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Defining Conflict in your Story

by Sue McKlveen

What is conflict? Why do I have to have it in my story? I love it when my characters are just allowed to live their lives and not have a care in the world. That way they can dream about the future and all is happy.

Yes, those are all thoughts of beginning writers, including me when I first started writing. To answer this, I want you to think about your favorite story. Chances are it had conflict. That conflict is what defined the story. It probably also had three acts, the first act defining the character and the problem the character had to overcome until you got to the second act where the character had to make a 'no-turning-back' decision about that conflict. Without conflict, there would be no story.

So what is conflict? Conflict is a struggle the character must overcome in order to live a peaceful life. Sometimes the conflict is resolved by the end of the book, sometimes it isn't. In writing a book, most of the time the characters have internal and external conflicts. For romances, internal and external conflicts are demanded in your story to keep up with the competition of other writers.

Internal conflict is a struggle the character has within himself. For example, the person may have to overcome the fact that he/she can't keep a penny in his/her pocket and is always in debt. They need to learn self-control to overcome that conflict.

External conflict is a struggle that's happening to the character on the outside. For example, a burglar stealing all the person's worldly goods would be an external conflict. The antagonist can be a person or a thing, such as the weather (like a tornado). External conflicts can also be between two people, struggling over compromise in a situation.

So what does conflict do for my story? It makes the reader identify and empathsize with the characters, to make them want to succeed. That's what makes a story real to the reader. It's your goal as the writer, to make the reader want to turn that next page, even though it's past midnight. The reader wants to find out if the characters overcome their struggles and obstacles to move on, and presumably have a happy ending.

References:
Trouble vs. Conflict

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