An enjoyable and successful fiction novel has to have many elements that not only click but also add to the story. While making your characters believable, being descriptive, remembering your plot and pacing the progress of your characters is important, there are other certain aspects that have the potential to make or break your novel. The below-mentioned guidelines will help you tie up your characters, your story and make it as impressive as you want it to be.

Perfecting Conflict

Creating conflict, weaving it through the story and then making it appear suddenly is not something that just is done. It takes practice, patience and sometimes tears to get the conflict right. Nailing the conflict often leads the author to nail the story and making it an instant hit. The conflict you create should be like a catharsis for the reader, it should be a cleansing that a reader craves. It will be a struggle, but in the end, it would be worth it. Without conflict, you cannot make a reader anticipate the outcome or even the end of the story. You need to make it forceful, something that affects the characters immensely and puts them into the action. If the story has a weak conflict, the characters won’t have growth, they won’t have changed and their development will be left in limbo. The satisfactory factor would be gone and unbalanced.

Revise and Revisit

There are certain things that you have to revise and revisit at different stages of writing. This is the biggest and perhaps the most important part of your fiction novel-writing process. Many new writers prefer to start revising and revisiting their story after they have finished it, but for a newbie, it is best to keep doing this as they progress. Here is what you have to do:

• Revisit any major character development, story development or a turning point once it is done. Revise it if necessary, but don’t leave it till the end.

• Tighten up the loopholes, make them less obvious if you prefer and ensure that you don’t leave anything for last-minute editing.

• Your conflict needs to be perfected, even before you reach the final editing phase. Sometimes, an author will revise and edit their conflict point multiple times over and still not be satisfied.

• An earlier revision can make the editing process easier for future writing. Writing the novel, the flow of the story and development becomes easier if the beginning is perfect.

Doing What Feels Right

Sometimes, letting the story take a life of its own and letting the characters write their own story is the best way forward. So the final advice is to let your characters and story decide where they want to go and where they want to be. The moment you start to force something, it will disrupt the balance and make things fall apart. Sometimes, letting go of control is the best way to move forward and the way into the reader’s heart.