No Conflict? No Story!

A story without conflict is not a story. If Jonah had gone directly to Nineveh as God told him to, Jonah would be forgettable. We remember Jonah’s story because he tried to avoid God’s directive by taking a boat somewhere else, got thrown overboard by the boat crew, and a whale swallowed him and spit him out on the shore of Nineveh. Lots of conflicts here. Man versus God. Man versus man. Man versus himself. Man versus Nature. You get the idea.

Hero-making Conflict

Readers want someone to cheer for. Just like sports fans, readers want to know how to keep score, the rules or conditions of the competition, and the stakes of winning and losing to decide who is worthy of the win. The conflict is the whole point of the game. Hockey cannot be played like a toddler’s tea party, all sweetness, and good manners. Hockey is a blood sport on ice.

If the hero obtains his goal on the first try, the story is over. But if he struggles, well, then, with every setback and failure, the hero climbs to his feet and learns from it. The higher the stakes for losing, the more we worry for the hero. The nobler and more unreachable the goal, the louder we cheer for the win.

Believable Conflict

The level of conflict must be proportionate to the situation. As much as I adored The Devil Wears Prada, a large portion of the frantic rushing about could have been resolved by call-forwarding. Am I the only person wondering why Andrea didn’t forward calls from the office line to her cell phone? Hello, it’s portable. Go. Run those endless errands for Miranda Priestly without being tethered to the desk.

When the level of conflict is larger than necessary to resolve the situation, then comedy, satire, or melodrama emerges. The story’s conflict should intensify, so if it starts with guns blazing where will it go from there? Nuclear war? Be careful to build the reasons to cheer for the hero before the battle. We must care about the hero first.

Conflict can range from an Intergalactic Apocalypse to frenemies sitting down for coffee. Any scene without conflict is boring and your editor will recommend infusing the scene with tension through subtext, so discomfort simmers just below the awareness of people at the other tables. If your critique partners say there’s no conflict in a scene, then dive deeper into the characters. Even twins disagree sometimes. Stir up a little trouble.

Organic Conflict

No matter how similar your characters may be, they will always be different in some ways. The characters might be in conflict because of similar agendas (both vying for the same job) or unrelated agendas (toddler wants attention while parent tries to do laundry). Because every character—yes, even a background character—has an agenda, one character will get in another’s way. Any differences can serve as natural sources of conflict. For example, in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, two archeologists team up to find the Holy Grail. The generational differences between the father and son archeologists keep them bickering even as they dodge Nazi bullets.

Consider how you can employ common sources of conflict with your characters, such as:

• A secret
• Religion
• Attitude and normalcy bias
• Occupation
• Something from their past
• Gender or sex
• Politics
• Habits
• Fashion, music, art, style
• Language and dialect
• Age or generation gap
• Temperament or personality
• Culture or race
• Class or education
• Bureaucracy or authority
• Misunderstanding
• Ego, pride, sense of entitlement

Result Of Conflict

In every well-written scene, the conflict or power struggle ends with a winner and a loser. Remembering that the hero’s big win comes from lessons learned during many setbacks and losses, the big win happens late in the story. Can the hero have a win before the showdown scene? Yes, but sometimes a win is a loss.

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry and three other students compete in the dangerous tri-wizard tournament which involves dragons and possible drowning and such. In the final challenge, Harry brings back the trophy, but his classmate is killed by the power-mad wizard Lord Voldemort. By all accounts, Harry won, but no one celebrates.

In another example, Hans Christian Anderson wrote about a mermaid who wants to become human and have a soul so that when she dies her soul goes to heaven instead of turning into sea foam. In The Little Mermaid (the original not the Disney version), the mermaid sacrifices her life to save a human Prince. Because she died selflessly, she gets a soul and goes to heaven. That’s the happy ending. Fairy tales are grim stuff.

Each scene has a winner and loser and there is a victor in the overall story. Without conflict, the dialogue is chit-chat, and the action is episodic meaningless drivel.

Go stir up trouble for your hero.

For further reading:

• Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and The Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee
• Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell
• “The Seven Types of Narrative Conflict” by Arielle Haughee