Story Building (Part VI): Swordfights and Spitballs

An explosion of shattering glass splintered the silence and yanked me awake.

Shirley screamed.

I shot up and kicked off the sheets, my heart racing. Not again. Broken glass chinked across a hard floor. I stumbled through the dark, fumbled with the knob, and flung open my bedroom door. The chemical smell of alcohol slammed into my face and burned my nose and throat.

“Mom, stop,” Shirley sobbed. “It’s me.”

If there was more to this scene, would you keep reading? What about this next snippet?

The chirp of a songbird roused me from my dreams. Soft humming came from the direction of Shirley’s room.

I pushed off my sheets and stretched. A spoon clinked against a mug in the kitchen. I walked across my sunlit bedroom, turned the knob, and opened my bedroom door. The bittersweet smell of coffee—mixed with a smoky bacon scent—greeted me.

“Mom,” Shirley called from the kitchen. “I’m up.”

What’s the difference between these two 70-word scenes? Both start out with a sound waking up the MC. There’s a vocal noise from Shirley. There’s the getting out of bed, sounds from the kitchen, leaving the bedroom, smells, and dialogue in both. Both have fair description. What made the first scene interesting and the second scene boring? It’s conflict.

Conflict is what keeps readers reading. It’s what grabs the audience. Which of those scenes, if it was on the first page of a book you’ve never heard of, would you keep reading? Hopefully you said the first one, because that’s the opening of my book, Defending That Which Is Not Mine. :)

At the close of last week’s post, Story Building (Part V): when the ending still hurts, I talked about making your audience wonder if the MC will make it. Will he stick to his ideals? Will he get the story goal? Will he give his all? The unknown is what pulls the reader in, and if you grab your audience in the first sentence, it’s your job to keep him reading until he turns the last page of your story.

Making Them Wonder

How do you do that? Creating doubt and therefore irresistible curiosity in your reader means that you need to mess up your MC’s plans, throw disasters in his path, and don’t give it to him easy. Dan Schwabauer once said that people like reading about things going wrong…for other people. You need to set your hero on his way, and then put roadblocks in his path.

Types of Conflict

Conflict comes in two ways: external and internal. External conflict tends to appear in the form of something going wrong. It can be catastrophic or minimal. It includes everything from getting fired from his job or getting caught in a blizzard to forgetting his house key. Dan Schwabauer describes external conflicts as disasters.

Internal conflict is presented in the form of a choice between two bad options and he must choose. If both options weren’t bad, then it wouldn’t be conflict. It’s the decision between fighting cannibals armed with bows and arrows while the MC only has a sword, or swimming across the near-frozen river at his back. Again, according to Mr. Schwabauer, this would be a dilemma.

Conflict doesn’t need to be violence. It can be an argument, someone agonizing over a stock market decline, a spitball from across the classroom, or someone beating themselves up for something they said. The Anne of Green Gables (1985) and Anne of Avonlea (sequel) (1987) movies are great demonstrations of conflict without violence.

A few things to keep in mind

Conflict…

·       Is crucial. As much as you may hate not helping your MC or thinking up ways to get him out of the situation you’ve put him in, you need it. Without it, your story will flop.

·       Is the beat to the music of your story: always present, sometimes loud, sometimes soft.

·       Comes in different forms and intensity. It will travel in dips and waves but is continually building up to the climactic collision of the opposing ideals.

·       Will wear down the reader if you’re not careful. Too much external conflict will exhaust your audience. Intersperse external conflicts with forcing the MC to make a choice. The intensity will feel a bit lower and give the reader a mental break without letting off the pressure entirely.

·       Reveals your character’s true person. Squeezed from the Mindset Matters blog sums this idea up in a few, great paragraphs. Your character’s response to the external and internal pressures shows what he’s made of and is what helps bring the change we’ll talk about in next week’s post.

·       Is a realistic part of life that adds to your story.

It’s also worth noting that disasters lead to another disaster or a dilemma, while dilemmas only lead to another disaster.

This week think of some things to get in your MC’s way of getting the story goal. Practice writing a few scenes where the MC makes a plan and it gets thwarted, even if the plan is as simple as “build a fire.” Oh, there’s nothing burnable in sight. :) Force him to make a choice between freezing to death or giving up his lifelong dream and the only memory of his friend.

Ask yourself, “What could I make go wrong?” Which disasters and dilemmas will the villain control, and which ones will just be a part of life, or a result of the MC’s own choices, or something just because (i.e. an earthquake)? Which disasters and dilemmas are big, and which ones are the sparks that keep the story moving?

“Always grab the reader by the throat in the first paragraph, send your thumbs into his windpipe in the second, and hold him against the wall until the tagline.”

– Paul O’Neil

Enjoy brainstorming and don’t forget to share what you come up with in the comments. Feel free to ask questions, and until next time, thanks for reading!

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Conflict is the beat to the music of your story.

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