What Inspires Your Characters?

In order to move your plot along, you have to have your character decide to do something. You've created conflict, so there are problems, to build suspense there are more problems. Something has to change, something has to bring the story to its climax.
While it may be tempting to make events beyond your character's control bring about the resounding crescendo of your novel, readers are much more enamored by a story if the struggling protagonist actually does something that makes all the difference. This is where your character needs inspiration. Generally, this is in the form of a catalyst - something new introduced to the story that awakens the lead.  It may be hitting rock bottom as a result of an especially catastrophic event. Just like what inspires alcoholics to go to AA, the situation gets so bad for your character that they are forced to recognize that something has to be done.
Your character may be woken up by something another character does or says at just the right moment - a slap on the face during a wedding by a grandmother who has always been only kind, a statement by a co-worker that makes the character realize that her impression of who she is, is far from how others see her. It may be that a new person or relationship in their life makes your character realize things can't go on the way they have been.
Perhaps it's something subtle like a glace in the mirror at a friend's house or the way a fish struggles on the end of the hook during a camping trip.
Inspiration can come in the form of a long-repressed memory coming to the surface, or a silly poem, or the look on a dog's face.
Your plot, theme, setting, and characters will all guide you toward the best choice for your book. Just make sure your readers feel it as intensely as you do.

The Fiction Of Love

The Fiction of Love

Love is not fiction, but love makes good fiction. Readers want to be moved; they want to leave the mundane of their life when their life does not leave the mundane. Of course one of the most assured ways to get your readers there is by writing about love. Perhaps what inspires us the most in life is love, wallowing in it when you have it, looking for it when you want it, recovering from it when it's gone. Everyone can relate and almost every story, no matter the genre, at least taps into this theme. One need not write a romance to write about love.
Love is also especially useful for creating the necessary page-turning, can't put it down, that keeps readers hungry for your books. Will he find love? Will she ever get that guy? Will he ever finally get a divorce and be with the one he truly loves? Will they ever stop fighting and enjoy their love? Will she ever tell her co-worker she loves her? Will love heal the pain of his past? etc.
One of the best vehicles for using love to create suspense is the friends/coworkers/neighbors who just can't quite seem to ever get it that they are in love. The reader figures it out early on but the characters, or one of the characters, is clueless. There is flirtation that is not recognized or acknowledged by those involved. There are excuses to get together that they believe are innocent. There is fluttery stomachs and nervous laughter that are written off as a reaction to the burrito at lunch and being over-tired. When will those two ever see what we see? When will they finally figure it out? Will they both figure it out at the same time? Will they ever stop laughing at their friends when they try to clue them in? Oh, we can't wait for the moment when they finally fall into each other's arms. But every time it seems there is a glimmer of recognition, they look away and start talking about their kids' baseball game, or suddenly notice that it's pouring rain and run into their separate cars.
Love is also good as a backdrop to other storylines. Love causes characters to make that fatal mistake that messes up their best-laid plans to become stockbrokers, or to rob a convenience store, or finally do right by their long-lost child. The loss of love drives characters to commit gruesome murders, or to become overly involved in their children's lives, or debauchery, or world travel.
Yep, love is a writer's best friend... or wait, is it really just friendship, or the beginning of a torrid romance?

Writing Sex Scenes

Writing Sex Scenes.

Lots of people say they dread writing sex scenes. I find it not so challenging myself, though reading sex scenes out loud can be a bit unnerving - especially if I'm not too familiar with my audience. It helps though, that the feedback has been very positive.

Here's Harrie's Helpful Hints:

It depends a lot on what type of story you are writing, who your projected readers are, and what importance the scene has in the story. Adjust accordingly.
In my novels, love and sex are pretty paramount to the plot and theme so I tend to get a bit more in detail and don't worry so much about telling the reader too much. However, in some scenes, the sex is way more important than in others. Usually, when I show more detail it's because I want to show the love that's developing between my characters, or I want to show how deviant, or drunk, or confused, or...whatever, my character is.
Gratuitous sex is ugly in any book that hasn't set out to be erotica or pornography, so make sure there is a point to your details.
Many sex scenes work really well with just some titillating foreplay, a glimpse of the more deep breathing stuff, and then the cigarette smoking, or rolling over and going to sleep, or entangled sleeping in one another's arms, or the awkward avoiding of the wet spot. However, if your book is one where sex is important, you don't want to cheat your readers out of some of the good stuff. I find it best though to leave readers wishing for just a little more.
Avoid a play-by-play sports announcer recount. Better to show the total-abandon looks on their faces, and the anguished cries, than an in-depth explanation of the techniques being applied - unless you're writing a training manual.
Mostly though, I implore you not to describe a totally vanilla, missionary-scene quickie, with a lot of whispering of sweet nothings, between pressed sheets, and expect your readers to buy this as the most awesome sex your characters' have ever had - I hate that.