Sonja Foust, Romance Author

One of the mostly commonly asked questions to writers everywhere is, “How do you come up with your ideas?” It is often a mightily loathed question because a lot of authors have no clue where their ideas come from. It’s like asking someone who is funny how to be funny. They don’t know, they just are.

I’m going to admit something that I have never admitted before. Brave, right? (Especially to admit it in a public forum called teh Internets, which never forgets…)

I know where my ideas come from.

Ideas are not just fluttering around in my brain like butterflies all the time waiting for me to pluck one out of the air and use it. If that makes me less of an artist (which I imagine, to some of you, it does), so be it. That’s just not how it works for me. I have to work for my ideas a lot of the time. This is a little embarrassing, as I’m a fiction writer and supposed to be a veritable font of story ideas.

I’ll give you an example.

I was working on a book I’ve been working on for a while, and it wasn’t really going anywhere, so I decided to put it aside and start something new. Upon this decision, I took a methodical look at my top 10 favorite movies of all time. (Maybe that will be a different post.) After examining my list, I decided that the common things I like in movies are: romance, historical settings, adventure, Christmas, sci-fi and comedy.

I think it’s pretty accurate to say that that’s what I like in the books I read, too. I tend to gravitate toward romances (obviously), and especially historicals and adventure romances. And, I kid you not, I have a special section on my bookshelf just for the Christmas books.

So, what to do with this “new” information?

In a silly mood, I thought, “What if I could combine all of the elements I love into one awesome story?” The one element that kept throwing me off was sci-fi. Recently, though, I’d read a few blog posts about the new steampunk phenomenon. I was intrigued. It was a way for me to fit everything into one story. And thus, the steampunk time-travel Christmas romantic comedy adventure idea was born.

So, see, there’s really nothing mystical about coming up with story ideas, at least in my world. I hammer ideas out, rather than catching them. I sit and think, “I need an idea,” and then I use what I have at my disposal to come up with one.

Authors, where do you come up with your story ideas?Are you an idea catcher or an idea builder?

Readers, do you like knowing where ideas come from, or is it better if they’re metaphorical butterflies for authors to pluck out of the mist of their creative minds?

As always, tell me in the comments!

[Side note: Found a story from Christina Dodd about how she came up with the Chosen Ones idea. So which one is she: a catcher or a builder?]

You’re ready to go. You’re going to write that great novel that’s been rattling around in your head for years. You have a desk, you have a typing device, you have your coffee, you got yourself some fingerless gloves that make you feel all Starving Artist Chic…

And then you sit and stare at that blinking cursor, and think of all the reasons you really can’t write that novel just now… Someone else already wrote something similar. People might get offended. You just remembered that pile of laundry that really has to be done right this instant. It might sound dumb when you get it out of your head and onto the page.

You’ve got (dun dun DUN!) Page Fright.

So, here are my quick and easy (well, quick anyway) tips for getting over Page Fright:

1. Give yourself permission to write crap. I think this is the best tip I’ve ever gotten. If you’re allowed to write crap, it means you’re allowed to write anything, without putting the pressure of being a Great Author on yourself. Just write what you want, and worry about whether or not it’s crap later. (Some of it undoubtedly will be crap, but you may be surprised at what is and what isn’t.)



Cover via Amazon

2. Don’t think about the whole novel. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott has a nice essay that talks about this. Once you’re ready to sit down and write, you have to take it one “bird” at a time. Think about this Act, or this chapter, or this scene. If you think about the whole novel every time you sit down to write, you’re going to overwhelm yourself and head for the nearest pile of dirty laundry.
3. Remember: It’s all been done. There is nothing new under the sun. Blah, blah, blah. You’ve heard this little pearl of wisdom before, haven’t you? Well, it’s true. There are a limited number of big story ideas (and pearls of wisdom, come to that)  in the world, and they’ve pretty much all been told. So don’t worry if your plot sounds similar to someone else’s. The thing that makes stories great is how they’re told.
4. Pretend no one is ever going to read it but you. If you’re aiming to sell your book, this is obviously not going to be the case, but sometimes it helps to imagine while writing. That way you don’t have to censor yourself in case your grandma ever gets ahold of a copy. Plus, you can always tone it down later if you need to.
5. Just do it! Quit your whining and write. It’s not going to kill you.

