Conflict is perhaps the most important ingredient in a story. Without it, the story is flat and lacks intensity. The difference between fiction and real life is that real life is boring. We do the same thing every day; we eat at the same time, we go to work, we talk to the same people, we watch the same TV shows, and we probably go to bed at the same time every night. I know what you are thinking, what about all the memoirs that are coming out lately? You are right. If you’ve had an interesting life so far I would encourage writing about it. Even in memoir, the reason they were written is because they have a good deal of conflict. In his excellent book Story in Literary Fiction, author William Coles says that “conflict can be physical, mental, or emotional. The action is presented by placing the reader in the scene or by narrative telling, and resolution involves a change in the character, either a reversal of some thought or trait in the character or the character’s recognition of something not understood before.”
Conflict is anything that will prevent the character from achieving his goal. In order to write a good story, we must have conflict in mind. Donald Mass says, “where there is conflict, there is rich soil to plant a story.” So how can you add conflict to your story? First, determine your protagonist’s goal, and then just start thinking about thing that will make things hard for him to achieve that goal. That simple.
Two books to check
David Benioff,
City of Thieves, and Joe Hill
20th Century Ghost
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