Tension and Conflict Part 2 - The Nature of Conflict

While tension is the emotion of a novel, conflict is the power. It drives the story forward and causes the reader to hang on and go with the ride. Without conflict the scenes would be a slow walk through a park. Who cares?

Yet conflict has some “need to” factors. An argument over what color to paint a wall or whether the evening will be spent watching a good movie or a sports event is a common event in many households, but it doesn’t fit the definition of conflict in fiction. Many new writers think an argument between two people is what it takes, and though an argument that severs their relationship or causes one character to do something drastic is a form of conflict, arguments are not the ultimate.

So what is the nature of conflict? What is it that conflict needs to be in fiction?

• Make a difference to the plot. The conflict must matter to the character so that the final solution will make a difference in the character’s life. The conflict must be worth the prize, meaning the solution to the conflict must be important to the character. Thinking of the movie or sport night, you can see in the long run that doesn’t make one bit of difference to a character reaching a goal.

• Must have a worthy opponent. If the conflict is involves another person, the person must be strong and clever. A dumb criminal is easily caught, but a smart one creates a dynamic story. As the main character expands his paths to undo the opponent, the opponent needs to also change and grow with the main character to make the fight worthwhile.

• Must connect with the reader. The conflict needs to be something in which a reader can relate. They can see the danger of the situation to the characters and to the even the world in a thriller. They must understand, and better yet the conflict makes even more impact if it’s something that has happened to them. This includes things like betrayal, fear, abuse, doubts, and internal struggles that many people experience.

• Must produce emotion. Emotion is the reaction to conflict and it is what creates tension. Conflict without tension is flat. This is the argument over a white or chocolate cake. A reader doesn’t care. They aren’t affected if a married woman comments on an attractive man, but if the woman finds herself dreaming of the man and looking forward to seeing him again, emotion is involved and thus tension since it signals a deeper conflict.

• Tests the character. Conflict that is powerful pushes a character to his limits. It forces him to demonstrate strengths & abilities he never realized he had, and it signals growth which is a must in good fiction. Readers want to see the character’s change and make progress in their lives.

• Gain causes loss. When the conflict is between people, someone wins and someone loses. Sometimes this could be an equally important character in the novel, and this creates another conflict. But conflict can happen inside one person. If the character wants to be successful and famous, he will lose privacy and freedom. It goes with the gain. Along the same idea, sometimes to reach one goal, a character must lose another. To obtain the job promotion to better himself, he must move and lose connection with his family who needs him.

If you can include these qualities in your conflict, they will be powerful and suited to a strong fiction novel that relates to the reader, provides them with excitement and draws on their emotions.

Michael Hague's Screenwriting Tips

As I've mentioned so often, knowing something about screenplay writing is a great help in fiction writing. Michael Hauge is a screenplay writer in Hollywood and presented a full day workshop at a writers retreat I attended in Denver. Michael Hauge's Screenplay Mastery Newsletter is filled with great information for fiction writers so you might want to check it out by signing up. You can always unsubscribe if you don't find it helpful.
Sign up at http://www.screenplaymastery.com/subscribe.htm

One article in his newsletter deals with WRITING MISDEMEANORS and here is an example of another great article:

SIMPLICITY

Whenever I lecture, I ask participants to share their story ideas, so I can answer their questions, provide examples and offer suggestions. And whenever I hear the reply, "Well, it's complicated..." I know that this writer's work is not going to sell.

Successful scripts and novels (meaning commercially successful, and likely to be bought by studios and publishers) are simple. They can easily be described in a single sentence, or at the most, two. Just look at any list of current movies or novels, and read the blurbs that accompany the titles. Almost without exception, those thumbnail descriptions of the plots tell you who we're rooting for, what they want, and what they're up against.

Here are some recent examples from the New York Times bestseller lists for trade fiction (all of these titles have been made into movies as well): "A girl sues her parents after learning they want her to donate a kidney to her sibling," (My Sister's Keeper); "A hacker and a journalist investigate the disappearance of a Swedish heiress," (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo); "An Afghan-American returns to Kabul to rescue the son of his childhood friend," (The Kite Runner).

