How to Write like Ian Fleming (13 Techniques from the Creator of James Bond)
Ian Fleming's unique writing approach created a billion-dollar franchise, an immortal character, and the world's greatest spy stories. This article explores how he did it.
Ian Fleming, the now-legendary author of the original James Bond series, once described the origin of his writing career:
"My daily occupation in Jamaica is spearfishing and underwater exploring... But after five years of it I didn’t want to kill any more fish except barracudas and the rare monster fish and I knew my own underwater terrain like the back of my hand. Above all, after being a bachelor for 44 years, I was on the edge of marrying and the prospect was so horrifying that I was in urgent need of some activity to take my mind off it... So I decided to write a book."
That book, of course, was Casino Royale, the first in a series featuring James Bond, an English secret agent with a license to kill. The character leapt from Fleming's imagination to the pages of his golden typewriter, scaled to the top of the best-seller list, then vaulted onto the silver screen. The rest, as they say, is history. James Bond is firmly embedded into Western culture, and no matter who portrays him or how he morphs to fit contemporary zeitgeist, he remains one of history’s most recognizable characters.
So how did Fleming do it?
Years ago, I became obsessed with this question while working as a CNC Operator in a machine shop. It was the world’s most monotonous job, and if they had a “Worst Employee of the Month” award, I would have won every time. I made it through those never-ending shifts by listening to the James Bond audiobooks — every one of them.
In the process I became fascinated by Fleming's writing: the pace and tempo, the fantastical storylines and bizarre characters, the vivid imagery and descriptions. Why were his stories rife with brand names? How did he write such intense, suspenseful action scenes? Who in their right mind names a character Pussy Galore?
I set out to learn all of Fleming’s secrets, and for months I scoured articles, interviews, letters, and of course, his novels, digging out the formulas and techniques that helped the author turn his otherwise run-of-the-mill spy stories into some of the most successful thrillers of all time.
Now I'd like to share those secrets with you. Here is everything I learned — 13 powerful writing lessons from Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond:
1.) "You must know thrilling things before you can write about them"
How exactly do you create one of the most enduring, influential thriller series of all time? It starts, Fleming argues, with living a thrilling life.
As author Raymond Benson explains in The James Bond Bedside Companion, Fleming's "rather brave attitude, mixed with [his] undeniably boyish taste for the romantic, fed lifeblood into the Bond adventures, and for the most part, explains why they are so popular."
Ian Fleming's resume is laden with adventure and intrigue. Like his most famous character, Fleming was a naval intelligence officer in WWII. He was in charge of Operation Goldeneye, formed and directed not one, but two units of commandos, broke into the Japanese Consul General's office to steal a code book, helped build out the first major American intelligence agency... the list goes on.
After the war, Fleming became Foreign Manager at Kemsley Newspapers, traveling far and wide to pursue stories for The Sunday Times. He was a globetrotter, adventurer, and aficionado with a breadth of passions: spear fishing, treasure hunting, golf, gambling, skiing, mountain climbing, driving fast cars, collecting first edition books, and of course, drinking martinis.
It was Fleming's enthusiastic generalism - his wide-ranging interests and skill sets coupled with an unbounded curiosity - that allowed him to write such thrilling yet believable adventures. His love of gambling translated into the high-stakes baccarat game in Casino Royale. His skiing obsession informed the famous ski chase in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The harrowing scuba scene in Live and Let Die is a nightmare version of Fleming's own underwater forays exploring Jamaica's reefs and marine life.
In Thrilling Cities, a collection of his best nonfiction travel stories, Fleming introspects on his own sense of curiosity and adventure:
"All my life I have been interested in adventure and, abroad, I have enjoyed the frisson of leaving the wide, well-lit streets and venturing up back alleys in search of the hidden, authentic pulse of towns. It was perhaps this habit that turned me into a writer of thrillers and, by the time I made the two journeys that produced these essays, I had certainly got into the way of looking at people and places and things through a thriller-writer’s eye."
According to Fleming, most of the central incidents in his books are based on real events, either in his own life or from research and second-hand stories. This level of veracity helped flesh out the Bond character and novels. As the author explains in the aptly titled essay "How to Write a Thriller:"
"You must know thrilling things before you can write about them. Imagination alone isn’t enough, but stories you hear from friends or read in the papers can be built up by a fertile imagination and a certain amount of research and documentation into incidents that will also ring true in fiction."
Fleming isn't the only fiction author to pilfer from history books. George R. R. Martin, for example, is well-known for borrowing real historical events for the famous plotlines in A Song of Ice and Fire, a.k.a. Game of Thrones. (For example, remember the infamous "Red Wedding" scene? It's pulled from Scottish history. Even the map of Westeros, Martin's fictional world, is just Britain and Ireland turned upside down.)
