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.

Getting to Know Your Characters.

Getting to Know Your Characters.

Characters who seem like flesh and blood people to readers is an essential part of good fiction. Mainly this requires that a character is multidimensional - just like real people. A character needs to have a past, hobbies, issues, dreams etc. 

One way to get to know who your character is in-depth, is to imagine him or her in all sorts of scenarios. It can be especially helpful to include situations not related to your story at all. In my novel, "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe," my main character, Jim, never once goes to a beach. But when I was on vacation during the time I was writing the book, even though I did not write during the vacation, I took the opportunity to - in my head - imagine Jim on the beach in Mexico. What circumstances would have brought him there? Who would he be with? What would they be saying to each other? What would he like or dislike about that beach? What kind of swimming attire would he wear? What beach activities would he partake in? Would he use sun block? etc.  

Once you have a real grasp on the people you people your novel with, it will come more automatically to you to know how they will respond to the situations in your book, what they will say and how they will say it. 

One of the things the other writers in my writers group use to say to me when I read from "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe" is "you really get inside Jim's head!" The truth was, I told them, that Jim really got inside my head.