Young Writers Society

There's a lot of nonsense about what conflict is, but it really doesn't have to be so complex. All you need to know is that conflict is created by characters who make stupid decisions. Mind you, they don't have to be stupid characters, but everyone makes stupid decisions, no? These stupid decisions end up affecting the rest of the characters and BOOM! Conflict is born.

Lovely stuff, no?

erm, I disagree.

Conflict can be much more subtle then that.

Talking a leaf out of another's book, I put conflict in two categories: internal conflict vs. external conflict.

Internal being inside influences and external being outside influences.

And I don't necessarily believe that decisions have to be stupid for them to create conflict, oft times I believe that the conflict is borne out of characters making decisions that they believe are the right ones, especially for their situation, though taking them out of context they may appear less than stellar. But, yeah, conflict via stupid decisions, ah, life as a teenager.

Ta,
Cal.

Yes, there is also such thing as external conflict.

And as for the choice being stupid, it doesn't have to be stupid, there just has to be someone else who has a problem with it, or it has to create a problem. Juliet falling in love with Romeo wasn't stupid - since when is love stupid? But it just so happened that their family hated each other.

I can't actually think of any time I've seen conflict caused through a stupid decision. I've seen conflict caused through a decision that not everyone liked, but that's kind of a different matter.

Fear of making a stupid decision can create great conflict, though. You can keep a character tortured for aggggggges with that as a driving force (until the reader gets bored with the angst).

If you're careful, you can get conflict out of nearly any situation, I've found. Conflict is fun.

I like the stupid decisions idea.

Conflict is the worst thing that could happen to a character at the worst time (I always see it quoted something like 'run your character up a tree, then throw rocks at him).

Usually, this does result from another character doing something stupid (knowingly or not), though not always.

...

Yeah... Most of my conflict in Speakeasy might result from stupidity, but it also happens because of emotions, and how each character reacts to the stuff going on around him. Or, outside problems. Like, Alastair getting arrested didn't happen because of stupidity [although, you could say hanging out in a speak easy and almost always being drunk is stupid] it happened because Leslie scams them.

From the start though, the conflict exists because no one likes the new girl. That's not stupid, it's just being overly judgmental and cruel. And it sounds cliché, but you'd have to know the whole story to know why it isn't...

I always thought of "conflict" having the same gist as "action"; that being things happening.

*ahem* Goal + Obstacle = Conflict *ahem*

*gag*


MM