The Innamincka Affair: Love. Lies. Mortal Danger. A lot can happen with an affair at Innamincka. Rebecca Boucher is a respected junior partner in a London law firm. When she’s sent to Australia to meet with the owner of a vast cattle property, she’s expecting a straightforward legal matter. But what she finds is Cooper Read More ...
Marriage in a Cold Climate View it on the UK Amazon Store The stark beauty of the frozen wastes of Siberia, where the cold can snap steel rails, and the empty sweep of the tundra, alternately a snow-muffled wasteland and an unexpectedly safe trackside haven, are vividly evoked. Against this backdrop, Robert Chalmers weaves an Read More ...
The Dragons of Sara Sara Innocence and terror meet in a fast-paced evocation of a time far in the future. Set among momentous happenings, Robert Chalmers catches a society on the brink of a new age. View it on the UK Amazon Store In an age far ahead in time, two young people from very Read More ...
Calorie Counted Recipe Book View it on the UK Amazon Store Introducing the ultimate calorie-counted recipe book for pre-diabetics looking to improve their health and lose weight! Each recipe in this book is designed to keep your daily calorie intake under 800 calories, making it the perfect resource for those looking to watch their Read More ...
Spy thrillers are genre novels and so they have a contract with the reader to deliver a certain type of story that is within those genre boundaries. That limits the options to four archetypal spy novel plots:
The Mission
The Mystery
On The Run
Playing Defence
But whichever you want to write, they will all fit within the basic Spy Thriller Template.
This first template is set in Four Acts. It is more common the set up the story in Three Acts. Why Four? To give you more room to work with smaller beats. If you look at the four acts, you will see that there are five beats in each act. If you write one chapter per beat, your writing becomes much more paced and much less daunting. Suddenly you aren’t faced with 70,000 words to write, but 1 Beat, or just 2,500 words. I know I know – 20 chapters times 2,500 words is only 50,000, not 70,000. But by now adding another 10,000 words is a snap. Right? But – don’t just tag them on at the end of the story. You will certainly come to a chapter in your story that needs a lot more prose. So add another chapter. You only need to add another chapter to each act, and there are your 70,000 words. Make it 100,00 words… go on I dare you!
Now, let’s take a peek at the Three Act Story. Numbers-wise. I’ll put up the Template in the next post. But briefly – 50,000 words divided by three is … 16,667 words plus a comma or two per Act. If you want 2,500 words per chapter, that’s only 6.6 beats per act. You can do it. Easy as. Remember that just one beat per act can actually be broken into two beats – beat a. and beat b.
It will help to open the Template when you create a project, with the Cork Board showing with the Manuscript highlighted.
The Icon in Scrivener’s Template list, when you import it, will look like this.
TOP!
Thanks for sharing your Spy Thriller Template.
Luc
Thank you! I look forward to reading your Spy Thriller 🙂
Thank you!
/J