One favorite aspect of writing espionage fiction for me is that characters, whether protagonists or antagonists, have to be complex. Readers don’t like and can’t relate to two-dimensional characters, i.e., the bad guy who is pure evil but with no explanatory back story. Much like with a mystery, I like to know how a character got to the point where he or she is in the story, how and why they make the choices they make. So, for the antagonist, you have to do a little psychological profiling.

I do this in a couple of ways. I research actual people who were captured spying against the U.S., or I read a novel by another spy writer to see how they developed the antagonist. Quite often, and the same is true for protagonists, I end up using characteristics of a number of real and fictional spies and create a character who is an amalgam. There is a downside: Sometimes you end up profiling a lot of despicable people in a quest for authenticity.

Because I write historical espionage fiction, giving an antagonist based on a real person an intricate personality is a balance of what is publicly known about the real person and what I’ve made up about that person to fill in the blanks. I usually give a character like this a fictional name, but I try to make it easy for the reader to understand who I’m talking about. Sometimes the fictional aspects outweigh the facts, but that’s good. I’m making the character not only more interesting but believable and authentic.

Many writers are successful at giving readers the tropes they want to see, but where the plot may be intriguing, the characters aren’t–at least not to me. Tropes have their place in genre fiction, don’t get me wrong, but when the story contains stereotypes as characters, I’m left wanting more at the end.

In espionage writing–really in any writing–you need characters with emotional depth. Moreover, the character has to grow or change as a result of the story, and that’s difficult to achieve for a two-dimensional character. Whether protagonist or antagonist, the character has to have motivation. Sometimes that’s hidden, e.g., someone who is selling secrets to an enemy who doesn’t want to get caught, or overt, the person who joins their country’s intelligence agency because they’re a patriot.

Among the types of motivations for either protagonist or antagonist are revenge (Yes, even for the good guy.), loyalty, love of country, redemption. The antagonist may have those same motivations along with perhaps a personal vendetta or an ideological conflict with the government of another country. Think KGB vs CIA in the Cold War. Both sides considered themselves loyal to their countries. And that ideological conflict could be someone within a country who disagrees with their country’s policies who then decides to sell secrets to an enemy country as a form of protest.

If you understand what motivates your characters and you express that sufficiently in your story, you have a story with authentic, engaging characters. As much as the character’s physical appearance has to be interesting to the reader, so does how they tick. Now, I’m not a psychologist, but I’ve used them in research. When I come up with a character, I do a character sketch (not a drawing, more like a dossier) and consult with people who can profile a character based on the backstory I’ve created.

Of course, one of my subject matter experts wanted to delve into my motivations for writing dark stories, but I declined.

So, do you infuse your antagonist with something that makes a reader empathetic? That’s a thin line to walk. Most of my antagonists are irredeemable, and I’ve done that on purpose. What I try to do is to show them as flawed human beings and how they got that way. Yes, you infuse the antagonist with some humanistic qualities, but you have to make sure that doesn’t overcome whatever the antagonist’s nefarious motivation is. You want the reader to empathize with a protagonist’s triumphs but also for the antagonist’s failures–after you cheer a bit for the antagonist being foiled.

Rather the opposite is true for the protagonist. He or she can’t be perfect because human beings aren’t perfect. The protagonist may be working hard to stop the antagonist in your story, but if your protagonist wins every skirmish, you’re not leaving room for that character to grow. The good guys have to have flaws, too, but can’t be so flawed they can’t stop the bad guys. Besides, those flaws, whether for the protagonist or antagonist, make for great plot twists.

Yet again, all of this has to balance. You can be too blatant in showing the antagonist to be evil. Your portrayal has to be nuanced. People aren’t born inherently evil. I know racists and eugenicists like to believe that, but no. The antagonist has to have a deep psychological reason to be the bad guy, but you can’t simply write that as a diagnosis. You have to show the reader via back story how someone became twisted.

It’s a lot of work to develop a complex character, but it’s also great fun and a tremendous challenge. And if you simply look around you, your neighbors, your friends, your family, and a whole host of public figures are fantastic source material.