I originally posted this in January of ’07, but I happen to have a friend putting together a romantic suspense proposal so I thought I’d post it again. Anything to help out a friend!

1. Watch a kick-ass car chase on TV and think “Wouldn’t it have been cool if they…” and then write that scene.

2. Write a wicked hot adrenaline-sex scene.

3. Stumble across a gunmaker’s site which offers a quiz on finding the perfect handgun for you. Get halfway through it before realizing answering in your hero’s POV might cause an infestation of men with earpieces and black SUVs. Yell “Oh crap!”, click the red X and barricade your door. Then make up a fictional, kick-ass experimental gun.

4. Think “Ooooh, knives are cool” and write a scene in which the heroine pins the hero’s clothes to the wall before having her way with him.

5. Write in a stealth helo because they’re really cool.

6. Ignore all articles on satellite and communication technology because it might prove you made up all that shit.

7. Write another wicked hot adrenaline-sex scene.

8. Make the hero have to jump out of a moving vehicle/airplane/train.

9. Blow some shit up.

10. Come up with a good excuse to tie all those scenes together. This should include, but not be limited to, coming up with characters, villains, a premise. Maybe some goals, motivation and conflict type stuff. Plot points. Character arcs. Black moment. Shit like that.

And…voila!