Photo courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/Stuart Miles
I don’t like conflict.
I have a feeling you don’t, either. I have a feeling you’re like me and you love it when everybody’s getting along in the family, at work, in the neighborhood, and at church (yes, it’s hard to imagine, but there is sometimes conflict within a church).
But there IS one place you want and need conflict: in your fiction. Conflict is truly a necessary evil if you expect your story to succeed. When people ask me to tell them about my Bitsy books, I’ll often include a line that says, “Bitsy has a good heart and wants to do the right thing, but she just can’t seem to stay out of trouble.” It’s a good thing she can’t, otherwise, there’d be no reason to write about Bitsy. No one would be interested in reading her because she’d be B-O-R-I-N-G!
Conflict is the ingredient that keeps the reader coming back. After all, who wants to read a book where nothing happens and nobody struggles? It’s true that we need to create characters readers like and care about, but is an interesting character enough to carry a book? I don’t think so.
But when we take that interesting character that readers care about and put them in conflict, we win. It’s the character’s struggle that compels the reader to turn the page.
External and Internal Conflict
Conflict does NOT have to be someone doing something bad to your character.
Yes, external conflict is a struggle with another person, object, situation–something outside the character himself. But internal conflict is a struggle within the character herself–a decision, a choice, a weakness to overcome.
That means conflict can be the weather, an illness, a co-worker, an addiction, a relationship, a physical threat, or anything else that causes your character to struggle and attempt to resolve.
One of the best examples of conflict I’ve ever read is demonstrated in this first page from Reconstructing Natalie, by Laura Jensen Walker:
I’m obsessed with breasts.
Not in the lesbian sense. I’m a card-carrying heterosexual woman with a serious crush on Johnny Depp. And I never really noticed them before. Breasts, I mean. They were just a fact of life. Like day and night. Sun and rain. God. And Krispy Kremes.
But now that I’m about to lose mine, I can’t stop staring at them everywhere I go. The mall. Work. Church. The gym. Even my parents’ house. (Sorry, Mom.)
Large ones, small ones, black ones, white ones, perky, even sagging–to me, they’re all a thing of beauty.
My name is Natalie. I’m twenty-seven years old. And I have breast cancer.
I can still hardly read that without tearing up. Now THAT is conflict!
So what kind of struggle is your compelling character going to face? Will it be a jealous ex-wife? A government? A choice between two men? An addiction to prescription drugs? A murderer? An earthquake? An illness?
Whatever it is, be sure to put your character at risk, and then ratchet up the pressure. If it’s done well, you’ll have your reader right where you want him . . . compelled to turn the page.
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Who won Eddie Jones’ book?
Comment #16-Cheryl Barker! Congrats, Cheryl! Now all you need to do is send me your mailing address and your book will be on its way so you can get it to your nephew!
And if you didn’t win, but want to get your own copy of Dead Man’s Hand by Eddie Jones, you can get it here!
Vonda
(Photo courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net and Stuart Miles)
