• 100 story ideas
  • Checked October 2026

Spy Story Ideas

Press the button for three spy premises, each with what goes wrong and one way it could turn.

Spy Story Ideas

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  1. A spy must return a stolen file before anyone notices that it is gone.The office has been rearranged. Turn: the cleaner shows her where it lives now, and winks.
  2. A message is written in a language that only two people speak, and one of them has forgotten it.The other is on the far side of a border. Turn: a lullaby brings it back.
  3. A trainee's first mission is to get past the front desk of her own headquarters.The guard knows her. Turn: that is exactly what the exercise is about.

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All 100 story ideas

The mission 20

  • A courier carries a sealed case across five borders without being told what is in it. At the fourth, he is asked to open it. Turn: it holds a sandwich and a note saying well done.
  • A mission depends on one sentence being overheard in a noisy cafe. The band starts up. Turn: the waiter reads lips, and has a price.
  • A new agent is told to follow a man for a week and write down everything he does. He does nothing at all. Turn: the nothing is a pattern, and it spells a time.
  • A retired spy is called back for one last job: to find out who has been reading the village's mail. She knows everyone. Turn: it is the one person she trained.
  • A spy is asked to get a look at a rival's desk calendar, and nothing more. It is blank. Turn: the dents left by a pencil say otherwise.
  • A spy is sent to photograph a secret invention and discovers it does not work. Her side wants the plans anyway. Turn: she reports the truth, and has to prove it.
  • A spy is sent to steal a recipe and finds that the rival bakery has sent someone to steal hers. They meet in the pantry. Turn: neither recipe is written down, so they have to trade lessons.
  • A spy is told to make friends with an ambassador's dog walker. The dog walker is also a spy. Turn: the dog has been wearing both their microphones.
  • A spy must return a stolen file before anyone notices that it is gone. The office has been rearranged. Turn: the cleaner shows her where it lives now, and winks.
  • A spy must swap one painting for a copy during a museum's busiest hour. A school group has sat down in front of it to sketch. Turn: a child notices that her copy is better.
  • A team spends a year planning to get into a vault, and on the day the door is standing open. Nobody trusts it. Turn: the vault was emptied by someone with a simpler plan.
  • A trainee's first mission is to get past the front desk of her own headquarters. The guard knows her. Turn: that is exactly what the exercise is about.
  • An agent is ordered to lose a chess match to a foreign champion, convincingly. The champion is playing to lose as well. Turn: the worst game ever played is watched by thousands.
  • An agent is sent to a small island to learn why its radio went quiet. Everyone is well and nobody will explain. Turn: they are tired of being listened to.
  • An agent is sent to recruit a scientist who turns out to be twelve. Her mother wants her home by six. Turn: the scientist asks the agent some questions first.
  • An agent must find out which of five identical briefcases on a train holds the papers. Each owner guards his closely. Turn: the papers are in the sixth, hers, and have been all along.
  • An agent must get a message to a contact she has never met, at a party of four hundred people. The sign is a yellow tie. Turn: yellow ties are the fashion this year.
  • An agent's whole mission is to deliver one umbrella to a man on a bridge at noon. It is not raining, and three men have umbrellas. Turn: the right one is the man without.
  • Two agents on a stakeout watch the wrong house for a month. Their report is very thorough. Turn: the wrong house was doing something worth reporting.
  • Two spies are each sent to plant a listening device in the same lamp. There is room for one. Turn: they agree to share the recording.