Clearly, that last blurb doesn't begin to convey the breadth, or depth, or wonderfully deep emotional experience provided by The Kite Runner. But that's not what it's designed to do. The goal of a story concept is to reduce what might be a very involved plot down to the simplest possible statement of what we're going to read or see on the screen - to tell the potential buyer of the manuscript or screenplay or book or movie who they're going to root for, what that protagonist wants, and why that desire sounds impossible to achieve.

Stories are built on a foundation of character, desire and conflict. So if a description of your own story can’t simply, easily and succinctly convey those three elements, getting it read will become nearly impossible; getting it produced or published, even more so. Because buyers of screenplays and manuscripts must always consider how they will sell your story to the mass audience – to the millions of moviegoers, TV-watchers or book readers your story will need in order to turn a profit.

If you’re writing for Hollywood, or writing genre fiction (romance novels, mysteries, thrillers, westerns, sci-fi or fantasy), the desire your hero is pursuing must have a clearly defined finish line. Your hero must want to win the love of another character, win the big game, stop the serial killer or monster or demon, find the buried treasure, or save the world. So when you’re asked what your story is about, and you begin a complicated speech detailing backstory, inner conflict, multiple plot lines and epic scope, you clearly haven’t defined or streamlined your concept enough to make it commercial – or saleable.

Don’t confuse complicated with complexity. Lots of great movies and books have original, complex, layered characters, and plots that surprise and enthrall us with unexpected twists and turns. But these qualities must emerge from a story that is, at its core, simple and easy to envision.

LA Confidential is a wonderfully complex novel and film, with multiple heroes, a compelling mystery, a rich, conflicted love story, and a vividly drawn backdrop. But if you ask what it’s about, it’s very simple: three LA cops in the 1950s must risk their lives to solve a multiple homicide at a downtown café, which forces them to confront widespread corruption in the police department. A second sentence could describe the love story and the conflict between two of the cops. But the basic story concept would remain simple, and much easier to sell.

So as you formulate any new idea for a novel or movie, before committing months or years of your life to writing and marketing it, try describing it in a single sentence. Create the blurb for the back cover or the TV listing. State, as simply as possible, who we’re rooting for, what goal she’s pursuing, how we will know when she’s achieved it, and what’s stopping her.

This simple sentence or two won’t capture all of your story’s richness, or its depth, or the theme, or the wonderful twists and turns and prose and dialogue you envision. But it will tell you if you’ve got a chance of getting it read – and sold.

-- approval to forward from Michael Hauge

Hauge points out an important issue. If you can't define your plot in simple terms you could get run over by the complex plot and miss the main point of the novel. It is easy to let a plot runaway with a story that seems to be buckshot, splattering in many directions and never hitting anything with a big impact. You want to write novels or screenplays that make an impact on readers or viewers. Keep this important tip in mind when developing a plot.

Don't forget to subscribe to Michael Hauge's Screenplay Mastery Newsletter at: http://www.screenplaymastery.com/subscribe.htm

Outlining #5 – Pacing Needs Planning

The screenwriting outline article I shared with you lists a fifth and final major point for creating a dynamic story—pacing. Pacing is not only important for screenwriting. It is vital for plotting a novel. I’ve stressed this before in other articles on writing, but this will be a good review.

5. Pacing needs to flow like a river with all its hidden dangers. Through outlining the author can visual pacing before writing the book. He can see the river's calm and the turbulence and then place these scenes in the most meaningful way to impact the story.

I use the analogy of climbing into a canoe and heading down a river to a specific destination. This would be your story. It begins when your character steps into a new life event, experience or awareness. Once on a journey, it ends somewhere, and most people know their final destination. A novel must have one.

