Conflict

Previous chapter gave you an idea of how to get scenes or chapters out of your plot. How to know which parts you should show, and which you should just tell with a literal sentence.

Let’s take one final step into the specifics of a scene. Okay, you want to make something happen. Maybe a character trait is revealed, maybe somebody needs to attack another, something is supposed to happen in your scene.

How do you construct the scene?

• Like a mini-story. Add a promise at the start, progress in between, then payoff. You already know how to do this!
• By applying the two core tenets of storytelling in general: goal and obstacle. Together, they create conflict.

Maybe you’re surprised that goals, obstacles and conflict are only mentioned this late into the course. I would like to remind you that this is only a plot course. Goals and Obstacles are tied to character and sometimes setting. I still recommend reading the Storytelling course first, which handles the art of telling a story globally (from beginning to end), and immediately dives into ideas such as conflict.

This chapter provides a summary of why conflict matters and how to get it. It also adds some practical tips on how to improve it.

What’s the idea?

In every scene, a character should want something (the “goal”) and something else should stand in the way (the “obstacle”). This creates conflict.

Throughout the scene, we see if and how this conflict is resolved.

As such, in general, a scene would be structured as follows.

• Start: promise the conflict, by introducing the goal and then the obstacle.
• Middle: the characters try to solve the conflict or work through it.
• End: something happens that resolves the conflict. Maybe they reach the goal, maybe they lose. Maybe the conflict is temporarily solved, but the chapter ends with a cliffhanger that reveals some bad consequence.

This “goal” and “obstacle” don’t need to be grandiose. No, leave that for the whole story. On a scene-by-scene basis, characters have simple goals and simple direct obstacles. Sometimes they lose, sometimes they win, but they always make progress.

Even so, a scene without conflict is not a scene. There has to be some goal and some obstacle (that prevents them from instantly, without effort, reaching the goal).

Otherwise, what’s the purpose of the scene? You could’ve told us that the hero achieved the goal in one sentence. But you decide to show it, with a scene, so there has to be juicy conflict.

Good Conflict

Now, not all conflict is created equal. Conflict is not the same as “problem” or “issue”.

You could write a story in which the main characters just argue every chapter, getting angry over disagreements, naming all the issues they’re having. Obviously, that’s not a good story, and that’s not “good” conflict.

Or one in which your hero has trouble deciding what to eat for dinner. Yeah, that’s a “problem” they need to solve. But it’s not really compelling conflict, is it?

Or one in which some great magical evil is coming … in about a hundred years. Yeah, a big problem is coming, but that would be one boring novel as we just wait for it.

There is clearly “good” conflict (in terms of storytelling) and “bad” conflict.

But how do we differentiate these? Are there any rules or guidelines? I’ve found it surprisingly hard to find specific advice on this. Many people just give examples of conflict they like or don’t like in popular media, emitting a vibe of “you know it when you see it”.

Below is my method for checking if my conflict is sound. It has greatly improved the quality of my stories, but I’m in no way suggesting it’s the answer.

A good conflict …

• Comes from a clash of relevant goals
• Is urgent or immediate.
• Has the potential for loss
• Leads to progress or consequences.

Let’s dissect that.

• Conflict starts with somebody who has a goal and who hits an obstacle. That’s the definition. But it should be an important, relevant goal. They should really want that, for good reasons. Ideally, it’s related to the Promise and Progress.
• They have to act now. It is relevant now. Otherwise, doing nothing is an option, and it’s often a good one that characters would take, which means your story grinds to a halt.
• If they don’t act, they will lose something. Humans are risk averse. Fear of losing something is much stronger than potential of gaining something.
• Whatever the outcome of the conflict, it progresses the story. Win or loss, both have interesting consequences.

Why a “clash” of goals? Because I’ve noticed that the strongest conflict is between two characters (with their own goals). Yes, obstacles can also be random or inanimate (like a natural disaster), but that’s just less interesting.

For more examples and details on good and bad conflict, visit the Definition of Story chapter (from the Storytelling course). It’s a great practical overview of the core ingredients needed for a story.

Internal vs External conflict

Most stories benefit from two main conflicts, one internal and one external.

The first is a conflict that comes from the hero’s personality and character. They fight against their past, their demons, their fears, something within themselves.

The other is a conflict with some external, outside force.

