Conflict

Conflict is the most important part of your story. There are two basic types of conflict internal and external. Both, if done well, make for really good stories, but the great stories find a way to combine the two.

 

Let's start with external conflict. External conflict is just what the name says, something that comes from the outside to challenge your protagonist. JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings mostly follows this model. His rag tag group of intrepid adventurers try to buy Frodo time to destroy the One Ring. The external conflict, what Sauron is doing, drives the entire plot of book and the internal struggles are not as prominently featured. Many spy novels, thrillers and other action oriented stories run on this model. It can be compelling. To make it more interesting figure out what this external struggle shows about who your characters are or what your characters deeply believe. It is not enough (unless you are writing YA) to simply make the "bad guys" the bad guys. It's easy to stand up to evil if you know it's evil. But our world is not like that. Sure you can see it in some cases, but most of the time you cannot. So dig a little deeper.

Internal conflict happens inside the character. At some degree every single character in a book should have some degree of internal conflict. Something the character wants and cannot get. The more spiritual the better. Ned Stark is constantly having to choose between his honor and integrity and how the real world works. Let's go back to LOTR for a minute while Tolkien redirects his story time and again to the external struggle, the war, and the horrors of war right up until the end when Frodo succumbs to the temptations plaguing him since he became the ring bearer. I found Tolkien's approach unique and compelling. The internal conflict here nearly determined the outcome of the book and this is why Lord of the Rings is a masterpiece.

So go forth and plot your conflict.

Love,

Melanie