How to Write a Novel. Part 1: Foundations of the Novel
Summary
- Design a novel’s structure to support sustained development, creating deep character and plot evolution over time.
- Cultivate narrative momentum by ensuring continuous progression, introducing new developments and changes in every chapter.
- Test your story’s scope for a novel, ensuring it sustains complex conflicts and significant character growth through a long, evolving arc.
A Long Arc: What Makes a Novel Distinct from a Short Story
The novel isn’t defined by word count, but by structure. Publishers may want 50,000 words or more, but as a writer, your real concern is structure. It’s a form designed to follow a story across time, through complication and change.
Short stories often focus on a single turning point. Novels require sustained development. That means a situation that doesn’t resolve quickly, a character who can grow through multiple phases, and enough plot or emotional movement to support many chapters.
The novel form allows space, but not waste. If a scene doesn’t move the story forward or deepen its meaning, it doesn’t belong. The length is earned through momentum, not just good prose.
Time, Change, and Momentum: The Core Demands of Longform Narrative
A novel covers time. This time must create change. Something needs to evolve: the characters, their relationships, their understanding, or the situation itself. Readers lose interest if everything stays the same.
Change doesn’t have to be dramatic. But each chapter should introduce something new: a shift in perspective, a challenge to beliefs, a deepening of conflict. That’s how you create momentum. Momentum means the reader feels the story is going somewhere. Without this sense of progression, the novel stalls.
If your story spans weeks or years, show what that time does. What do characters lose? What do they learn? Time should leave its mark.
Genre, Intention, and the Reader’s Expectation
Every novel sets up expectations. It does it through genre, tone, and structure. You don’t have to follow all genre rules, but you need to know what your opening signals to the reader.
If the story opens with a murder, readers may lean toward mystery; if it opens with emotional loss, they may anticipate a character-driven journey. These expectations aren’t rules to follow, but signals to be aware of. You can challenge or subvert them, but do it on purpose, not by accident. Reader trust comes from a sense that you’re in control of the direction, even if they don’t know where it’s going.
Commitment to Scope
Not every story needs a novel. Some ideas, no matter how vivid, wither under too much space. Before committing to a novel, test the story’s depth. A strong novel idea reveals more, the longer you stay with it. The main conflict should develop in stages, where stakes shift and deeper truths surface over time. The protagonist should be able to change more than once, facing not just one crisis, but several moments of decision or insight. If the story includes secondary characters, they should carry some tension of their own, enough to justify the space they take up. And perhaps most importantly, the story should still feel unresolved halfway through. That’s a sign it has narrative stamina.
For example, “A woman discovers a family secret” might work as a short story. But “A woman discovers a secret that forces her to re-examine her whole upbringing, change her relationship to her parents, and make a life-altering decision” suggests a longer arc, multiple turning points, and the emotional range needed to support a novel.
To test an idea’s strength for a novel, sketch its arc across time. What changes in the story apart from the events? Are there inner shifts in relationships and meaning? Can you spot at least three major turning points that force your character to rethink or redirect? If the idea runs out of steam by the one-third mark, it may be too thin. But if depth and consequence keep unfolding, you likely have material strong enough for a novel.