It’s a fact commonly acknowledged that most people would love to write a novel of their own. Some have even tried their hand at writing one, but got stuck very quickly or weren’t sure how to begin.
Not to worry—we’ll guide you through everything you need to know so that you can get your story down on paper the right way. By the end, you’ll have a completed novel that you can start sending out into the world.
Ready? Read on.
What is a novel?
First of all, what exactly do we mean by novel?
A novel is a full-length work of fiction that tells a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end (although not necessarily in that order). Most novels fall between 40,000 and 120,000 words. Because they have more space to expand than a short story or poem, novels have complex narratives and multi-faceted characters.
Novels may have primary and secondary stories, or subplots, happening at the same time. Their distinguishing criteria is that they’re always fictional, or fictionalized accounts of real events. This separates them from other kinds of books like memoirs. Novels are particularly challenging to write because they have so many moving parts which need to come together into a cohesive story.
The major components of a novel you have to think about
To take a story idea and expand it into an entire novel, you’ll need to ensure you hit each of these essential elements.
1. Premise
A premise is the basic idea for a story.
Imagine you’re sitting with a friend, having a bit too much to drink, and you say “Hey… hey… wouldn’t it be cool if there was a secret cabal who used cocktails to harvest people’s emotions? And then they sold them on the black market to people?”. You’ve just created a premise—the seed from which a full-blown novel can grow.
Not every premise has enough depth to build a full novel (more on that below). Some are better for a short story or a piece of flash fiction. But once you find the right premise, you can use it to build an entire world.
2. Setting
The setting is the time and place in which your story takes place. It’s more than just a simple backdrop—a coffee shop, a library, a spooky surf shack by the sea; it’s also the era, season, cultural and political backdrop, and relationship with the natural ecosystem. It’s the parameters that have been built out of social norms.
If you’re writing science fiction, fantasy, or historical fiction, your setting will be one of your novel’s most essential factors. But even in literary fiction or other genres like mysteries, every choice the characters make will be informed by the constraints and expectations of the world they live in.
Which brings us to…
3. Characters
Characters are the foundation of any good story. All novels will have at the very minimum a protagonist, or the main character who carries the reader along with them on their journey. It’s the experiences and actions of this character that moves the story forward.
Many novels will also have an antagonist, which is the “villain” or the character whose goals are in opposition to the protagonist’s. Novels may also have secondary characters like love interests, sidekicks, and complications. We’ll look more at developing characters below.
4. Conflicts
Character + Conflict = Plot. You have a character, and that character wants something. But! Something or someone is preventing them from getting it. Now you have the first stage of your plot.
Conflict happens when there’s a problem to solve or an obstacle to overcome. If everything went right all the time forever, there would be no story!
5. Theme
Theme is the underlying message of a novel. What are you trying to communicate through your story? A novel’s theme might be something like the prevalence of racial oppression, the power of family ties, the danger of institutionalized ignorance, and so forth.
Some writers begin their novel with a theme already in mind, and build up from it. Others might be part way through their novel and suddenly realize what the true, subconscious message has been the whole time. You can always go back and enhance your theme during the revision process. We’ll look at a few easy ways to do this below.
6. Voice
Voice is the natural rhythms, cadence, and tone of the author. Even when speaking through different character’s thoughts and perspectives, there’s an overall voice that the author brings to every novel they write. This tends to be what brings readers to buy books by the same author again and again.
You can get to know your own writer’s voice by practicing writing as much as you can! Eventually you’ll get a sense of what writing style sounds most like you.
How to write a novel in 12 very manageable steps
It’s true that writing a novel is a big undertaking, but it’s also true that anyone’s capable of getting their story down on paper if they’re determined enough and driven enough. If you can make your way through each of these steps, you’ll be the proud author of a real, finished novel.
1. Find your idea
First off, you’re going to need a cracking original idea. Or a mediocre well-trod idea, if you’re confident you can give it a fresh spin.
Some writers struggle to come up with new ideas, lamenting that everything’s already been done before. Others have more ideas spinning out of their heads than they can ever hope to write about in this lifetime. If you’re having trouble coming up with the premise for your novel, try making a list of “What if?” questions. What if a cutthroat climate researcher fell in love with an academic rival? What if some kids on a school hiking trip discovered a portal to another world? What if cats unionized? Etc, etc.
2. Decide if your idea is a novel-worthy idea
Not all story ideas will have enough depth for a full-length novel. Some are better suited to short stories, flash fiction, or even poetry. When an idea is big enough for an entire novel, writers sometimes say the idea “has legs”.
To decide if your premise can fill around 80,000 words, try creating a mind map of possible directions your story could take. This means writing the premise in the center of the page and marking around it all the different things that could happen as the story progresses. The premise is normally the inciting incident; from this point, infinite paths could be taken.
