Conflict can be simple

 Ever wondered about conflict in creative writing?

It's important. Without it, a book is boring.

There is conflict in action and everybody can see when two characters come to blows or the Indians attack the cowboys. There can also be conflict that is only implied or suggested, even hidden.

People rarely agree about everything, no matter how good a friendship is. Little things niggle and become an irritant, and can lead to big blow-ups which may seem to be about one thing but are often due to something completely unsuspected. Those conflicts make life really interesting! So often these spats show what people really are and what makes them tick - or explode.

My dog and I have conflict. She wants to dart from side to side at great speed, following every last smell but I want her to walk sedately by my side and not drag me into a hedge or a cowpat.  We struggle. Eventually I win, and she loses interest in the smells. (Not really, but she stops dragging me to them!) Sometimes I can be patience itself with this behaviour but sometimes I am dangerously close to shrieking at her and since she's deaf, it doesn't help. 

The shrieking can be because several small incidents have happened to me that particular day, and it is the cumulative effect that tips me too far over the edge. This can happen in fiction, too.  It doesn't have to be one word, or one phrase, but it might be several comments from different characters spread over a day. Conflicts can be simple or they can be complex. Writing conflict is wonderful.

Conflict in fiction

Snowy slopes in Banff

Conflict is defined as a struggle, often an unconscious one, as a result of opposition or simultaneous functioning of mutually exclusive impulses, desires or tendencies. 
A character may have to decide between right and wrong or  between 2 or more solutions to a problem. 

1. attraction and prejudice (Pride and Prejudice is an example)
2. Opposing desires
3. Mismatches and/or uncertainty
4. incompatible goals
5.  It is about being in a new situation where old attitudes and habits war with and hinder the need to change.

Show conflict by showing character responding to their inner compulsions.
What is your hero's desire?
What is his fear?
In the opening chapters, introduce your hero and heroine and their conflicts, both external and internal. What stops them achieving what they want? Add a killer hook, an inventive and clever inciting incident - sparkly, witty and page turning would be good. By chapter 3  the reader should know why this couple are better together than apart. Are these two going on a journey? Is it clear to the reader? What would happen if they failed to achieve the destination? Who would care?

External conflict forces characters together, but internal conflict forces them apart.

Always start with a moment of change, preferably with dialogue. Reveal secrets and drop bombshells in the middle to keep readers turning the page. There should be a Black Moment at the end of the middle section. Conflict should build tension, show motivation, fore a choice and make the character grow.

(Notes, handwritten many years ago, found tucked into a diary. Possibly taken from category romance instructions, but still good for all that.)

Plot Points

Editing makes a person consider plot points.

Definition? A plot point is a turning point in the story for both protagonist and plot.

Start with your protagonist at a moment of  change - and this had better be a significant, life-changing change, rather than a decision to wear heels rather than flatties. Feed in a few general details to give us a grasp of normal life because then we will appreciate the changing incident more. This first plot point marks a change in and for the protagonist, indicates the direction the story is about to take, and hopefully engages the reader. The most difficult question to answer is the last one. How can we know if it strikes any sort of bell for the reader?

Once you have your protagonist marching in his new direction, he should run into conflict, both expected and unexpected. How he handles these is a learning curve for him and strengthens his character. As the climax of the story approaches the hero has to face his most difficult challenge of all. How he handles this will define the rest of his life - and sometimes if he has a life after this. 

It is easy to forget the emotional side of this last confrontation when writing the action. Don't forget the effort it takes, the courage, strength and persistence to keep moving forward toward a goal. I suspect I have skipped over this point too lightly in my story of Matho, but I will fix that as I reach the last chapters in what will hopefully be my final edit.

Afterwards, your protagonist and mine should be a different person. The same, but more so, with added strength and knowing what he can do when pushed to the absolute limit.The next question is, what does he do then? Go back to obscurity? Hardly.

Conflict in fiction

Act Two makes up the bulk of the story. This is the Action Story. It is here that the hero tries to solve the problem, save the maiden, complete his journey, whatever. The problem itself may shift or change as the story progresses. Little stays static in real life, and we can use that in fiction. Problems metamorphose into larger problems, or twist and become different problems.