Have you ever had Page Fright? How did you get over it? Tell me in the comments!

(You like that post title? Ever notice how my titles are never that clever? Yeah, that’s because my awesome copywriting friend Veemoe gave that one to me. Thanks, Vee!)

I always bring a photo with me when I get a new hairstyle. But it never really turns out looking like the photo anyway. Most recently was the Katie Holmes bob. I don’t look like Katie Holmes in the first place, so, you know, I can’t expect much. But still. I was hoping for a little more Katie Holmes and a little less Chicago The Musical vamp.

This time, I brought in the photo to the left.

Nope, I look nothing like that. Nothing. But I keep hoping that, someday, I’ll bring in a picture of what I want my hair to look like and the magical hairstylist will be able to do it. Not sure why it’s so hard. Maybe my hair just foils them, like Harry Potter’s magical regrowing hair.

How about you? Does your haircut ever turn out like the picture? Does it make you mad when it doesn’t?

Ok, ok, here’s what my hair actually looks like now:

I love villains. Ok, well, you know, I love to hate them. I’m not a sadist or anything. But I think villains are often the best part of a book or a movie. Defeating a real bad baddie makes the hero/heroine look even better. The really good villains are the ones who show how bad bad can be and illuminate how great the hero/heroine really is. So here are my top 10 villains of all time (in no particular order except the order I thought of them in):

1. Voldemort (Harry Potter series)- You knew he had to be on this list, right? The baddest baddie of them all, and so scary I had to turn away from my book, grab my husband’s arm, and go, “eek!” a couple of times. I haven’t seen the Harry Potter movies yet, but my mom tells me Voldemort is not nearly as scary in the movies as in the book. So, may I recommend reading the books?

2. Belloq (Radiers of the Lost Ark)- The other day I went on and on and on about Raiders of the Lost Ark, so I won’t put you through that again. I like the villain, Belloq, though, because he is like Indiana Jones, only bad. (It’s not subtle, either. He has a line in the movie: “I am a shadowy reflection of you.”)

3. Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty)- There’s nothing like a villain whose very name strikes fear in the hearts of mortal man. This one is pretty much punctuated by ugly green lightning and scary music every time anyone says it in the movie, and she’s a real bad baddie. I love that she has an ugly pet who is also evil and that she’s not comic at all. Some kids’ movies tend to water down the villains a bit with silly toadies and whatever, and I get why, but I like that Maleficent is just pure evil, and so is her bird.

4. Sean Ambrose (Mission: Impossible II)- I think the thing I liked most about this villian is that I recognized him from another movie where he played a nice guy (a prince, actually), and he was so convincing as a really bad bad guy in this movie that now I watch the other one where he’s a nice guy and I don’t quite believe it.

5. Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs)- Just totally creepy. Also, you’re never sure if he’s the villain or the protagonist. His story is almost as important as Clarice’s story.

6. Alex Forrest (Fatal Attraction)- Hell hath no fury and all that. This is still, I think, one of the scariest movies of all time, largely because of Glenn Close’s performance. And you almost, almost want to root for her because the Michael Douglas character is so scummy. Thanks, Glenn Close, for scaring a generation of men into fidelity.

7. Darth Vader (Star Wars series)- Every now and then, you get to redeem a villain, which I love. If your villain is going to be a darker version of your hero (which he most certainly is in this series), redeeming him can be possible. The redemption scene in Return of the Jedi is one of my favorites.

8. Agent Smith (The Matrix)- Totally scary, and also gives a lot of background on motivation. He gets a whole long monologue on why he hates humans, and I pretty much believe him.

9. The Wicked Witch of the West (The Wizard of Oz)- In fairy tales, it seems like the delineation between good and evil is necessarily sharper. I like that it works this way because it’s easier to get your point across when you don’t have to worry about who’s bad and who’s not. And we definitely know the Wicked Witch is, well, wicked.