Consider how many characters you see coming together to develop this premise. If there are only a few, the premise might better serve a short story. If you can think of several right away, with potential for more interactions later in the story, your idea might be a novel.
Most importantly, your idea should be something that inspires and excites you. A novel is a lot of work—you’ll be spending at least a year, if not longer, corralling it into shape. Do you want to spend that long in this world, with these characters? If you’re not sure, you can always write a short story first to see what it feels like. Then, you can expand that story into a longer one.
3. Map out your setting
Once you’ve decided once and for all what your story is going to be about, you’ll need somewhere to put it. This means getting to know the ins and outs of where your story is set.
Some genres take more intensive worldbuilding than others—fantasy, science fiction, and historical fiction in particular. If you’re setting your novel in a place that’s different from the one most readers will be familiar with, you’ll need to convince them your world is a real place as compellingly as possible. But even if you’re writing a contemporary novel with no unconventional elements, you’ll still need to make sure your setting is vivid and authentic. After all, where would Only Murders in the Building be without the building?
The reason we do this first is that the world your characters live in affects everything that happens to them and every choice they make. Keep in mind, a story’s setting isn’t just its geographical location or how many windows it has; it’s also the social expectations and culture, the relationship between people and their natural landscape, the political climate, the time period in history, and so forth.
For some more tips on developing an immersive setting, be sure to check out our lesson on settings, and our worldbuilding template!
4. Get to know your primary characters
The main character is the guiding light of the entire novel. Your readers will only stay with you all the way to “The End” if they care about your protagonist and want to follow them on their journey. This means your central character needs to be interesting, relatable, and complicated.
To develop an engaging protagonist, there are a few essential questions you’ll need to ask yourself about this person:
What do they want? (Something concrete—a better job, a date with the girl next door, a pink Cadillac, etc)
What do they need? (Often a subconscious deficit which is connected to, yet separate from, their conscious want—safety and security, validation, independence, etc. You can uncover this by simply digging a little bit deeper: “What does this character want? A better job. Okay, but what do they really want? To feel safe and not have to worry about money anymore.”)
What is their greatest strength? (E.g. compassion, a whip-smart mind, a gift for the arts)
What is their greatest weakness? (This will be normally a dark inversion of their strength; compassion turned to gullibility, intelligence turned to emotional distance, an artistic mind turned to insecurity, and so forth. Consider what the cost or disadvantage is to the strength you’ve given them)
What made them the way they are today? (I.e. their “backstory”. Very often their weakness will be a direct result of something that has happened to them in the past. For example, insecurity can be a result of not getting enough support through childhood; gullibility can be a result of a sheltered and idealistic upbringing)
Notice how each of these character elements is interconnected. Each of us is the product of our fears, needs, and experiences. All of these questions will help inform the way the character acts as they come up against the conflicts in your novel.
5. Get to know your secondary characters
Once you’ve developed your novel’s main characters, it’s time to explore your supporting characters.
Secondary characters are the people who interact with the protagonist throughout the novel: friends, family, colleagues, love interests, rivals, villains, mentors, and everything in between. Just like the main character, these supporting characters should have their own motivations, desires, weaknesses, and strengths. The most important thing to remember is that everyone sees themselves as the main character in their own story. These secondary characters have just as much pain and hope and want as everyone else.
Once you start mapping out your cast of characters, the conflicts at play will naturally rise to the surface. Conflict happens when two characters want different things that can’t coexist at the same time. For example: if one character wants to destroy the world and another wants to save it, that’s a pretty big conflict: these two desires can’t exist at the same time.
But, conflict can be much subtler. For example, maybe your protagonist is healing from a broken heart and wants to retreat into solitude, while her mother wants her to start dating. These two goals can’t coexist. Or, a high school sports star wants to do his best and get a college scholarship, but his coach encourages him to lose intentionally in order to pay off a gambling debt.
When you can clearly see what every character wants and needs, all you have to do is put them in a room together and watch the room burn down.
6. Create a novel outline
Now it’s time to sketch out the overall shape of your novel. Some writers like to spend a lot of time on this step and describe everything that happens before they begin to write. Others prefer to take a looser approach and make a few notes about using a plot outline; then, they discover the rest as they go.
Your outline can be as intensive or loose as you like, but at a minimum you should make a note of:
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The inciting incident: what event happens to kick the story into motion?
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The first major turning point: the next big complication that sends the story spinning in a new direction.
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The midpoint: the moment in which the character’s world is thrown into disarray and they need to start taking real action.
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The climax: the cataclysmic scene in which everything comes to a head.
In a light summer romance novel, these plot points might look something like this:
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The inciting incident: The heroine finds out she’s inherited a children’s charity summer camp and now has to run it (or find someone who will).