This is where the tension must rise as the problem is faced and overcome in a series of mini climax up to the ultimate climax which resolves everything. It is in Act Two that the story events, even if they're changing, need to be linked to each other. Think cause and effect - there always has to be a link, even if we know random acts take place in real life. Good Fiction rarely depends on luck. There has to be internal logic and structure. Each plot-point must rise out of the previous point. After each climax there will be a small lull and then the tension begins to rise again.

Remember that if you have several story threads running through your novel - and I have! - then each thread needs its own internal logic, and the tension must rise there also, in the same way. Importantly all the threads need to link into a logical ending. Now this is where I think I have some of my threads rising jerkily. I wanted to show the two steps forward, one step back, sequence that so often happens in Real Life, but sometimes things got out of sequence as a consequence. This is something I must check.

Rising side by side with the Action Story is the Emotional Journey, and I'll write about that next time.
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First chapters

The best advice I ever read about first chapters was “re-write it.”

(The theory behind this advice is that the author is thinking her way through the facts of her characters and story when she first writes Chapter One., so it is usually crap.)

 I did that. Scrapped chapter One, and started with the original chapter 2. (But I wasn't so daft that I didn't keep a copy on my hard drive and a memory stick, just in case!)

Other advice is Start where the conflict begins, and include action. Don’t go into detail about characters that are never mentioned again. Ensure there is a flavour of the genre and a sense of setting and period.

So I removed all the exposition, and gave tantalising clues about future action. But somehow I never really loved that second version of my story.

Months later I decided I wanted the original first chapter back again to give a real feel for what was happening in the book. So I got out the original Chapter One, pared it down to the bone and added some character conflict between Matho and Harry to the main conflict because I know the characters so much better now after two years writing and re-writing. 

Suddenly sentences started flowing together in a way they never had before. Three bald sentences collapsed down into one graceful sentence and I thought I was really getting somewhere. Since it's a story with more than one viewpoint character, I decided to give my second protagonist, Meg, space in chapter one. After all, she's a large part of the conflict.

But now I have a fairly long first chapter. How long is too long? Where should I make the break? But at least the conflict is set up, and there are clues that my two main protagonists are destinied to clash head-on before too long.

Revision Fatigue

Durham Market Square

In spite of the rain clouds and the dull, windy sky, I'm feeling pleased with life. That's because I have finished - hurrah! - what is probably the fifth edit of  my first Matho story.  I haven't been counting the edits, but this one feels like I'm really getting the hang of revising a story.
I was pretty chuffed with the first draft, but that was probably four years ago. I made the big mistake and sent partial submissions out, and of course got rejections. About six months later, I had another look at the story, wondering why it didn't have agents queuing up at my door. That's when I saw all the niggling little repetitions and awkwardnesses, even the occasional plot problem.

A year on, and I went through it again, and found still more to change. Does this process never end, I wondered? Will I be doing this ten years from now? Then I read a piece about revising and though I can't remember who said it, I jotted down the four things that really count: Conflict, Suspense, Drama and Emotional Intensity. One or the other of these should appear on every page.

The full meaning of the phrase Revision Fatigue hit me. The story was as good as I could make it and I didn't want to go through the damned thing again....but I knew I needed to do it. Nobody warns you about this process. Some authors blog about doing their umpteenth edit, but like every other newish writer, I must have glossed over it. I certainly didn't properly take it in.

But you know what? This time around, I gave myself permission to be ruthless. I chopped boring bits (yes, there were some) re-drafted sentences so they were less clunky, upped the intensity every which way I could think of and even subjected poor old Matho to be a bit of torture along the way. Punctuation and missed words (yes, there were still some of those, too) chapter endings and beginnings - all were given the old critical eye. I re-wrote two chapters from a different POV because I thought it gave the whole more intensity. The last chapter was finally finished off properly. I think I'd got so tired at the end of writing 110,000 words that it had always got short shrift. Now it is done, and I can can go off and have a jolly day out. Yeah!

