good idea. And everyone says how important is the routine.
- progre 4y agoI'm sure I saw a text "editor" a few years back where it was impossible to actually edit the text. Adding text was the only function. It was meant to help with this style of writing.
- mejutoco 4y agoI always heard editing is what makes a written text great. Personally, I prefer the editing approach.
- ajkjk 4y agoGood read, and as engaging as any novel, but I have to remind myself that by "heroes who are white, villains who are black" he means as in black-and-white contrast...
- Archelaos 4y ago"But the point I wish to make is that if you decide to become a professional writer, you must, broadly speaking, decide whether you wish to write for fame, for pleasure or for money." Is that the same for devs?
- caminante 4y agoSeems like a false tri(?)lemma. Ian said pleasure/money. Why not ALL three?
- Archelaos 4y agoActually Fleming became famous too, but most of it was posthumously. Maybe one should ask oneself what one wants to achieve first.
- pessimizer 4y agoBecause without a priority, you have no means to make a decision when the goals conflict. If what's most important to you is having cake, you might have to limit how much of it you eat. If you instead value eating cake more, you might have to give up on the idea of keeping it.
- caminante 4y ago> Because without a priority, you have no means to make a decision when the goals conflict. <Can't have cake and eat too> You're mixing a zero sum concept with the on-topic hypothetical. I can buy fame with money or convert fame to money. It's not even zero sum.
- runevault 4y agoBecause, often (though not always) you have to write in a different way to get them. It is hard to write well enough to make money purely for pleasure, as the editing/etc process can be a grind trying to make everything smooth and pleasant to read. And with caveats the writers that are most famous tend to be ones who write big L Literature, which rarely makes significant money but is the stuff you hear about on TV in the news etc. There are exceptions but it tends to require more than a little bit of luck to hit the zeitgeist in a way to work out. Take for example Brandon Sanderson. Outside SFF I doubt almost anyone has heard of him but dude makes millions.
- legitster 4y agoWhat an amazing read. It feels like it could have been written yesterday. Throughout I am impressed with the value of professionalism. The most consistent artists seem to see themselves with no more sanctimony than an experienced plumber would.
- nick4780167 4y agoOh, experienced plumbers get pretty sanctimonious, at least in online forums!
- nemo44x 4y agoI think it's precisely because he sees himself as more of a craftsman that creates entertainment rather than an artist who is trying to express the nuance of the human condition. He is secure in his work and purpose and understands just what he is doing. I believe it's important to make distinct the difference between "art" and "entertainment". Art is inward looking and for the individual to experience uniquely theirs, whereas entertainment is for the masses and outwardly.
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoFun fact: Ian Fleming wrote more than James Bond books. He also wrote "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang".
- pdonis 4y agoNot only that, but the film of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang had Gert Frobe, who played Goldfinger, as Baron Bomburst of Vulgaria.
- Animats 4y agoHm. "My plots are fantastic, while being often based upon truth. They go wildly beyond the probable but not, I think, beyond the possible. . . . Even so, they would stick in the gullet of the reader and make him throw the book angrily aside—for a reader particularly hates feeling he is being hoaxed—but for two further technical devices, if you like to call them that. First of all, the aforesaid speed of the narrative, which hustles the reader quickly beyond each danger point of mockery and, secondly, the constant use of familiar household names and objects which reassure him that he and the writer have still got their feet on the ground." That's what makes action-adventure movies work. It keeps people from realizing that all someone needed to do was some simple thing, instead of the adventurous thing. That Fleming did this in his writing made the move to the screen easier. "Above all there must never be those maddening recaps where the hero maunders about his unhappy fate, goes over in his mind a list of suspects, or reflects what he might have done or what he proposes to do next." Much "great literature", and wannabe great literature, is full of such introspection. Ayn Rand takes it to an extreme. The other big vice for writers is the info-dump, where there's a long description of the setting. Read anything self-published, and you'll probably find both of these problems. "Show, don't tell". There are major action movies with voice-overs or explicit scene-setting at the very beginning, from Star Wars to Kick-Ass. But if it's in the middle, you're doing it wrong.
- yamtaddle 4y ago> Much "great literature", and wannabe great literature, is full of such introspection. Ayn Rand takes it to an extreme. The other big vice for writers is the info-dump, where there's a long description of the setting. Read anything self-published, and you'll probably find both of these problems. "Show, don't tell". As usual, the rules can be thrown out if you're good at it. A master writes whole chapters of introspection and makes them sublime and compelling. Woolf filled the entire middle of a book with description of an unoccupied house passing the years, featuring very little that could even generously be called action and hardly even any characters to properly introspect despite the whole affair feeling introspective, and it's excellent. An author even slightly below that level of skill and talent creates only trash of one variety or another, should they attempt anything similar. But the point definitely holds for most writers, and you're exactly right that you can dig through (especially, but not only) self-published works and easily improve most of them several times per chapter by swapping a tell for a show. I suppose one hallmark of what might be called literature—at least, the kind that truly deserves that label, not just any work that aspires to it—is that if you were to edit it in that fashion, instead of getting better, it would get worse. > There are major action movies with voice-overs or explicit scene-setting at the very beginning, from Star Wars to Kick-Ass. But if it's in the middle, you're doing it wrong. Same here. See: Tarantino. He interrupted a thrilling, tense narrative to have a distractingly-famous actor who wasn't otherwise in the movie explain, directly to the audience, a bit about the chemistry of film, and somehow it worked. And that's not the only time he's done something like that. Don't do it... except if you can.
