Rewriting the Rules of Spy Fiction: Paul Wright Discusses ‘Line of Sight’

Author Paul Wright found the spark for Line of Sight during a movie night, realizing how rarely spy stories center on women. In this interview, he shares how that moment led to a grounded, high-stakes thriller. An insightful read for fellow authors exploring fresh angles in familiar genres.

What was the first image, idea, or “what if?” moment that sparked Line of Sight, and how did you develop it into a full story?

Paul Wright: “The spark came from a mix of frustration and inspiration. One night, I was watching GoldenEye with my dad. He’s a lifelong James Bond fan. As we were watching the movie, it hit me. For all the spy stories I’d seen or read, I couldn’t name one featuring a female lead. That felt strange, especially considering how many brilliant, capable women actually work in intelligence. So I started asking, What would a female-led spy story look like if it were grounded, emotional, and still full of high-stakes action?

“From there, the character of Agent Vogel came into focus, loosely inspired by a close friend I’ve known since high school. She’s intelligent, fearless, composed under pressure, and has a natural presence that makes people listen. The kind of woman who could sit across from a foreign diplomat one moment and navigate a combat scenario the next.

“Once I had Vogel in place, the rest followed: a rogue invention, a missing scientist, an old flame, and a villain with global ambitions. All of it became the backdrop for a deeper story about loyalty, identity, and the blurry line between duty and desire.”

Why did you choose to set the story in 1995, and what advice would you give writers who are considering writing in a time period they didn’t just live through?

“I chose 1995 for two reasons. One practical, the other personal. Practically, I wanted to strip away the safety nets we rely on now. Smartphones, instant GPS, and real-time facial recognition. In a modern setting, half the problems in Line of Sight could be solved with a text message. But in 1995, if you lost someone, they were gone. You had to think, adapt, and dig your way forward. And for a spy story, that makes the stakes more visceral.

“On a personal level, 1995 was a memorable time for me. I was young, single, and close with the friend who inspired much of Vogel’s character. We spent a lot of time together, trading stories, debating everything from movies to music to life choices. Some of the banter between Vogel and Richard Davis actually grew out of those conversations. Setting the story then gave me a way to recapture that energy and era. One where the world felt both wider and harder to navigate.

“For writers setting stories in eras they didn’t live through, I’d say this: don’t chase accuracy. Chase atmosphere. Yes, do your research. Know what cars people drove and how they communicated. But beyond that, ask: What did it feel like to be alive then? What did people fear? What did they hope for? Readers will forgive a missed model year or a background detail. But if the emotional tone feels off, the whole story rings false. Time periods are about mood as much as fact. Get the mood right, and the rest will follow.”

Paul Wright ‘Line of Sight’ book cover

Lora Chandler (Agent Vogel) is smart, capable, and emotionally complex. How did you go about building such a multidimensional heroine, and what tips do you have for writers trying to write powerful female leads?

“Agent Vogel was built on a balance I saw in my friend. In high school, she wore Doc Martens and Dead Kennedys t-shirts under an army jacket. My friend was strong, uncompromising, and completely her own person. She wasn’t loud, but she didn’t have to be. Her presence alone made even the toughest guys take a step back.

“What fascinated me, and what ultimately helped shape Vogel, was how that toughness never diminished her femininity. If anything, it amplified it. She didn’t perform softness to make others comfortable, and she didn’t sacrifice strength to be liked. That tension, the collision of fire and restraint, vulnerability and edge, is what I tried to build into Vogel. She can handle herself in a firefight, but her real complexity comes through in quieter moments. When she’s questioning who to trust or struggling to reconcile the personal cost of her choices.

“For writers creating powerful female leads, my advice is this: don’t confuse strength with invulnerability. Power doesn’t mean a lack of emotion. It means owning it, navigating it, and still pushing forward. Let your characters be flawed. Let them intimidate people without apology. And most of all, let them be whole. As multidimensional and contradictory as the real people who inspired them.”

