Conflict and Caring

Have you ever watched one of those movies where the hero gets shot six times and run over by a truck – then he gets up and races after the villain as if nothing had happened? You saw the conflict, but there was no sense of pain to go with it. The conflict was divorced from feeling and emotion.

Personally I feel short-changed by this. If something bad happens in a story I want to feel the emotions that this engenders. It will most likely be the emotion of the person on the receiving end of the bad thing, but it could be the emotion of an observer or even of the person who perpetrated the offence.

The emotion might be expected – “He hit me. I’m angry, so I’ll hit him back.” “He hit me. I’m afraid so I’ll run away.” Or it could be unexpected – say pity because the aggressor is totally unable to control his movements.

As a writer you can choose the response and follow it any way you want. What you should not do is ignore the emotion. “He hit me and then I went shopping and bought new shoes.”

OK, that’s a pretty obvious example. But in effect that’s what we often do. We show the response -‘ hit him back’, ‘run away’ and we short-change the reader on the actual feeling of anger or fear that produces the reaction. When you are angry, how does it feel to you? Think back to the last time you were angry and define the physical feeling within you.

If you want the reader to care about your protagonist and his journey you have to generate that caring by having him drawn in emotionally. A conflict happens then show the feeling that follows. That feeling will probably lead to the next conflict. Show how, show why.

Not by saying “He felt angry.” How do you, your spouse, your co-workers, neighbors and friends show anger? Watch and find out. One person might go red in the face, another might grind their teeth or curl their hand into a fist.

Become a collector of emotional clues – that way you’ll get it right when you need to show emotion in a story. Unless you are writing ‘hunt-’em-down, shoot-em-up’ stories be more generous in showing the emotion. It doesn’t cost you extra. It’s the ingredient that brings your characters to life.

Fear

Yesterday I heard an interesting idea – that most of us run much of our lives on fear. Well, maybe THEY do, but not me.  Definitely not me.

I’m not talking about the fear of spiders or snakes, but about day-to-day fears.

“I’m afraid my money’s going to run out before the end of the month.”

“I’m afraid my young kids might get into drugs.”

I have to invite my brother to spend Christmas with us or he’ll make my mom’s life miserable”

“I’m afraid I’ll never be as good as she is.”

“I’ll have to skip breakfast to catch my bus. If I’m late again I might lose my job and then I’d never be able to pay the rent.”

Many of these are legitimate fears – if my kids were still young I’d be afraid of them getting into drugs too. I’d behave in a way that minimized those chances. But when you are writing these fears are all grist for your mill. These are the kind of fears, reasonable or otherwise, that people are living with and orchestrating their lives around.

It affects their behavior. The woman afraid of losing her job is not going to set off sedately for the bus and calmly accept the fact that it left ten minutes ago. She is going to be running, panicked if she misses it, antsy waiting for the next bus, berating herself for being so stupid as to sleep in.

She will get to work ragged and unfocused, probably make a few mistakes in her flustering, and be cranky to her co-workers. You could be setting her up for something really bad to happen. If it does she will be mentally less well prepared to deal with it capably. You  can write her into a serious situation with heightened conflict.

Maybe in her flustering she accidentally shreds some important papers. The stakes just got raised. Maybe the Big Boss is in town and needs the papers.

But you don’t have to go for the major conflict here. You can just show this person as a woman who nervously tries to be a really good employee even though she is a square peg in a round hole. She tries so hard to be useful and helpful that she becomes a bit of a nuisance. Perhaps this leaves her open to be bullied. and maybe she is driven to do something drastic to end the bullying.

Well, here we are at major conflict again. We look at ordinary, everyday lives and perhaps we don’t see a lot of fiction-worthy conflict. But it’s there, latent, hiding in the common fears we all have.

Common sense tells us to take small steps towards addressing any fears that start to run our lives – small preventative measures perhaps. However, we’re talking about fiction here. Sensible action is not what we’re looking for. We just want our larger-than-life characters to have traits of common humanity that everyone will recognize. Fears are everywhere – possibly disguised. Use them to give your story depth and believability.

7 Best Conflicts

Conflict is a  struggle or clash between two opposing forces. Opposing forces can be:

• armies,

• individual people such as family members, neighbors

• ideals, ideas, opinions,

• wishes or impulses

• physical forces

The ability to spot and sense conflict is a great asset to  writer. Anyone can see armies firing rockets at each other on a newscast, or one boy hit another after school. It takes a more perceptive mind to see the conflict between two people who, on the surface, like each other.

You might see it in shoulder tension, in lack of eye contact, in a quick turning aside or in word choice – words that were unusually careful, or not careful enough.

In a lot of fiction today – sci-fi, fantasy – we see overt conflict. It can be bombs, sword fights, gun battles, but you see the conflict happening and it’s right in your face.

But in a lot of our work the conflict we portray is not overt. It is revealed slowly through dialog and juxtaposition of events and actions. Sometimes the strongest conflict is the internal conflict – one person fighting the forces within.

Even the basic ‘good versus evil’ conflict is intensified when fought within the confines of one person. Ideas – the practical versus the spiritual, for example – take on deeper meaning if the thoughts are battling in one mind.

Often the conflict is “I want to,” versus “I shouldn’t” –  “I want that new TV but I shouldn’t max out my credit card.”

Or it is “I want to,” versus “I don’t think I can” – “I want to ask that girl for a date but I’m pretty sure she won’t go out with me.”

You can take the seven deadly sins and re-write them in plot form (although some work better than others in our time)

Anger -“I’m so ticked off at my wife that I’m thinking of leaving her. I’ll miss the kids but it will teach her a lesson.”

Greed – I want all the money from my grandfather’s estate. Watch me scam my cousins out of their share.”

Sloth – “Why should I take  the trash out when I’m so comfy watching the football game?”

Pride – “I love my new job as sales manager. I’m going to show those salesmen just who’s boss.”

Lust -“He’s a hunk! How can I get him to notice me? Tight dress? Blonde highlights? Stall my car in front of his house?”

Envy – “I should have got that promotion. I deserve it! I’m going to set out to make my new boss’s life miserable.

Gluttony – “I’m going to run an oil pipeline through that pristine forest. It will make me rich.”

Al of these set up clashes and conflicts from which stories  can be built. The imagination takes over and you’ve got ideas aplenty. You’re a writer!