Purpose is something that comes into all aspects of writing a book, from your initial intent to sit down and write a novel to the final piece of marketing you do after publication. It is something that is always important, but arguably never more so than when you’re editing your book.

The editing stage is the stage where you question things, where you take your novel apart and put it back together again until you’re certain that it is, with any luck, the book you set out to write in the first place. Purpose plays a crucial role here. For example, when you’re editing your book, you need to be thinking about the purpose of the whole novel. Does it work as a whole, or does it need some work to achieve what you want to?

It’s something that matters just as much when you start to break the book down. What, for instance, is the purpose behind the structure of your book? Why have you chosen that particular structure rather than another one, and what does it bring to the novel that another structure wouldn’t have done?

What is the purpose of having a line break there? Why have you chosen to have that particular chapter length? What is the purpose of that particular scene? What does it add to the book and how does it move the story on? If you find yourself doubting your answers to any of these questions, it is generally a sign that there is something that will require you to re-think and look again at your initial decisions.

This is important as it relates so closely to the believability of your novel; readers need to be able to invest in it and care about it, and believe that the events within it could actually happen, if not in real life then at least within the world you have created. And, if you aren’t sure of your own book’s purpose or the point of particular aspects of it, your readers won’t be either.

What do you think?