“There are strong incidents in [Casino Royale] which are all based on fact. I extracted them from my wartime memories of the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty, dolled them up, attached a hero, a villain and a heroine, and there was the book.”
—Ian Fleming
Last week I picked up a used copy of Ian Fleming’s original James Bond story published in 1953. Casino Royale is only 137 pages, which I’d guess comes in around 50,000 words. He wrote the first draft in two months while on holiday in Jamaica. In my quest to discover why James Bond has had such a long shelf life I came across this article attributed to Fleming (but I have yet to see the original source).
[T]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. I write, unashamedly, for pleasure and money.
I also feel that, while thrillers may not be Literature with a capital L, it is possible to write what I can best describe as ‘Thrillers designed to be read as literature,’ the practitioners of which have included such as Edgar Allan Poe, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Eric Ambler and Graham Greene. I see nothing shameful in aiming as high as these.All right then, so we have decided to write for money and to aim at certain standards in our writing. These standards will include an unmannered prose style, unexceptional grammar and a certain integrity in our narrative.
But these qualities will not make a best seller. There is only one recipe for a best seller and it is a very simple one. You have to get the reader to turn over the page.
If you look back on the best sellers you have read, you will find that they all have this quality. You simply have to turn over the page.”
—Ian Fleming
How to Write a Thriller
Originally published in the May 1963 issue of Books and Bookmen
Via the LitHub website, Emily Temple, and Peter Morwood
(If anyone has info on the original 1963 article please send me a link.)
P.S. Did you know that first actor to play the James Bond was not Sean Connery—but an actor born in San Francisco and raised in Oakland? Back in 1954 Barry Nelson was Bond in the live tv version of Casino Royale (as part of the Climax! series). Antony Ellis and Charles Bennett wrote the Tv version that came in at 52 minutes. A comment on IMDB said the Tv rights were optioned for $1,000. That is believable since James Bond was unknown and Casino Royale just hit the bookstores in the United States a few months before the airing of the show. All involved probably thought it would help book sales.
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Scott W. Smith is the author of Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles
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