009: 3 Tips to Create Conflict

Conflict is essential for any story, no matter what genre. Learn how to create conflict, the different types of conflict your story can have, and how to instantly elevate the conflict in your book.

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3 Tips to Create Conflict

By the time you listen to this episode, the holidays will be upon us. So wherever you are, whatever you're doing, while you're listening to this episode, I hope that you have an amazing holidays and have really fun plans for New Year's. Yeah, I feel like I don't know about y'all but I feel like this last few months, like this fall has just flown by. And I'm still kind of in shock that it's December already. Geez. And thank you to everyone who has left a review for the podcast sent me a DM, shared it, whatever I really again, I know I've said this before, but I really appreciate your support. If you can't leave a review on Apple podcasts or don't want to another way that you can show your support is to just take a screenshot of this episode on Instagram, and then share it, it could be an episode that really resonated with you and episode you liked you got some value out of just share it and then tag me @thekatiewolf, that would be very much appreciated. I really appreciate your support with this podcast. I'm having a lot of fun doing it. And it's just Yeah, it's cool to see, you know, to know what episodes in particular are resonating with you.

So this episode is all about conflict. And conflict is one of those things that I could do like a three hour masterclass on because there's so many different ways to approach this and so many different elements to conflict. But I want to give you three tips that will help you write conflict, because this is one of those things that people sometimes struggle with, like maybe they'll have their characters defined, they know, you know, they have a good understanding of their main character, their protagonist, but they don't know what the conflict should be. They just have an idea for a story. But they're not really sure what obstacles to put in that characters way what the tension should be, if there should be a specific person who's an antagonist, and there are lots of things to consider here. So okay, my first tip for writing conflict is to consider what your characters want. So this does require, like I just mentioned, it does require really knowing your characters, especially your main character, understanding what's motivating them, understanding what they want, in your story, what their goals are, and then consider kind of what's standing in their way.

So for example, if character a wants one thing, your main character, let's say, wants one thing in this story, and then character B over here wants the exact opposite thing, then there's naturally going to be a conflict between those two things. And conflict doesn't have to mean something massive, like, you know, if you're writing fantasy, for example, conflict might actually be like a war, or some kind of battle, like it might actually be a really high stakes, physical conflict. But if you're writing, romance, for example, your conflict is probably not going to be something massive like a war or physical battle. It's probably going to be these characters wanting different things, these characters having their own issues that they're struggling with that are preventing your two characters from getting together from experiencing their happily ever after. So really get clear on what your characters want, and see if there are characters in your story who want opposing things because again, that's a perfect natural place for there to be conflict.

Okay, tip number two, is to differentiate between inner and outer conflict. Those are two different kinds of conflict with different, your approach to writing them will be different, the stakes are going to be different. When I say inner conflict, I mean something that your cat just jumped into the room. Your inner inner conflict is gonna be something that your character is wrestling with internally. As an example, if your main character is struggling with addiction, they're wrestling with giving up the thing that they're addicted to giving up drugs or alcohol, right, there's an internal struggle that's going on their mind is telling them oh stop, you have to stay away from this thing. But yet they want it because they have a physical craving for it. They don't know how to live their life without it there all of these internal struggles going on inside of that person about their drug use, or their alcohol use, or whatever the substance that they're addicted to is, there's a lot of internal conflict that's going on within that person.

An example of external conflict would be two people competing for a job. Let's say you're writing a novel in which a lot of your scenes take place in an office. And your main character really wants this job really wants this promotion. But yet someone over here in this other department is also competing for that job, maybe there's an outside candidate who's competing for that job. That's an example of outer conflict, there's something that they want externally outside of themselves. Now you can have both your main character can have inner conflict, something that they're wrestling with, and outer conflict. It's not like you have to pick between one you know, choose one or the other. But that can help maybe give you some food for thought or something to brainstorm around if you're having trouble identifying what the conflict should be.

And then the third tip for writing conflict is raise the stakes. What do I mean by this, raising the stakes means there's a greater chance of risk, there's a greater risk for your character. But there's also a bigger chance of reward something that they're going to get. So make sure that each each choice that your character makes has big consequences. And a lot of times this is actually something that feedback that I got on my first book that I wrote, I hired someone to hired an editor to give me feedback on my manuscript, because I wanted to make sure it was really solid, and really ready to go before I started querying to find a literary agent. And one of the things she mentioned was that the stakes were pretty low for my characters, like, yeah, they could make a choice. And like not much would happen. And it just, I needed to raise the stakes to make things a little bit more dramatic. And since she gave me that piece of feedback, I've noticed that in manuscripts that I evaluate on client work, I actually sometimes see this in published books that I read to where there's not really much risk that the character takes like, it doesn't really matter, their choices don't have a lot of consequences. And this is a great way to really heighten the story to make it more dramatic. And I think sometimes people shy away from that, because they want it to be more, maybe they want it to be more realistic, where you know, choices that we make in the real world don't always have big consequences.

Like if you decide to go left out of your driveway, instead of right. That's not going to, you know, the stakes aren't that high for that kind of decision. But in fiction, don't be afraid to make an employee out of the driveway is a silly example. But don't be afraid to make the stakes higher, right? Going back to our example of a character who's let's say a drug addict, right, who's who has that inner conflict going on within themselves, make the stakes raise the stakes for that character. It's not just if they use again, they'll get high and feel some sort of guilt. Maybe if they use again, they overdose maybe if they use again, they lose their job, maybe they become homeless, like make the stakes greater, there's a greater chance of of risk with all of these decisions that your characters are making. And that's also just going to make your story richer and more enticing. Overall for the reader. All right, three tips for writing conflict. Again, like I said, this is this is one of those things that could talk about for hours, but Hopefully if you're struggling to identify what the conflict should be in your story, hopefully there's some good food for thought in this episode about things that you can come up with that will be conflict for your characters.

Katie Wolf