The Importance Of Conflict In Your Story

If you’re going to tell a story there needs to be some kind of conflict, or I guess alternatively you could say there needs to be a problem to solve. There needs to be a beginning, middle, and end. Things have to happen and come to a conclusion or it’s not going to be a very good story. In this post I will discuss why conflict is one of the most important story elements.

I think that when it comes to stories and conflicts within them they are most regularly used for character growth. For this post I will use my book Weapon Of Choice as an example because the entire story is built around several different conflicts.

It should be noted that not all of the conflicts within a story need to be major but they should still be there in some capacity. It keeps your readers engaged and wanting to know more. What’s going to happen, how the conflict will eventually be resolved, and who will come out on top.

In Weapon Of Choice, the main character, Galina, first meets the main love interest Mickey and already has an internal conflict about if she should tell him not to work for her father. She notes that some of the men that come through there are already hardened criminals and know what they are getting into but some of them are like Mickey. They need work, they are desperate, and they’ll do just about anything they are told. Mickey doesn’t seem to be aware that he’s involving himself with the mafia which is why she attempts to warn him, but it doesn’t work.

This leads to Mickey being shot and ending up on Galina’s doorstep in the middle of the night so she can fix him up. Another thing that leaves her conflicted.

Over the course of the story, Galina is met with several conflicts. She knows certain actions will cause certain results, as will complete in action. She knows that she cannot let the rival mafia win because that would mean not only the death of herself but her own family. The conflict in this arises in the fact that she doesn’t have much loyalty to her family and before being kidnapped by the rival mafia she was planning to leave town with her fiance and never look back.

I believe that having these different conflicts from things as small as what to have for breakfast and as big as what body part she wants to cut off, serve to drive the story. Not only that, it builds character. When Galina is given a command to cut off a part of her body, she’s also not told which part to cut off. She’s just told any part and ultimately what she decides to do gives insight into her character. It also drives the story in a whole other direction because it’s not a choice that most people would consider when faced with that situation. It’s a way to give the audience the information that Galina is more clever than once thought and the idea that maybe she can defeat the rival mafia after all.

Conflicts and how they are resolved further the growth of characters and the plot. If there’s no conflict within your story or hard choices to make then there’s no reason for people to continue reading the story. If things just happen because they happen then it’s not a very good story.

When writing anything fictional you must not think of it as:

Joe goes to the store and then he gets some milk and then he goes home and then he argues with his wife etc

You need to think of it as:

Joe goes to the store to get milk but because he’s in a hurry he doesn’t realize the milk is expired and this leads to a fight with his wife. She is angry because Joe doesn’t pay enough attention to what he’s doing, and this is the final straw for her to pack up and leave him.

Whatever is going on in your story shouldn’t be “and then this happened” over and over again. You will want to make sure that you have an action and then figure out what the consequences of the action are, especially in a conflict. How do the behavior and conflict better structure the story to make it more immersive and engaging? All people have motives. All characters have motives. Maybe the motive the character has isn’t one you will agree with but they still have them.

In the end, conflict is the hear of any good story (no matter how high or low the stakes are) and should be greatly considered and planned out to a genuine and relatable conclusion.