A story has to have conflict, right? Characters must face obstacles, or why is anybody reading this? Think about it: if you write about a process, and nothing goes wrong, readers will be bored.

Mary went into her immaculate kitchen. She took out bowls, measuring spoons, a rolling pin, and a baking sheet. Carefully measuring flour and oil, and breaking eggs, she stirred the mixture expertly. Dusting the rolling pin with flour, she rolled the dough out, singing quietly to herself. She cut the cookies into artful shapes as she warbled, 'Down in the Valley'. Life was good.

Are you asleep yet? Try this.

As Mary rolled the cookie dough out, stray flour flew out onto the linoleum floor. 'Oh, rats,' she thought. 'More cleaning.' She hunted fruitlessly for the new cookie-cutter set she'd got for Christmas, then settled for the old circles-and-blocks the kids gave her last Mother's Day. Getting into the rhythm of cookie cutting, she began singing along with the radio. 'I'm more than a bird, more than a plane, more than a pretty face beside a train, and it's not easy to be me…'

Howls interrupted her kitchen karaoke. She turned, and two cats were registering their protest. Behind them were floured pawprints across the kitchen flour.

'Everyone's a critic,' Mary sighed.

That first description is only going to be good for something if the next paragraph contains an earthquake.

Why Conflict?

I dunno. Is it because we don't believe in happy worlds? Or we want to see how fictional characters overcome difficulties in order to learn something for ourselves? Or is just Schadenfreude? One way or another, you've got to have some kind of conflict. Even in Mr Rogers' Neighbourhood, things aren't always perfect.

Manufacturing Conflict

What kinds of conflict do we imagine for our imaginary characters?

We could:

• …impose some kind of restriction on our character: the need to acclimate to a new place or new job, the challenges of a disability, a historical event, perhaps?
• …use the setting in some way, imagining a conflict that arises out of a particular place and time. Snow removal in winter? The rigours of pioneer life?
• …introduce contrarian characters: the obnoxious coworker or boss, the irritating in-law, the meter maid with a quota to fill?
• …imagine an internal conflict. Perhaps the character has a crisis of conscience? An unresolved trauma from the past? A personal decision to make that proves difficult?

You can probably imagine other conflicts to throw in. The main things to keep in mind are:

• The conflict should be organic. It should arise from the characters themselves, and the situation you've set up. No fair continually dropping pianos out of windows just to liven things up. Although, come to think of it, that might make a really amusing storyline…but that's lampshading. Normally, let us say, don't drop pianos if you aren't writing a script for Mr Magoo.
• The conflict should be relatable. It should be something the audience can identify with. That way, they'll want to hang around to see how the character solves the problem.
• The conflict should be resolvable. That doesn't mean you have to land on a hunky-dory, peaches-and-cream ending. But the conflict should go somewhere.
• The conflict should be, in some way, a teachable moment. Even if the character doesn't learn anything – the character could be incorrigibly ineducable – the audience should be able to.

Try not to make the conflict revolve around your pet peeve of the week. Why not? Because you'll slip up and oversell it. You're likely to derail your own train of thought and end up with a rant in the shape of a story. It will damage your narrative. It may also become too transparent when the antagonist is somebody whose behaviour really, really gets your nanny. One of the surest ways to lose reader sympathy is to tip your hand as a writer and let them all know what kind of behaviour you, personally, find super-irritating. They're unlikely to thank you for it. Stick to conflicts where you can see more than one side of the issue, if at all possible.

Conflicts can be large or small. They can be horrific, or amusing. But before a story can move, something has to go wrong. Even if it's just singing cats with floury footprints.

Blast from the Past Division: Here's an old story of mine from half a dozen years ago, based on real events in the newspaper at the time. It's called 'Come in, It's Air-Conditioned Inside'. The conflicts, alas, were real: people really did plough into some shop windows in a small town in the Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina, area, as described. It's not a lot of conflict, because Robert Thigpen (a composite character, I assure you) is the most pleasant, Christian, helpful, and above all conflict-avoidant human being you'd ever want to run across. He's the kind of guy you call at the last minute when one of your volunteers didn't show up and you need to serve 300 people at the charity dinner. There's just enough conflict to move the story along, such as it is. You'll also find an illustration of how to avoid lawsuits: all the place names and brand names have been falsified to a ridiculous extent.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

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