Secrets of Writing: Conflict
All stories arise from conflict. As we stated earlier, the hero wants something. Either the prevention of a loss, or some kind of gain. He goes on a quest to obtain the object of desire. What makes it a story is the conflict that stands between the hero and his goal. That is the crux of your story. Conflict keeps the story moving. Lose the conflict and you lose your audience.
Imagine a story where someone wants to be rich. So they buy a lottery ticket and win. Now they’re rich. The end.
Is that a story? Yes. Is it an interesting story? No.
Why? Because there’s no conflict. People expect some kind of struggle. Life is not so easy for most of us. We have things standing in our way, between us and the object of our desire. How we over come these obstacles is the conflict. We want to see how a character overcomes their obstacles. That’s what makes the story interesting to us. Good stories are often a life lesson of sorts.
I like to think of conflict as the salt in the story. Any cook will tell you that salt brings out the flavors in food. Without it, the food is bland. The same principal goes with fiction. A story where nothing happens is a boring story. A story where everything comes easy to the characters is just plain full, unless there’s a catch.
Conflict is not action. Many writers mistakenly confuse the two, and thus end up with stories full of meaningless action scenes. Conflict is the reason most action occurs. Conflict is when two forces are in opposition to each other. These forces can be emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, sociological, or elemental.
We begin to understand a character through their response to conflict. How each person reacts to any given situation defines their character. We respond to how characters deal with conflict because we can relate to it. Conflict is in our face every single day in one form or another. And when it’s not, we’re bored.
How a character deals with their conflicts helps us gain perspective on our own lives. It can either serve to validate or repudiate our own choices. If we really disagree with the choices a character makes when dealing with his conflict, we form negative opinions about that character. If we love the choice they make, we love the character more. It’s that simple.
So how your characters deal with conflict will have a lot to do with how your audience is going to feel about your work. Remember one crucial thing, however. Conflict is not action. They are two completely different things. We’ll discuss the nature of action in a later chapter.
TYPES OF CONFLICT
Conflict comes in several forms. You have to choose the type that best serves your story. Every form of conflict has implications on the level it affects. They are:
INTERNAL: The conflict a person has with themselves. Inner turmoil. Moral dilemmas. Overcoming trauma. Psychological problems. This conflict is not with other characters, though it can affect other characters in the story. The Internal Conflict is best showcased in the novel, where the Audience feels they are in the mind of the character, because they are visualizing based on the chosen words of the writer. Comics can also handle the internal conflict effectively through use of captions. The art work can show the struggle of the character in many different ways. But the film and theater mediums are much less effective dealing with this form of conflict which is why so many novels don’t translate well to film. Novels that deal mainly with external conflicts always translate better than those which deal with internal ones.
PERSONAL: This is between the Hero and his friends and lovers. It’s about inter-personal relations between individuals. It does not involve larger issues like peer pressure or the rules of society, but rather, the problems people have relating one on one. This is the conflict best showcased in the theater. Though comics handle it well.
SOCIAL: Social Conflict is between the parent and the child, between the doctor and the patient, between the Hero and society. When you’re dealing with larger issues than just inter-personal relationships, this is the conflict of choice. Stories that deal with concepts like authority, injustice, persecution, assimilation, etc. are playing in the realm of the social conflict. This is best shown in films, but every medium can use it effectively.
ELEMENTAL: Between man and the environment, between the hero and a force of nature. The hero deals with an elemental force which has no persona. It could be anything from a giant meteor heading toward earth or a pack of rabid Chihuahuas.
THE NATURE OF CONFLICT
By itself, conflict is impersonal. Even if you’re dealing with a war. People understand the concept of a war, but they don’t see what it has to do with them unless you apply the exercise of conscious will on it, through your main characters. Then it becomes tangible.
What this means is, many people can feel something looking at scenes from a war. But the people dying become abstract. We can feel sorry for them, but it can be hard to identify with them unless we are pulled in through the story. That happens when our characters become our eyes into that world. When the characters become our eyes, the story becomes more real for us.
Conflict needs meaning to be powerful. So it has to be important for the characters. When the characters become emotionally involved with the conflict, we become emotionally involved. IF, and I repeat, IF we care about the characters. We’ll get into that in the characterization section.
If I said two guys were fighting down the street, they’d be faceless individuals in your mind and meaningless to you on a personal level. You don’t know who they are or why they’re fighting. But if I said your best friend is fighting your worst enemy, suddenly the idea draws you in because it now has personal meaning.
That’s how you involve the Audience in the conflict. By making the characters people they can identify with. You do this by showing their dynamic will in action.
The story of a guy who just wants to have a decent life isn’t very exciting. It’s a very passive, run-of-the mill desire. There’s nothing special about it. Nothing to make the character’s struggle interesting.
But...when you show that he will fight the most incredible odds to secure that peaceful life, then the story becomes interesting, and so does the Hero. You transform the conflict by showing his dynamic will in action against it.
When you’re writing a story about personal and/or social conflicts, you’re really pitting the will of your characters against each other. And through that use of will, we learn who they are and what they’re made of.
In an internal conflict, the character uses their will against their own innate nature. They may have a phobia about fire. To get out of a building they’re trapped in, they have to walk through a fire filled room. They must force themselves to do something they’re afraid to do. They’re battling their own desires for a better good.
Lack of internal conflict limits a character’s dimension. Single minded individuals are only common in bad fiction. Not in life. Everyone has inner demons of some kind. We’re conflicted. Often we ask ourselves if ywe’re making the right decision. According to scientists, reason and emotion are completely intertwined. When someone suffers brain damage to the emotion centers of the brain, they lose the ability to make logical decisions.
This is because we learn by our mistakes. If we no longer fear negative repercussions, we’d do anything without thought. So you need to be aware of a characters fears, their needs and desires. Their emotional hot buttons.
It will have a big impact on the character’s choices. And it will help us understand them.
REMEMBER: All stories arise from conflict. Conflict is transformed by dynamic will.
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