People decide to write novels for a number of reasons: fame, fortune, revenge, catharsis, to name just a few. While it's highly likely that anybody who wants to write a novel is also a reader of novels, that doesn't mean that the writer necessarily has a grasp on the common structures of a novel. All too often, new writers commit to putting autobiographical details to the page without thinking about how the book is going to work out. After all, the writer's life is still going on. Who knows how it will end? But all novels should come to an end. Some should come to an end sooner than others. And if you intend for anybody to read your novel, it needs to satisfy certain cultural expectations.

That said, it's a good bet that most new writers don't bother to figure out a structure before they start writing. Most often, writers just write and let the story create itself. So don't despair. The rewriting and editing process is the most common approach.

Novels follow a number of standard forms. It may be that in reading a list of them, you may discover that your novel actually does fit into one of them already. More likely, your novel consists of a combination of several forms, none of which are fully developed. Your novel as it stands today probably shifts between a number of forms, including romance, coming-of-age, television sitcom, epic, picaresque, and others.

Conflict

Before we go any further, let's talk about conflict. Every novel deals with one or more conflicts. The conflict can be a real conflict between the protagonist and another person (the antagonist), between the protagonist and nature, the protagonist and herself, the protagonist and society, and so on. In a novel, unlike in a story, there are often small conflicts that support or illuminate the larger conflict.

For example, in a coming-of-age novel, the protagonist may be dealing with the inner conflict of having to break away from a domineering mother to follow her dream of being a trapeze artist. The mother, who loves her daughter, is afraid and wants to protect her, but her concern comes out as anger.

The novel may explore a number of conflicts: the conflict the mother suffered as a child when her father died while walking on an electrical cable, the protagonist's conflicts with her schoolmates who think she's a freak because she can never play outside, her inner conflict with wanting to please her mother but also wanting to walk on the clothesline. All of these conflicts build to help illuminate the protagonist's ultimate realization that she must hurt her mother to help her mother and herself, by becoming a trapeze artist and showing her mother that her fears are unfounded.

If you've already written hundreds of pages of your novel, your first task is to begin to identify the major and minor conflicts in the story. Then, you must weed out or revise the conflicts that veer off and distract from the main conflict and purpose of the story.

By performing that task, you will begin to reveal the actual shape and structure of the novel.

Scene and Sequel

Scene and Sequel - Virtually every structure contains these two basic elements. You need to make sure that you understand and at least generally adhere to the basics of these two elements.

Scenes are the showing part of the story. Every story consists of a number of scenes. The scene is where something happens, usually between two or more characters in a well-defined setting. Scenes almost always contain dialogue and are used to illustrate elements of the conflict that is the core of the novel or story.

Sequels are the connecting pieces between scenes. In the sequel, the narrator reflects on the prior scene, expanding on the meaning of the scene by way of narration. A first-person narrator will use the sequel to reflect on what just happened and sometimes on what is about to happen in the next scene.

Beginning, Middle, and End

Assuming you're not writing an experimental novel, your novel should have a beginning, middle, and end. Sound too obvious to even bother with? It's not. Too often, novels start in the wrong place, go nowhere for two hundred pages and only end because the writer ran out of steam.

Some authors claim that they never begin a novel unless they know the ending. While not a requirement, it's not a bad idea to have some sense of how your novel will end. The ending may change after you've written a few hundred pages, but your chances of finishing the book are better if you have an ending to shoot for.

The Beginning

The beginning of your novel sets up the conflict, setting, and cast of characters. Although there are no hard and fast rules for writing novels, it's best to stick to the commonly accepted approach for your first novel. Get all of your characters out into the open in the first third of your novel. Even if you have characters that won't appear until later in the book, introduce them through narrative or through the dialogue between other characters. If crazy Aunt Tillie is going to appear on page 257, you'd better make sure that your narrator and other characters talk about Tillie in the first 100 pages.

Create a memorable and vivid setting in the beginning of the novel. Novels without vivid settings are often boring. The late writer and writing teacher Louis Owens once told me that it was a good idea to put some weather into the opening of a novel. A good rainstorm or a blistering heat wave can do more to set the stage than dozens of pages of philosophical musings.

The Middle

The middle of your novel must move the action forward by pitting the protagonist against the antagonist, whether that antagonist is nature, society, or another person. If you want to learn more about how the middle of a story can move the story forward, watch a few good action films. The story arc is blatantly expressed in movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark, the original Stars Wars trilogy, or the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The middle of the story is where the protagonist loses something valuable, almost gets it back or gets it back only to lose it again, and gets stuck in almost insurmountably dangerous circumstances.

