Elements of Fiction (57)

Element 57: Conflict

Here’s another big one. No story could be duller than one without conflict. Without conflict, what is there to resolve? Why should the reader go on?

All good writers are aware of this, and many have voiced their thoughts about this element.

As, for example the always apropos John Gardner, “All meaning, in the best fiction, comes from — as Faulkner said — the heart in conflict with itself.”

“Internal conflict inevitably leads to an external conflict, easily dramatized.”

Says Stanley Colbert, “Conflict equals drama.”

I think Ayn Rand nails it with, “Conflict here means conflict with other men or conflict within a man, but not conflict against nature or coincidence.”

The way I think of it, “Conflict is a clash of wants.”

Ayn Rand then goes on with a battery of thoughts: “Since plot is essentially conflict, you must look for a good conflict.”

“A proper plot situation involves a conflict of values.”

“Plot conflict is not conflict merely in a character’s mind or soul, while he sits at home. A plot conflict has to be expressed in action.”

“The more conflicts involved in the same action situation, and the more serious the values for the participants, the better the dramatic situation and the tighter the plot you can construct from it.”

“I have to show the hero in a difficult struggle — and the worse I can make it, the better dramatically. I have to devise the hardest obstacles possible, and those of greatest significance to the hero.”

“The more struggle a story involves, the better the plot.”

“The essence of plot structure is: struggle — therefore, conflict — therefore, climax. A struggle implies two opposing forces in conflict, and it implies a climax. The climax is the central point of the story, where the conflict is resolved.”

“In a fully volitional conflict, both adversaries must have free will; two choices, two sets of values, must be involved.”

“The values involved in a story should be important enough to interest the characters, the author, and the reader, a conflict over a choice of dessert obviously will not do.”

“He has a spiritual conflict, a conflict of values within himself — and the story is lifted from detective fiction into drama.”

“In this sense, I believe with Victor Hugo that the more melodramatic the action in which one can express the drama, the better the story. (By ‘melodramatic’ I here mean physical danger or action). If you can unite the two — if you can give a relevant and logical physical expression to the spiritual conflict you present — then you have high-class drama.”

“A drama involves primarily a conflict of values within a man (as expressed in action); a melodrama involves only conflicts of a man with other men.”

“Your central conflict must be complex enough to warrant the development of events on the scale you intend.”

“The usual pattern of drama is a conflict within the hero himself and a conflict against other men. This creates the best, most complex plot structures.”

“Before you construct a story, you must decide on the central conflict, which will then serve as the standard telling you what you have to include in order to fully develop this conflict, and what is superfluous.”

The way Sol Stein puts it, “Author James Frey refers to the crucible as ‘the container that holds the characters together as things heat up.’

“A crucible is an environment, emotional or physical, that bonds two people. It can be a scene or a series of scenes, but more often the crucible is an entire book.

“The key to the crucible is that the motivation of the characters to continue opposing each other is greater than their motivation to run away.”

And S.I. Hayakawa, “It is hardly possible to express strong feelings or to arouse the interest of an apathetic listener without conveying to some extent this sense of conflict.”

And Percy Lubbock puts it this way, “It is the mark of a dramatic case that it contains an opposition of some kind, a pair of wills that collide, an action that pulls in two directions.”

I’ll let William Sloane sum it up, “My reading of unsuccessful manuscripts proves nothing, but it suggests that this element of confrontation is the heart of almost all good scenes.”

Happy writing.

© Wolfstuff