10. The Evil Stepmother (Ever After)- Ever After is my favorite retelling of the Cinderella story and the evil stepmother in this version is really, really evil. Incidentally, this is the movie where the villain from Mission: Impossible II plays the charming prince. Watch both and let me know what you think.

So who are your favorite villains, and why do you like/hate them?

Alex Sokoloff did a really wonderful 3-act structure breakdown of You’ve Got Mail on her blog. I did my own of Return to Me, my favorite romance movie, a few weeks ago. Since I’m writing something in the adventure genre now, I thought it would be useful to do a breakdown of my favorite adventure movie too, which is, of course, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

SPOILER ALERT– I’m pretty much going to spoil the whole movie, so if you haven’t seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, do not read this post. Instead, go immediately to your local Blockbuster or your Netflix queue and get it now, put it in your DVD player now, and watch it now. It’s iconic. You must see it.

Raiders of the Lost Ark

1981
Director: Stephen Spielberg
Writers: George Lucas, Philip Kaufman, Lawrence Kasdan

I have loved Raiders of the Lost Ark and, indeed, the entire original Indiana Jones trilogy, from the very first moment I saw it. Indiana Jones is an iconic figure, if a little less than perfect (which I’ll go into more). The adventures are action-packed and the settings are always just right.

Act I

In the first half of Act I, we have the famous idol sequence. This sequence, which is really just an introduction to the character of Indiana Jones, takes up the first 11 minutes of the movie. The first 11 minutes tells us that Indiana Jones is an adventurous archeologist, who, while smart, doesn’t always get the last laugh. He escapes with his life, but little else, including his dignity– the snake in the front of the plane with him scares him half to death.

The second part of Act I is easy to pick out as there is a dramatic scene change to Indiana Jones’ home town, where he is a professor at a university and friends with a museum curator. This second part of Act I also sets up the quest and the history behind the quest. Additionally, it raises the question of history versus religion–an important question throughout the movie– and whether religion is something more than “hocus pocus.”

Here’s where I get a little fuzzy. Indiana Jones gets on a plane bound for Nepal where he meets his old flame Marion (with fiery results– literally, haha). This sequence starts about 23 minutes in and ends with Marion informing Indiana Jones that she is now his “goddamn partner” at the thirty-minute mark. Originally, I had this at the end of the first quarter of Act II, but I’m reconsidering, and thinking it might just be the end of Act I. True, it’s the start of an adventure (there’s another one of those red lines going across a map scenes to get them to Cairo next), but Indiana Jones already started his adventure when he set off to find the Ravenwoods at 22 minutes in. For argument’s sake, I’ll say it’s the climax of Act I, since it’s at the 30-minute mark.

Act II

Act II was where I mistakenly started trying to make Raiders of the Lost Ark into a romance, when it most certainly is not. Indy consistently chooses archeology over Marion, which never really hit me until I watched it through again (probably for the 1,327th time) today.

Act II finds Indy in Cairo where his friend fills him in on the goings-on at Tanis, where they’re looking for the Ark of the Covenant. We find out that Indy’s arch-enemy, Belloq (who already stole the idol from Indy in the very first sequence), is behind the excavation of Tanis, too.

In one of the best comedic action sequences in film, Indiana and Marion are shopping in Cairo when they are attacked by Egyptian Nazi goons. There is much slapstick, and great zany background musical orchestration throughout the whole thing, but suddenly, there is an explosion and Marion is dead.

This is where I wanted to put the Midpoint. The Midpoint is supposed to be a great loss, kind of a “now it’s personal” to the hero. Indiana is indeed shaken by Marion’s death– he gets drunk and then confronts Belloq– but this would be the Midpoint in a romance, and Raiders of the Lost Ark is not a romace. Instead, I’m going to say it’s the end of the first quarter of Act II, at 42 minutes.

The confrontation between Indiana Jones and Belloq is really interesting, and a great demonstration of my favorite hero/villain dichotomy. Belloq tells Indy, “I am a shadowy reflection of you.” Love that.

