Creating Compelling Story Conflict
By Mary Kole
Mary Kole is a former literary agent, freelance editor, writing teacher, author of Writing Irresistible Kidlit, and IP developer for major publishers, with over a decade in the publishing industry.
As an aspiring writer, you know that the success of a book idea largely rests on its story conflict, tension, and plot. Without those crucial elements, a narrative becomes stale and fails to engage the reader. However, crafting a compelling story conflict is easier said than done. In this article, I'll provide a detailed guide on how to create a story conflict that maintains tension throughout your novel, memoir, or short story.
What is Story Conflict?
Let's start by defining story conflict. Story conflict refers to a sequence of obstacles that a character must overcome to reach their character objective. These are often linked together with cause and effect logic. Story conflict is the driving force that moves the plot arc forward. Without conflict, there's no story. But how can you create gripping conflict that keeps the reader engaged from start to finish?
The ingredients for crafting a compelling story conflict include high stakes, personal investment from both the character and reader, and emotional resonance. You want your readers to care about what happens to your characters, and that means creating conflict that directly affects the protagonist in a way that challenges everything they hold dear. Think about the consequences of failure and what the character stands to lose if they don't succeed.
Tying Story Conflict to Character
To make the conflict even more engaging, it should be closely tied to your character's objective and motivation. What are they striving to achieve? Why is this important to them? What are the stakes if they do or don’t get what they want? Make the conflict personal and your readers will empathize with your characters on a deeper level.
Another critical component of story conflict is the relationships between your characters. By introducing secondary characters with opposing objectives, you can really put story obstacles in your character’s way. This is where the conflict will arise and create tension. Each person will have their own motivations and desires which will run counter to others, generating friction and angst, ideally in every scene and chapter. This will produce a richness in tone and emotion that will captivate your audience.
How to Execute Story Conflict
To execute story conflict for maximum emotional impact, consider adding character and action beats. A character beat refers to a moment in a story where a character experiences an emotional shift. It can be a reaction to another character's dialogue or inner turmoil, expressed through dialogue, action, or interiority (for your POV, or point of view, character). You should use beats strategically to build suspense and emphasize the tension between characters.
Finally, you should be wary of common mistakes writers make when attempting to create story conflict, such as overuse of bickering (which is not true conflict), improbable plot twists, and simply recycling story beats that appeared earlier in the work (which risks triggering the law of diminishing returns). And you always need to recognize that different genres of novels or short stories require different types and intensities of conflict—understand what your genre target audience expects here in terms of story structure, then adjust accordingly.
Crafting a compelling story conflict is vital for any fiction or creative nonfiction writer. The ingredients that go into it, the connection to characters and their goals, and the relationships between characters themselves are what can make a story intriguing and emotionally resonant. By avoiding common pitfalls, focusing on emotive beats, and considering the dynamics unique to your specific genre, you can create conflict that will hook your reader until the very end.
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