CROSSING THE FINISH LINE

AS any veteran novelist can tell you, a standard-length novel of 80,000 to 100,000 words calls for a gargantuan effort. It’s a heavy lift to get your characters fully developed, your plot humming, your language riveting – and all elements seamlessly interwoven. At some point, when you type “The End” on what you vow is the very last draft, you feel like you’re finally getting there…

…But are you? How can you be really sure your draft is ready to query?

Or what if you get to that last draft and feel your novel is still problematic, but you can’t quite pinpoint the snag or figure out how to fix it?

For answers to these two key questions, we turned to five successful novelists for their ideas and recommendations – and for their own experience in tackling the question of novel completeness.

The ‘finished’ novel and the elements of fiction

Novel writing is a craft, one that requires an adept handling of many elements, including character, point of view, plot, setting, style, and theme. But what does “adept handling” even mean? And should you plan ahead to ensure you skillfully balance these components or just let it happen, trust the process, and know you’ll be able to fix everything in later drafts?

Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author with 12 novels under her belt, does quite a bit of planning in advance of writing. During this stage, she seeks answers to three crucial questions:

1) What does the protagonist want?

2) What’s at stake?

3) What misbelief keeps the protagonist from achieving his or her goal?

Once she can answer these initial questions, she writes a lengthy synopsis, which changes as she writes, but the overall idea of the book does not.

Then, when she’s ready to share a draft of her novel with her beta readers, Leavitt seeks feedback on two main questions:

1) Does the conflict presented in the first