You’ve worked as a journalist and screenwriter. How did those experiences shape your approach to writing novels, especially when it comes to structure, pacing, or character development?

“Journalism taught me discipline. It showed me how to write with clarity, how to get to the heart of a story, and how to listen, really listen, when people speak. It also gave me a deep respect for deadlines and the value of economy in storytelling. You learn quickly that every sentence has to earn its place. That instinct has stayed with me in fiction, especially in pacing. I tend to write with a lean, forward momentum because, as in journalism, I want the reader to keep turning the page.

“Screenwriting, on the other hand, taught me structure. In film, you can’t hide behind prose. The bones have to be solid. You need an inciting incident, a midpoint, a climax. You need movement. That sense of architecture helps me outline Line of Sight, which leans heavily on timing, suspense, and the layering of reveals.

“Character-wise, screenwriting also taught me to think in behaviour, not exposition. You can’t have a character walk on stage and explain who they are. You have to show it through action, through tension, through what they say and what they don’t. That’s something I brought directly into writing Vogel. She reveals herself in fragments. You get to know her by how she reacts under pressure, not because she offers a monologue about her past.

“Together, both disciplines helped me build a novel that moves with intention but still leaves room for nuance.”

What does a typical writing day look like for you, and what advice would you offer to writers trying to develop discipline or consistency in their creative habits?

“I wish I could say I wake up every morning with a cup of coffee and dive straight into writing. But the truth is, writing is a second job for me. I work full-time during the day and write at night, after dinner. The house is quiet, my wife works on her own projects, and I can focus. I usually put on my writing playlist, open the file, and reread the last paragraph I wrote the night before, to help ease myself back into the world.

“That first week on a new story is always the hardest. Getting past the inertia, ignoring the inner critic, and just putting words down. But once I’ve written chapter one, something shifts. The story starts to come alive, and the characters begin to take over. That’s when I start looking forward to it again.

“My advice for building discipline is simple, but not easy. Don’t wait for inspiration or the perfect mood. Just commit to showing up and write anyway. Whether it’s 100 words or 1,000. The important thing is consistency. Writing is a muscle, and you have to use it to keep it strong. Some days, it’ll feel like pulling teeth. Other days, everything will flow like water. But either way, you’re moving forward.

“It also helps to create small rituals. I always start with a piece of music that matches the tone of the story to get into the right headspace. Some writers set a timer. The main thing is momentum. That’s what turns blank pages into a manuscript.”

Paul Wright, photo by Steve Wright

Spy thrillers are often action-driven, but Line of Sight also explores grief, love, and personal redemption. How do you balance emotional resonance with fast-paced storytelling?

“I think the most compelling thrillers are the ones where the action isn’t just spectacle, it’s personal. From the start, I knew Line of Sight needed to have tension and momentum, but I didn’t want it to be a nonstop barrage of chase scenes and shootouts. The stakes needed to matter emotionally. Every explosion, every twist, every mission, it all had to tie back to something the characters cared about deeply.

“Vogel, my lead character, isn’t just running from enemies or racing to stop a conspiracy; she’s also confronting unresolved grief, fractured trust, and a past that still echoes in her choices. For me, vulnerability is just as important as velocity. I wanted readers to care about the characters not just because of what they’re capable of, but because of what they’re carrying.

“Sometimes that meant slowing down for a quiet scene between her and Richard Davis or letting a line of dialogue carry more weight than a gunfight. Other times, it meant showing how emotional wounds can fuel action. How the drive to protect someone, or make something right, can be just as explosive as a car chase.

“Shade, in particular, helped me explore that balance. She’s unpredictable and dangerous, but everything she does is driven by a need to survive and reclaim a sense of agency. Writing her taught me that action and emotion don’t have to be separate. They can reflect and intensify each other.

