There’s a strange similarity between writing a thriller and working in intelligence. At least, that’s what I’ve come to realize.

Now, before anyone gets carried away, I’m not saying I spend my mornings exchanging classified documents on park benches or checking the rearview mirror to see if I’m being followed. Most mornings, it’s just me, a laptop, a cup of coffee, and a blinking cursor that occasionally feels more intimidating than an interrogation.

But when I sit down to write stories like The Catalogue and build the larger V.E.N.O.M. universe, I find myself thinking about many of the same spy habits that define the world of espionage: information, deception, timing, pressure, and perhaps most importantly, knowing what not to reveal.

The more I write thrillers, the more I realize that a good thriller author and a good intelligence operative might actually have a few things in common.

Information Is Only Valuable If You Control It

Spies deal in information. So do writers.

The difference is that a spy is trying to uncover information someone else wants hidden. A writer already knows the secrets. Our job is deciding when you get to know them.

When I’m writing a thriller, I usually know far more than the reader does. I know who is lying. I know who is hiding something. I know which seemingly insignificant conversation will matter later. At least… most of the time.

The challenge is resisting the urge to tell you everything.

Because information revealed too early loses its power.

Imagine if, in the opening chapters of a spy novel, someone handed the protagonist a folder explaining exactly who the villain was, what they wanted, where they were hiding, and how the entire conspiracy worked. That would be a pretty short book.

Instead, information has to be earned. A name here. A suspicious conversation there. A detail that doesn’t quite make sense. Individually, these pieces may not mean much, but eventually they begin connecting and something larger starts to emerge.

That was something I thought about constantly while writing The Catalogue. Jake Penny begins with what appears to be a homicide investigation. On the surface, that’s the case. But underneath it is something much larger, and the reader discovers the true scale of that world alongside him.

In a way, you’re being briefed on a need-to-know basis.

And that brings us to one of the most important lessons intelligence work can teach a thriller writer.

Compartmentalize Everything

Intelligence organizations don’t give everyone access to everything. Information is compartmentalized. People know what they need to know to accomplish their part of the mission, and sometimes they have no idea what someone working beside them knows.

Writers should think the same way.

Every character in a thriller should have their own version of the truth. Jake knows what Jake knows. Parker knows what Parker knows. Zasha knows what Zasha knows. And you, the reader, know what I decide you’re allowed to know.

That imbalance creates tension.

One of my favorite questions when writing a scene is: Who knows the most right now?

The answer isn’t always the most powerful person in the room. Sometimes the person saying the least knows the most. Sometimes the character who appears completely lost is actually several moves ahead. Other times, two characters can have an entire conversation without either one realizing the other is hiding something.

That’s where things get interesting.

The tension isn’t always in what characters say. Often, it’s in what they refuse to say, what they deliberately leave out, or what they know that everyone else in the room doesn’t.

As the author, I’m essentially running several intelligence compartments at once. Each character has access to certain pieces of the puzzle, while I’m sitting above the entire operation deciding when those compartments should finally collide.

Trust No One—Especially Your First Idea

Intelligence analysts are supposed to challenge assumptions and it’s no different for writers.

Sometimes the first version of a scene makes perfect sense. Maybe too much sense. The obvious character is the villain. The hero makes the logical decision. The clue leads exactly where you expect it to lead. Everything works perfectly.

And that’s usually when I start getting suspicious.

You guys are smart. You’ve read these stories before. You know the patterns. You know the mysterious stranger probably isn’t just a mysterious stranger. You know the helpful government official might not be as helpful as they appear. And you definitely know that when someone says, “You can trust me,” you probably shouldn’t.

So, as a writer, I have to interrogate my own story.

What if the obvious answer is wrong? What if this character is lying? What if the person Jake trusts has another agenda? What if the person everyone believes is dangerous is actually trying to prevent something worse?

Some of the most interesting ideas I’ve had while writing the V.E.N.O.M. universe came from questioning something I had already decided was true. A character’s motivation changes. An alliance suddenly looks different. An idea I thought I understood takes the story somewhere unexpected.

Which means, occasionally, I have to treat my own outline like an unreliable source.

 

Pressure Changes People

You never really know who someone is when everything is going well.

Thrillers aren’t built around characters having good days. They’re built around pressure: a deadline, a threat, a betrayal, a ticking clock, or a decision where every available option has consequences.