In your novel, go through the hundreds of pages you've written and identify all of the scenes in which you are repeatedly dealing with the protagonist's conflict. The middle of the novel is usually the longest part of the book, as it contains several turnovers in the action. Usually, you have identified the major conflict in the beginning of the novel. At the start of the middle section, your protagonist will attempt to resolve the conflict.

Going back to the earlier example, let's assume that the protagonist runs away from home to get away from her domineering mother. She takes off with a small traveling carnival and gets hooked up with a rather sleazy carnival owner. Things go along well until she is forced to perform a very dangerous tightrope act with another runaway. In that act, the other runaway falls and is killed.

Our protagonist runs away because she's afraid of being accused of murder. She is pursued by a police detective and by the sleazy carnival owner. The carnival owner gets to her first and convinces her that unless she stays with him, she'll be sent to prison. He takes her to South America. Over the next couple of years she hones her craft and becomes a great trapeze artist. When she is forced to repeat the very dangerous act with another young runaway, she takes precautions and ends up saving the life of the runaway, and at the same time exposes the carnival owner for his negligence and criminality. He comes after her. He holds her hostage in a tall building in Mexico City.

This middle section has built suspense and led the reader to the point where they need to know what happens. They suspect that she will escape, but there is no way of knowing what will really happen. Will she fall too? Will she be taken back and put into prison? What happened to her mother?

The Ending

By the time you reach the ending, you should have crafted all of your scenes and sequels into a narrative that leads to an inevitable climax. The climax may be highly dramatic, or it may be subtle. In any case, the ending is where you must resolve the conflict that is the basis of the novel.

Let's assume you've written an autobiographical novel about your abusive childhood and how you overcame your abuser and the stigma of abuse. Also, let's assume that in the middle part of the novel you showed scenes of your abuse, or of the ridicule you faced from family members who didn't believe you, or from the law enforcement officials who treated you like a criminal for being abused.

The ending, then, might consist of you confronting your abuser and finally leaving home, or having the abuser arrested, or exposing the abuser to other members of your family.

Forms of the Novel

Over the last three centuries, novelists have stretched the boundaries of just what a novel looks like. Nonetheless, there are a few basic structures that still prevail. A partial list follows.

CAVEAT: This is my personal opinion and only a partial list of genres/structures. I have not included all genres (Western, Mystery, Magic Realism, Pulp/Trash, etc.). You may disagree with my categories, examples, or other parts of this article. You're entitled to your opinion. This article does not purport to be a comprehensive guide to writing a novel! If you have a different take on the topic, write your own article. The more, the merrier!

Epistolary -- Letters and more letters. Examples include Pamela, Clarissa, Shamela (parody), Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land (partial), Branding Unbound

Coming-of-Age --The coming-of-age novel is a staple of popular novels. Usually a bittersweet tale of growing up, the coming-of-age novel can contain tragic and comic elements, realistic or fantasy elements, and can deal with family dynamics as well as larger historical or social issues. Some examples include David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Catcher in the Rye, Slaughterhouse Five, A Separate Peace, Summer of '42, Bastard Out of Carolina, Mysteries of Pittsburgh, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Fine Balance.

Picaresque -- These novels seem to be little more than a string of incidents, but when done well, they are often deft social satires and explorations of types of individuals. Examples include Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy, Don Quixote, The Ginger Man, V, The Sportswriter and Independence Day.

Family Conflict - The family conflict novel, which is sometimes a novel of manners, is a major force in the literary world. Often these novels follow several characters in a family or a community and illuminate a sort of microcosm of the society. Examples include Middlemarch, Pride & Prejudice and other novels by Jane Austen, The Accidental Tourist, The Beans of Egypt, Maine, The Poisonwood Bible, Mosquito Coast, Beyond Deserving, When We Were the Mulvaneys, and The Corrections.

Philosophical - Philosophical novels often deal with the life of the mind and matters of ideas. Examples include The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Ferdydurke, The Stranger, The Castle, Blindness, and Distant Star.

Confessional - This is a genre or structure that has gained a lot of adherents over the last twenty years. Primarily focused on tales of victimization. Examples include Lithium for Medea, Exposure, Cherry, Madame Bovary, This Boy's Life (Memoir), The Liar's Club (Memoir).