Fictional stories need conflict

Conflict is not all about battles and arguments

Without conflict your story is flat and aimless. How your character deals with the obstacles and problems dealt him or her is what keeps the reader reading. 

Even the gentlest of stories needs conflict. Think of a toddler's picture book. It will have a conflict suitable for that age group – perhaps a lost teddy bear or a child afraid of the dark. It might seem inconsequential, but to a three-year-old, it’s an exciting story.   

Conflict is all about the character’s problems, insecurities, worries, and anxieties. How your character faces and deals with those obstacles is what makes your story an absorbing read.

However, conflict is not all about action, battles, arguments and fights. There is internal conflict and external conflict. Internal conflict is your character battling with their own emotions, beliefs and anxieties. They could be struggling with their own fears and phobias; or their feelings of guilt or loyalty; or the conflict is brought about by feelings of love, lust or hate for another character – or emotional turmoil in a multitude of other ways.

External conflict is difficulties arising from actual obstacles, from things happening to your character which are beyond their control. This might be anything from your protagonist breaking the heel of her shoe on the way to an important meeting, to a character trying to escape from a prisoner of war camp. However, I would add that even in the most action-packed stories where your character is facing all kinds of physical problems, unless you also show their inner emotions, the story will fall flat.

Keep your story moving forward and the tension rising by piling on the conflict. Give your character mounting challenges to overcome, remembering all the while to let the reader know how they are feeling deep inside – which of course, may be in complete contrast to outer appearances.

Stories can’t be continual mounting pressure on the protagonist, you need to pace your story with high and low spots, ie scenes of calm before the next storm. But whatever life throws at your characters, let the problems rise in intensity as the story progresses. As you near the climax of your story towards the end, your character's problems should seem insurmountable, your protagonist will seem doomed to failure.

You might find it best to tie up all your loose ends before the climax, so you can write the climax scenes without other distractions, and without having an anti-climax after the main conclusion as you’re forced to tie up loose ends then. Of course, you might choose to hold back on one loose end or sub plot, so as to provide an additional feel good moment at the very end.

With the climax of the story, achieving their goal should come through the protagonist’s own efforts, rather than the arrival of the cavalry!  Let your main character succeed or fail through their own decisions and actions. Make the ending unexpected but also believable and plausible. Never cheat the reader with an unbelievable ending.

We all love a happy ending, but if you choose not to have a happy ending, you might want to have a little ray of hope there, or maybe the main character has learned something along the way. The important thing is to leave the reader satisfied. The last thing you want is to leave the reader feeling dissatisfied by the outcome. You want them to come back and read your next story, don’t you?

I find it easier to write scenes where it’s all going horribly wrong, rather than the happy scenes. How about you? Do you like putting your characters through untold misery?