Today we'll put it together.
It really is this simple: take your favorites and use them. Take you favorite genre, take your favorite characters, main, side, antagonists, protagonists, primary, secondary, tertiary characters, sidekicks, background characters, supporting, minions, what you have. Take your favorite plot, plot twists, obstacles and conflict, clichés and tropes, take your favorite dialogue and quotes, take your favorite setting, POV, style, theme, literary devices, pacing, patterns, tone, writing, language, characters, descriptions, motifs and moods, narration, exposition, action and so on. Elements of the story, how ever you define them.
This is just a list of ingredients. It is you who puts them together in the way only you can. No-one else will write the same book with these ingredients.
There is no "bad" elements. You can write a good book by doing every "don't!" thing you have ever read. You can take the most hated elements and write something good with it. A lot of people like clichés. That's safe, familiar, enjoyable, comfort food. I mean, your grilled cheese isn't gourmet food, even if one tries to make it so, and it isn't supposed to be, but it can be the best damned sandwich you've ever eaten, just the thing you want, need, grave for.
There is only one "don't" you should actually never do. Don't plagiarize. Read about the Cassandra Clare plagiarism case, and learn from that. It is totally fine to be inspired by all the amazing writing around you, in tv shows and books, it's totally fine to love quotes and want to use them. It is not fine to just take a quote and make your character say it, especially if you don't know where it came from, especially if you "find" it in your notebook and you KNOW you have been collecting quotes from books your whole life... You could make your character say "I heard someone say one day, when fighting monsters one has to be very careful not to be a monster oneself." "I used to be afraid of the dark, but then I read something like "I have loved the stars too dearly to be afraid of the dark", and after that I think of stars when I get scared, and it sooths me." Or something like that. I mean, you don't need to know where the quote comes from, just mark that it's not your words. A couple of words, a quote, a sentence is quite OK to use.
Another thing, I read somewhere about a little trick movie directors use. They "set" the imagery into music, they use some music as background of their "vision". Now, a lot of directors use existing movie soundtrack, and there famous pieces, because they work. Then they give the movie to the composer and ask them to give them music that fits the imagery, and they will expect the piece they used - which they of course cannot get, because that music is copyrighted and all that jazz. So the composer is basically forced to compose something that sounds the same but isn't the same, and that's really boring. The director should have taken a couple of music pieces, given them to the composer and asked for something similar, and then used the original composed piece as the background music to "compose" the movie.
It's fine to write "fan fiction". Someone wrote several books about Barry Trotter, where all the characters were badly disguised versions of the original ones, and he got published, and not sued for plagiarism or copyright violations, so there's that. A lot of people think this kind of "humor" is funny. I would prefer original works, when it is so easy to do, but, hey, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies exist, too, and he says he copied the original, added his own writing, changed the original to fit the zombie idea, and that's basically it. I hate that book as well, but - it's a book, it got published, go for it. Maybe someone else likes your parody of something popular as well. I know I enjoyed the YouTube spoofs of Twilight.
Anyway, the most important part of your story is the story. It's not the same thing as plot. Plot is a "story element". Plot tells what happens in the story, but it's not the story.
It is important to have a plot, and a plot helps you tell the story.
Most important element of the story are the characters, because the story is what happens to the characters, the characters drive the story, why they do what they do, how they react on what happens, how they feel and think about what happens, how the events change them, what they learn on the journey, that is what the story is.
Take "It Happened One Night". The plot is "a rich girl tries to run away from her overprotective father, meets a journalist, they have adventures, fall in love with each other."
The story is about why this rich girl runs away, how she thinks about it, why she makes the choices she does, why the journalist happened to be in the bus, how they react on things that happen during the adventures, what made them fall in love with each other... emotions, reactions, thoughts. People. The story is what makes the reader put themselves in the shoes of the characters, put themselves in the story, feel, react and think with the characters. It is this that makes the reader love the story. It is this why "bad" books sell.
About the other story elements. (They are all important, though if you have a good story, but the novel is lacking in other elements, you still have a story.)
Genre is important. A lot of people use the genre as some sort of a backdrop, when the genre gives you a lot more. If you choose a genre, write something that doesn't fit in any other genre. It is OK to write "romantic fantasy" or "fantasy horror", of course, but then you should have the necessary elements from both genres. And genres do have "necessary elements". I like fantasy, and to me, part of fantasy is the element of wonder. I want to be awed. I want to be fascinated, charmed, enthralled, enchanted... this is why horror fantasy doesn't quite work for me, because horror (as Stephen King said) has to horrify, terrify, and disgust, and fantasy shouldn't.
Think about this a little. Why do you classify books into genres? And what do you think is essential to make the book belong to a genre?
Diana Gabaldon says Outlander isn't Romance. I say it is, because everyone who loves the book loves it because of the love story between Claire and Jamie.
Nicholas Sparks says he doesn't write Romance. I say he does, because all his stories are about love.
Terry Goodkind said he didn't write Fantasy. I say he does, because he has a typical high fantasy setting with magic, monsters, and medieval setting.
I don't understand why authors dislike the genre they write in, that made them famous? There isn't anything wrong with any of the genres.
Choose a plot formula (or not. What ever suits you.) I think it's nice and helps with the writing, but a lot of people think it makes the writing formulaic and stiff.
Free fiction writing template outline by chapter
* Outline the story
Outline the story like a subway map
How to Easily Outline Your NaNoWriMo Novel During Preptober
Your target reader is you.
If your favorites are all or most from one and same book, book series or author, mix it up a little and choose several favorites, from different books and authors. (Though it seemed to work fine for Cassandra Clare and E.L.James...)
(Also, try to find Story Genius by Lisa Cron, to realise that elements of the story are just the wrapping, the cherry and the bow on top of the real thing, the story. Which is why 50 Shades of Grey, Twilight, Da Vinci Code and Outlander are so big today. Storyteller will always beat the writer in selling books...)
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