“The key, for me, is always character. If I can stay grounded in what each person wants and fears, the emotional depth becomes part of the propulsion, not something that interrupts it. That’s what keeps a thriller from being just noise. It makes it human.”

ION, the villainous organization, feels chillingly real. What are your tips for crafting believable antagonists and raising the stakes without going over the top?

“For me, the key to creating a believable antagonist, whether it’s a person or an organization, is to start with intentions, not theatrics. ION isn’t evil for evil’s sake. They have a philosophy, a plan, and a chilling sense of purpose. Their leader, Malachai, genuinely believes the world needs to be broken to be rebuilt. He’s not twirling his mustache; he’s operating from a twisted kind of logic that almost makes sense, and that’s what makes him dangerous.

“With ION, I wanted to show how real-world threats often come from institutions or ideologies that sound rational on the surface, but whose actions, if left unchecked, lead to something deeply destructive. That’s how you raise the stakes without going over the top. You keep the threat grounded in reality, and give it just enough plausibility that the reader starts to wonder, could this actually happen?

“And while ION raises the external stakes, the real tension in Line of Sight lives inside Vogel. Her greatest challenge isn’t just stopping Malachai. It’s deciding what kind of life she wants once the mission is over. Does she stay in this high-stakes world of secrets and sacrifice? Or walk away and try to build something normal with Richard? A life where trust and love matter more than control. That emotional crossroads is what gives the story its weight.

“My advice to writers: don’t make your antagonist a cartoon. Give them beliefs, blind spots, and just enough charisma that readers can almost understand them. Even as they root for the hero to choose something better.”

You layered personal tension into the plot by reuniting Vogel with her estranged ex, Richard Davis. What advice do you have for writers on using personal relationships to heighten dramatic stakes?

“The moment I brought Richard Davis into the story, I knew I didn’t want him to be just a romantic subplot. I wanted him to be a source of emotional friction. Someone who could challenge Vogel not with weapons or tactics, but with memory, vulnerability, and love she’s never quite known how to live with. Reuniting with him doesn’t just stir old feelings, it forces her to confront the part of herself she’s always kept guarded. She’s comfortable leading missions and facing down threats, but letting someone truly see her? That’s harder.

“My advice to writers is not to separate the personal from the plot. Weave them together. The best tension doesn’t always come from a ticking bomb. Sometimes it’s the person standing next to you, holding your history in their eyes, while everything else is falling apart. That’s real. That’s the kind of tension readers feel.

“And when you write these relationships, don’t be afraid of silence. Don’t rush toward closure or confession. Let the distance between two people carry weight. Let their past shape the present without needing to explain every detail. For Vogel and Richard, the real danger isn’t whether the mission will succeed, it’s whether she’s capable of lowering her defences enough to risk connection again.”

Why did you choose a small Florida town as the backdrop, and how do you think setting can shape or support suspense and tone in a story?

“In part, the setting is personal. My wife and I are both beach people—it’s our favourite place to vacation. Every fall, we head down to the coast for our anniversary, and those quiet days by the water have a kind of peace and rhythm that I’ve always wanted to bottle. So when I started writing Line of Sight, I decided to put a little of our world into it.

“The fictional town of Lancaster is partially based on a real beach town where a college friend of mine used to live. I’d visit him from time to time, and there was something about the place that stuck with me. Even Professor Blackmarr’s university is loosely inspired by a real one nearby. These were the kinds of spaces that felt emotionally real to me, so I built my fictional world around them.

“As for choosing a sleepy beach town as the setting for a spy thriller, that was very intentional. One of the characters in the book even asks, almost incredulously, ‘What in the world would spies be doing in a place like Lancaster?’ And that’s exactly the point. I wanted to take the most unlikely location I could think of and drop an intelligence operation, and a high-stakes conspiracy, right in the middle of it. I think most writers could do the same thing. You don’t need an exotic location or a major city. In fact, readers might even connect more deeply when something thrilling and dangerous unfolds in a place that feels like home. There’s power in setting the extraordinary against the backdrop of the familiar.”

