By: K.M. Weiland
What’s so hard about story conflict? You throw your
protagonist and your antagonist onto the page–insta-conflict! Right? Actually,
not so fast. Turns out creating a fascinating story world in which dwells a
fascinating hero and an evil villain is not enough, in itself, to
create integral and interesting story conflict.
I’ve read quite a few unfortunate stories in which the
protagonist spent the majority of the book pacing around his base thinking about
that dirty antagonist and all his dirty deeds. The protag shakes his fist at
the sky, curses the antag, and promises to make him pay. Then he resumes
pacing. Finally, the Climax rolls around, the protag and antag meet, they
fight, the protag wins.
Of course, the author is lucky if I’ve actually stuck around
long enough to read his fascinating Climax, since all that
pacing on the protagonist’s part slipped me the Mickey chapters and
chapters ago.
The dangerous part of all this is that it’s super easy
for authors to fall into this mistake without even realizing it. But never
fear! There is an easy precautionary measure you can take to make sure your
conflict is alive and well throughout your entire story.
Do You Understand the True
Nature of Story Conflict?
Where many authors go wrong with their conflict is simply in
failing to understand what story conflict really is.
Is story
conflict…
. . .
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