- photochemsyn 4y agoI vastly prefer George Smiley to James Bond when it comes to spy-vs-spy fiction (though perhaps Mad Magazine's take on that genre is the best of all). Bond stories consist mostly of one-dimensional heroes and villains and their empty-headed sidekicks, predictably shoehorned into some Disney-style morality play, all designed to improve the public image of the CIA and the MI5/6 (both of whom were very upset about Le Carre's take on the Cold War, and basically seem to have promoted Fleming as an antidote). Usually, when people these days want an unambigous good-guys-vs-bad-guys storyline, they have to go back to WWII and the almost-universally despised Nazi regime. This is because there's a lot of uncertainly about who the 'good guys' were in the Cold War, or even if there were any. The Berlin airlift looks good for the West, but the effort to perpetuate French colonialism in Vietnam, not so much. There are at least a dozen similar examples on both sides, from eastern Europe (USSR not looking so good) to Africa and South/Central America (lots of bad behavior by the 'pro-democracy West'). John Le Carre famously portrayed the conflict as two giant gear wheels grinding against each other and destroying the lives of people unfortunate enough to get caught in the middle, and his doubtful self-questioning protagonist, George Smiley, though obviously devoted to the West, carries that theme well. Le Carre's "A Perfect Spy" and "The Russia House" are also some of his best works, with similar themes and central characters.
- kaveh808 4y agoAlso an excellent spy series: Sandbaggers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9c6MTFimTk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9c6MTFimTk
- spitfire 4y agoThe sandbaggers was /fantastic/. For those who don't know, it's basically accountancy with violence.
- ahartmetz 4y agoYes, it's the best spy series together with the two BBC le Carré series. Le bureau des légendes is also similar to these three and just slightly worse IMO, and that mostly because of the weaker final season and an accumulation of implausibilities roughly starting in the middle (more series have that than not, sigh). But, for the most part, flawless acting. The Night Manager is cool, too, with a very satisfying ending. The Little Drummer Girl is also good, though there is some... uncommon? psychological stuff going on in the book that creaks even more in the series.
- Octokiddie 4y agoI'd consider James Bond to lie more toward the genre of "action" rather than "thriller." An action story has three obligatory elements: - a hero (James Bond) - a victim (humanity, or maybe a damsel) - a villain (rotating) This sounds childishly simple, and it is. But it's also very easy for authors of thrillers to forget the triangle because it's not something you even notice in a well-crafted action story. But all three need to be fleshed out to the extent that the audience cares about them. The difference between an action story and a thriller is that in a thriller, the victim and hero are the same character. For example, Stephen King's Misery is a thriller because the hero is the victim. Action stories often involve the hero's facing death, but it's done to save the victim. Something else that's easy to forget is the human value at stake in an action story: life and death. James Bond is always on the edge of being killed, even when in extracurricular persuits. If Bond doesn't succeed, the victim is toast, and the stranger that death is, the better. At the end of the story, there's no doubt which way it went. This is why good action stories are page-turners, or as Fleming writes: > "You have to get the reader to turn over the page." Humans are hardwired to pay attention when death is a possible outcome. That's why rubbernecking is a thing even though people complain about it. It's also one reason cited for the popularity of NASCAR. Death can come at any time even though the action is quite repetitive. More than that, the scenes in an action story tend to turn on life and death. That's one place where action story authors can get into trouble: writing too many scenes that turn on a value other than life-death, or don't turn on anything. It's shockingly easy to write scenes that offer nothing more than information. One or two of them is all it takes for the reader to yawn and quit.
- jameshart 4y agoNot sure I agree with this taxonomy. Remember, the genre ‘thriller’ has a different meaning when applied to written fiction, as opposed to movies. As Eddie Izzard once memorably pointed out, you get a lot of car chases in movies; very few car chases in books though. So in movies we see ‘action’ emerge as a distinct genre, with ‘thriller’ left for more Hitchcockian psychological excitement (and then Michael Jackson comes along and confuses everyone by writing a song about horror movies and calling it ‘Thriller’). But meanwhile in novel-land, spy stories (and detective stories) were always ‘thrillers’ - although maybe that does conjure more Len Deighton or Le Carré than Fleming… Still, from ‘thrillers’ we also get ‘techno thrillers’ which in some ways also build off Bond-like action elements. I suppose there is the other pulp-ish fiction category of ‘adventure’, which you could also shelve Bond under, alongside war stories and explorers and space captains.