To capture this important inspiration and source material, no matter where his adventures led him, Fleming was rarely found without a notebook.
2.) Take notes
Fleming's fiction danced elegantly in the margin between fact and fantasy. The writer supplemented his first-hand experience with diligent research and constantly hunted for novel information to embed in the Bond stories. Ernest Cuneo, one of Fleming's close friends, described the writer's frustratingly intense curiosity:
"Detail fascinated him... If he ran across a trick of the trade, a nuance, a fillip, he would pursue it like a ferret, for example, how cowboys on the range made a barbecue sauce with sugar, ketchup and Worcestershire sauce... all of these things he’d scribble down with the avidity of an explorer taking notes on the opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb... He said that at the end of each day, he had compiled notes. These he amplified and typed out, no matter what the hour, at the rate of about 800 [words] a day. 'Figure it out for yourself,' he said. 'At the end of a year, I have about 250 or 300 of these daily memos, and when I go down to Jamaica, I weave them into a book.'"
Fleming leveraged real events, secondhand stories, and personal experiences, amplified them with his self-described "vivid powers of imagination," and then saturated them with factually-accurate, insider's details. It created a unique writing style and provided the 007 novels with an impressive level of depth, realism, and intrigue.
Then, with a head full of ideas and inspiration, Fleming landed on the beaches of Jamaica and took the first draft by storm.
3.) Bulldoze through the first draft
According to Ian Fleming, your goal for a first draft is simply to finish. Don't analyze, revise as you go, or wonder what so-and-so will think — just hammer on until you're done.
"If you once look back, you are lost... If you interrupt the writing of fast narrative with too much introspection and self-criticism, you will be lucky if you write 500 words a day and you will be disgusted with them into the bargain... I don't even pause from writing to choose the right word or to verify spelling or a fact. All this can be done when your book is finished."
For Fleming, your first draft is meant to capture ideas and tone, not perfect prose. On writing Casino Royale, the author reflected:
"I rewrote nothing and made no corrections until my book was finished. If I had looked back at what I had written the day before I might have despaired at the mistakes in grammar and style, the repetitions and the crudities. And I obstinately closed my mind to self-mockery and “what will my friends say?” I savagely hammered on until the proud day when the last page was done."
Author Chuck Wendig recommends a similar approach, describing a first draft as "the beach-storming draft." Like Fleming, his advice is simply to survive the first draft at all costs. Make it to the figurative beach-head no matter how messy, chaotic, and painful the process. If something is worth fixing, you can do so after the action of draft number one.
4.) Revise ruthlessly and develop thick skin
After he stormed through the first draft, Fleming combed through his manuscripts twice, copy-editing and diligently rewriting select passages before sending them to publishers.
The Man with the Golden Typewriter is an entertaining compilation of Fleming's Bond-related letters, including extensive correspondence with publishers. The editors provided feedback, corrected grammar, challenged him to avoid cliches and be more creative in his phrasing, encouraged him to avoid the passive voice and "therewasery," and more. He readily adopted many suggestions and his writing improved for it.
However, he confidently discarded or refuted disagreeable recommendations. For example, when one editor suggested they shouldn't dare use the character name Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, Fleming doggedly replied, "Oh yes I will, and not only that, we're going to get away with it!"
The writer learned to take criticism with a grain of salt. When the head of Fleming's American publishing house expressed disappointment with The Spy Who Loved Me, the author pointed out that "oddly enough the very reasons for your doubts about it are those put forward by Capes [Fleming's publisher in London] for any special virtues it possesses." Hence the necessity of thick skin — the reason one person hates your creative work might be exactly the reason someone else loves it.
Fleming also received his fair share of brickbats from critics, fans, and even friends, but took it in stride. He deflected silly suggestions, rude comments, and hate mail alike in a lighthearted, gentlemanly manner. "You are mad to think that I am thin-skinned about criticisms," he reflected in one letter. "One longs for them."
Expert suggestions from his audience, on the other hand, he found invaluable.
5.) Listen to your audience
As Fleming's popularity grew, so too did his audience. Despite his incredible attention to detail, experts in their respective fields often wrote in with all manner of advice and corrections.
"In the 1950s... the world was more innocent," remarked Fergus Fleming, the author's nephew and editor of The Man with the Golden Typewriter. "When British policemen chased a suspect they blew whistles or, more dashingly, rang a little bell at the front of their car. Guns were uncommon currency." As such, despite Ian Fleming's activity in the war, his choice of weaponry for James Bond was naive. For firearm experts among his readership, it drove their suspension of disbelief past its breaking point.
