Here are seven different types to consider. There are two basic kinds of conflict: external and internal, which have been further categorized and codified in many different ways over time.
#V PUTI RUSSIAN GRAMMAR IN CONTEXT ANSWER KEY SERIES#
Without conflict, your main character is simply experiencing a series of largely uninteresting slice-of-life moments. It offers a teasing carrot of uncertainty about whether your protagonist will achieve that goal, keeping your readers engaged and turning pages to discover whether (or not) the conflict is resolved.Īnd that’s what every author wants, right? To carry the reader all the way to THE END?
Conflict is what comes from the challenges your protagonist must solve or resolve on the way to achieving his/her/their goal. Conflict is opposition – either internal or external (more on that below). Quite simply, conflict keeps your story interesting.
Layered Conflict Makes Compelling Fiction. They’ll focus on eloquent setting description or complex character development but then give the main character no conflict to resolve. Just as they want to avoid conflict in their own lives, they don’t want to place their characters into uncomfortable, confrontational situations. Yet readers crave it in fiction.įirst-time authors often find the idea of putting their characters into conflict an upsetting one. In her book Writing Fiction, Janet Burroway says that, in literature, “only trouble is interesting.” It’s a bit ironic that in real life, we resist trouble we shy away from conflict. Every kind of story, every genre – novel, short story, science fiction, romance, mystery, historical, young adult, etc. The finer details like story setting, character, and plot events all give the reader context and understanding, but conflict, according to McKee, is the “soul” of story. This is what Robert McKee, the author of Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, calls the Law of Conflict, and storytelling is governed by it. 
“Nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict.”
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