We’re all in need of a little writing inspiration right now. We just finished week five of quarantine here, and man has it been a roller coaster! The past few weeks were better than the first few because we’ve been able to settle into a schedule of work and distance learning, dividing our house into zones so everyone has space to be on their Zoom calls at once. With all of the tumult in our lives, putting effort into creative projects seems both more important and more impossible. How can we mentally move beyond the walls that confine us to create new and interesting work? How can we find writing inspiration, talking to the same people every day in the same spaces? 

One method I’ve discovered recently is how much fun it is to add Top Gun to projects when I feel stuck. Maybe you’ve been consumed by your work in progress for weeks, maybe months.  Maybe you’ve outlined the heck out of it and know what you need to accomplish with each and every scene (I am NOT that person). I know the truth is everyone gets stuck sometimes, though, whether in the first draft or the fifteenth. If you’ve hit that point, and feel like you’re out of ideas, try overlaying your story with Top Gun. You know, the movie with Tom Cruise?

But my story has nothing to do with Top Gun!

Why Top Gun? Consider the emotions Top Gun evokes: there’s friendship, romance, competition, drama, grieving, and ultimately euphoria. From what I’ve read, the market will be looking for feel-good stories when we’re on the other side of this, stories that are comforting and uplifting. Not everyone wants to write those stories, and in a time when we’re bogged down with an overdose of less than uplifting news, it can be especially difficult to remember that euphoric, “I shot down the Mig and got the girl!” loving feeling.

Chances are the story you’re writing has at least one element of Top Gun. Writing a middle grade that touches on a first crush? Try adding in the “You Lost That Loving Feeling” in the bar type of scene. (But without the bar. Maybe the cafeteria.) Is one of your characters grieving? Add in the conversation between Meg Ryan and Tom Cruise, the reminder that Goose loved nothing more than flying with Maverick. And need a feel-good forbidden prank? Buzz the tower, baby!

OK, maybe not Top Gun exactly …

Obviously you can’t put the exact scenes from Top Gun into your work in progress. But it makes for a fun exercise. And you don’t have to limit yourself to Top Gun. There are so many movies to choose from, as you’ve probably seen in your unlimited streaming the past few weeks. Think of how some of your favorite movies made you feel, how they elicited specific emotions. What was it about the scenes? How did you relate to the characters? And how can you bring that to the page? Ask yourself what Maverick or Goose (or your movie people) would do, and if your characters would make the same decisions.

You have plenty of other choices for writing inspiration!

If you’re looking for more writing inspiration, try some movie classics like Big, The Goonies, or The Princess Bride. Or sports feel-good, like Cool Runnings, Rudy, Miracle, or Invincible. And then there’s Legally Blonde and Clueless, or more recently, Wonder, School of Rock, and Elf … I could go on. My point is, find a movie you think of as a classic that left you feeling like you could take on the world when you left the theater. Then think about how it achieved that reaction, and consider how you can take those elements and add them to your story. Play with the ideas and shut off your inner critic. Will you come up with something outrageous? Maybe. You can boil it down later. Have fun with it. It’s your story, and right now there’s no one to tell you, “Negative, Ghost Rider, the pattern is full.”

Never stop looking for writing inspiration—it’s out there!

Kristen is passionate about what an outline can do for your full manuscript and offers a rare service: a full outline edit with a one-hour consultation call. Book yours here!