How did your training in screenwriting help you write this novel, especially when it comes to scene construction or visual storytelling?

“Screenwriting definitely shaped the way I approach storytelling, even when I’m working in prose. When I wrote Line of Sight, I didn’t think in terms of literary technique—I saw the action in my head like a movie and wrote what I saw. That’s something screenwriting taught me: how to build a scene visually, how to move characters through space, and how to keep the momentum sharp without over-explaining.

“One of the early scenes in the novel is probably the most cinematic, and deliberately so. Vogel, terrified of heights, is forced to dive from a shattered skyscraper window to escape. A black ops helicopter hovers nearby, waiting to pull her in using the Kevlar cable clipped to her belt. It’s over-the-top by design, meant to grab the reader by the throat and drop them straight into the world. For me, the image of Vogel, mid-air, silhouetted against the skyline, caught between the danger below and the machine above, captures something essential about who she is: powerful, poised, and in constant motion between control and chaos. That scene came to me like a film sequence, and I simply transcribed what I saw.

“Screenwriting also taught me to think in visual rhythm. Every scene needs to move, whether it’s physical action or a subtle shift in emotional tension. And it trained me to trust the visual economy. A single glance, a silence, or a restrained gesture can say more than paragraphs of internal monologue. That restraint, that sense of visual weight, is something I carry with me into every scene I write.”

Did you ever hit a point where you doubted the story—or yourself—while writing Line of Sight? How did you push through, and what advice would you give writers facing the same thing?

“Absolutely. I hit what we often call the muddy middle. That part of the book where you know what’s supposed to happen next, but you just can’t quite figure out how to build the bridge to get there. For me, it wasn’t about losing interest, it was about getting stuck in that space between scenes where momentum stalls and everything you write feels dead. And in that moment, yes, I doubted the story and myself.

“There was even a time when I tried chasing what I thought might be an exciting twist. One of those ‘rabbit trails’ that feels like inspiration at first, but quickly starts pulling everything off-course. I had to walk it back, which was frustrating, but it taught me something valuable. It wasn’t until I returned to the core question—What is this story really about?—that things began to click again. That one line brought me back to center and helped me reconnect with the emotional heart of the book.

“Another piece of advice that helped came from a writer friend: Which character have we not seen in a while? That simple question has a way of opening new doors. Sometimes the answer isn’t forward, it’s sideways. A forgotten perspective. A thread waiting to be picked up again.

“It’s still work. But those two questions, asked honestly and without panic, usually shake something loose. My biggest advice? Don’t give up. Hitting a wall doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It just means the story’s asking for more. Keep going, and you’ll find your way through.”

What’s one piece of advice you wish you had heard when you were just starting out as a writer? And what’s next for you—any sequels or new projects in the works?

“I wish someone had told me early on that, for all its wonder and magic, storytelling is built on structure. Books have shape. Stories have form. No matter what genre you’re writing in, there are patterns that work because they speak to something deeply human in us. So much emphasis is placed on inspiration, on having a great idea. That is important, but it’s only the first step. Translating that idea into something you can actually build on, scene by scene, is where a lot of writers struggle and sometimes give up.

“The truth is, structure isn’t the enemy of creativity. It’s what gives your story a spine. A framework that helps readers follow you, trust you, and ultimately feel what you’re trying to say. So my advice is: study structure. Learn how it works in your genre. Watch how your favourite writers do it. Reach out to them. Many authors, myself included, are happy to share what we’ve learned. There’s so much more support and access now than there used to be. Take advantage of that.

“As for what’s next, I’m already working on the sequel to Line of Sight. There’s more to Vogel’s story, and she’s not done surprising us yet. I’m also developing a coming-of-age story inspired by my teenage years as a high school metalhead. It explores friendship, first love, music, and ultimately, what it means to discover who you really are. It’s a very different kind of story, but one I think will resonate. Stay tuned!”