A lot of people have made a lot of money writing about the elements of a good novel. Even more people have spent a lot of money buying those books, looking for a plug-and-play formula. Unfortunately, that’s inevitably going to lead you away from writing a novel that works. So, we’re clearly not going down that path in this post. However, there are some basics to cover when planning a work of fiction.
For starters, you need characters that will draw in your readers. That means they must be rich, complex, and at least a little messed up, just like the rest of us. In short, both your protagonists and antagonists (otherwise known as heroes and villains) have to be interesting and believable, with needs, values, and aspirations that help drive their interactions and your story.
No matter how compelling, the characters you create need a story to make them come alive. That’s called a plot. As Amanda Patterson says in her Writers Write blog post, “A plot involves a protagonist with a worthy story goal.” Will that involve challenging those characters you’ve created? Absolutely. You want them to struggle and then struggle some more. Let’s face it, that’s real life. In your novel, however, you want the consequences of failure to be intolerable. Explore what kinds of sacrifices they’ll have to make in order to succeed.
This dynamic can help you outline your novel. As editor and writer September C. Hawkes says in a 2019 blog post about one of the elements of a good novel, “If you look at famous story structures, they almost always speak to the protagonist’s struggle. And in many stories, this struggle will reach its most intense moment at plot point two, when it seems everything is lost . . . until the protagonist makes the biggest sacrifice yet. From there, the protagonist will be tested yet again during the climax, to prove they have fully overcome the difficulty.”
Since you want your readers to live vicariously through your story, you’ll want to show them what’s happening rather than telling them about it. Action and dialog, both key elements of a good novel, will bring your scenes to life. But you don’t want too much of either. As the MasterClass article “The 5 Elements of a Good Book,” points out, “The best books will balance scenes that heavily feature dialogue with scenes that describe action through first-person or third-person narration—and if a first draft leans too heavily on either, the author will often try to restore relative equilibrium in future drafts.” Adding key scene-setting descriptions and your characters’ body language will further enrich your story-showing, as I call it.
Your book is going to have to start out with a hook that grabs readers right from the start, keeps them interested through the middle by advancing the story with each scene (and perhaps making life harder and harder for your main character), and ends in a way that fits the character’s quest and makes the reader’s journey through the book seem worthwhile.
My final suggestion regarding elements of a good novel brings us right back to where I started this blog post—your author’s voice. The choices you make in your story’s creation—from language and tone to how you approach your story and express an idea—make up your unique writing style. Your goal is not to have your writing sound like anyone else’s but rather to be original. Just as in life, you’re looking to come up with the best possible you rather than a damn good copy of someone else.
