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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29630
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29630
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

At the heart of every novel (or almost every novel, at least) is someone who wants something and some form of opposition, internal or external, that stands in the way of their getting it. The novel is their quest to attain what they desire and how they either overcome or are overcome by the things that stand in their way, and the things that they either have to change or realize about themselves as they face the moment of crisis.

Your novel starts when you figure out who you character or characters are, what they want, what stands in the way of their getting it, and what moment of crisis they will be brought to -- usually a moment of moral crisis, a crisis of values -- before they get it or lose it.

Some writers seem to go on for a long time building worlds, imagining characters, and planning out plots without ever getting to these essential ingredients: desire, opposition, and crisis. Perhaps they will eventually find these things in all the rest of the planning, and perhaps they won't. But until they do, the novel has no heart, no spring, no motive force.

Find your desire, your opposition, and your crisis, and you have the indispensable ingredients you need to begin.

Original score: 11