For example, Geoffrey Boothroyd, a gun expert living in Glasgow, wrote to Fleming in 1956 and blew a hole in his credibility. "I like most of the things about [James Bond]," Boothroyd wrote to the author, "with the exception of his rather deplorable taste in firearms." He critiqued Bond's choice in everything from pistols and rifles to the holster hidden under his jacket. But Fleming was delighted. He took the suggestions seriously and after volumes of correspondence, "anointed Boothroyd as Bond’s fictional armourer and charged him, in real life, with answering the many queries that came in about his guns."
Similarly, in 1961 Fleming received a letter from Herman W. Liebert, a librarian and scholar at Yale University. Liebert, a huge fan of the Bond books, was appalled by the faux-American language and slang used by Fleming's supposedly US-based characters. He sent a long list of suggested replacements for words like "sponge bag," "damnably," "gammy," "arse-end," "chap," and "by gum," joking that "I don’t think an American has said this since the recent death of A. Lincoln." In response, Fleming thanked him profusely, incorporated most suggestions, and asked him to be an unofficial fact-checker and editor for future Bond books.
When it came to suggestions and expertise from fans, Fleming was all ears. He valued - and deeply understood - his audience. That empathy was also key to developing his best-selling writing techniques.
6.) Build your unique toolbox
"I write, unashamedly, for pleasure and money," Fleming confessed in "How to Write a Thriller." He was a craftsman — describing himself as a writer rather than an author. He felt that "There are authors and artists and then again there are writers and painters.” Where the target of an author's work is the head and, to some extent, the heart, Fleming said his books aimed "somewhere between the solar plexus and, well, the upper thigh."
But that's not to say he cheapened his work. Fleming was a professional, and he bore no illusions about his genre, audience, or expertise.
"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, aeroplanes or beds."
Fleming had a journalistic, "workmanlike" style and an arsenal of effective writing techniques. He relied on rich visual descriptions, near-cartoonish villains, visceral emotions, and potent action — all qualities which, as it happened, translated perfectly to the big screen. He maintained an "unmannered prose style, unexceptional grammar and a certain integrity in [the] narrative." In other words, a book that highlights the hero and story, not the author and their indulgent writing.
Above all, Fleming believed that best-sellers share one vital quality: "you simply have to turn the page." To achieve the effect, he developed an array of tools and literary gadgets.
Fleming used movement, momentum, and pacing to deadly effect. For example, he manipulated sentence, paragraph, and chapter length to heighten the intensity of action sequences, or to build inertia as the books reached their crescendos. He also shifted the level of resolution in his stories, starting with a more objective, bird's eye view, then gradually zooming in on Bond's more immediate, personal perspective. Fleming paid special attention to the finer details as well:
"You cannot linger too long over descriptive passages. There must be no complications in names, relationships, journeys or geographical settings to confuse or irritate the reader... Above all, there must never be those maddening recaps where the hero maunders on about his unhappy fate, goes over in his mind a list of suspects, or reflects on what he might have done or what he proposes to do next."
In addition, Benson observed another tactic that helped turn the Bond stories into best-selling page-turners. He called it "The Fleming Sweep." Fleming ended chapters with tantalizing "hooks" which heightened tension and pulled the reader deeper into the book. For example, a late chapter in Dr. No ends with:
"Head first, Bond’s body shot out of the shaft and fell through the air, slowly, slowly, down towards the gunmetal sea that waited for him a hundred feet below."
Without knowing a thing about the story or the stakes, as the protagonist's body plummets down toward the ocean surface, you can't help but wonder what happens next. Fleming compels his reader to turn the page, and "sweeps" them into the next chapter.
From a technical standpoint, Fleming's writing was sound and well-suited to his genre and audience. He knew how to create a readable, credible, magnetic story. But there were other, more distinct tools and tactics that made him truly unique, and helped the Bond books redefine a genre.
7.) Stick to your themes
Any aspiring writer knows the value of metaphor and simile in writing, but how do you take the technique to the next level? To elevate the quality of his descriptions and metaphors while simultaneously establishing a unique sense of style, Fleming relied on specific - albeit repetitive - Bond-appropriate themes.
With his routine "spearfishing and underwater exploring" expeditions in Jamaica, Fleming knew well the mysterious, predatory nature of the undersea world. Subsequently, the sea and its inhabitants offered a trove of compelling metaphors for James Bond's travails in espionage…
Substack is telling me this post is too long, so click here or below to read the rest of this article on our blog (No Paywall; Includes 6 more techniques and Bonus Reading about how James Bond almost got me fired).
If you’re enjoying this article, enter your email below to subscribe to the Call the Muse Newsletter. You'll receive new articles studying famous creatives, deconstructing their recipes for success, and providing tips to apply their techniques to your own creative projects.