Prewriting: Identifying the conflict

Without conflict, you have no story. So, correctly identifying and understanding it is crucial for effective storytelling. Whether it’s a movie, theater, song, novel, or even a pamphlet, space is a premium resource. Both the author and the audience can only focus on so much at any given time. On one side, there’s the risk of creating something sprawling and directionless, while on the other, it could be thin and shallow with no depth. For the audience, without careful attention, they might get lost and confused or be left wanting more, potentially leading to frustration and a loss of interest. In prewriting, it’s paramount to identify the conflict, build the story around it, and, most importantly, make efficient use of the available space to convey as much as possible with as little words as possible.

Hello Neophyte, welcome. Today, we’re delving into one of the pivotal steps in the prewriting phase – the identification of conflict. This step, along with developing characters, will play a key role in shaping the course of the story. Let’s focus on conflict for now; as I’ve mentioned before, there are two types – internal and external. The internal conflict involves a character’s inner struggles and will be explored more when we discuss characters. For now, let’s concentrate on the external factor, which is often misunderstood. Why, you ask, Neophyte?

Because for anything to matter to the reader, it has to matter to the characters. For it to matter to them, it has to touch their inner core in some way. So even if it’s something in the background, a far distant threat looming on the horizon, it has to feel close and personal enough to impact the characters. If your characters constantly ignore it or don’t take it seriously, or worse, if you briefly mention it and then forget about it, you’ll reach a point where you suddenly realize, “Oh, crud, the plot!” and hastily stitch everything together. In that case, you have a failure on your hands, and I won’t mince words about it, Neophyte.

Conflict, what truly matters, is easy to confuse, especially in this day and age where we externalize so much that we seem to have forgotten what an inner core means. A conflict is alluring, entrancing, captivating, intense – not because it’s dangerous. Repeat after me, Neophyte, “There is a limit to how many times you can threaten to blow up the world before people lose interest.” It’s not exactly catchy, but it’s true. To identify the right conflict for your story in the prewriting phase, it has to feel like the world is ending without it actually ending, for every ending is a new beginning. But I am veering off-topic.

There are two sides to this – the first is the external one. Something happens that causes a point of contention, something shatters in the world of the characters that propels them into the story you want to write. Let’s run through a few examples:

The patriarch of a family dies, leaving in the air the issue of succession. The external conflict here is evident.

The administrator of a building is found dead in the boiler room, and the only suspects are the tenants. So, who killed him?

A fisherman dies in a small coastal town; he had a large inheritance that he never touched, and he had only one son. However, many women from the town come forward claiming that he fathered their children. I hope this conflict is self-explanatory.

From the outside, this is simple enough, really. External conflict rarely has any twists to it, at least for the author. The trick is trying to weave it in such a way that puts the characters’ inner cores at play.

Let’s take the Patriarch example and run with it. How many children did he have, and what was their relationship with him? Did he leave a will? Yes? No? What type of people are his children, and how will their relationships impact the coming conflict? There is a deadline for the will to be executed, so there is pressure on that side and the mounting pressure of the competition between his offspring. Is his wife still alive? If so, how does she play into this? Is she a puppeteer or a passive character? Did he have debts?

I hope that you have noticed by now that conflict doesn’t refer to just one thing; it can be one thing but with many faces.

Let’s take another example: a battalion goes to war. That is the external conflict, a literal conflict. But how you present it will differ by the people, especially if you have more than one character. Because a conflict for the guy in charge of logistics is not the same as it is for the riflemen, the actual boots on the ground, or the colonel leading the overall tactics. Here, Neophyte, is where we circle back to the issue of space.

By identifying the conflict, you will know what to focus on, how to focus on it, and how to handle your space. This is crucial, Neophyte, because a meandering book that should be focused is a surefire recipe for bad writing certification.

I also hope that you have noticed that I have kept the examples focused and limited. Sure, when Superman saves the planet, everyone is interested, but Superman is a larger-than-life character, and there is a limit to how people can relate to such a character. As I said before, how many times can the world be saved before its audience becomes dull to it? If you are truly skilled, you can build a narrative that feels world-shattering inside a single building by keeping the scope and scale limited and not losing yourself in the sprawl, because if you get lost, so will the reader.

So, to recap, identify the conflict, how it interacts with your characters, and how you can build it in an efficient way without getting last in the sprawl. Got it? Good. The next step is that you must accept that you will come back to rebuild it many times as you write. What? Don’t look at me like that, and forgive the cheeky smile. In the craft, nothing is ever done until the book is done.

Until next time.