Spies, Camera, Action?
Spying – done well – should not make great cinema. So, why is it on our screens so often?
‘I've always wanted to play a spy, because it is the ultimate acting exercise. You are never what you seem.’ So says the actor Benedict Cumberbatch.
Ironic. Because good spying should be invisible. It should look dramatic only when it has gone wrong. Very wrong. Yet drama is inherent to the agent-recruitment cycle, which I describe in Think Like a Spy. In fact, when it comes to storytelling, spying has it all.
Agent-recruitment is about evolving human interactions. This explains why spying is dramatic, even while it is not visually compelling. So, it is not surprising that the recruitment cycle maps pleasingly onto the three-act structure, as commonly used in movie scripts, stage plays, and novels.
This symmetry wasn’t on my mind when I wrote Think Like a Spy. But it felt natural to divide the book – and the agent recruitment cycle – into three broad stages. Acts, if you like.
The first stage, I called ‘Getting Ready’, or ‘Operational Groundwork’. This section embraces three techniques: targeting; development of cover; and cultivation. Now, I invite you to think about the elements of Act I in a typical three-act structure: exposition; inciting incident; and first plot point.
· What is targeting, if not exposition? Targeting describes key characters and how they relate to intelligence objectives, or the ‘story’.
· Why is cover developed if not in response to an inciting incident? That incident determines the type of cover required and how it will be used. One important feature of an inciting event is that the main character – the spy – can still walk away. That changes at the first plot point.
· How does cultivation work if not by creating the first plot point, sometimes described as the threshold of no return? The two main characters – cultivator and cultivated – are involved now and will bear one another’s imprints. Whatever happens next.
The second stage is ‘Getting Together’, or ‘Recruitment’. In this part of the book, I examine another three techniques: elicitation; assessment of motivations; and the recruitment pitch. Let’s look at how these three elements map onto those in a classic Act II: pinch-point; mid-point; and plot point two.
· Elicitation is the process through which a spy discovers what drives her target, for good and bad. In other words, elicitation reveals the antagonistic forces at play in the relationship between spy and target. Just as a pinch-point reveals the antagonistic forces at play in a drama.
· Assessment of motivations is the mid-point of the recruitment cycle: every prior step leads to it and every subsequent step follows from it. It is the ‘moment of truth’, as has been said of a screenplay’s midpoint, marking the transition from passive to active mode.
· Typically, at the second plot point, the dramatic stakes are at their highest. This is an apt description of the recruitment pitch. Get it wrong, and the spy places herself and her target in danger. Get it right, and the stage is set for the final act.
The third and final stage is ‘Staying Together’, or ‘Agent Handling’: the settling of a recruitment into a stable and productive pattern. I write in Think Like a Spy that a successful recruitment is a huge moment but it is by no means the end of the story. Now, the spy must labour to cement their win. This work involves: continuing use of influence; effective debriefing, including deception-detection; and control of the operating environment through tradecraft. These mirror the triptych of Act III in traditional drama, encompassing: the pre-climax; the climax; and the conclusion, or resolution.
· Often, the pre-climax involves a set-back, or a false-victory. This is analogous to the moment our spy realises that, yes, she has recruited her agent, but she does not yet control him. She cannot rule out that he will refuse to deliver, provide her with intentionally misleading material, or betray her. She has a recruit, now she must turn him into an agent, with continuing use of influence.
· The climax is the moment of pay-out, in the three-act structure. For a spy, pay-dirt is, usually, actionable intelligence. It is recovered through effective debriefing of the recruit-turned-agent. It is validated with deception-detection techniques.
· In Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, Syd Field writes that Act III is ‘held together with the dramatic context known as Resolution.’ Resolution may be the difference between success and failure. Similarly, agent handling is held together with the espionage context known as Tradecraft. Good tradecraft may well be the difference between success and failure.
Field disagrees with Kurt Vonnegut’s assertion that art, like life, is only a ‘series of random moments.’ ‘Birth? Life? Death?’, he writes, ‘Isn’t that a beginning, middle and end? Spring, summer, fall and winter – isn’t that a beginning, middle and end? Morning, afternoon, evening – it’s always the same but different.’ As I read those words, I was reminded of my own, in Think Like a Spy: ‘Cycles govern our lives: as youngsters, the academic cycle gives us structure; later, in our workplaces, project cycles occupy us, as do taxation cycles; beyond our windows, the cycle of the seasons dictates the cycle of sowing and harvesting; above us, some people believe that the lunar and planetary cycles determine our fates.’
There is, after all, nothing new in the world. Including the three-act structure, which has been seasoned alongside the second-oldest profession, espionage. That is why spying is rarely off our screens.