Every writer faces the same dilemma when it comes to finishing a novel—it’s not just you.

How do I know if my novel is truly finished?

Well, sadly there is no one moment that you cross over from ‘in progress’ to ‘finished’, and so you have to be a little intuitive to work out the right moment.

Here are some pointers for you that will help you to work out when your novel is truly finished, and when you can think about moving on to the next steps.

You’re not editing, you’re just tinkering

To begin with, much of your editing process is likely to focus on large, structural changes in the novel. The big questions at the heart of everything, the consistency, the resolutions—all the juicy bits that make up a great story.

But once your revisions shift from larger changes to obsessing over individual words or punctuation, you’re at the point where you’re polishing. This is great, because it means the core novel is basically finished, and you’re just refining small details.

But it’s worth being wary of polishing, because it can quickly progress to tinkering, which can leave you in an endless loop. You don’t want to remove your style from your story, and once it feels like you’re just reorganising or replacing for the sake of it, that’s a sign that it’s time for the next steps.

You’ve addressed any major plot holes

This one is similar to the editing point above. A finished novel should not contain major errors, such as huge plot holes, characters who don’t act like themselves, large unresolved aspects of stories or general logical flaws.

Once your self-edits or beta readers have stopped highlighting major aspects of the writing, it’s a sign you’re in a good place to progress because you can begin to polish and prepare for the next steps.

And it’s worth a note that you might still end up with inconsistencies (even if small). There are tons of successful books written by the biggest names in writing that have their own inconsistencies or issues, even if small. Sometimes it takes thousands of eyes to find these problems, and you might not find them out until years after publishing.

Beta readers are no longer giving you the same critiques