In the kitchen, you need a set of ingredients to cook that delicious meal you’ve been craving. Writing a novel is no different. There is a basic set of ingredients, let’s call them elements, that must exist in order for your story to take shape. Below are some of the most basic elements you will need to build and write your story. If you are a pantser, don’t worry because you do not need to have these prepared in advance. But you need them!
Characters:
A character is a person, animal, creature, or sentient being who drives the story along through action and emotions. It is the entity we follow throughout the story whose emotions and struggles are the most important to the reader.
Characters determine the behaviour of the other elements of the story. For example, if the character’s emotional journey is the most important aspect of the story, then the genre becomes Literary Fiction: the POV needs to be in the character’s perspective, the settings and themes need to revolve around the character’s life, etc. If the characters are not the key aspect of the story, then this is Genre Fiction: the focus is on the plot and how the characters react to external factors.
As for the main characters, there are usually two opposing characters that need to be established in a story: the protagonist and the antagonist.
Protagonist: This is the main character who is often associated with the hero, but does not have to be the hero. This is the character, or set of characters, that readers follow throughout the story. Their emotional journey and physical struggles are the most important factors in your story. They are the characters the readers will connect with because the story unfolds through the protagonist’s life and adventures. Protagonists do not have to be completely good; in fact, it’s better if they are flawed. Therefore, your protagonist might not be the ‘hero’ of the story, especially if you are writing a story from the perspective of a villain. In short, the protagonist is the character of focus.
Antagonists: The main character opposing the protagonist, often associated with the villain. Sometimes the antagonist isn’t a sentient being but a concept or natural occurrence. For example, in Disney’s Encanto, the villain is generational trauma. In stories of characters conquering their fears against nature, the antagonist might be a mountain, giant waves, a desert, or Mother Nature herself. Either way, the antagonist is the opposing force that is trying to stop the protagonist, or is trying to do something the protagonist must stop.
Setting:
Time and space, atmosphere and context. Setting is the moments in time and the locations where the story takes place. The atmosphere controls the overall feeling of the place, how the characters behave in those locations, and the context tells us why these events are happening there.
Writers use settings as tools to incite incidents, provoke reactions from both the characters and readers, and change the pace of the plot. For example, after a long battle, the setting of the next chapter may be a flashback to a calmer time to give the readers a break from the mayhem and to add more background information for the following chapter.
Settings are tricky to work with because they change a lot during the writing and editing phase. Also remember that settings are not set in stone; you can always change them if that would better suit the story.
Plot:
The plot is the sequence of events that moves the story from the beginning through the middle to the end with specific milestones. Plot does not work without specific milestones, and those are Exposition, Inciting Incident, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action and Dénouement. Every event needs to follow up with another event, and the easiest way to do that is to follow a chronological order.
However, sometimes events are not in chronological order for a reason, or sometimes a chapter delves into the past and then returns to the present in the next chapter. Plots are difficult to construct in complex stories, so they need to be thought over carefully. Writing is an art form, and thus you can bend some rules here and there. There is no rule that fits all, which means how the plot unfolds is entirely up to the writer and what they want to accomplish with their story. Some novels out there use reverse chronology, where they start with the tragic end and walk backwards to the start of the character’s story, and to what led to that tragic end. There are also stories in which the plot starts with a dangerous situation, and then the character says, ‘Let me tell you how I got here’. Part or most of the story takes place in the past until time catches up with the present, and then the rest of the plot continues to the end.
The Hook:
This is the element that catches the reader’s attention and reels them into reading the story. Basically, the hook is your marketing angle. Sometimes the hook is a mystery: who was the murderer? It can be an unknown event in an otherwise known story: a retelling of a classic tale with a twist. The hook sparks that initial interest, and the author usually displays it in the blurb at the back of the book and in ads. Think of the last book you read and how it grabbed your attention. Was the hook the plot, characters, setting, etc.?
The hook is also an anchor for the writer to help them stay on track with what they want to do with the story. The hook can be associated with the Elevator Pitch idea. If you only had the time to talk about your book during an elevator ride, you would need to pitch the idea and give the hook within two to three sentences.
Conflict:
Every story has to have a central conflict. Novels have the room to contain multiple smaller conflicts alongside the major conflict, while short stories usually have only one conflict. The conflict is the central problem or struggle that the protagonist has to overcome. What is everyone fighting for or against? Usually, the antagonist is directly responsible for the major conflict. If this is a series, each book may have a mini-boss while the overall series has the final boss all the way at the end. In Lord of the Rings, the mini-bosses are the orcs, the Nazgûl, Gothmog, Shelob, Saruman, etc., while the final boss is Sauron or maybe even Gollum.
