Constant Conflict

by Gary Fearon, Creative Director, Southern Writers Magazine


One of the Oscar Best Picture contenders earlier this year was Hacksaw Ridge, directed by Mel Gibson and based on the 1967 book The Unlikeliest Hero: The Story of Desmond T. Doss.  HBO just had another of their free weekends, so I watched the film again, and doing so reminded me of something:

I love boot camp.

Mind you, I'm a peace-loving guy with pacifist leanings, but I've always been riveted by scenes involving new recruits meeting their drill sergeant and being taken through the rigors of basic training.  

Hollywood loves war movies. Conflict is perhaps never portrayed bigger and bolder than in a battle scene.  But the face-to-face tension of an underdog trying to keep it together under dire conditions is human drama we can all relate to.

A workplace with a tyrant boss, a classroom with an unreasonable teacher, in-laws who can't be pleased, even domestic quarrels, are ready sources of inherent tension that can escalate our protagonist's real problems. Such challenges come in infinite varieties, but if they are resolved as part of a happy ending, these subplots are typically addressed in one of two ways:

1. The troublemaker gets their comeuppance. The conniving co-worker is exposed, the miserly uncle gets arrested for embezzlement, the contentious neighbor breaks a leg falling off a ladder, and the hero is right there to enjoy it.

2. The troublemaker turns out to be ally. The overzealous drill sergeant eventually reveals his human side. When the hero rises to the challenge and their strained relationship takes on a hint of mutual respect, it becomes clear that everything the sergeant put him through was for his own good. That moment feels like a satisfying character arc in its own right.

As we talked about in my recent Suite T post ("Who Is Your Contagonist?"), anyone or anything that stands in the way of our hero's success makes for good conflict along the way. Those everyday scenarios that we inflict on our hero can cause hardship right along with the actual antagonist.

Page-turning prose relies on the story's ability to keep the problems coming.  Providing that steady supply of friction in your fiction can ensure that your reader doesn't go AWOL.

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The Other Faces of Conflict

by Gary Fearon, Creative Director, Southern Writers Magazine


When we think of antagonists from literature, we typically think of the classic villains like Captain Hook, Injun Joe, The Wicked Witch of the West, Hannibal Lecter, Dracula, and the other memorable personifications of evil.  But there are many other faces of conflict not of the human variety that can be put to good use in a story.

Many children's books choose not to pit the hero against another person.  Instead, the dilemma comes from a small difficulty that can be turned into a problem-solving life lesson.  A terrific example is Pete the Cat, who loves his white shoes. When he steps in strawberries that turn his shoes red, what follows is a simple but brilliant story about learning to accept and love yourself, cleverly disguised as a tale about shoes.

Even as adults, conflict in story teaches us to deal with life, each dilemma in its own small way representing the eternal struggle.  A problem is a problem, no matter what form it takes.  Here, then, are some classic inhuman antagonists:

Man vs Beast
What's worse than someone you can't even reason with?  How about someone that wants to eat you? Ask the heroes of Jaws if their adversary doesn't pose a lethal threat.  The irony is that the shark isn't fishing for trouble; he's just doing what comes naturally 'cause it's feeding time.  Likewise, the great white whale in Moby Dick may or may not understand the concept of revenge, but it knows all about self-preservation.

The Great Outdoors
Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is one of many examples of a protagonist trying to survive in the wilderness. Again, there is irony in the fact that a forest, waterfall, mountain, etc mean no harm; they don't even have a conscience.  But it's a jungle out there, and a babe in the woods goes back to basic human survival.

Not to say that a tornado or a tempest can't stir up some additional trouble on their own.  The Perfect Storm, Earthquake and Twister are cinematic examples of how Mother Nature can be a real shrew.

Hard Times
Nellie Olsen wasn't the only thorn in Laura Ingalls' side in her Little House on the Prairie books.  Tales set in the Old West are particularly filled with the struggle just to make it through life under primitive or poverty-stricken conditions. Mix in some of the previous elements like a grizzly bear or no rain for growing crops and you have a multi-layered prairie of pain.

Conflict in Nonfiction
Even when we're writing nonfiction, it's not hard to find conflict because life wouldn't be life without it.  My recently-published short story "Family Tree" in Stories of Music, Volume 2 is primarily a retrospective of the musical family I grew up in.  I wasn't particularly seeking a way to add conflict or even drama to this memoir; it just happened organically because it was a tragedy that put a stop to the musical collaboration in my family, and, ironically, another tragedy is what brought it all back with new magic.

A good guy facing off against a bad guy is classic drama.  But fighting off the challenges of everyday life are readily available story helpers to add extra conflict, or take it out of the mano a mano realm altogether.

Causing Trouble

by Gary Fearon, Creative Director, Southern Writers Magazine

Most sane people don't go around looking for trouble.  In fact, they do their best to avoid it. More often than not, trouble finds them instead. A flat tire, a power outage, a computer crash — no one anticipates calamity, much less extends an invitation to it.

But when conjuring up a story, mayhem can be our best friend.

Since conflict gives fiction its fire, we do well to put our natural human instinct for self-preservation aside and actively invoke troubled times, at least for our main character. The better the obstacles between them and their goal, the more compelling the story.

Since trouble comes in many different flavors, the genre will often dictate the appropriate realm of ruin to choose from. A lover's quarrel that would send Bridget Jones running to her diary is unlikely to hound Sherlock Holmes while investigating a Baskerville murder. Deciphering whether alien messages are friendly or declarations of war would probably be too out of this world for a child's book.

Indeed, the age and life circumstances of the intended reader is a ready yardstick for measuring the severity of impending doom. Dealing with a school bully is sufficient drama for a student reader, while a mature audience is capable of pondering the end of mankind. If your protagonist is the approximate age of your typical reader, it's easy to throw the appropriate curveballs their way and have them struggle authentically.

The most tried-and-true obstacle is another character who seeks the opposite outcome. The murderer will do everything in his power to prevent being captured. The handsome rancher has vowed never to fall in love again. A cut-throat coworker connives to get the big promotion instead of our hero.

As we know, making trouble for our protagonists is simply a matter of giving them a goal and then putting roadblocks in their way. We can think of our storyline as a maze, where the hero/heroine knows where they need to go, but getting there is just one problem after another thanks to all the obstacles in the way.

"The trouble with trouble," it's been said, "is that it always starts out as fun."  Have fun being the real troublemaker in your story.  It's the one time you don't have to worry about getting punished.