5 Key Elements To Writing A Great Fiction Novel
As a writer you want to create something original, something that draws the reader in, holds them by the collar and sets them down right at the end out of breath and as a changed person. You want to impress with unique ideas and creative prowess.
However, you can’t just dazzle a reader with your prose. Writing a successful fiction novel requires you to follow a few broad guidelines. Before you exceed your reader's expectations you need to first meet them. After all, while the process of writing a book may be a deeply personal thing, the end result is fundamentally about satisfying your reader with a great story.
In this article, we take a look at five elements every fiction story needs in order to succeed as a novel.
1. A great hook
The start of your story is vital and often incredibly challenging to get just right. The first scene or chapter needs to tread a fine line between easing your reader into the story, introducing key characters and getting them into the action and establishing conflict as quickly as possible.
The hook, or inciting incident needs to tell them why they should read on. It should make the reader curious, and get them asking important questions that you can feed them answers to slowly over the rest of the story. Without a good inciting incident, a reader will likely begin your book feeling confused or simply uninterested.
So how exactly do you write a good inciting incident?
Firstly, it should set the tone of the story. Is it a gothic horror? A fast-paced action? A mystery? Should the reader feel excited, scared, or angry?
Secondly, it needs to introduce your main character, and it needs to make the reader care about them. You can do this by making your character's motivations and goals clear from the very beginning.
Thirdly, it should raise questions. If you’re writing fantasy, for example, you might display a little of the magic without an explanation. If it’s a murder mystery, you need to make the reader ask why was this person murdered.
The hook is a make-or-break point and is the first thing you need to get right if you want a reader to read on.
2. An interesting protagonist
Novels are about people. Everything else is dressing. The main character or characters drive the story. They need to be believable, their actions, motivations and goals should make sense, be consistent and evolve over the course of the story. The reader doesn’t have to like the protagonist, but they do need to understand them
The reader also needs a reason to care, no one will finish your book if they don’t care whether the protagonist succeeds or fails.
Writing the main character requires giving them a clear purpose or goal. This can change over the story, but having something for them to work towards and establishing a risk of failure will allow you to build tension, create conflict and allow for character growth as they overcome obstacles.
Finally, your protagonist should also have some flaws that make him or her interesting and relatable to readers.
3. An antagonist
Tension in a story is built through conflict. Your main character needs a goal, but if there’s nothing that stands in the way of that goal then they’ll simply achieve it. There’ll be no character growth, no conflict, and probably quite a short story.
Enter the antagonist. They should be believable, consistent, and have their own motivations just like the protagonist. The antagonist doesn’t have to be evil. They don’t have to be the protagonist’s mortal sworn enemy. They don’t even need to be a person necessarily. What they do need though is to create obstacles and conflict with the protagonist’s goal.
Your antagonist could be the weather or a dystopian government, they can be anything that the protagonist needs to overcome on their journey to completing their goal.
What matters most is that 1. Your main character doesn’t have an easy time reaching his or her goal and 2. You give as much thought and detail to your antagonist as you have your protagonist.
Ursula from the Little Mermaid is one example of an effective antagonist.
4. Conflicts to overcome
We’ve already talked about conflict and even mentioned how you can create it using the antagonist. But ultimately, conflict is what brings tension to the story, creates trouble for your protagonist, leads to character growth and makes your plot and story more engaging.
Over the course of the story, your protagonist should overcome (or fail to overcome) multiple points of conflict with the stakes getting higher and more intense as the story builds and your protagonist gets closer to his or her goal.
There are several different types of conflict, the main ones being internal and external.
Internal conflict takes place within the mind of a character, such as a fear of failure or anger toward a family member. External conflict is what happens to the character based on outside forces, such as a tragic incident or loss or a fight with another character. Your story will likely include both internal and external tensions.
You can also include smaller moments of conflict throughout the story, ones that don’t necessarily develop the main plotline but might add depth to side characters, reveal tensions in subplots etc.
There should always be an element of conflict in your story to keep the reader engaged.
5. A satisfying resolution
There’s nothing worse than putting a down book that was otherwise great and being disappointed by the ending. Think of the final season of Game of Thrones…
A satisfying ending is essential. It needs to wrap up all of the important plot points and conflicts and answer the reader's burning questions. You might want to leave room for a sequel, in which case some elements can be left open, but most of the conflict and questions you introduced during the book should be resolved by the end in a way that makes sense.
Hopefully, your protagonist has gotten closer to achieving their end goal and undergone some character growth since the beginning of the story. It’s okay to leave your readers wanting more, but if you don’t manage to resolve the majority of it you’ll leave your readers frustrated and annoyed.
Final Words
Writing is a deeply personal and often lonely activity. While writing you need to let those creative juices flow, you need to let the characters drive the story. You may well end up in a place you never expected, something that’s a far cry from the conflict you originally established in the first chapter.
However, ultimately you’re writing for an audience. This is why the editing process is so important. Let the writing be for you, but make the editing process for the reader. In order to create a compelling and engaging story, your novel needs to have all five of the elements laid out in this article. You need a powerful hook, you need to create and build tension, have character growth, and it all needs to be tied up with a bow by the end.