Ho hum. Let's see what I can cook up for you. Really, you just have to learn from experience. It's a long and tedious path, but you can't take short cuts.

Ummm ... Make sure to have good charries. You want the MC to be someone your audience can connect with, but make sure it is not a Mary-Sue. (unless you make all the charries Mary-Sues)

OH WAITWAITWAIT!!! Try to look for "Writing Magic" and "From think to ink" both by Gail Carson Levine. THESE BOOKS HELP A BUNCH!!!

I am not one to give advice, really; I'm the one who needs it! However, I feel the urge to quote Hemmingway-

"The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day, you will never be stuck." 

This has always helped me! 

I think it's actually okay to copy an idea, as long as they're not exactly the same. Dystopian books, for example, are usually always about escaping a bad society, people are in groups, and blah blah blah. 

The plot and reason why it is like that, are just different.

Or are they?

Anyway, I just got finished with one, and it took a long time. Writing one takes a lot of practice, and your plots will never hit the targeton the first try. I changed mine around toatlly when I realized how terribel it was.  

To escape writer's block, I usually plan out the what happens before I actually start writing, like some of the things they're gonna do. Then I just progress off of that. Also, here's a tip, put plenty of nice, descriptive paragraphs in your book, but don't over do it, and make sure your characters have lots of dialogue. 

Go write. 

Quit worrying about plots, about characters, about everything.

Write.

Quit reading this.  

Go write.

And thus, you, my friend, will have have mastered the art of writing. There is no secret formula.

My turn to share something. Try the app "how to write a book." It's very informative and helpful! Also check out my new book! It's on the thread, click here! Click here! Click here! Etc. 

Nugget says bpak. So you got a new backpack? 

Hey friend! I know this thread is a bit old, but I've written, as of this April, five finished (first drafts of) novels, so I suppose I'm sort of qualified to give advice? 

- The most important thing I've ever learned about writing a novel is that it's okay if it's bad. There's a really important quote from someone - Ira Glass, I believe - that for everyone who makes art, for a while there's a disparity between your idea of what a good product is and your perception of the quality of the product you create. And that's okay. When we read books, we don't read someone's first novel - we don't even read someone's first draft - and that's a heck of a difference. For everyone! Everyone improves with each novel - Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris, published in 1832, is a heck of a lot different than his Les Miserables, published in 1861. People grow; people change. Sometimes, people hate what they create, but I'd say not to devote energy in early stages to finding an objective judgment on the quality of your work. Just throw words down on paper and see what happens, and don't judge what you come up with - it's like critiquing a lump of wet clay by the same standards as a finished ceramic work. 

- To elaborate: that means that things like not creating Mary Sues, not ripping off someone else's existing work, not doing this and not doing that - put them aside. Shut down the area of your brain that worries about these types of things - sit down and write. You have this unique perspective that nobody else in the world has - as I said to my Camp Nano cabin, if everyone in the world were told to sit down and write a story about two people falling in love, they would each draw on their ideals, their experiences, their dreams, and in the end no two of them would come out the same. And nobody would be ripping off one another! It's just the universality of the human experience in conjunction with its individualism, and that means it doesn't matter what happens when you mold the wet clay into the initial shape of whatever you wish to create - you have created something, and you are leaving your thumbprints on it, which nobody in the entire world can recreate. That's pretty beautiful. 

- And then after so much time of wild, impassioned work, every writer in the world is left holding this lumpy, somewhat misshapen shape formed from clay and it's miraculous with the fact of being uniquely theirs. Then they shape it, they mold it, they create something beautiful out of this rough idea that they dreamed up, and it becomes an entirely unique, polished work of art - but the point is, the point is that they would never have come up with it if they hadn't had the courage to sit down and create it, pushing through the fear of not beng good enough and the idea that if they left it alone nothing would change. 

- Because, fun fact: most occurences of writing block happen because you think the story isn't good enough. And, fun fact: it doesn't matter! Is there even such a thing as objective quality? Hugo, who included a fifty-page digression on sewers in his 1500-page work, and Hemingway, to whom the world's shortest sad story (six words!) is attributed, are both considered great writers! Enormous influences on genre! Great voices of their time! Some people love both, some people can't stand either, some people can't stand one and adore the other! And if someone asked which one is better, and why, everyone in the world would give their own answer, because the merits by which we judge a work are defined by our own individual human experiences and preferences! 

- And that means that everything is GLEAMING WITH GOLDEN, UNTAPPED POTENTIAL!

- And that means: sit down and write, because it will be glorious and messy and unforgettable, and at the end of all things you will be left holding something that has never existed in the world before this moment, something created by you and you alone, and it will not be perfect, because nothing will ever be perfect, but you will have written it. 

- And in conclusion: write, and don't be ashamed, and don't be afraid.  

Try reading Spilling Ink by Anne Mazer and Ellen Potter.