Wordplay

Who says conflict is a bad thing? Who says world peace is the most important goal of humanity? Who says arguing with your little brother when you’re a kid means you’ll grow up to be an ill-mannered ruffian?


Obviously, not a writer.


Arguably (after all what isn’t arguable in writing?), the single most important tenet of fiction can be summed up in the saw “no conflict, no story.” You can break every rule in the book (pun intended) and still have a whopper of a story—so long as you remember to throw in a dash of conflict. Or, actually, a heaping tablespoon or two would be preferable.


The simple fact is: fiction has its very basis in conflict. If the main characters aren’t clashing, if there are no wars, if the aliens are content to stay unobtrusively in their own galaxies—then we really don’t have much of a story do we? Think about it. If Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy had hit it off from the beginning, we never would have experienced all that wit and sizzle in Pride and Prejudice. If the North and South had simply resolved their differences over a handshake, Scarlet O’Hara would never have needed to escape a burning Atlanta. And if the Martians had minded their own business back on Mars, Orson Welles could never have made history by freaking out thousands of people with his War of the Worlds radio broadcast.


So how does one go about manufacturing this most precious of story ingredients? Well, happily enough, conflict is actually one of the easiest (and most fun) bits of storycraft. As humans, we all know a little something about anarchy and chaos, and it really isn’t that much of a stretch to borrow some of that from real life and spread it around on the page. But just in case you’re feeling stumped, here are a few suggestions.

• Personality clashes. This is the easiest (and, often, the best) way to throw a little conflict into the mix. Character interaction is always at the heart of any story; therefore, it’s the character clashes that will produce your most consistent conflicts, and generally your most interesting ones as well. The key thing to remember about clashing characters is that they must clash for a realistic reason. Characters who get along perfectly for the first third of the story can’t suddenly, for no apparent reason, explode into a manic fistfight. Of course, we probably don’t want our characters to get along perfectly for the first third of the story (how boring is that, right?). Instead, we try to craft characters who will naturally push each others’ buttons. And I’m not talking just good guy/bad guy confrontations. Make sure your hero is surrounded by foils. If you find yourself with a character who tends to affirm your main character at every turn, spice him up by throwing a little unexpected rebellion into the mix.

• Put characters in unexpected situations. Many stories base their entire premise on this idea (think of the Pevensie siblings tumbling through the wardrobe into Narnia or young upper-class Jim Graham sent to a Japanese prisoner camp in J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun.) But, even if you don’t go quite that far, you can still take advantage of the unexpected by forcing your character into situations and relationships that go against his personality or inclinations. If you have a heroine who is terrified of speaking in public, why not put her in a situation where she has no choice? She’ll either cave under the pressure or rise to the challenge—either way, the reader will be hooked.

• Up the ante. For a long while, I had tacked on my bulletin board a note which read “Think of the ten worst things that could happen to character.” Kind of sadistic, I know. But readers aren’t interested in stories about characters who sail through life without ever encountering hardship, danger, or sadness. Rip your characters apart, put them under excruciating pressure, and then when things look like they couldn’t possibly get any worse—make sure they do.

• Inner and outer battles. Nancy Kress, in her fantastic book Beginnings, Middles & Ends spoke about the necessity of including both inner and outer battles:

  “Every paragraph in your story should accomplish two goals: advance the story (the plot), and develop your characters as real, individual, complex and memorable human beings.”

  In other words, conflict has to occur not just on the larger scale of the novel (whether that be a family crisis or World War III), but also on the smaller theater of the character’s inner life. Every scene must include the outer battle (the physical reaction to conflict) and the inner battle (the psychological and emotional reaction to events). Any scene that lacks one or the other, is teetering on the edge of the Cliff of Not Enough Conflict.

• Building to a climax. Although it’s vital that every scene contain some level of conflict, it’s also important to monitor the general flow of that conflict. You have to open your story with enough conflict to grab the reader’s attention, then keep building on that conflict to keep him reading. But you don’t want to pour on the danger and the distress so thick in the beginning, that you run dry by the end of your story. Using foreshadowing and tension, build your conflict steadily to the high-point of the climax.

• Balance. Stories are about balance. A tale in which is there is no conflict is going to be just about as boring as watching condensation dissipate. But a tale that never pauses to let its characters (or its reader) catch their breath is boring in its own way. We have to find ways to adjust the level of the conflict. We have to give our characters a chance to slow down and get their thoughts gathered for the next attack. Stories must consist of both large- and small-scale battles. Mix things up. Throw in a variety of conflicts in all colors, shapes, and sizes, and keep both your characters and your readers guessing.

Story by K.M. Weiland

Tags: action , beginnings middles and ends , climax , conflict , nancy kress