A while ago, a friend of mine who is working on her first novel asked me if we could get together and talk about her current work in progress (WiP). She had several scenes written but wasn’t sure how to advance the story further and wanted to get some feedback from me.

Of course I agreed. I teach the occasional creative writing class in the private high school where I work, and I love to help students and friends in this area. So we set a date to meet, and my friend asked if I would like to read what she already had before our conference date. I declined because, this early in her project, I was pretty sure the answers she needed were structural and I want the story to be fresh if I ever have the opportunity to critique it.

Sure enough, the problem was structural, and we were able to diagnose it with two questions. The first one: What plot structure was she using? (Her answer: the three act structure I had previously recommended.) The second question: What were her protagonist’s inner and outer conflicts? My friend was able to detail her character’s inner conflict but said as of yet, there was no outer conflict.

Viola. Problem identified.

Any high school English teacher will tell you (over and over again if you were to attend one of my classes) that without conflict, a story is boring. Any avid reader will agree. Yet, as writers who are reasonably nice people, we often struggle with placing our characters in the path of trouble. We want to live happy, peaceful lives, and we want our characters, whom we grow to love, to enjoy emotional stability, as well. The problem is, stories revolve around conflict. They depend on it.

In a longer work, like a novel, you often need more than one conflict. In his screenwriting craft book, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, industry veteran Robert McKee states that the Law of Conflict is: “Nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict” (210). He goes on to state that for a story to possess sufficient complexity, it must contain conflict at three levels: inner conflict, personal conflict, and extra-personal conflict. So, for example, if I were to write an epic fantasy novel, it would need to contain a protagonist with some sort of emotional need (inner conflict); someone she is fighting with (personal conflict); and something that has gone terribly wrong in her world (extra-personal conflict). In The Lord of the Rings this trifecta of trouble appears as Frodo’s innate, Hobbit desire to live a sedentary, quiet life (inner conflict); Frodo’s struggle to master the One Ring instead of being mastered by it (personal conflict); and the need to prevent Sauron from world domination (extra-personal conflict).

If you are working on a novel, and you currently feel stuck or are floundering for ideas about how to develop your plot, try analyzing your story’s structure (even if you are a “Pantster,” or are – like me – some sort of hybrid between Plotter and Pantster; every writer has to have some sort of structural frame to hang those scenes on). Take a hard look at your protagonist and his or her levels of conflict, and see if you can’t find some way of getting unstuck there.

As a creative exercise, try brainstorming these three levels of conflict for random characters. I’d love to hear some of your results in the comments below!

 

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