The cover 20

  • A man has lived under a cover name for twenty years and is told he may go home. He has a garden here, and a choir. Turn: he asks whether the cover can retire instead.
  • A spy goes undercover as a substitute teacher, and the class works out by Wednesday that she is not one. They want something for their silence. Turn: it is a field trip, and it helps.
  • A spy has played a boring clerk for so long that the office gives him an award for it. The ceremony will be photographed. Turn: the photographer is in the same line of work.
  • A spy is undercover as a lighthouse keeper, and ships begin to depend on her. Her orders are to leave tonight. Turn: she leaves the lamp lit and a manual.
  • A spy must attend a school reunion as someone who really went there. Everyone remembers the real one differently. Turn: so nobody can say she is wrong.
  • A spy plays a waiter at a banquet and is promoted to head waiter halfway through. Now everyone is watching her. Turn: a head waiter may stand wherever she likes.
  • A spy poses as a piano teacher and finds she is good at it. Her real work begins to suffer. Turn: her best pupil's father is the man she was sent to watch.
  • A spy's cover is a famous chef, and tonight she is asked to cook. She can make toast. Turn: the kitchen staff has been covering for the real chef for years, too.
  • A spy's cover is a street musician, and a record producer stops to listen. Fame would ruin everything. Turn: she plays badly on purpose, and he likes that more.
  • A spy's cover is a tour guide, and she has to invent the history of a town as she goes. A real historian joins the tour. Turn: he prefers her version and takes notes.
  • A woman finds out that her dull neighbor is a spy when his cover story changes overnight. Yesterday he sold carpets. Turn: he asks her what she thinks he should sell.
  • An agent is given a false name so ordinary that there are three others in the same hotel. Their mail gets mixed. Turn: one of them is getting hers on purpose.
  • An agent poses as a painter and must finish a portrait before the sitter loses patience. The sitter is the target. Turn: three hours of looking tells her more than a file could.
  • An agent poses as a tourist and is joined by a real tourist who wants to see everything. The meeting is at four. Turn: the tourist's vacation photographs are the best evidence of the trip.
  • An agent pretends to be a birdwatcher and sees a bird that is not supposed to be there. Real birdwatchers arrive by the busload. Turn: the crowd hides what she came to do.
  • An agent's cover as a crossword setter requires him to set crosswords. People write in to complain. Turn: one complaint is itself a clue, from a friend.
  • An agent's cover is a failing flower shop, and business suddenly picks up. He has no time to spy. Turn: his customers have been leaving him messages in their orders.
  • An agent's false passport says he is a dentist, and somebody on the train has a toothache. He has a penknife and a mirror. Turn: the patient is a real dentist, testing him.
  • Two agents pose as rival ice cream sellers so they can watch one corner. The feud becomes convincing. Turn: the neighborhood takes sides, and one side is useful.
  • Two spies are given the cover of brother and sister and cannot agree on their childhood. A dinner guest asks about their mother. Turn: their two stories fit together better than one would.

The code 20

  • A code book is disguised as a book of nursery rhymes, and a child borrows it from the library. She learns them by heart. Turn: she recites one to the wrong visitor.
  • A code breaker cracks a rival's cipher and finds it is a letter to her. It asks for help. Turn: answering means admitting she can read it.
  • A code can be read only by someone who knows the tune it is set to. The one man who knows it cannot carry a tune. Turn: he taps it out, and the rhythm is enough.
  • A code clerk notices that every message sent on a Tuesday is one letter too long. It could be nothing. Turn: the extra letters spell a name in the building.
  • A code is hidden in the mistakes of a church bell ringer, and tonight he rings perfectly. The listeners wait. Turn: perfect is also a signal, and the worst one.
  • A girl finds that her grandmother's knitting patterns are messages. One scarf was never finished. Turn: the message was for her, when she was old enough.
  • A laundry line of colored shirts sends a signal across a courtyard. Rain is coming, and everything must be taken in. Turn: the empty line is read as a message too.
  • A lighthouse flashes a pattern that is not on any chart. Ships ignore it. Turn: a girl on shore has been answering with a flashlight for a month.
  • A message is baked into a loaf, and the loaf is sold to the wrong customer. He is very hungry. Turn: he brings back the slip, with a complaint about the crust.
  • A message is hidden in the order of books on a shelf, and a tidy housekeeper comes on Thursdays. She alphabetizes. Turn: alphabetical order says something too.
  • A message is written in a language that only two people speak, and one of them has forgotten it. The other is on the far side of a border. Turn: a lullaby brings it back.
  • A radio operator hears a station that sends only numbers, every night at nine. Tonight it sends a word. Turn: the word is her own call sign.
  • A spy hides a message in a crossword, and forty thousand readers solve it before her contact does. Letters pour in. Turn: one reader's wrong answer is better than the right one.
  • A spy memorizes a message so well that he cannot forget it after delivering it. It runs in his head for a year. Turn: the second half only makes sense now.
  • A spy sends reports as chess moves by postcard, and his opponent starts winning. The opponent thinks it is only a game. Turn: he has to lose the game without changing the message.
  • A stamp collector realizes that the stamps on one man's letters are placed to form words. He has forty envelopes. Turn: the last one is addressed to him.
  • A window display in a hat shop changes every Monday, and somebody across the street is taking notes. The milliner has no idea. Turn: her assistant arranges the hats.
  • An agent receives an urgent message and finds that her code book is last month's. There is no time to fetch the new one. Turn: she writes back in the old code, and that tells them enough.
  • Two agents agree on a code word and each remembers it differently. The handover is in an hour. Turn: both words turn up in the same weather forecast.
  • Two children invent a code for passing notes and are overheard by someone who needs one. He offers to buy it. Turn: they ask to see what it will be used for.

