Conflicts Force Your Characters to Grow

 Conflict is necessary for a story. That's a big reason why the "enemies to lovers" trope is very popular. The point where the "enemies" realize they have more in common than they thought is the basis for many books (as well as movies and TV shows).  

There's something about the conflict that's exciting. We want to see the characters lower their guard and fall in love. 

But stories can't just be the main characters fighting with each other. Or breaking up because they failed to have one conversation. After a while that's not going to be much fun to read about.

The problem might be that authors may not be sure what the real conflict is. Here's an example of what I mean. If your hero has been hurt and is afraid to be open, is that really a conflict? Sure, it can lead to conflict. But that isn't the one reason why the characters are in conflict with each other. 

Instead of focusing on the hero's broken heart, how about going deeper? Maybe his issue isn't because the other relationship failed. Perhaps there were other factors that led to the failure. Maybe he had a loss of confidence due to other life experiences. If the hero's real conflict is within himself, his growth within the story can work for him. He can have the happy ending and fall in love again. 

Of course, during this journey there will be conflict between him and his significant other. And that character will have their own growth as well. Both main characters will have to do the work to be ready to have the HEA or HFN that comes at the end of the story. 

If the conflict is just the main characters making up to break up over relatively minor issues, it's may become boring. There should be more going on underneath - more conflict within the characters and more opportunities for them to grow. 

When your story has romantic elements (but isn't a romance) you can make the same choices. Their relationship may not be the main event in a story like that, but it shouldn't be an afterthought. 

The main characters may be in conflict because they're working together to solve a mystery or go on a quest. They'll have conflict and may even go their separate ways (temporarily). That's to be expected. But you can bring them back together to reach their shared goal while keeping the romantic conflict going. 

For instance, in a mystery maybe your characters are chasing a criminal because they work together to solve crimes. They disagree over the next action to take and they split up. Conflict between them - and their methods - breaks them apart. Their romance would add another level of conflict for them. 

They'll have to deal with it on both the personal level and the professional level. That can make for a very exciting story as emotional sparks fly while they pursue their quarry. In this case the conflict might be even better because they have to actively work through it, while reaching their shared goal. 

The inner doubts and fears and the outer obstacles will force characters to grow. No matter the trope or the genre, conflicts are necessary and make a story worth reading. 

Creating Tension

This weekend I’m attending When Words Collide, a wonderful writer and reader’s convention in Calgary.  I can’t  wait! I go every year and always learn a lot. In addition I’m going to be on a panel called Creating Tension. Here’s a preview of what I’m going to say:

1.  Hooks and cliffhangers. Everyone knows that your novel should  start with a hook, but it’s even better if every chapter and every scene begins with a mini-hook and ends with a mini-cliffhanger. I grew up reading Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. The chapters always ended with Nancy in trouble of some kind. 

2. Conflict. I know this seems obvious, but, yes, there should be conflict in every scene. Even a quiet scene between two friends can have conflict, provided they both want something different. I once wrote a book where I deliberately gave the heroine a conflict with every other character she encountered.

3.  High stakes, both public and personal stakes. What’s the difference? The public stakes in a thriller might be a madman threatening to blow up a building. The private stakes may be that the heroine’s grandmother is trapped in that very building. Your novel should have both kinds. When revising, try to raise the stakes.

4.  Use the Scene Question (sometimes also called Dramatic question) and Scene Answer to add punch to your scenes. During revision, I hunt for what the scene question is and move it up in the text so that the reader naturally poses this question to themselves.  Sometimes the scene question is quite simple. In a fight scene, it’s Will the protagonist successfully repel this attack? In a different scene it might be something more subtle like: Will the princess persuade her handmaid to spy for her? 

The scene answer should either be No, AND or Yes, BUT therefore complicating matters for the hero even more. For example, in the aforementioned fight scene, the protagonist could lose the fight and wake to find themselves a prisoner. Or the protagonist could win the fight but kill their opponent therefore losing the opportunity to question them about the villain’s plans. Either way, their situation is worse off than at the start of the scene.

If you have any tips, post them in the comments!