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The first turn: The heroine meets the camp counselors for the summer and one of them is swoon-worthy.
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The midpoint: The heroine finds out the previous owner left the camp in a lot of debt and now the bank is going to shut it all down.
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The climax: The heroine and her hero put their plan into motion to save the camp against all odds (What is the master plan? You actually don’t need to know this yet—just by marking the climax on your outline, you’ll know that they’ll have to come up with a plan at some point.)
See? Easy!
For some writers, this is all you need to begin writing. Others feel more comfortable sketching out everything that happens in between these plot points. There are also several tried-and-true story structures you can use to build your plot around:
Try out a few of these approaches and see which one feels right for you.
7. Explore your story’s theme
Now, theme can be a little intimidating. It might remind you of stuffy English Lit classes back in high school, where everything was a metaphor for political oppression. But theme is really just uncovering the heart of your story.
You may already have an idea in mind, or it may be simmering in your subconscious. To find your theme, ask yourself why you’re drawn to write this story. What are you trying to accomplish with it? What do you want your readers to come away with when they close your book?
Some possible themes might be things like the power of family in times of crisis, the ability to tap into our own inner resilience, the way society continues to oppress those it sees as “other”, the toxicity of social media and the beauty industry, and so forth. Theme means your reader emerges a little more hopeful, aware, or ready to take action because they’ve read your novel.
It’s helpful to have an idea of your theme before you start writing, because then you can incorporate hints of it throughout the story. You can find some more tips on developing your story’s theme here.
8. Choose your narrative perspective
By now you should have a pretty clear idea of what you’re going to write about. The next step is to make a mechanical decision: choosing the right point of view.
The most popular point-of-view styles are third person (using the pronouns “he”, “she”, or “they”: She stood in the doorway of the grimy bar and scanned the room.) and first person (using the pronoun “I”: I stood in the doorway of the grimy bar and scanned the room.). You can also use second person (“You”) or fourth person (“We”). These are more unconventional, but some writers do use them to great effect.
It may seem like a small detail, but finding the right point of view really does have a huge impact on a story. Margaret Atwood famously started writing the first hundred pages of The Handmaid’s Tale in third person and realized that something was missing. She went back and rewrote the novel in first person, and the rest is literary history.
While you’re deciding on what point of view to use, also decide if your novel is going to be told in past tense (“I stood in the doorway”) or present tense (“I stand in the doorway”). There’s no right or wrong perspective to use in your writing—there’s just the right one for this story at this time.
We have a ton more resources all about playing with perspective in our Writing Academy!
9. Start writing the first draft
Ready? Set?! WRITE!!! Now that you’ve done all this preparation, it’s time to finally start putting your novel down on paper. You’ll find that it’s helpful to set goals that keep you on track—either a daily or weekly word count, or a set amount of time per day or per week that you spend writing.
In your first chapter, there are a few things you should try to accomplish:
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Introduce your main character(s)
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Establish the setting of your story
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Hint at the central conflict to come
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Lay out the inciting incident
But you already know all this stuff, because you’ve prepped it from the work you did earlier. All you have to do is make sure the reader knows it by Chapter 2. Then, just write to each of the major plot points we discussed above.
Writing a novel is a process of discovery as much as it is creation, and so you might discover secrets about your characters or plot twists you didn’t see coming as you move forward. Allow yourself the freedom to be surprised. Trust the process.
10. Push through the tough bits
If you take only one thing away from this article, let it be this: keep going. There will be times when you want to give up. There will be times when you find yourself going, why am I doing this again? There will be times when you stare into the abyss and think, I am a complete and utter loser. Why did I think I could be a novelist? I knew I should have gone into selling women’s shoes…
Writing is hard work. Know that you’re not alone in your existential despair. Every writer since the dawn of the written word has gone through this slump. Even Stephen King. Even Jack Kerouac (definitely Jack Kerouac).
The bookshops of the world are populated by writers who pushed through this. You can be one of them if you trust that this, too, is all part of the process.
11. Get peer feedback
Once you’ve completed a rough draft that’s at least somewhat coherent, it’s time to get some fresh eyes to look it over. If you’ve never done this before, it can be a terrifying experience—but ultimately incalculably rewarding.
Fortunately, that’s what Scribophile is all about! You can upload your novel to a general spotlight to get a wide range of feedback, or a personal spotlight to get targeted feedback from people who share your interests. You can read about how it all works here.
If you have any friends who are writing a novel too, you can offer to trade feedback; they read yours and give you their advice, while you do the same for theirs. Giving and receiving feedback can be a delicate balance. On the one hand, peer feedback should always be as encouraging and compassionate as possible. But feedback that’s nothing but effusive praise isn’t exactly helpful, either.
