Excellent article by Ian Fleming - 'How to Write a Thriller'
SpectreBlofeld
AroundPosts: 364MI6 Agent
http://www.dianeduane.com/outofambit/2012/10/05/for-world-james-bond-day-how-to-write-a-thriller-by-ian-fleming/
Stumbled across this while looking for James Bond's scrambled eggs recipe.
This is some great reading! Rare to find the full article online... Fleming explains a lot about the motivations behind how he chose Bond's food and drink, locales, plots, etc. Fascinating stuff, with some gems like this:
Finally, the torture scene. What I described in Casino Royale was a greatly watered-down version of a French-Moroccan torture known as passer à la mandoline, which was practised on several our agents during the war.
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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’s been hoaxed – but for two technical devices: first, 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. A Ronson lighter, a 4.5 litre Bentley with an Amherst-Villiers supercharger (please note the solid exactitude), the Ritz Hotel in London, the 21 Club in New York, the exact names of flora and fauna, even Bond’s Sea Island cotton shirts with short sleeves.
Enjoy.
Stumbled across this while looking for James Bond's scrambled eggs recipe.
This is some great reading! Rare to find the full article online... Fleming explains a lot about the motivations behind how he chose Bond's food and drink, locales, plots, etc. Fascinating stuff, with some gems like this:
Finally, the torture scene. What I described in Casino Royale was a greatly watered-down version of a French-Moroccan torture known as passer à la mandoline, which was practised on several our agents during the war.
---
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’s been hoaxed – but for two technical devices: first, 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. A Ronson lighter, a 4.5 litre Bentley with an Amherst-Villiers supercharger (please note the solid exactitude), the Ritz Hotel in London, the 21 Club in New York, the exact names of flora and fauna, even Bond’s Sea Island cotton shirts with short sleeves.
Enjoy.
Comments
Thanks.
Incidently, if you still want the scrambled eggs recipe I think Fleminbg tells it in '007 in New York'