If you needed further proof that Marion’s (supposed) death is not the Midpoint, Sallah says it in a line of dialog. Indy tells him Marion is dead, and he says, “Yes, I know. But life goes on.” One line is about all the mourning she gets and they’re off again after the Ark.

I think the actual Midpoint of the whole movie is the discovery of the location of the Well of Souls in the map room at Tanis. They realize that Belloq has been digging in the wrong place, and they have a chance to find the Ark of the Covenant and take it right out from under Belloq’s nose. I would possibly have missed that this is the Midpoint, except there is an entire long scene with swelling musical orchestration and a big glowing special effect when the location is revealed. I’m pretty sure it’s the Midpoint. This happens at about 53 minutes in.

Here’s another way we can tell Raiders of the Lost Ark is not a romance. At 55 minutes in, Indiana discovers that Marion is, in fact, alive and being held prisoner at the Tanis dig. Instead of freeing her, though, he leaves her where she is so that he can have a chance at getting to the Ark. He chooses archeology over Marion, big surprise. Marion is left to her own devices, and she manages to figure out an escape of her own.

The next few scenes cut between Indiana Jones discovering the Ark and Marion orchestrating her escape. I love that they get nearly equal time here. We’re allowed to root for Marion just as much as we’re rooting for Indy. This is probably why Raiders is my favorite of the three in the Indiana Jones trilogy– I love having a heroine to root for, too. It’s that romance thing, again.

The Act II climax finds Indiana and Marion both foiled in their plans. Belloq has taken the Ark back, Marion has failed to escape, and they’ve been thrown into the Well of Souls together, and it happens to be crawling with asps (very dangerous, you go first). All is lost, it’s a big dark moment, the torches are going out.

Act III

Of course Indiana Jones saves the day. He’s Indiana Jones. He does that. They escape from the snake pit and the next 20 minutes is one fight scene after another– a fist fight, explosions, a truck chase, whatever we can punch or blow up, it’s done here. I guess all these actions scenes could probably be lumped in with the Act II climax. We could, instead, start Act III when they get to the ship that will bring them (and the Ark) to England, we hope. This is at 1 hour and 30 minutes in to the movie.

Of course, the relative peace (and the most romantic scene in the entire movie squashed into a lull between action sequences– but it’s not a romance!) is soon interrupted when the Nazis board the ship. Marion is captured this time, but Indy escapes and follows them to an island where we learn that Belloq plans to open the Ark.

Indiana Jones follows them into the desert and manages to get hold of some kind of badass rocket launcher. He points it at the Ark and tells Belloq that he’ll blow up the Ark unless Belloq gives him Marion. “All I want is the girl,” he claims. Now here, at the midpoint of Act III, is your undeniable proof that this is not a romance and that Indiana Jones is not a guy you really want to depend on: Belloq calls his bluff and tells him to go ahead and blow up the Ark, but Indiana Jones can’t do it, even for Marion. Archeology wins over love again. Again!

Act III finishes up with the usual battle scene, only it’s between the Nazis and God, which is kind of awesome. Faces melt, heads explode, Nazis die.

Once back in the United States, though, Indiana Jones can’t get his hands back on the Ark. It’s been taken away to be studied by “top men,” and he can’t get at it. He walks down the steps of the Congress building (?) feeling as if he has lost. Faithful Marion, though, is there as his consolation prize. Ugh. I get the distinct feeling that Indiana Jones would sell Marion into slavery if it meant he could get his hands back on that Ark, but he can’t, and it’s wheeled off into storage, lost forever in rows and rows of crates all the same size and shape.

It’s not a romance. Did you get that part? I feel like that’s kind of a revelation for me. I always sort of thought of it as a romance, maybe because that’s the part of it that always caught my attention, more than the explosions and melting faces and stuff. But, if you’re writing a romance, you can’t structure it like this, with the romantic elements taking place in the down time between the actual scene climaxes. The romance has to BE the climax (yeah, hur hur, laugh it up). I’m not trying to bash Raiders of the Lost Ark at all! It’s a great movie for what it is, which is not a romance.

What do you think? Am I being too hard on old Indy? Could he have really loved Marion more than archeology? Tell me in the comments.