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| 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?
