[– Karen Myers –]
(I warn my characters about this, right in the contract. But do they listen?)
Stories need conflict of some kind, not just the little things that keep individual scenes moving along, but the great big ones that drive the whole story. I understand the theory, here, but the practice can sometimes be elusive.
Fictional stories aren’t real life — they are artificial constructions that combine some of the verisimilitude of real life with an underlying message from the author (consciously or not). The “messages” I notice are things like “see, there really is a God”, or “you can dodge the bureaucracy if you’re clever enough”, or “there are more important things than material goods”. Those stories demonstrate their underlying message by set pieces as if they were medieval passion plays in modern dress. “See, he tries this but that gets in the way.” Obviously, I’m presenting a bit of a caricature of this, but if you look hard at some of the weaker entries, you can see some of these mechanisms. I’m not saying it’s necessarily conscious on the part of the author, but the author’s own opinion often shows through.
Guides for how to write fiction often speak in this analytical way — show the difficulty the character has in accomplishing his goals by putting obstacles in his way, such as deliberate enemy action or character flaws or even just random chance (weighted by an author’s heavy hand).
My problem is that I can’t construct a story well this way ahead of time. It’s too much like assembling clockwork, and getting all the gears and mechanisms of the small and large obstacles into place usually results in sullen bits still lying about unaccounted for when the scene/chapter/book is done. I understand the principle, but I don’t like using those mechanical tools.
What I try for instead is a mix of “what happens at the story’s critical inflection points (4-act structure) (pre-determined, but without overmuch detail)” and… whatever seems good to me as I go along. It’s as if the overall mechanism of conflict I use has a framework (4-acts), like a robot lurching slowly forward from one unbalanced step (act) to another, but none (or very few) of the in-between details are known in advance. Instead, those smaller obstacles are presented on the fly as they occur to me, suggested by what’s already happened. Yes, I may then have to go back and make minor adjustments, but it’s the weight of what has already happened that suggests the next local conflict that occurs.
Obviously, I would suck at writing genuine “mystery” or “thriller” plots this way, but for my genres it works. Just like the protagonists (and the readers), I am surprised by events as they occur. They feel organic, because they are.
(I don’t think this approach would work for me if I were fond of presenting a master-villain’s POV, too — that level of complexity would require far more advance planning. But while deliberate opposition to the hero often exists, I resist the dedicated-villain sorts of stories — people may wish my hero ill, but they don’t commit their every waking moment to the project, as if he were the center of their world.)
How do you handle conflict in your stories?
Mad Genius Club 
6 responses to “Conflict”
Been fighting with this in the wip. Have the events of the first act more or less worked out, but it didn’t work. What I just realized was I was focusing on the wrong conflict. I was thinking in terms of what the character was doing, but for that character, the core conflict is why they are doing it, not the what.
Now that I’m looking at the right conflict, even though the core events are basically the same, the rough arc feels much better.
Man vs Woman, The Man loses. [Sarcastic Grin]
Actually, that should be Man chases Woman, the Woman catches the Man.
I seem to have “man vs. man” and “man vs. nature,” where nature includes the trials and tribulations of daily life (“Ma’am, you need to come get your child from school. He has a stomach bug.”) as well as the physical environment. There’s a Bad Guy or gal, perhaps with a hench-person, and then all the other stuff one has to deal with in life.
In my stories, there’s usually Big Conflict, originating with a hostile superhuman entity. Some of them like the Duat in the Star Master books or the Avazata in the Jaiya books have a bit of an “are they aliens or are they demons?” thing going on, but they are malefic regardless of what box you put them in.
There’s also Petty BS Conflict. Steam train personnel won’t let heroine have all of her horses because two of them don’t look like the rest and there was a foulup with the paperwork. Hero lies like a rug in course of explaining what’s going on to people who don’t believe in werewolves. Hero’s Chief of Security decides to steal heroine’s airship ticket. Space Noblewoman’s useless cousin and bodyguard offers objections to everyone’s plans, usually out of spite, bravado or secret cowardice, but every now and again he has a point, so the others can’t just discount his thoughts out of hand.
I can’t even plot as far as you can. It’s like I write blind. I’ll start off with a scene, or a character and start writing. In the book series I’m writing now, no less than six major characters popped into it out of nowhere (including the two main bad guys, only one of which was bad from the beginning) and another seven started off as minor or secondary characters and forced their way to main characters. And a full third of the story as I first envisioned it ended up going nowhere.
And I’m only three chapters into the second book.
The conflict is there, it just pops into my head when its needed. The strangest thing is, that usually when I go back to add foreshadowing its almost always already there.