It’s craft time! Writing craft, that is. Through the years, writers and literature teachers have precisely defined the terms they apply to story discussions. Those denotations help us talk about what is going on in a story more easily. But I find remembering these words’ meaning a challenge, even though I think about writing craft all the time. Here are some thoughts that might help you as well as me.

Conflict

Literary Conflict

Conflict is one of the first things a student learns about when discussing story. In school we study examples of different kinds of literary conflict. (“The Lady or The Tiger,” anyone? How about “Yellow Wallpaper?” “To Build a Fire?”) We use conflict categories to describe the general plot of a tale. The storyline consists of a protagonist going up against someone or something to reach their goal.

This list from Dan Brown’s Masterclass notes seems exhaustive (When I was in school, there were only three!):

• Character versus Self. The protagonist’s battle is with themselves. Think of the first four act of Hamlet, for example.
• Character versus Character. Likely the most common plotlines involve a person opposing another person.
• Character versus Nature. Jack London owned this sort of conflict, but it is perennially popular as at least one aspect of the struggles on various reality shows.
• Character versus Supernatural. Much like character versus character, except the antagonist is much more powerful and difficult to understand.
• Character versus Technology. Our plot may be about the puny human literally struggling against a machine like a steam engine or robot, or more cerebral, such a being trapped in a matrix or computer, for example.
• Character versus Society. Our protagonist may be at odds with social institutions on a small (their school or workplace) or large (the system as a whole) scale.

Character Conflict

We also use the terms “internal conflict” and “external conflict” as we develop or analyze a fictional character. Internal conflict is struggle within each character against competing emotional needs. While internal conflict may describe the story’s plot (character versus self), it is also a part of every character’s development. Something is going on with them before the story starts. They bring this concern into the story. In my novel The Big Cinch, the protagonist, Sean Joye, hints at bad past experiences with the fae. He aims to avoid them.

 External conflict is a character’s in-real-life need. Not an inner struggle, but rather a tangible goal. Barriers to attaining the goal trigger the story plot. Film writing refers to this conflict event as the “inciting incident.” It provokes at least the possible of change. The characters need things, aim to get them, and are opposed by someone or something. Often the external conflict will bring the internal conflict to the surface. In The Big Cinch, the old cleaning lady asks Sean to help her rid the courts building of ghosts. Sean wants to avoid the supernatural; she insists he do it. They have external conflict over this plot hook. While many stories have an external-conflict type plot (people fighting other real people over real things), in most stories the important characters will also have their own source of external conflict.

Scene Conflict

Each scene of a story needs conflict to shape the plot and engage the reader. This is basically the external conflicts of the scene actors applied to the scene. As Blake Synder explains, a character enters a scene with a goal and standing in their way is an obstacle. The strongest conflict is an actual confrontation be it physical or verbal, such as a battle or a contest.

Crisis and Climax

Two important points of conflict in a story are the crisis and the climax. These terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but a careful analysis of the story and audience reaction to it shows that “the exciting part” has distinct stages.

Crisis

An engaging story is full of many setbacks for the protagonist, but generally a big one occurs about three-quarters of the way or more through the story: the crisis. It is THE disaster, not just a disaster. The story energy will be the highest so far, and the protagonist’s energy the lowest. It’ that point when the audience feels there’s no way out, the protagonist has no options, and sees no way to win. For example, in The Empire Strikes Back, Luke and Vader had a famously disastrous light saber duel, which ends with Luke clinging to the underside of a floating city.

Climax

Yet, the storyteller has a trick up their sleeve. The protagonist figures out a solution or at least the author sends them a deus ex machina. Usually the penultimate scene, this is the moment of success. Often the story energy is at the absolute highest and the protagonist at their best. In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke telepathically contacts his twin, Leia, and the team accomplishes a just-in-time rescue and escape. An example of a more rousing climax is Independence Day, in which defeat is turned to success when Russell, the old pilot, crashes his missile ladened fighter into the alien mothership. The alien craft burns as our erstwhile heroes swagger away smoking victory cigars.

The Storytelling Blog first published this article on March 2, 2022. I’ll be presenting this information at Imaginarium this weekend (July 19-21, 2024), and thought I’d share it again here. And, as I will mention in the talk, these are ideas. Ways of thinking about our craft, not rules.

Check out my other craft blogs: Plot And Story, The Where: Setting Of A Story, Character Terms For Writers And Readers, Character Creation Tools, Character Creation, and Snowflake Plotting.

And Now a Word from Our Sponsor

Click here to order The Big Cinch, an award-winning supernatural noir novel from Kathy L. Brown. Sean Joye, a fae-touched young veteran of 1922’s Irish Civil War, aims to atone for his assassin past and make a clean, new life in America. Until he asks the wrong questions . . .

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My latest Sean Joye Investigations short story, “The Haunted Guild” appears in the St. Louis Writers Guild’s latest book, Member Anthology 2024.

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