Talking about beginnings and endings, don't forget about the middle of a novel. Sure the beginning has to hook a reader and get him or her interested in reading onward, and the ending should be one that wraps up the story in a satisfactory way, be it sad or happy. But the middle has to get a reader from one to the other. And it does that by keeping the reader interested.
I've read a lot of blogs that complain about the middle. Writers sometimes say they get bogged down in the middle, almost as if they run out of things to happen. I don't think they should really worry about that. Not if they have a good plot, anyway. Because if you establish a good plot, you've got a journey going right there. Take your journey home, that's all. Once you know how it will end, you just write it through.
The key is complication and conflict. Every story must have complications develop and conflicts to be resolved. And that should take care of any problems concerning the middle. That's the body of the work, after all, and without it, your story will be just a head and tail!
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