All stories arise from conflict. As we stated earlier, the hero wants something. 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.

Conflict keeps the story moving. Lose the conflict and you lose your audience. 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.

It's why the hero and the villain are at odds. Conflict can be emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, sociological, or elemental. How each character responds to the conflict defines them to the Audience. We respond to how others deal with conflict because we can relate to it. Conflict is in our face every single day in one form or another.

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, 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.

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:

THE NATURE OF CONFLICT

By itself, conflict is impersonal. Even it 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.

For example: 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, all of a sudden 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 as they deal with the conflict. 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 it 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 are 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 are afraid to do. They’re battling their own fears 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 individuals. 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 from our mistakes. If we no longer fear negative repercussions, we would do anything without thought. So you need to be aware of a character's fears, needs and desires. Their emotional hot buttons. It will have a big impact on the character’s choices.

The Hero and the Villain have conflicting motives when it comes to the focus of the story known as "The Object of Desire". I prefer to use the term "Grail".

The Grail is whatever the hero thinks will restore balance to his life. There may be a visible grail in the story. A material object. But the Grail can be something intangible like friendship or trust.

All stories are about A>B<C. The Hero (A) wants C (the Grail) and B (the Villain/Conflict) stands in the way. In almost every case, the Grail can be summed up as that which restores balance, because stories always begin with the hero’s life being upset by some event. The hero then sets out to restore balance to his life. The grail is his means of achieving that balance.

In the case of E.T., the Grail was E.T. being able to return to his people unmolested. The Villain’s goal was to capture and study him. So freedom is the Grail, and the Villains are in direct opposition to it.

Action, Crime, and Suspense stories usually employ a physical Grail. Examples are a piece of microfilm, a suitcase full of cash, a nuclear bomb, plans to a new secret weapon, or incriminating documents. Writers call this kind of grail "MacGuffins". Sometimes the Hero is already in possession of the MacGuffin, but doesn’t know how to use it. So the Grail in such stories is knowledge. Knowledge restores the balance.

Romance stories have an obvious Grail, love. The Villain is either a rival lover, parents, society, or nature, threatening to keep the lovers apart.

Sometimes the Grail is a person or a living creature. The Grail in Jaws was the shark, doubling as Villain and Grail. In cop movies the Grail is the capture or death of the criminal (Villain). In some stories, the object is the rescue or capture of a person who only serves as the Grail and not as an Villain. Charles Bronson did a movie called Breakout, where the Grail was a man in a Mexican prison that Bronson was supposed to "break out".

Most writers view Grails as physical objects of desire. But since all stories are about someone trying to get something, or not get something as the case may be (refusal is an action), we can define any object of desire as a Grail. It doesn’t have to be a material thing.

When you set down to create a story and are stuck for where to begin. It’s not a bad idea to think about what the Grail might be. That makes it easier to then formulate the motivations of the Villain and the Hero. Once you have those things figured out, everything starts falling into place.

A hero has a conscious desire in a story to win the Grail. But you can also establish an unconscious desire on the hero’s part. A desire he may not be aware of, but his actions betray. This desire is often radically different than his conscious one.

When unconscious desire is employed, it can add a lot of dimension to the work. The object of the unconscious desire becomes the true grail in the story and all the hero’s conscious desires are ephemeral.

The true grail in these scenarios becomes the "super objective". No other MacGuffin or Grail really matters when you’re dealing with an unconscious desire, because the U.D. is what the story is about.

When you’re dealing with a super objective, the conscious desire is a front. A ruse, even. Sometimes the false grail is to establish that the Hero has sold out his personal values for what he perceives to be a higher purpose. But the story teaches him that his "heart’s desire" is more important than what he’s been fighting for. During the Crisis, he realizes what his heart’s desire truly is after a series of events makes it clear to him, and this is when he makes his choice.

This desire is usually at odds with the interests of other protagonists in the story, but as far as the premise is concerned, choosing to follow it is the right thing for him to do in this story.

REMEMBER: The unconscious desire is the only desire that matters when it’s used.