Both conflicts influence each other. Maybe the hero butts heads with somebody else because of their inner conflict. Maybe a great loss, suffered at the hands of their enemy, causes them to doubt themselves and increase their inner conflict.

This weaving of conflicts keeps the story fresh at all times. It also allows you to create amazing stories (using the external conflict, which is easier to plot) that still include some lesson for the hero to learn or some deeper meaning (using the inner conflict).

Rising Action

Finally, a common mistake is to randomly pick the severity of your conflict. Maybe you invent some crazy conflict in each scene that threatens the hero’s life, every time! Or you invent tiny conflicts that really don’t matter that much for twenty chapters in a row.

As expected, this isn’t great. It confuses readers about what’s happening or where they’re going. They get whiplash from how the plot sometimes seems to go super fast, then super slow.

Stories need rising action. The first conflict is small (although it might not feel that way, at the time). The next conflict is slightly more serious. The next one even more serious. This continues and continues, until the final conflict (of the climax) is the biggest of them all!

This sounds simple in theory, but is a skill only learned through experience. There are no rules here. You need to get creative and construct plots that naturally lead to higher and higher stakes.

I remember this through the rule of: don’t just regurgitate arguments.

Many, many stories think of a conflict and then repeat it time and time again without any change. The same argument or disagreement, the same “almost escalation”, repeated over and over again. Often, the writers themselves notice this and state it! I’ve read several books that state “We rechewed the same arguments” or “Here we go again”.

Don’t do this. You never want to repeat the same argument or conflict twice in a story, let alone 3+ times. At that point, it just becomes grating and frustrating. Your story isn’t leading anywhere, it’s just stating the same conflict over and over.

If you repeat a conflict, have it grow over time. The next time the disagreement is mentioned, make sure something has changed (the reasons, the location, the stakes, the people involved, whatever).

Threat trumps Action

This is a deeper truth I was surprised to learn after writing many stories.

The threat of an event is often more powerful than the event itself.

In other words, most conflict comes from the fear of something happening. The fear of losing something or someone. The fear of getting attacked. The fear of being left behind. The fear of not being able to persuade someone else.

The actual event is more like the payoff. You’ve build all this tension, all this threat, and now you release it by actually making something happen. The event is usually much shorter and takes less time than the conflicts that build it up.

For example, an attack is simply “He hit the guard in the face” or “She thrust the blade through his heart”. One sentence. Maybe you can turn it into a longer action sequence, but for what purpose?

Most of the scene should be the buildup to that action. A rising tension, a rising conflict.

For example, maybe our hero was talking to the guard at first. He just wanted passage, and did not want to resort to violence. He tries several tactics: bribing, sweet-talking, etcetera. As the conversation continues, however, it becomes clear that the guard will not let him through. So far, we’ve been building a conflict for multiple pages. So tense! The reader reads faster and faster, eager to see how this turns out!

And then our hero is done with it and sees no other option: they attack the guard. Maybe just a paragraph, a sentence or two, and the guard is down.

Ah, the reader can release all the tension. The hero has gained passage, progress was made, the chapter ends.

That’s my biggest tip. Many writers see conflict as a physical fight, or literal death. It is not. Most conflict is merely the threat of something terrible happening. Death would be the payoff and the resolution of that (temporary) conflict.

Conclusion

Phew, this was a long chapter. But that’s alright, because conflict is the essence of story. Knowing how to write a good one (versus a bad one, or none at all) is essential to writing a good story. It also gives you the final, practical tools for how to construct every scene.

Now you know all the general advice about plotting. Both high-level (plot is just a chain of event and consequence) and low-level (how to pick which scenes to tell and how to write them).

It’s finally time to start experimenting! In the next chapters, I will present you one “tool” or “method” for generating a plot. Something I learned somewhere else, or something I invented myself over the years. Then I ask you to write one story using that method! (Ignoring any other rules. Just focus on that one method. Also, keep the stories very short, otherwise this becomes unmanageable!)

Based on everything I know about both writing and learning, this is by far the best method.

• You get a lot of practice (writing)
• But also new challenges each time (using a new method), forcing you to grow and not get stuck in bad habits or limited ideas
• And when you’re done, you’ll have so many tools, that you intuitively know how to approach any idea you might have

So let’s get started!