Novel Writing Brainstorming Forum

Michelle,
If it’s not brutally obvious that I’ve never planned a novel by now, it will be as soon as you read the answers to your questions. I like to write but I’ve never actually finished a story. Even my short stories are part of something bigger and either have resolution to only the immediate problem or they have such a weak ending that it almost ruins the whole story.
I’ve also got some sort of fear of creating a bad guy for his own sake, letting people die and apparently causing conflict in the first place. My outline is conspicuously free of dramatic tension. Apparently I thought it would just come to me or something. The planning is too general and woefully weak, but here it is:
The compass and what happened to Slade and Mina: Because I can’t figure out what would cause a boy to betray his lifelong best friend (or why a girl who was involved in bringing everyone to the new planet for the right reasons would turn around and use to opportunity for completely selfish gain), I’ve created this compass which is connected to the underworld that when split in two would cause those in possession of each piece to work to give the world to the ruler of the underworld (I don’t have a name for this entity yet, sorry) Like I said… I fear conflict? I don’t know how to make a good bad guy? This is incredibly weak and I’ve known it all along.
So (and this is the weakest link of all) the ending is basically figuring out that the compass is causing all of this trouble and destroying it. It involved Slade almost killing Zan, a fight ensues, he accidentally injures Mina (who I didn’t expect to turn into a bad guy), realizes that he’s being stupid and doesn’t want her to die so he steps down, Carstan heals Mina and they all destroy the compass together.
Except that this doesn’t solve the lack of resources, the approach of winter, the issue of starvation or change the minds of Slade’s followers back to being a part of the community.
Here was kind of my logic in the planning process; establish a community. Have one boy seize power and turn it into a military state. Zan flees, meets other kids with a more utopian community but is pursued. He then has to convince those kids to fight to defend their way of life. I changed this to keep all the characters in one community because I didn’t think it likely that the utopian community could defeat the others and I didn’t actually want to kill Slade. I wanted to try to wrap up the story in one book because I’ve never finished a novel and I thought that writing a book that would certainly need a sequel didn’t accomplish this. But clearly this story is too big for one book. I have considered not letting them get out of the mess. But then everything seems unresolved (because it would be) and I still haven’t written a story with an ending.
So this is really more of a compilation of my weaknesses as a writer of fiction and a rookie novelist.
Thanks for your critiques and suggestions for what I’ve got going on so far. I’ll definitely make notes and incorporate some of those suggestions into a rewrite or use them in helping to continue writing.
I really appreciate all the help and support