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.

People talk of Gothic novels - aka Northanger Abbey – but what is a gothic setting? Dracula’s castle is gothic because it helps invoke gothic themes. Take architecture, add in claustrophobia and creeping dread, toss in distance from civilisation, a prison-like atmosphere and you are almost there. 

Old places, and isolated wilderness helps to set the scene.  Almost any castle will do, especially if it is partially ruined and has a dungeon or better yet – a locked door. How about an ancient mansion, a hunting lodge, or dilapidated chateau? There are plenty of ruined cottages scattered about the norther landscape.

Take something familiar and twist it. A doll isn’t gothic-scary, but a doll that inexplicably appears on your bedside table might be. How did it get there? Who put it there?

Signing the contacts on some property isn’t scary, but doing so in Transylvania might be, especially if a mysterious and reclusive count lived there.

Historical fiction is based in reality. In Gothic horror, magic and monsters and things that go bump in the night might be real.

In a Gothic horror, the doll would be the ghost of a horribly murdered girl that now possesses the doll.

In historical fiction ghosts aren’t real and there will usually be a protagonist driven mad by the nasty doll shunted around by her wicked uncle.

 I like writing about the Viking Age which tends to be action-packed and practical. But I am beginning to think along the lines of a chieftain’s hall in the middle of nowhere, with a murderer who stalks the corridors at night, leaving gruesome trophies behind!

Yes, I did read Beowulf at uni!

But add in dread, and snow them in over a brutal winter as they are picked off one by one…

Backstory

"Writing backstory feels like storytelling,” says New York Times bestselling novelist Jamie Ford (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet), “but it isn’t. It’s regurgitating facts or dolling up aspects of world-building—basically plugging in what that author already knows, hoping it will entertain and enlighten the reader. Instead it has the opposite effect. Less is more. Backstory is like creating a ‘connect-the-dots’ picture—you just need the dots. The reader will draw the lines.”

I’ve been thinking about backstory in novel-writing. So, to remind myself, here are some thoughts I've picked up on the internet.

Too much backstory in the opening pages can be a turn-off.

As we begin writing, we’re grounding ourselves in the story, exploring our characters, creating their histories as we discover who they are and what they want. These early writings are a crucial part of the process. As authors, we need to know everything that came before and why our characters act as they do. Our readers, however, do not. Answering their questions too early and too easily takes away a large part of the incentive for them to keep reading.

 A good opening sets the scene, introduces the characters, and sets the story in motion. What it never does is answer the question, “Why?” Why the characters behave and think as they do, and how they came to this point in the opening are questions that will be answered throughout the book.

Good storytelling has nothing to do with what the author wants to say, and everything to do with what the characters need to say. As authors, we don’t speak in our own voices; rather, we’re speaking for our characters.