Welcome back to this month's Aspire! Since this month's theme is to motivate, we thought it appropriate to talk about conflict.

Conflict is, simply said, what motivates your characters, what drives them to action. It is what happens when something (or someone) stands in the way of your MC getting what they want the most. It drives the character to do something about it, to fix it, and therefore it drives the story itself. Every story needs conflict. Without conflict, the story is nothing more than a sequence of events with no clear beginning or ending and no common thread to tie the scenes together.

Conflict derives from something standing in the way of what your character wants. Thus, the first step in creating conflict is asking yourself this simple question: What does my character want the most in their life? This could be anything from finding their soulmate to getting revenge on the person who killed their child, anything from surviving high school to world domination.

Conflict can be divided into two categories: internal and external conflict. Stories need at least one of the two, but the best stories make use of both. The reason for this is simply that life will also have both external and internal conflicts. The image above shows internal conflict very well.

Internal means that the conflict originates from inside the character themselves. This could for example mean that something inside the character is stopping them from doing something, like fear or anger or mental illness. It could also involve opposing beliefs or desires. The character could get into a situation where they need to hurt a loved one to protect them. A teenager might want to fit in with their friends, but those friends might do things like taking drugs or stealing. Either way, internal conflict represents a psychological struggle. Dilemmas, moral and religious conflicts all fall under internal conflict.

External conflict, on the other hand, is when the character is set against something (or someone) outside of them; something they have no control over. This thing or person will stand in the way of what your character wants or needs to have, thereby creating tension. It will keep your protagonist from reaching their goal.

External conflict can be subdivided into the following three types:

· Character vs. character: The antagonist forms the main obstacle in the protagonist's quest. In this type of story, it is of the utmost importance that both these characters are fully developed. The reader does not necessarily need to empathise with the antagonist, but they do need to understand him. An example of this would be a fantasy story in which the protagonist needs to defeat an evil wizard in order to save his village.

· Character vs. society: The antagonist now isn't up to one single person, but up to the entire society in which they live. Usually, there will be one person representing society (the president, king, or someone else high in the hierarchy of the society), but that person will simply be part of a larger, problematic system. A great example of this type of story is The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins.

· Character vs. nature: In this type of story, the main problem in the MC's life is a natural phenomenon. Examples are natural disasters, powerful animals, and infectious diseases. Zombie stories could fall under this category, depending on the focus of the story.

Another interesting concept falling under this topic is the Conflict Lock. The Conflict Lock is very thing that sets your protagonist and your antagonist against each other. A simple example of this is the story of Red Riding Hood. The protagonist is of course Red Riding Hood and the antagonist is the wolf. The conflict lock is what sets these two against each other: Red wants to get to grandmother's house safely and give her the cookies (or whatever she has in her basket, depending on your version of the story). The wolf, however, wants to eat both Red and her grandmother. Since these characters cannot both have what they want (the want of one automatically excludes the want of the other), they are locked into this conflict.

So, now that we know all about conflict, let's focus on how to write conflict. Firstly, as we mentioned before, you'll need to decide what it is that your character wants the most. The conflict will follow from this goal. It's important to realise that anything can be a character goal, depending on the type of story you're writing. From defeating the evil wizard to getting to school on time, from becoming world-famous to proposing to the person you love. The goal itself doesn't matter; much more important is how badly your character wants to reach it. This means that you'll need to think about the stakes as well: what happens if the protagonist doesn't reach these goals?

Once the goal (or goals) is clear, the next step is to decide on obstacles. What stands in the way of your protagonist reaching that goal? Remember, there are usually internal and external obstacles.

A fun way to develop your character is through moral grey areas. This means that the protagonist is expected to make a decision where the 'right' and 'wrong' choices aren't so clear. Moral dilemmas are a great way to develop your character, as both their reasoning and their final decision will tell the reader a lot about them. It might even help your protagonist (and reader) understand the antagonist a little better, as the antagonist may have made the opposite decision.

Another great way of developing your story is to work out how the internal and external conflicts affect each other. Your internal conflict might make the external conflict even stronger. For example, a character who is terrified of being abandoned might become clingy towards the person they love. But this clinginess might be the very thing that's pushing this second character away.

Furthermore, you might give your characters opposing internal conflicts. If we stick with the example above, your protagonist might be struggling with fear of abandonment, while their love interest is struggling with a fear of their relationship moving too fast. These characters won't understand each other, which creates more (and stronger) conflict. Alternatively, such opposing traits or internal conflicts might be incredibly intriguing for each other, which might actually lead to these characters growing closer through it.

Finally, let's end this article with some simple steps. Once you understand conflict, all you need to do is ask these six questions to develop the conflict in your story (by Reedsy):

1: What does your character want?

2: What is in their way?

3: How can their strengths help them (at first)?

4: What must change to overcome the final hurdle?

5: What consequences will this change have?

6: How can other characters bring these conflicts to life?

As a final note, we'd love to hear any suggestions for topics we should cover next. If there's anything you struggle with in writing, let us know in the comments and we might just write an article about it soon.

Naomi - NDeMeer

Team Of Dreams