Over the past month or three I’ve seen a bunch of people offer their views on conflict in storytelling. And a lot of them had very strong opinions about it. What it is. Why we shouldn’t be obsessed with it. Why, maybe, we don’t even need it in our story.

To be blunt… I think they were wrong. But they were wrong for a few different reasons. And I think if we go over those reasons, maybe we can all get a better grasp of conflict, how to use it, and how we can make it work best in our stories. Sound good?

Let’s start with basics. What is conflict?

In a literary sense, conflict is something between my character and what they want. It’s an opposing person or force or set of conditions. Note that the thing they want doesn’t have to be something physical and neither does the thing between them and it. My hero wants to date the cheerleader/ save Uncle Ricky’s Surf Shop/ get the big promotion/ save the world from destruction, but first they have to overcome their shyness/ raise $50,000 by Friday/ figure out what happened to Doug from sales/ stop the alien invaders. Feel free to mix and match those into whatever combination works best for you.

Conflict is what drives my plot forward, because it forces my characters to make decisions and take actions. If there’s no conflict, they don’t need to do anything. And if my characters don’t do anything… well, that’s not much of a story. It might work in a weird artsy way but… look, nobody wants to read the story of how I once did data entry for eight hours a day for the better part of a month.

Two key things to note, before we move on.

First is all the random conflicts I mentioned in those examples up above require a degree of effort to overcome. None of them can be brushed aside or ignored. If I’m thirsty and go the kitchen to get a drink of water, there isn’t any opposition to overcome or effort required. There’s not really tons of consequences if I don’t do it. It’s not so much forcing me into action as barely requiring minimal action. If something doesn’t require much conscious thought to resolve, it’s not conflict.

Remember this. It’s going to come up again

The second key thing is that most of these conflicts don’t involve lots of shooting or punching or ninja throwing stars (spoiler about that cheerleader). There’s a common misconception that conflict just means aggression and violence. If I had to guess, I think this view’s grown out of ye olde advice nugget “start with action” which gets misunderstood a lot to mean we should always start with car chases and kaiju attacks. And that just belief just grew from there and now some folks see conflict and action as the same thing.

Remember this, too.

Now… with all of that in mind…

First, I’ve seen a number of folks who have odd ideas about conflict, and I think it comes from that misconception that conflict and action are the same thing. They’re smart enough to know “start with action” doesn’t always mean explosions and no-holds-barred cage matches. It can mean almost any sort of action, right?

The catch is these folks now think any sort of action counts as conflict. Walking my dog is conflict. Eating lunch is conflict. Taking a shower is conflict. But like we just said, conflict needs a degree of effort. It requires something preventing me from doing the thing I want to do. Yeah, it’s possible taking a shower could be a huge conflict in my story but… that’s probably going to be a really specific story.

A simple way to check this is a trick I’ve mentioned before. Whatever story we’re talking about, get the whole thing in your head and write out a good solid summary. One page, tops. Try not too skip anything, but don’t overthink it. Just get it all down like you were telling it to me at a bar or over dinner or something casual like that. “I just read this great book about…”

When you look back over this summary, you’re probably going to see the word but a few times (or maybe some of its kissing cousins like however or although). And a lot of those buts are going to be points where there’s conflict in the story. If I didn’t instinctively use but to explain how this element fits in my summary, there’s a really good chance this element isn’t conflict.

I mean, look at my choose-your-own conflict example up above. It’s a simple story explanation, and what’s the conjunction tying it together? It’s a natural way to explain conflict. They want this, but that.

Another thing I’ve seen a lot of in the discourse is some people arguing conflict’s completely unnecessary in a story. But almost all of their statements seem to tie back to that misconception—that conflict only refers to sword fights and alien invasions and ninja cheerleaders. And conflict can cover a lot of stuff. Heck, how many 80s movies are just about needing to raise money to save the orphanage or the car wash or, yes, Uncle Ricky’s Surf Shop? How many romantic comedies are based around misunderstandings that need to be resolved or class inequality?

So a lot of the folks insisting conflict’s unnecessary in a story are just, well, misunderstanding what conflict is. They’re defining conflict as just punching and ninja cheerleaders and the like, and therefore this story which has neither punching nor ninja cheerleaders… has no conflict. And that’s almost certainly not true. I mean, it’s true that they don’t have a ninja cheerleader, yes (maybe? ninjas are everywhere), but it’s not true the story doesn’t have conflict.

Again, conflict needs to be an opposing force or obstacle, but it could be the nagging doubt in the back of my mind that never shuts up. Or a letter from the bank telling us they’re going to foreclose on the surf shop if we don’t pay back all the loan money by 5:00 this Friday. Or the third point of a romantic triangle. Or the hundred miles of desert between me and getting that drink of water.

I think some of this misunderstanding also spills over into discussions about storytelling forms or structures. Someone will say “this type of story doesn’t need conflict” and then give an example that… well, has conflict. Not jetfighting/ spinkicking conflict, no, but they’re absolutely stories with obstacles that need to be overcome. It might not have one main, overall conflict, but the individual elements have lots of smaller conflicts. Or maybe the ensemble characters don’t have a single united obstacle they’re all trying to overcome, but they each have their own individual obstacle to deal with throughout the course of things. And sometimes it’s just plain old regular conflict.

Now, a closing disclaimer or two before anyone starts typing up responses.

Am I saying it’s impossible to have a story without conflict? No, of course not. But as I’ve mentioned once or thrice before, I personally find it really hard to be interested in a story about a normal day where nothing happens. Yes, it may have beautiful turns of phrase and inspired vocabulary and vivid imagery, but they’re all serving… well, a boring, normal day.

And ultimately—again, might just be me—I don’t think a lot of readers are going to sit through a boring, normal day. No matter how inspired my vocabulary is. Because we all go through boring, normal days all the time. We want to see something happen.

Even if it isn’t a spinkicking ninja cheerleader.

In other news…

I’m going to be at WonderCon this weekend! All day Sunday. I’m part of a panel Sunday morning at 10:30 on writing blended genres (Room 300 C) and after that, starting at 11:45, I’ll be in the autograph area for forty-odd minutes scribbling in books. And then I’ll be walking the floor saying hi to folks and looking at things. I’ll be the guy in the cranberry blazer with a Midnight Burger shirt.

And next time… well, I’ve been bad about the ranty blog these past few months, so I’m going to try to redeem myself.

Until then, go write.