- dang 4y agoRelated: Ian Fleming Explains How to Write a Thriller (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25181256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25181256 - Nov 2020 (18 comments) and for that matter, here's Raymond Chandler explaining how to write a murder - from yesterday: The Simple Art of Murder (1944) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33888453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33888453 - Dec 2022 (3 comments)
- adamc 4y agoNice references. Chandler was a pretty good writer.
- 5tefan 4y agoImho after Casino Royale the book series went south rather quickly.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago"Casino Royale" is amazing. Not the same James Bond we think we know. "Diamonds Are Forever" is the other one I recommend to people who want to read his best.
- 5tefan 4y agoI stopped reading after that unbearable "Moonraker". "Diamonds Are Forever" is the next in the series. Might give it a try now.
- adamc 4y agoNothing against his piece but Fleming was a dreadful writer. Aim higher, at Eric Ambler or John le Carré.
- t43562 4y agoI was disappointed when I read the Bond books - they seemed to have no charm at all. I think it was the Italian producer (Albert Broccoli) who must have made the initial films worth bothering with. My spy hero is Bernard Sampson from the Len Deighton Trilogies - starting with Berlin Game, Mexico Set, London Match. He talks about how experienced spies are like frightened old women and avoid risks and it's only the noobs who charge into things bravely. Sampson is the believable opposite of Bond who would obviously not have a long life in reality. Sampson is still extremely brave - just not idiotic - and he's very clever but human so it takes time for him to work out what's going on.
- spitfire 4y agoThis thread is absolutely fantastic. It's hitting all the obscure spy thrillers. First sandbaggers now Len Deightons game set match. What next, Mr. Palfrey of Westminster? ? That said, you're watching James Bond wrong. Watch it as a porno. There's a quick excuse for a plot, then you see the "spy" doing all sorts of cool and exotic stuff. Same thing with movies like top gun, ignore the story and just watch it as an excluse to fly $50M planes near the edge.
- t43562 4y agoLen Deighton and John LeCarre are not obscure at all unless you're American perhaps and you don't want to read about non-Americans. Also your attitude to Bond is the reason why they went wrong after Broccoli - you don't understand the romance of them - the action and gadgets are side issues - trimmings but not the meat.
- withinboredom 4y agoThe mechanic who worked on Ian Fleming's yacht once worked on my boat in a small coastal town after I got caught up in a nasty storm -- bear hugging a mast in pouring rain and lightning is generally when you realize how fragile your life can be. We had a few beers after he was finished and he told me some crazy stories... I still need to blog about that adventure; that was a highlight of my early 20's.
- aerovistae 4y agoHmm. > My opuscula do not aim at changing people or making them go out and do something. They are written for warm-blooded heterosexuals in railway trains, airplanes and beds. This is a bit of a turn-off. Sounds like a modern day conservative whining about not being able to say Merry Christmas and people convincing children to destroy themselves with surgery. And I say this as someone who loved reading Moonraker...
- thomascgalvin 4y agoThat quote was written decades ago. It's not a reaction to "woke culture" or any of the right's current bullshit. It's just an author saying he is unapologetically writing books with tough men, hot women, and dumb action. He's admitting, proudly, to creating junk food lit.
- mft_ 4y agoFunnily enough, when I read: > I am not an angry young, or even middle-aged, man. I am not “involved.” My books are not “engaged.” ...I wondered whether, were he writing in 2022, he would have written "My books are not woke"?
- wyclif 4y agoRead this again with fresh eyes, then when bookmarking it saw that I had already bookmarked it back in 2019 and forgot I had. It's still great writing advice.
- smcameron 4y ago> Above all there must never be those maddening recaps where the hero maunders about his unhappy fate, goes over in his mind a list of suspects, or reflects what he might have done or what he proposes to do next. If I may be forgiven for bringing up chatGPT, that thing LOVES to go on about the state of mind of the protagonist. Its favorite thing ever is to write some variation of the following sentence: "<main character> knew things would be difficult, but he is determined to prevail." I suspect it may have been trained on a corpus containing entirely too much fan-fiction.
- pentaphobe 4y agoAnyone good at sleuthing and not behind restrictive proxies? The author here mentions that all her sources are online and links to one of them (which is alas a blog post with minimal references) Would be amazing to confirm whether this source is legitimate, I feel like anything online with hand-wavy citations can just start getting treated as real so long as it's at least 10 years old
- mock-possum 4y ago> I was bullied at school and lost my virginity like so many of us used to do in the old days, holy fucking shit WHAT
- michaelhoney 4y agoyeah, what is he saying there?