The goal of peer feedback is to exchange actionable advice that can be used to improve a story’s plot, character trajectories, and overall consistency. A peer reviewer might point out plot holes that slipped beneath your notice, moments that seem out of character, scenes which seemed to slow down the momentum of the story, or elements of worldbuilding that they found a little confusing. This is incredibly valuable, because it helps you make the novel as strong as it can be before you send it out to agents and publishers.
12. Revise, revise, revise
You know that Bryan Adams song that goes 🎶played until my fingers bled…🎵? That’s what you’re doing here. Go back over your manuscript and smooth out the story, the dialogue, and the descriptive passages until you want to gouge your eyes out with a guitar pick.
Consider all of the peer feedback you’ve received, especially areas that came up from more than one person. For example, if three or four readers stopped on the same scene and said “It feels really out of character for this person to have done this”, it’s probably worth reassessing and seeing what you can do to make this character’s dynamic change more authentic.
Also look at the narrative on a line level and edit out any extraneous adverbs (“she said snidely”), any clichéd phrasing, any awkward expository paragraphs, and so forth. Pay attention to the way each sentence flows into the next; if you have too many short sentences in a row, break them up with a longer one, and vice versa. Make each paragraph as lyrical and emphatic as it can be. Many writers find they write multiple drafts before they emerge with a manuscript they’re happy with.
It may be helpful at this point to get some help from a professional editor who can look at the overall structural shape of your second draft. Then you can give your finished novel a final editorial sweep before moving on to the next big step in your writer’s journey: seeking publication.
Sending your masterpiece into the world
If you’ve managed to make it this far, throw yourself a party because you’ve reached a threshold few are brave enough to cross. The next stage of the journey is to join the ranks of contemporary authors—and that means getting your book published.
There are three main path you can take to publishing your book:
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Self-publishing
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Submitting to a literary agent
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Submitting to an independent publisher
Each of these have their own advantages and disadvantages. Self publishing means that you take on all the financial risk, but you also get complete creative control over the final product. Submitting to a literary agent means you have someone who will liaise with big-time editors and publishing houses, and will get you the best deal possible. A good agent will also help with the final editing process. Finally, submitting to an independent publisher means you can cut out the middleman and liaise directly with the publisher yourself.
You can learn more about the pros and cons to each of these publishing pathways here.
Extra steps that will make you a better novel writer
If you’re preparing to write your first novel, it’s a good idea to build up your skills and arm yourself with the conventions of your chosen genre. Here are a few things you can do that will make you a better writer so you can get that book deal!
1. Read widely in your genre
If you’re writing any sort of genre fiction—romance, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, historical fiction, mystery, dystopia, or thriller—it’s helpful to know what your readers will expect when they pick up your book. For example, anyone who picks up a clearly marketed romance novel is going to expect a meet-cute, a third-act breakup, and a happy ending. If they read your romance novel and these elements are missing, they might feel cheated in some way.
Likewise, avid mystery readers are going to expect a crime, a series of clues and red herrings, and finally a denouement in which all is revealed. If you don’t include these elements in your mystery novel, you’re going to have some unhappy readers (ranging from mildly annoyed to writing hate mail on Goodreads).
This doesn’t mean that you should be recycling the stories you’ve read or feeding into a very rigid set of expectations. It means that you’re carving out a place in an established literary tradition and engaging with readers who are also a part of this tradition.
2. Brush up on the basics
It’s astonishing how many people think that writing a novel is born out of pure instinct. And yet, they wouldn’t say this about building a house, for instance, or baking a cake, or playing the trombone. Every craft form has its own mechanics and set of tools in order to create a piece of art.
For a writer, those tools are things like grammar, sentence structure, exposition, foreshadowing, symbolism, subtext, characterization, rhythm, juxtaposition, suspense, sensory language, and so forth. We have many, many tools to work with in order to enhance the work that we do.
This means, familiarize yourself with things like the proper way to format dialogue and dialogue tags, how to use exposition correctly, how to enhance your writing with symbolism, how to structure a story arc so that your pacing doesn’t stagger. Learn what a semicolon is and why an em-dash is your new best friend. If this seems like a lot of work, just remember: writing is a lifelong journey, and we never stop learning. Getting a sense of how to use these tools will make your novel a thousand times more confident and compelling.
3. Practice, practice, practice!
Much like playing the trombone, your writing won’t be perfect right from the start. Most writers compose tens of thousands of words before they start to feel secure in their writing. Try using writing prompts, journaling, working with short stories and vignettes, making surreptitious notes about the inner lives of the people living next door. The most important thing is to let the words flow so that you can become comfortable using the tools discussed above, and start uncovering your inner writer’s voice.
Writing a novel is a long but hugely rewarding road. Are you ready to take the first step? Remember, it all begins with that first page.
