No matter what writing topic I’m asked to address, I hang the most importance on characters.  Conflict is drawn from characters.  It’s based on their goals, their backstory and their motivation.  It is opposing forces that come from within the characters themselves.

Webster’s Dictionary defines conflict as “the opposition of persons or forces that gives rise to the dramatic action in a drama or fiction.”  This definition is the essence of fiction, and we need to keep it in mind as we develop characters and plots.

            If there’s no conflict, there’s no story.

            In order to understand conflict and how to develop it, we must first understand what conflict is, what conflict is not, and what conflict can be.  The elements that make up a story are so closely meshed that at times it becomes difficult to dissect and make a firm delineation between them.  Characterization, plotting, and conflict are all intricately entwined in a masterfully developed story.

            Conflict is not delay.  Anything that helps or hinders your character’s effort to get what he wants should go into your story.  Anything that doesn’t, shouldn’t.  We do use incidents now and then to show frustration or characterize or flesh out the story and make it seem real, but even though these incidents are useful, they don’t complicate the situation or make it worse, therefore they are not conflict.

            Examples of incidents: the protagonist can’t find someone or something; he falls in a mud puddle; he misses a bus; he arrives at an important event late.

            Conflict is not anger or bickering or foot stomping.  This is probably one of the most widely misunderstood elements.  Getting mad and yelling at another character without reasonable believable motivation only makes that character childish or just plain mean.  This behavior is acceptable for antagonists, because it characterizes them, but your protagonists should have more depth.  There are always exceptions to the rule, for example The African Queen and High Road to China, are movie plots in which the characters argue relentlessly, but for these particular characters and situations, it works.  The key is to make your characters’ personalities work for your story.

             Conflict is not the characters fighting with each other.  It’s them fighting with themselves.  Misunderstandings are fine and many of the novels we read start out that way, but misunderstandings between adults are easily discussed and cleared up.  There must be conflict beyond the initial misunderstanding or that misunderstanding must be the catalyst for something more significant.  Often, when a person is angry, he’s angry with himself or with an unresolved situation.  Dig deeper.

           

            Conflict can be relative.  The character’s motivation and reactions are what bring the conflict to life.  What constitutes conflict for one person may be taken in stride or perhaps even be an ideal situation for the next person.  If you were a writer with a bad knee, and you required surgery and had to stay off your leg for  a couple of months, of course you would be inconvenienced.  Someone would have to shop for your groceries and walk the dog, but on the up side, you’d get in a lot of writing time.

            If you were a mailman, requiring the same surgery, then the time off your feet presents an entirely different dilemma because your livelihood is at stake.

            The reader must know why this situation is important and why he should care.

            Conflict must be an intolerable state of affairs; It must be problems or situations that your characters cannot ignore or explain away.  From the very beginning, start off by pairing or grouping characters in sharp contrast to one another; develop well-motivated characters that by their very nature will feed the conflict and drive the story forward toward the resolution.  Give them many sides and varying traits, good as well as bad.  Interesting people have layers of values, convictions and faults.

            Make it important that your character do something to remedy his situation.

            Create the characters with built-in conflict.  Build it in as you personify them and give them diversity.  Use their past, their needs and their fears.  Use their strengths and their weaknesses against them.

            Their backstory, combined with characterization, will be motivation for everything they do.  It will shape their goals and define the way they react to situations.  Weak superficial motivations lead to weak superficial conflict, resulting in weak superficial characters.

            Conflict is what reveals your character’s emotions, and it’s the emotion through which your reader identifies.  If the conflict isn’t emotional for the character, it won’t be emotional for the reader.  If you want the reader to care about these people, and you do, engage his feelings.

 

            Conflict can be simple or complex.  A simple conflict can be every bit as powerful as a complicated one; how the characters react and resolve it makes all the difference.  A simple conflict relies more on internal conflict and characterization.

             Your characters must be motivated.  The situation must be so important to them that it’s intolerable unless they do something.  There are several terms you may have heard which basically cover the same thing: motivation, back story, prime motivating factor, and prime motivating incident.

            Here’s an example from the powerful prologue in Barbara Dawson Smith’s Fire On The Wind:

            “Tonight his mother would finally love him.”  That’s the first sentence.  Seven year old Damien Coleridge garners all his courage to approach the mother who calls him a demon and a devil.  He has spent hours on her Christmas gift--a picture he drew with hands that are scarred as a constant reminder of the fire two years previous that made his brother an invalid.  His mother blames him for the harm to her favorite son.

            While she’s entertaining guests, Damien approaches his mother, accidentally breaking a vase for which she verbally abuses him, and he gives her the drawing.  His mother takes him into another room where she tells him he’s a devil who deserves to burn in the flames of hell.  She’s rueful of the day he was born and wishes he had died.  She throws his gift into the fire.

            That prime motivating incident drives Damien to live his entire life living up to his mother’s distorted opinion of him.  He sees himself as totally unlovable and it affects his every relationship.

            What motivates your character does not have to be negative, however.  He or she could be a person who can step in a steaming pile of doo-doo and come up smelling like freshly baked bread.  You’d match this person with a jinx.  Or say your character had the perfect home life, with all the love and devotion a child could want.  He believes in love and family, so you’d pair him with a cynic.

            Knowing who they are and what experiences they’ve had makes your character’s goals and reactions motivated and believable.  It is imperative to keep your character’s history in mind as you unfold the story.

            Conflict must be personalized to the character.  If you don’t know your story people and motivate them, you won’t have a strong conflict.  A vague or general motivating force produces a vague and general plot.  Being specific will increase the emotional intensity of your story.

            Conflict is not a plot device.  It’s your character.  Document what makes this person who he is today.

            Conflict is divided into two separate, but linked categories: Internal and external. 

Many writers get confused over these two types of conflict, but neither must be complicated.  Both internal and external conflict need to be in opposition to the character’s internal and external goals.  Let’s look at these goals first, since you can’t have conflict unless there’s something to oppose.

            If you’ve studied Dwight Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer, or if you’ve studied writing much at all, you know there are three parts to a scene: 1) Goal, 2) Conflict, 3) Disaster.

            A goal is a mission.

            The character wants one of three things:

1) Possession of something (girl, job, money)

2) Relief from something (blackmail, poverty, abuse)

3) Revenge for something (a slight, a loss, a betrayal)

            There are short term goals and long term goals.  Short term goals are decisions your character makes in order to achieve a long term goal.  For example your character’s goal may be to win the Miss America Pageant.  First, she must win the local pageant.  In order to do that, she will have to buy clothing and take singing lessons.  In order to do those things, she needs to raise the money.  She must take steps to attain the larger goal, in other words.

All goals must be concrete and explicit.  Write them down and remind yourself often.