So let’s say, you’re going on a canoe trip. You climb into the boat and know you’re heading five miles down the river, but you have no idea what awaits you on your journey. The river begins calm, perhaps a few riffles in the water, but then things happen. You begin to struggles with the current. It draws you into rocks or into the trees near the shore. You battle your way out of that and then find rough water ahead, a whirlpool that’s drawing you in, another struggle to bring you back to calmer water. Then a new trial awaits you. Ahead you a towering boulder and you fight the current that sucks you in. Safe again, but then you see white water and the current picks up. Your job is to make it through the rocks to reach the calm by manipulating the canoe, fighting the current, and staying in the boat. The trip continues from one set of white water to another, each more powerful and more frightening, until you see a waterfall ahead. What can you do? Give in and go over, jump out and swim to a boulder (if that’s even possible), or be strong enough to land the canoe on shore. These are choices you must make and then achieve.

In your novels, pacing is that same kind of troubled journey. Making your character face choices creates tension, and each choice causes your characters to deal with challenges and conflicts. As the author you must decide which conflict comes first, which challenge, which danger. If you begin your novel at the waterfall, everything after it seems easy. You must decide which event adds tension to the story yet leaves room for more dangerous or more emotion conflicts to follow.

Making these decisions and organizing your plot events to build greater disasters and controversy as your story proceeds is pacing.

Outline #4 – Developing Subplot Arcs

The Gideon conference offered me some interesting concepts to think about, and one of the topics was outlining plot elements for a dynamic film or book. The fourth point under outlining dealt with developing subplot arcs.

4. Develop subplot arcs affect the main plot. Weave these subplot arcs through the novel rather than dropping them into the story and then resolving them early. A subplot must make an impact on the main story and change it in a meaningful way by adding conflict.

Perhaps the word “arc” is a concept not well known to some writers. An arc in fiction is the journey with its ups and downs. It’s the rise of conflicts and the resolving and the next rise to a new conflict. The arc, then, shows the effect of change. To see it visually, picture the pattern of a stock market’s journey from month to month. This pattern is seen in all the arcs: characters and story, but in this case I’m talking about subplots.

Subplots are subordinate plots, woven throughout the story, that relate to the main plot and affect the story’s outcome. In a story where a detective is searching for a serial killer, a subplot might be that the detective learns his wife wants a divorce. Obviously this affects the detective's mood, concentration, contentment, lifestyle and many other life aspects. It will obviously add stressto his life and draw on his energy.

When adding a subplot, authors must create an arc for it just as they do for the total plot. This means organizing the various subplot points with growing conflict and then deciding where they can fall within the main plot to create the greatest stress and conflict to the main story. In the Detective plot, you might decide the first step would involve the detective’s suspicion that something isn’t right at home. Should this be revealed through introspection or dialogue? You would make that decision. When will this happen in the major plot?

These decisions create the subplot’s arc, creating its own plot points and then weaving it through the main spot in the most effective way.

Creating powerful stories means adding complexities to the plot and subplots is one way to do this. It makes the story real, since real people have numerous "subplots" in their lives from dealing with children, spouse, work environment, social life, temptations, finances, and friends or familiy who have issues that affect the person. Life is complex, and subplots make our stories like real life.

Outlining #3 – Setting that makes a difference

From the list of screenwriting techniques from the Gideon Media and Film Festival, the third technique you can work with to enhance your story is using setting to make a difference in your story.

3. Setting should be specific and used to deepen characterization and conflict, not just a place to plop characters. Setting influences the storyline because it influences the lifestyle of the characters, and it affects their needs and wants or their ability to reach these goals.

All Writers know that in fiction “setting” means establishing a sense of place. You don’t want “talking heads,” characters having a conversation where the reader can’t envision where the characters are. Not only in a little town or the bustling city, but the kind of town and what part of the big city is important. Take the TV show and movie, Sex in the City, and move it from the bustle of Manhattan---Fifth Avenue, Central Park, Wall Street—to the Bowery or to Harlem. The story would change. Crime might be more prevalent, the women’s glamorous, professional lives would be downplayed, and the situations might be dealing more with lack of money or fear of being out at night. They would be dropping by sleazy bars, approached by panhandlers, and eating in diners. I think you can see the difference, and that’s just taking them from one part of the city to the other.

