conflict

Without conflict in your story, good luck. Learning about conflict was probably your first introduction to fiction writing. As it should have been. Conflict is needed throughout your story. And the more of it, the better. You should think of your story as one big problem for the characters, especially the main character. Drag him or her through hellfire. Don’t make their goals easy. In fact, you should make their goals near-impossible to achieve. Conflict in fiction is necessary because it is a mirror reflection of our lives. Nothing is easy for us. And neither should it be for the characters. They represent you and me in our struggles to get what we want. Read more to learn how to write an interesting story by making conflict for your characters.

In real life, we try to remove ourselves from conflict. Most of us, anyway. Enduring conflict unfortunately is unavoidable. It is a situation we should get better at and learn from it to put it in our stories because fiction is nothing without conflict. As is our own lives. Without conflict, the story suffers greatly because the characters don’t have any reason to solve a problem.

Researching Conflict

I hope you will write a detailed outline of some sort before you begin your novel. During this process, you should decide how the conflict will occur. Here a few questions I think will help that process.

  • What does the main character hope to accomplish?

This depends on what the plot is about. Is your story about finding romance? If yes, then maybe the main character wants to reconcile with an old girlfriend he ran into at the supermarket. Or is your story about office politics? If yes, then your main character might want a promotion and not for a fellow coworker to get it.

Whatever the scenario is, the main character believes that the choices he or she makes assist or obstruct the intended goal.

  • What are the consequences involved?

When the hero makes a choice, each time, something else changes either for the good or bad. So, when your hero accomplishes that goal, how will it affect those closest to them? Will it impact them the way your hero wanted? The aftereffects of your hero’s choices will determine much more than your hero’s arc—it will change the way other characters view the hero, themselves, and the world. Also, the message a writer is sending the reader depends on the stakes involved and if your hero gets what he wanted.

  • How does conflict obstruct a path?

This is when the writer must be specific when it comes to conflict. By now, after answering the previous questions, you should be prepared to conjure up detailed ways to develop the conflict that will go into your hero’s path. There are only two ways of conflict: the other’s free will stopping the hero from accomplishing a goal or by the hero’s own internal struggle with something.

Enhance the Conflict with a Powerful Goal

Whichever goal you decide to give your hero, it should be one that is important to him or her because of a moral reason and the goal should be personal to the hero, too. 

This goal must stem from the hero’s emotional need to achieve this goal. His or her happiness or future depends heavily on whether the hero meets this goal. Hidden reasons to reach a goal are important, as well. For example, on the surface, a hero might want to become a successful inventor. However, that goal is really to prove to himself or others that he is just as creative as his older brother. Think of the emotional goal as the genuine, true goal that faces conflict. The emotional goal is the one that the hero is truly striving to accomplish and any conflict that gets in his way will not just make him fail but will destroy him personally.

Set up Conflict and Obstacles

It is your duty as a creative writer to force your hero to suffer greatly. You need to strategically place hardships in his way that he must overcome. These obstacles should be special to the hero. What I mean is the obstacles should directly reflect the opposite of what the hero is trying to achieve.

For example, if the hero is trying to pay off a credit card bill because he needs the remaining limit to buy an anniversary gift for his wife to make up for the fact that he disappointed her, it gets obstructed somehow. Maybe he gets a flat tire and needs to call the tow truck and has to pay the mechanic with his credit card. This puts the hero in a dilemma, a major dilemma because his marriage is depending on it.

Or maybe the hero’s boss finally begins to recognize the hero’s progress at work and mentions a promotion in the future. This means more responsibility, more respect, and more money for the hero. But a jealous coworker sabotages a big project, and it makes the hero look bad to the boss.

Find Conflict in the Villain

A story is only as interesting as its villain. The antagonist must be a person who does not want the hero to accomplish his goal. For whatever reason—pride, envy, etc.—the villain sees the hero meeting his goal as terrible and world crashing. If the hero gets his goal, then the villain perceives that as a loss for himself. The villain, in this case, is concerned and involved in making sure the hero does not succeed.

Now, I want to make it known that a villain isn’t necessarily a Joker type or a mafia boss. Those are well-known villains of such a vile extreme that they bring more than just conflict with them—they bring death and destruction. What I mean of a villain in this context is someone—an average Joe—who simply works to oppose the hero. It could be a family member or a nosey neighbor or a jealous coworker. It should be someone who is relatively close to the hero already and knows how to place obstacles in the hero’s way to make the goal difficult.

Find Conflict within the Main Character

In my opinion, this is the best villain a writer can use. Sure, having another character set obstacles, and make life difficult for the hero is great, but it isn’t the same as the obstacles a hero can make for themselves. And this makes for great conflict and even greater storytelling. Even after all the struggles that your hero survived and accomplished, they are still must face their own fears or change or accept someone or something else.

Using this as a force of conflict can really make your character shine while highlighting the hurdles the hero had to jump over to overcome their inner conflict. A good writer would show these conflicts from early on in the novel and over time the hero would use his or her positive ways to learn and grow. By the end of the story, there will be a special moment, a deciding moment, where the hero must use what he or she has learned to defeat the conflict within or stay the same as they were at beginning of the story. Neither choice, necessarily, is bad, per se. Depending on the outcome you wish to write for the hero, perhaps succumbing to the conflict is the better message you wish to showcase. The point is that the hero must use his angels and demons they have within them to make a choice at the end. 

Greater Conflict Means Greater Suspense

Suspense and conflict are closely related. They cannot exist without the other. The better the writer is at creating conflict the better the suspense will be as a result. Here are a few ways to increase both:

  • Increase the risk

If your hero is trying to save people from a burning house, there is an urgency to get everyone out alive. However, if the hero suddenly realizes that his mother is in that house, it becomes much more urgent and personal. Now the hero is in a different mindset. There is more panic and conflict than before because saving his mother is a top priority.

  • Reduce the choices

This is a great way to create immediate suspense during the conflict. For example, if your hero only has one bullet left as he is facing off with a villain with a machine gun, make the hero’s gun jam. Now the hero must quickly discover a new way to defeat the villain.

  • Use a time limit

Forcing your hero to deal with conflict during a race for time is a surefire way to increase suspense. Many plot-driven stories use a literal time bomb for this. As the numbers count down, the reader is involved in the suspense, hoping that the hero solves the problem before the bomb explodes. Another way is to use the time limit for something more personal like the hero is running late for a court date. Maybe a journalist character must meet a deadline and he has missed his last two deadlines.

If you would like to learn more creative writing tips, you can check out my YouTube channel here.

To download my eBook to learn how to write suspense in your novel, click here.

If you have a manuscript you would like professionally edited, you can check out my SERVICES page here.