Heart of Story: part II Conflict

Conflict  
  
Conflict is sometimes another word for plot.  Some writers and industry professionals see them as different things but I don’t.  When someone asks me what the plot is I go into my 30 second elevator pitch for my novel.  If someone asks me what the conflicts are I can breathe a sigh of relief and explain my story in simpler terms.  Conflict exists in 5 basic categories.  According to Michael A. Stackpole they are as follows:

•    Man vs. Nature
•    Man vs. Self
•    Man vs. Man
•    Man vs. Society (or Government)
•    Man vs. Technology (or Supernatural)

Man vs. Nature-  This is simple enough.  It could be climate: a man struggles for life while stranded in the desert.  It could be biological: a scientist fights for the life of her husband who is dying of a strange virus transferred from a rare African plant.  It could be animals: pick any B movie on USA Network about bats, piranha or snakes plus or minus the T&A and you’ve got it. 

Man vs. Self-  Insanity, addiction, weakness, phobia, inner turmoil, guilt, rage, amnesia.  I could go on and on.

Man vs. Man-  This is the heart of most action stories, comic books, sports stories, war, any sort of competition.  You’ll find this sort of conflict in horror and suspense novels as well as fantasy.  Anything with a “bad guy” has a man vs. man conflict.

Man vs. Society-  This could be political, moral dilemmas, ethics, religious differences.  This sort of conflict can often lead to man vs. man and man vs. self because it is usually based on ideological factors.  A top general in the Army coming out of the closet could be a man vs. society conflict.  Court dramas could fall into this category as well. 

Man vs. Technology-  Think Terminator, The Matrix, just about any sci-fi story.  This could also be something more mundane.  The carburetor industry collapsed overnight after the advent of the fuel injector.  People being displaced from jobs could be man vs. technology and man vs. society.

We can also apply this to man vs. supernatural which you could list as a 6th type of conflict but it works about the same as technology.  Anything with the supernatural gets this label usually.  This also covers magic, which is common in fantasy.  It could be ghosts, vampires, zombies, werewolves, even any type of telepathic powers.

Conflict is the motivator for your characters.  It’s what makes whatever happens in the story happen.  Conflict forces the characters to change in some way which is also known as a character arc.  It doesn’t really matter how you use the five types of conflict as long as your story works.  Understanding them, like types of characters, will help you communicate within the writing universe.  Defining them can help if you get stuck as well.  You might realize that you have three conflicts that are all man vs. man and adding man vs. nature or man vs. self might add the layers your story needs to bring it to life.

Conflict helps bring out the best (or sometimes worst) in your characters.  It builds tension and creates obstacles for your characters to overcome.  If you have a character that most people typically wouldn’t like and put them through the ringer, you will end up either loving or hating the character based on how they deal with the situations.  Teddy Rosevelt said “Some men are born to greatness.  Others have it thrust upon them.”

Without conflict, nothing happens in the story.  Seinfeld was supposed to be the show about nothing.  That would have been true if the highly flawed characters weren’t given conflict, which was usually self inflicted, that brought out their worst qualities and made them funny.

I believe in torturing my characters.  If everything goes right for them then the story gets boring.  They have to be challenged.  They have to have something to rise above, to make them more than a normal life would have them be.  Without the characters struggling, facing their own mortality, proving their courage in the face of certain death and finally winning, the reader has nothing to help them escape their boring reality.  The reader struggles with them, faces their fear, they are bolstered by the courage of their fictitious friend, they mourn her losses, her defeats and they exult in her victories.

Conflict dies without characters and so we begin to see how the elements build the Heart of Story.

Listening to: A Perfect Circle- Blue   Wow a morbid video.  Love the song though.