Yet more on conflict

Greenhouses at Chatsworth

Conflict also has to come through plot though it is not divorced from character.  Having a brand new character suffer tragedy on their first appearance in the pages won’t work because the reader is not emotionally involved with the character. Having said that, let me qualify the statement. The only way it will work is if the tragedy is an early event in the life of the hero or heroine and we’re going to find out in the rest of the book exactly why it mattered so much. This sort of event often sits at the front of the book as a prologue, and it has to grip the reader and make them want to find out what happened next.

Personally I’m not in favour of childhood incidents that then resonate through the life of the major character when we pick up the story thirty years later. For me this would be better handled as a mystery thread, making the reader wonder why the hero acts as he does until we find out at a late point in the story what that dreadful childhood incident was. If it’s something in the near past, say a year ago, then it’s OK to treat that differently, for then it adds a different element to the tale, because the reader knows that the hero will react badly to certain stimuli that are certain to arrive sooner or later.

I heard a tale locally of a writer reading her first page to her writing group. It began with graphic sex, which made everyone uncomfortable, not because of the sex, but because they had no point of reference. They didn’t know either character involved and therefore were not “clued in” to the story or the strangers performing such intimate acts.

 It’s a lesson worth remembering!

Conflict ongoing

Satisfaction may be great in real life, but in fiction,  the struggle is the thing. If your character faces troubles in the world around him, why not add to them by giving him inner troubles as well?
My current character is doubtful of his own abilities as a courier-cum-kidnapper, and for every step forward in confidence and ability he falls back two - or that's the way I'm trying to build the plot. He's doubtful of the rightness of what Henry VIII has asked him to do - more internal struggle. If he does what the king asks, he'll have his foot on the first rung of the ladder to success and riches - but at what cost? If he goes through with it, he can afford to take a wife, if he doesn't, he has no way of supporting her. Lots of struggle, I think. The only thing is, the struggle is all in my mind - but have I brought it out onto the page? Will my readers (if I ever have any!!) appreciate  his inner thoughts?)

Chatsworth House, south front

I've done a third draft of Treason, which needs a change of title as the hero, as an Englishman, is not exactly committing treason no matter what he does when he's in Scotland. (I'm thinking of The Hope of Scotland, but may come up with something better) and will now read it through hoping I have cut out all the repetition, glossed up the sentences and upped the tension sufficiently to keep people turning pages.

This morning is the first of a 3-day freebie for Fair Border Bride on Amazon Kindle, so if you fancy a great free read about Harry and Alina's struggles among the Border Reivers, do something about it now!

Tension

Chatsworth House

We’re told tension in creative writing comes from conflict, and depending on the genre, it has different causes. With romance it’s all usually quirks locked away within the characters, only to emerge when one party meets the (potential) love of their life only to discover an opposing habit or quirk that means they cannot be together. Think kleptomaniac meets policewoman – bound to be problems there. Or man with alcohol problem meets Salvation Army woman; addictive personality meets iron-willed volunteer. How do you get those two together in a lasting relationship?

Battlefields, courtrooms, schools and hospitals all provide conflict without the author having to struggle too much, but seeking conflict in suburbia is more difficult. Suburbia is inherently safe, at first glance.  But think of the Bennet women, living under the threat of being turned out of their home once Papa died. Unless one of them married well, they were doomed to a life of drudgery and that sort of conflict rules lives and forces decisions that would otherwise not be taken. Fortunately houses are not usually entailed in suburbia these days, but sometimes it is damned difficult to keep on paying the mortgage. Pile on the agony by having the breadwinner die unexpectedly, and a teenager turn to drugs or run wild, or worse still, run away. The result is almost more tension than the writer can handle.



the drummer

Unfortunately, none of these examples are particularly original, and that’s what everyone’s looking for these days. But the basic idea holds good. The writer needs an original twist to an old problem, more than one plot layer and characters that will live in the mind of the reader after the book closes. How does a writer achieve that? Well, give the characters something difficult to achieve, problems to overcome, make them suffer and live dangerously close to disaster. That’s how – but exactly how is up to each writer. March to the sound of your own particular drummer.

This is just a reminder for me to sail Matho closer and closer to the wind…

Downton and dumbing down

Downton Abbey’s airtime is to be cut from eight to six hours when it goes out Stateside next week amid fears it will be too complex for American viewers.