Stories with conflict are easier to structure, but if there is no conflict, readers get confused and ask, what is this novel about? Why are the characters doing what they are doing? But there are cases of stories without conflict. Different cultures have unique ways of telling their stories, and some don’t always have conflict. Needing conflict in stories is often attributed, but not limited, to Western storytelling. Jami Gold at Writers Helping Writers, explains this in her article, No Story Conflict? Explore Your Options.
Theme:
Themes are the main ideas, lessons, or messages of a story. Themes ask: What is this story about? Why is this story important, and why do we need to care about the characters? Novels can have a central theme and several minor ones, but short stories usually have one theme. The central theme dictates the feel and plot of the story. For example, the central theme of a love story is love, but the minor themes can be what the characters learn about themselves and to be truthful about their feelings. The themes of adventure stories usually revolve around bravery, doing what’s right, taking the high road, forgiveness, and moving forward.
These themes affect the characters, but they also play on the minds and hearts of the reader. How many times do readers walk away from a book feeling enlightened, transformed, and inspired to change or grow? Books help readers learn and empathies with people on themes they might have never experienced firsthand. The themes act as the headliners for the topics readers will go through.
Genre:
This is the category or style of the story. Is it fantasy, science fiction, literary fiction, etc.? How is this story defined, and where in the library would you find it? The genre affects the way the story is told, how the plot unfolds, and what aspects the reader should expect in the telling of that story. For example, if we have a fantasy story, we do not expect a spaceship to suddenly appear and whisk the characters away. If technology appears in a historical textbook about cavemen, then as a reader, I would get confused with what I am reading.
Here is where sub-genres come into play. They have developed into their own group with clear definitions to handle reader expectations. Let’s say a writer wants a novel about technology in a natural setting. This is called Solarpunk, a subgenre of speculative fiction where technology works with nature instead of against it. Just as long as the story is in line with the genre it claims to belong to, the reader will not get confused.
Point of View (POV):
The perspective of the story. This can either be first-person, second-person, or third-person: POV is how we experience the story. It can either be right in the protagonist’s head as first-person, inside your own head where you are the protagonist in second-person, or outside as a disembodied entity floating around and observing the world of the novel in third-person POV.
Which POV you choose greatly affects the way the story is told and how it makes the reader feel. Between first and third person, your reader can experience all the emotions of the protagonist or simply watch how they behave as a normal observer. The prose in the novel has to reflect this perspective. Many new writers struggle to draw the line on how much the reader should know and what techniques they need to use to enact certain emotions without breaching the first and third person POV. This takes practice. It’s also a good idea to read from talented authors and see how they navigated this topic. Joining a writing group helps new writers fine-tune their writing senses so they will be better able to know when they cross that line.
Resolution:
This is the resolution of the major conflict and the ending of the book. It is the final wrap-up. If this is a series of novels, then the resolution might not be complete; i.e. book one might handle one conflict or one mini-boss, while the last book will finally defeat the main villain and end the saga. The resolution also alludes to other books in the series if it’s not the last one. If you are a pantser, do not worry, you do not need to know how the book ends right away.
Resolutions don’t always conclude neatly. Sometimes they are open-ended, to a degree, allowing the reader to make up their own conclusion about how the story truly ended. Open-ended stories suit mysteries or horror well, but not all genres readily accept them unless the writer has masterfully crafted the story. You do not necessarily need to give a summary of the rest of the character’s life and finish with, ‘And they lived happily ever after’, but you can allude to an end of that ilk in children and young adult genres.
[Some Advanced Elements]
Tone: How the author presents the story, its characters, and themes. This is the flavour of the story, or the writer’s attitude towards the story. If the writer is an academic constructing a work of non-fiction, then the tone would be formal. If it’s a children’s book, it would probably be optimistic and cheerful.
Mood: These are the feelings the reader gets while reading the story. Writers need to keep in mind what mood they want to put their readers in. If they want their readers to feel relaxed, then the prose needs to reflect a safe environment for the protagonist by utilising soft words then harsh ones. Jokes create a cheerful mood, while criticism creates a personal feeling of being attacked. There are so many techniques to guide readers’ moods, and they usually entail word choice.
Style: The author’s unique way of writing. The way the author constructs sentences through the words they have chosen in their writing.
Voice: This is the author’s unique worldview and how their personality manifests through the written word.
Homework:
List the distinct elements of your story and write a brief paragraph for each one. This will help you solidify them and use them as references any time you feel lost.
NEXT:
Please look forward to the next post: 1-9 What are Themes & How to Distinguish Them?
Image by Vilius Kukanauskas from Pixabay