Creating Conflict in your story

Conflict is the engine that drives your story. It’s what makes your characters go from being bored to fighting each other, from arguing over dry toast to shooting lasers from their eyes. Conflict happens when two or more people have different opinions, ideas, and goals. They can agree on the facts but disagree about their significance and how those things should be resolved. When those things are brought together, conflict results. A character is made up of their motivations and goals. If you don’t know where a character stands or what they want by the end of your story, then there won’t be enough conflict in your ending for it to feel satisfying. Here are some ways you can add conflict to your story.

Define your character’s goals and motivations

Just like you have to know your goals, you have to know your character’s goals and motivations. Your goal is what you want the story to be about. It’s the reason you wrote the story. A character’s motivation is why they want the goal. Let’s look at an example to make this more concrete. Imagine you’re writing about a princess who wants to have a baby so she can have an heir to the throne. That’s the goal. The princess’s motivation is that she wants to be able to protect her people and keep the kingdom safe. Now, you know that she also wants to have a baby and you know why she wants a baby, but you don’t know what she wants more than anything else. Maybe she wants to protect her people more than she wants to have a baby. Maybe she wants to protect the kingdom more. Maybe she just wants to protect something. Maybe she wants to protect her people, but changes once she has a baby. Point is, if her goal is to protect something, you have to clearly define that action.

Show, don’t tell, how they feel

Even if you know your character’s motivations and goals, you can’t write about them unless you know how they feel about them. If you just tell the reader what the character thinks and feels, they’ll miss out on the author’s point. Readers can catch on a bit, but they can’t truly understand your characters until they’ve been inside their heads. So, don’t just tell the reader that your character wants to have a baby. Tell them how and why they want to have a baby. Discuss their motivations, their hopes and dreams, and their fears. Make the reader understand your character inside and out so they can see the character in a new light. That way, the reader can see the world from the new character’s perspective and so they can understand the character better.

Involve other characters in the conflict

Conflict is often about two people, but it’s sometimes about more than two people. When it’s not just about your main characters, then it’s about the entire world that they live in. Every conflict is a struggle between two things: your character’s goal and another person’s goal. That person can be anyone, even someone who isn’t a character in the story. For example, conflict can be between two people in the story, but it can also be between a character in the story and a situation in the story. Disaster movies are a great example of a situation creating the conflict. The conflict is between what your character wants and what the people or situations that deny that.

Don’t underestimate the power of small changes

We often talk about having big conflicts between two characters, but when you’re writing, you have to explore the small changes. Every conflict is between two things. If one of those things is changed, then the conflict changes. For example, let’s say your character is a working woman, but has a dream about a baby. Their boss wants them to stop dreaming about babies because the job is too important. The boss has created the conflict is between the character’s dream and the company’s expectations. Now let’s say the woman finds out that she is already pregnant. This sudden small change in the conflict could become a very powerful situation.

End on a high note

Common conflicts in stories end on a high note. They end with the characters resolving their conflicts and being happy with the outcome. Sometimes, though, the conflict ends with the characters just being okay with the outcome. And even other times, the conflict ends and the character doesn’t like it at all. Just keep in mind that audiences want a happy ending. So try to end on a high note. Always. If you end on a low note, the conflict in your story feels unsatisfying because it doesn’t feel like it had an ending. If it doesn’t have an ending, it feels unresolved and incomplete. The last thing you want is for your story’s ending to feel unsatisfying because one of the things that happens in the ending is not satisfactory.

Conflict isn’t restricted to your main characters

It can be a struggle to make your main character’s conflict feel satisfying. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the conflict between two characters and forget that the conflict between your main character and the world is just as important. The conflict between your character and the world is what makes your story unique. Your character’s relationship with the world is what makes your character different from every other character that has ever existed in any story. Conflict between your main character and the world can come in many forms. It can be between what your character wants and what their society expects of them. It can be between what your character wants and what someone else wants. It can be between what your character wants and what the environment wants. Don’t be afraid to widen the scope of your conflict.

Conclusion

Conflict is the engine that drives conflict in your story. It’s what makes your characters go from being bored to fighting each other, from arguing over dry toast to shooting lasers from their eyes. Conflict happens when two or more people have different opinions, ideas, and goals. They can agree on the facts but disagree about their significance and how those things should be resolved. When those things are brought together, conflict results. A character is made up of their motivations and goals. If you don’t know where a character stands or what they want by the end of your story, then there won’t be enough conflict in your ending for it to feel satisfying. With these tips in mind, you’ll be able to add conflict to your story in a satisfying way.