It is thought “there might be too many references to the entail and they have been cut. It is not a concept people in the US are very familiar with.”
Well, I have to say I’m not familiar with an entail either. Why would I be? My family even at its most extended and affluent has never had cause to think of such a thing, and I think that goes for most of the British population.

“American audiences are used to a different speed when it comes to television drama and you need to get into a story very quickly.” Not only in their tv, darling, but in their books, too. Miss out the detail, go for the action seems to be the cry.

“Matthew Crawley (played by Dan Stevens) – a middle-class third cousin of Lord Grantham (played by Hugh Bonneville) who becomes the unlikely heir to the family’s estate – will also arrive earlier than he did in the UK version to increase the show’s “drama and conflict." He is a pivotal character and his arrival brings with it drama and conflict. In the British version he doesn’t arrive until episode two. In our version he is there in episode one.”

The eight hour running time has been cut to six for the US, but there is hope for those who would like to see the whole story – the DVD boxed set will be the eight hour version.

Perhaps this goes someway to pinpointing the differences in UK-US film/tv culture. Most of the film stuff that comes out of the US these days makes me think of the cartoon characters in the comics we used to read as children. Angelina Jolie in Salt, for one – the action sequences should have killed her off in the first reel but no, up she bounces, dives off a motorway bridge and ricochets off yet another moving juggernaut on the lane below. I gave up counting how many times she ought to have died and thought of her as an indiarubber doll rather than a human being.

This is a bit of a rant for the New Year! Maybe I'll save books for the next post.

Conflict and Gotham writers

This is the old pack horse bridge over the Whittle Burn in Ovingham, and has absolutely nothing to do with what follows, but it's pretty, and I like it. It was repaired in 1698, so it is pretty old.


The start of a story is important. It has to grab the reader. So the lead-in, from the first page to the inciting incident should introduce the protagonist, establish the genre and the setting and lead to the inciting incident. And you have to do it in an interesting way. You might want to show your protagonist in his/her normal world, which the inciting incident will disrupt and set the rest in motion. Or you might prefer to begin with an incident that will tip everything normal on its head, and run from there.

And for the rest - keep the conflict coming so that stakes are raised for the protagonist, weave in subplots and give it all highs and lows. Conflict may be many things - external, internal, spiritual, emotional, physical - but you need it. Reaching the goal has to get harder and harder. If the main character has nothing to lose, you have no conflict.

Ouseburn and pacing

More bridges, this time where the Ouseburn runs into the Tyne, less than a mile and a half from the Tyne bridge, but tucked away out of sight. Although the pub looks as if it is sitting on the bridge, I assure you is not. The strange ovoid shaped piece of white metal is part of the barrage they are busy putting into place to keep the water level constant upstream. At low tide the banks of the burn are an unsightly mess of mud. Once the barrage is in place, it will look much better.
Before I forget - I have an excerpt on Unusual Historicals today - or maybe yesterday now! Do have a look. It's a bit from Dark Pool, my story set in Viking Dublin.

The weather has been so good this week that I've been out gardening every day, but now it is time to get back to work. I've been having doubts about the opening chpaters of KT so whilst gardening I've been simmering about what to do. I've had the old notebooks out, checking the words of masters like McKee, Bransford and Maas on things like pacing and conflict. I've pickedup some lovely quotes along the way. "Pacing is the rhythm of a novel." Well, yes, but it doesn't tell you how to achieve good pacing, does it? "Pacing is the length of time between moments of conflict." That gives me a clue. "The rate the reader reads." "The speed at which the novel events occur and unfold." What speeds up pace? Dialogue. Now we're getting somewhere.

Bradbury says: "Start where things start to go wrong." So, I'm rethinking the opening pages. Much as I love them, there is no real hook there to grab the reader, no hint of plot. Of course, this book started out as a romance, pure and simple. Now it has morphed into something else. Since I'm a start-at-the-beginning-and-work-through-to-the-end sort of writer, then those first pages are the oldest bits of writing.

Bransford says "without conflict the book is DOA." His way of putting things is sharp and dead on the money, and I must now go back and look at my beginning.