The double 20

  • A double agent has told so many stories that she keeps a notebook of who believes what. The notebook is missing. Turn: whoever has it now knows only half, and so does she.
  • A double agent wants to stop being double and cannot decide which side to stay on. Each thinks she is theirs. Turn: she picks the one that asks how she is.
  • A double is hired to stand in for a minister at dull events and begins getting invited to the important ones. The real one hears. Turn: the real one asks to keep the dull ones.
  • A man passes secrets to both sides and makes sure that each gets exactly the same. Both are suspicious. Turn: he thinks it is the only fair way, and says so in court.
  • A man who sells secrets to anyone is finally asked to keep one. It is a small one, from a child. Turn: it is the first he finds he cannot sell.
  • A spy discovers that she has a double, and the double has a better record. Headquarters cannot tell them apart. Turn: neither can remember which of them is the original.
  • A spy is certain that someone in her team of four is passing notes to the enemy. She sets four different traps. Turn: all four are sprung, by four different cats.
  • A spy leaves a false trail so convincing that her own side follows it. They arrest her cover story. Turn: she has to break her own cover out.
  • A spy sees her own face in the back of a stranger's photograph, in a city she has never visited. The date is last week. Turn: she goes there, and is expected.
  • A spy's most trusted informant is a parrot that lives on a rival's balcony. The parrot begins repeating her questions to its owner. Turn: the owner starts sending answers.
  • A trainee is asked to find the mole in her own class of six. Everyone is told the same thing. Turn: there is no mole, and what counts is how each one looks.
  • An agent is ordered to pretend to change sides, and nobody on his own side has been told it is pretend. He is entirely alone. Turn: one person guesses, from the way he says goodbye.
  • An agent is told to tail a suspect and realizes that the suspect is tailing her. They circle the same block for an hour. Turn: one of them stops to buy two coffees.
  • An agent learns that his handler reports to the other side, and that the other side's handler reports to his. Nobody is sure who is winning. Turn: the two handlers are old friends keeping the peace.
  • An agent returns from a year undercover and nobody at headquarters remembers sending him. His file is empty. Turn: emptying it was the last part of the plan, and he agreed to it.
  • An agent's twin brother is mistaken for him and handed a briefcase. The twin is a tax inspector, and curious. Turn: he does the job better.
  • An old double agent writes two versions of his memoirs, one for each side. The publishers have the wrong envelopes. Turn: both sides like the other one better.
  • Two agencies find that they have been paying the same informant for the same rumors. The rumors were invented. Turn: by now, three of them have come true.
  • Two rival spies have reported on each other for so long that each could write the other's life. One retires. Turn: the other sends the missing chapter as a gift.
  • Two spies who have never met are each told that the other is a traitor. Both are loyal. Turn: comparing orders shows them the hand that wrote both.

