Art Of Fiction Writing
Purpose of Conflict
Today we are giving a look at the most important driving factor of any story, if you have read the title you know it.
Yes, it is a conflict.
Today we are going to give a look at conflict and its purpose.
So, what is conflict?
Going through a direct Wikipedia(not a good place to research by the way)
Conflict is a struggle between opposing forces.
But, how does this apply to a story?
So a character is trying to get somewhere and they are opposed.
If you give a closer look, conflicts are of three types.
External Conflict
Internal Conflict
Philosophical conflict
Let’s understand each term separately.
External Conflict
As the name suggests it is physical conflict is a conflict that deals with obstacles, the character faces challenges from the external world.
Your first thought might actually go towards the Antagonist but is Antagonist is the only obstacle.
The one-word answer to this is No.
The character always faces several obstacles throughout his journey.
Then why did I say no to the antagonist?
Here’s the secret the biggest obstacle you can ever give to your character is his supporting characters. Yes, the great movies of all time make precise use of great side characters to oppose the character from reaching his goal.
So, we can say that Antagonist is the second most important obstacle.
Moving on we have,
Internal Conflict.
Internal conflict is basically the choices that the character makes affecting his emotional dilemma, it attaches the audience to the story.
The story is not all about the want, gain and lose system it is an essence of life.
Same with life, the story does not necessarily needs to be straight heading towards its goals, the character has to make choices that might be right or wrong.
But these choices shape and make the characters who they are, developing or changing the worldview is totally dependent on the character’s choices.
But how do choices create a conflict, the simple answer to this is….
Make him take a wrong decision, nothing can act as a better conflict than your character taking a wrong decision and acting against his own belief system unknowingly.
Moving on to the most important type of conflict,
Drum rolls….
Psychological conflict
I know, I wasted the drum rolls but this is the most important type of conflict.
It can be part of internal conflict but it is better to be separate.
Because unlike internal conflict it revolves around the world views of the character. It is rarely affected by the decisions the character makes.
This type of conflict is basically based on the belief system and it comes into conflict once the belief system is challenged.
Challenging belief system makes the character face the truth and change his world view this is the most effective way of developing the character’s choice.
So this brings us to the end of the conflict.
If you have any queries ping me in the comments till then, keep writing.