So where you set your story also provides a “tone.” A small town atmosphere, where everyone knows everyone, would create a story much different from an urban area where the person is lucky to know the neighbor. In a small town, gossip, nosey neighbors, people helping people, secrets, tradition, fighting change, etc. would be characteristics that would influence the plot and the conflicts. Secrets are easier to hide in the city but not in a small town where everyone knows everything.

Setting allows you to create unique secondary characters who bring with them interesting subplots---the nosey neighbor in the next apartment to the crotchety old man who runs the candy shop.

Beyond a sense of place, setting can deepen characterization by allowing the reader inside the head of the character reacting to the setting---a young woman who feels stifled in the small town, the man caught up in a high-powered job who longs to open a garage in his small hometown in the mountains. It reflects the attitudes of the characters played against the attitudes and social/political influences of the. And finally, use setting to reflect the character’s mood and emotions. I’ve written on this before. A woman gazes at the sun as a cloud passes over it, and shadows fall over her. She shudders, knowing that her own sunny spirit has been darkened by the abandonment of her husband. This is one example but I know you can think of many.

Think of movies you’ve seen --- rain in sad scenes, sun in happy ones, panning cameras over the sweep of landscape to reflect loneliness, dark basements or attics to reflect fear, a shadowy figure through a shower curtain (think Psycho). The impact of setting on plot and characterization can be very effective.

Outlining #2 - Creating Character Arcs

In the Outlining for Screenwriting blog provided early, the second point deals with the topic of creating characters arcs.

2. Create individual character arcs. What does the character want? What does the character need? The need factor is often the hidden desire of the character. The difference between the want and the need are sometimes in conflict and an effective technique is to create a situation where to gain what the character needs means to give up what he wants. This is an excellent technique to create conflict.

A character's arc is the growth of one character as to who he is when the story begins and how he changes as the story ends. It has to do with viewpoint and attitude. A character may be prejudice against an ethnic group, for example, but by the end of the story, his experiences will lead him to a new understanding and an appreciation for people of that ethnic group. He will have changed.

This arc is needed for the major characters in your novel. In real life, we often want things. We want a new job, a new boss, a new spouse, a new home, or a trip to Europe. Sometimes our wants are more internal. We want to be more outgoing, to be funnier, to be more beautiful or handsome, to be more talented, to be more discerning and to be secure. Other times we want to be left alone, we want to suffer silently, we want to run away from life. But our wants do not always match what we need.

The conflict comes when we see a solution to a problem that isn't realistic or that won't equal the result we want. Let's look at the person who wants a new job. Why? What's wrong with the job? Is it the job or is it something inside the person that's causing the job to be unpleasant or unsuccessful? Would updating the character's education help the character to be more adept at his work and therefore more happy? Rather than wanting a new job, the character perhaps needs a better education to give him the feeling of confidence and success.

The want in this case seems the easy way out. Walk away and get a new job. Would he find another job that will make him happier and successful? Not necessarily. If the problem is in the inner workings of the character's attitude and feelings, then a new job will lead to unhappiness again.

Someone who wants to be left alone is usually depressed, unhappy, and lonely. Instead, this person needs to face the internal issue that is holding them back from feeling comfortable with people and the help they are offering. As someone strives to draw out a character who is depressed and unhappy, conflict will be created. What makes a good novel? Conflict? In fact, a novel must have lots of conflict to be a novel.

So take a good look at your characters and ask yourself, what do they want, and then ask what they need. This will stimulate a story that offers conflict and growth of the characters which is a sure way to grab readers. Why? Because we've all been there.

Outlining #1 - Creating A Theme Or Purpose

Recently I listed five points to outlining a screen writing project presented in a class at Gideon Film Festival. These same five points work for fiction as well, and I believe that many screen writing techniques can enhance fiction. I was asked by one of my blog readers to expand on these ideas so this is the first.

