What kind of things help move your writing along?

As I start into the last third of my current WIP, I search my video shelf for the right inspiration. I seldom write in the silence. Sometimes I like music, preferably movie sound tracks. But as often as not, I like to put a movie on my little portable DVD player and use it as background noise. The movie I pick has to match the emotions of the scene I'm writing.



For instance, today my hero was confused, feeling out of place in a society that is like nothing he's encountered before. Despite his competence in the ways of war, he is a fish out of water when among the ordinary citizens. Can you say Kurt Russell in Soldier.



My next scenes will return to the mountains where a battle will likely take place. There will be tracking, living off the land, hiding, ambushes. How about that Daniel Day Lewis in Last of the Mohicans. And that's a great soundtrack too.



A little romance and humor to keep the story from being too grim. Drew Barrymore in Ever After. And when I need a damaged, tragic hero fighting to his last breath, I put on that sexiest man of all, Matt Damon in Bourne.



Serenity provides the inspiration for heroes and heroines fighting against the all powerful, evil enemies. How can they not help me make my protagonists a little more flawed, a little more entertaining, and so much more human.



Want a really lonely hero? Who's more lonely than Brandon Routh in Superman Returns. And of course he messed up. He shouldn't have left her without explanation. Can't I use that stupid man mistake somewhere in my own novel?



I think we all have been inspired by books, movies, perhaps fairy tales that we've loved over the years. Take the best of them, use them and your hero and heroine could end being the best of them all.



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