The escape 20

  • A captured spy is kept in a room with a jigsaw puzzle to pass the time. It has no picture on the box. Turn: finished, it is a floor plan.
  • A spy escapes by hot-air balloon and has no say over where it comes down. It comes down in the garden of the embassy she just left. Turn: they are too surprised to object.
  • A spy escapes over the rooftops and lands in a rooftop garden party. The host hands her a plate. Turn: her pursuer arrives and is handed one too.
  • A spy escapes with the wrong suitcase. It holds someone's vacation clothes. Turn: the right suitcase has gone on vacation, and she follows the luggage tag.
  • A spy hides in a traveling circus, and the circus needs someone for the high wire. She has a head for heights and no experience. Turn: the net is where the papers are hidden.
  • A spy is hidden by a village that passes her from house to house, and each house tells her a little less. She does not know who is in charge. Turn: nobody is, and that is why it works.
  • A spy is locked in a library overnight and must be out before it opens. The windows are painted shut. Turn: the book return chute was built for bigger books.
  • A spy must disappear from a ship at sea. The crew counts heads at every bell. Turn: she joins the count twice until the port, and then not at all.
  • A spy on the run hides in a marathon and finds she is winning it. The finish line is full of cameras. Turn: she slows down, and third place is nearly as bad.
  • A spy's escape depends on the last train, and the last train is canceled. The stationmaster is sorry. Turn: there is a handcar, and the stationmaster's daughter knows how to pump it.
  • An agent is cornered in a hall of mirrors and cannot tell which reflection is the way out. Neither can the men behind her. Turn: the one mirror that does not show her is the door.
  • An agent is smuggled out in a grand piano bound for a concert hall. The pianist wants to rehearse. Turn: the low notes are flat, and the pianist knows why and says nothing.
  • An agent must cross a border where every guard has her photograph. It is a bad photograph. Turn: she looks nothing like it, and never has.
  • An agent must leave a city where every bridge is watched. He cannot swim. Turn: the river freezes on the third night.
  • An agent slips out of a hotel dressed as a waiter and is handed four plates on the way through the kitchen. Table nine is his pursuers. Turn: he serves them, and they tip.
  • An agent's exit is an ordinary bus, and the bus driver chooses today to change his route. Everyone aboard is annoyed. Turn: the new route goes past no checkpoint at all.
  • An agent's getaway car is blocked in by a parade float. The band is playing. Turn: he leaves on the float, waving.
  • An old spy plans one last escape, from his own retirement party. Every guest was trained to stop him. Turn: they let him go at the door, as the gift.
  • Two agents handcuffed to the same briefcase have to get through a revolving door. The pursuers are on the stairs. Turn: the door only works if they agree.
  • Two rival agents are stuck in the same elevator, each with the other's stolen papers. There is nowhere to run. Turn: they swap back and agree to say it was a draw.

How it works

These spy story ideas are 100 premises of one sentence each, about the mission, the cover, the code, the double or the escape. Under each is what goes wrong and a possible turn. Brains, not weapons.

Read the full guide

Secret agent story ideas, part by part

A spy story has five moving parts, and each is a group here: The mission, The cover, The code, The double and The escape. A list under the button holds them. Choose one, and every press deals from it.

Small missions, real nerves

The missions are small on purpose: deliver one umbrella to a man on a bridge at noon, read a desk calendar, lose a chess match convincingly. A small job leaves room for the one detail that goes wrong, and the note under each premise names it.

  • Give the cover job a real skill. The spy who can only make toast is in trouble by dinner.
  • Press once in The code and once in The escape, and use both in one story.

Questions and answers

What do great spy story ideas have in common?

On this list, a simple job and one thing the plan did not allow for. An agent must hand over an umbrella at noon, it is not raining, and three men on the bridge have umbrellas.

Is there violence in these ideas?

No. The stories run on codes, covers and gadgets. No premise turns on a weapon or on anyone being hurt, and a chase ends at a garden party or in a marathon.

Are the agencies and countries real?

No. No country, agency, operation or person is named, and nothing here is a fact about real espionage. Every premise was made up for this page.

How do I write a code into a story?

Hide it in something ordinary and then disturb that thing. In the group The code, a message sits in the order of books on a shelf, and a tidy housekeeper comes on Thursdays.

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