The first point was: Define the overall theme or meaning of your work. What will happen and why does it matter? Why? If your story does not make a difference, if it doesn't matter, then why write it? How can it serve the reader?

Think first of non-fiction novels. Can you imagine reading a book that didn’t have a point. A non-fiction book focuses on a topic or theme, It has a purpose. Fiction is no difference. Your purpose could be to point out the foibles of the human condition. It could be to dramatize how a mother’s love can push her to give her life for their child. A novel can be a story of good verses evil and shows the power of good. It can show the power of love. It can dramatize that we are not alone, that others share our fears, worries, or sinfulness.

When a novelist sets down to write a book, he has an idea. It may begin as people doing things, but if it doesn’t have direction or purpose, it falls flat. Think of Gone With The Wind without the backdrop of the Civil War. How long would anyone remember that book?

As an author of Christian fiction, my purpose is often focused on a Bible verse that sums up a major idea in the book. For example, Proverbs 16: 9 reads: In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps. This book would be about someone who has made a life plan— a career, a goal, success, fame, an accomplishment—but things happen, and the character realizes to reach that goal, he may have to give up something else equally important.

I know this works because of reader mail. Letter after letter reveals how my novel has made a difference in someone’s life. They tell me what they learned about themselves or about someone else. They tell me how they found an answer to a question or how they realize they need to ask questions about their life. They walk away with something that has made a difference.

While you might not write Christian fiction, you can, writing any genre, also sum up in a sentence what the major theme or purpose of your novel seems to be---good wins over evil, love is worth fighting for, a parent will give their life for their child, lies tangle lives, gossip only begets gossip, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and laughter can heal. You can think of many more. These themes work for a romance, a thriller, a western, or any genre.

When you sit down to write a novel, ask yourself what you want the reader to take away when she finishes. If you can’t answer the question, this is the reason your story is not making an impact on an agent or editor. It might be why a reader enjoys it for the moment and can’t remember the title or what it was about two days later. Write so that you make an impact on your readers with a purpose. Create a theme or a message that you want to leave readers with at the end of your novel, and you will have written a memorable story that makes a difference.

Impacting Fiction Writing with Script Writing Techniques

I have heard that authors can learn some great writing techniques through studying screenwriting. So I decided to act on this idea, and I'm away from home attending the Gideon Film Festival Conference. This unique conference has pulled together award-winning authors with multiple published books, movie producers, actors, screenwriters and more to open doors for the purpose of networking and learning.

Yesterday I attended the Art and Craft of Screenwriting, presented by Sarah Anne Simpolec. A part of the workshop on pre-writing activities included outlining, ten a fiction writing technique and a place where index cards can be useful. Sarah explained many techniques used for screenwriting but the section on outlining for screenwriting works extremely well for fiction writing.

Outlining

1. Define the overall theme or meaning of your work. What will happen and why does it matter? Sarah made an excellent point about the why. If your story does not make a difference, if it doesn't matter, then why write it? How can it serve the reader?

2. Create individual character arcs. What does the character want? What does the character need? The need factor is often the hidden desire of the character. The difference between the want and the need are sometimes in conflict and an effective technique is to create a situation where to gain what the character needs means to give up what he wants. This is an excellent technique to create conflict.

3. Setting should be specific and used to deepen characterization and conflict, not just a place to plop characters. Setting influences the storyline because it influences the lifestyle of the characters, and it affects thier needs and wants or their ability to reach these goals.

4. Develop subplot arcs that affect the main plot. Weave these subplot arcs through the novel rather than dropping them into the story and then resolving them early. A subplot must make an impact on the main story and change it in a meaningful way by adding conflict.

5. Pacing needs to flow like a river with all its hidden dangers. Through outlining the author can visual pacing before writing the book. He can see the river's calm and the turbulence and then place these scenes in the most meaningful way to impact the story.

By considering these five points, an author can impact the power of story and create a book that grabs the reader and keeps him hanging on for the amazing ride.

This is only one small way in which screenwriting can enhance fiction writing so learning more about writing scripts can help you grow as a writer.