Whatever I may have said about writing
advice being a 'choose what suits you' buffet, I
do think there's one thing a novel has to have – structure.
I don't care if your structure is based
on a spiderweb or a patchwork quilt, the hero's quest or the colours
of the rainbow, it just has to have one.
The most commonly used structure,
certainly in genre fiction and screenplays, is the three act
structure. This classic framework was described by Aristotle and is
still popular today for a reason. It follows our instinctive
understanding of stories: beginning, middle and end.
The first act (the beginning) includes
the event that kicks everything off (often called the inciting
incident), plus an introduction to the characters and the world of
the story.
I find it helpful to think of the very beginning of the
book in terms of a question e.g. will the
heroine find love/save the community centre/triumph
over the demonic forces of evil? At the end of the act, there is an
event (a turning point) in which your protagonist makes a decision
that launches her into act two.
During the second act (the middle), you
have the conflict that you set up in act one getting worse. Your
protagonist chases her goal but is continually thwarted. Her goal
might change, things will certainly get more complicated, and there
may be a reversal of fortune in the middle of the act (the mid-point
of the novel).
At the end of the act, there is another turning point.
As the conflict has been escalating throughout the act (making
everything much worse for the heroine and raising the stakes), this
turning point will be the 'dark moment'. This is the point in the
story when it seems as if all is lost, that there is no possible hope
of success, which leads into…
Act three (the end). The big
confrontation or battle followed by the resolution. This is where you
tie up all of your sub-plots and answer the question that you asked
at the very beginning of the story.
I think it's nice to have a
couple of 'breathing out' scenes at the end so that it doesn't finish
too abruptly, and to give the reader a chance to enjoy the relief (if
your heroine achieved her goal) or horror (if she didn't) of your
ending.