That’s when characters reveal themselves.

When I’m writing, I often think about how far I can push a character before something changes. What happens when the rules they normally follow no longer work? What happens when doing the “right” thing puts someone they love in danger? What happens when loyalty and survival suddenly point in opposite directions?

Those are the situations where characters become interesting to me because real people are complicated. Good people can make terrible decisions. Dangerous people can sometimes do honorable things. And occasionally, the person you thought you understood turns out to be someone completely different when the pressure becomes unbearable.

In the V.E.N.O.M. universe, morality is rarely clean. That’s intentional.

I don’t want every character divided neatly into heroes and villains. I’m far more interested in the uncomfortable space between the two. I want you to understand why someone made a decision even if you completely disagree with it.

More than anything, I want you wondering what you would do if you were standing in their shoes.

Always Have a Contingency Plan

In intelligence work, you probably don’t want your entire operation depending on one plan going perfectly.

The same is true when writing a novel.

Characters don’t cooperate. Plots break. Scenes that sounded incredible in your head suddenly don’t work when you put them on the page. Sometimes a minor character walks into the story and becomes far more important than you ever intended.

Writing The Catalogue taught me that stories evolve.

There were ideas that changed. Characters who changed. Entire possibilities that existed in earlier drafts but disappeared from the final version. Some of those abandoned ideas even became seeds for other parts of the V.E.N.O.M. universe.

That’s why I’ve learned not to become too attached to the plan.

I may know where the story needs to go, but I’ve become more comfortable allowing the route to change along the way. Sometimes you discover something better than what you originally planned. Sometimes you realize a character wouldn’t realistically make the decision you outlined for them months ago.

The destination might remain the same.

The operation might not.

Like any good field operative, sometimes a writer has to adapt.

The Best Secrets Are Hidden in Plain Sight

This might be my favorite part of writing thrillers.

The Easter egg. The innocent line of dialogue. The character who appears for five minutes. The detail you barely notice because, at the time, you have no reason to think it matters.

Then, two hundred pages later, something happens.

Suddenly, you remember it.

You flip backward through the book, find the page, and there it is. The answer was sitting in front of you the entire time.

Those moments are incredibly satisfying to write because they create a silent agreement between the author and the reader: I showed you. You just didn’t know what you were looking at yet.

That’s always the goal.

The best twists shouldn’t feel like information that appeared out of nowhere. They should force you to reinterpret information you already had. The clue was there. The conversation happened. The character told you something important.

You simply didn’t realize it was important.

When the reveal finally happens, I don’t just want you to think, I didn’t see that coming.

I want you to think, How did I not see that coming?

There’s a big difference.

Every Mission Has an Objective

Here’s something else writers can learn from intelligence operations: know the mission.

Every scene needs an objective.

Someone wants information. Someone wants access. Someone wants to escape. Someone wants to manipulate another person. Someone wants to survive.

That doesn’t mean every chapter needs explosions, gunfights, or car chases. Sometimes the most dangerous scene in a thriller is simply two people sitting across from each other at a table.

Because both of them know something.

Both of them want something.

And neither is willing to show their hand.

That’s the kind of tension I love writing. The action matters, of course, but the chess match underneath the action is often far more interesting to me.

When two characters enter a room with competing objectives, even an ordinary conversation can become a battlefield. Every question has a purpose. Every answer is calculated. Every silence means something.

The reader might not immediately know what the real mission is.

But the characters should.

Never Underestimate the Reader

This might be the most important lesson.

Intelligence analysts look for patterns.

So do thriller readers.

You’re constantly trying to figure out what I’m doing. I know you are.

You’re watching the characters, questioning their motives, collecting clues, developing theories, and looking for the one detail that might reveal where the story is headed. Some of you probably trust absolutely no one by the halfway point of the book.

Which means my job isn’t simply to hide the truth from you.

My job is to give you enough information that you could figure it out—and then convince you to look somewhere else.

In that sense, reading a thriller becomes its own intelligence operation. You’re gathering information, evaluating sources, questioning motives, looking for inconsistencies, and trying to separate truth from deception.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting on the other side of the page trying to stay one move ahead of you.

And that’s probably the biggest similarity between writing thrillers and the world of espionage. We’re both playing with information. We’re both operating under pressure. And we’re both keeping secrets.

The only difference is that eventually, I have to tell you mine.

Well…

Most of them.