The Importance of Conflict in My Writing (Patreon)

One of the things it has taken me a while to realize is I can’t write a story without knowing the conflict that drives it. Tension is good, but until I understand the conflict and decide what that is, I can’t seem to bring the story toward a conclusion. I have always been more of a panster than a planer when it comes to how I write. I feel that is starting to change, but I still like to just take an idea and run with it. "Loving You is Wrong," is an example of this technique. I wrote it quickly in two days without an outline or any notes written down, but only after having throwing out two previous drafts.

I actually have more cut words about Radic, the vampire fox in the story, than the number of words I put in the finished story. The first draft of Radic’s story I wrote back in 2018 had tension, but I never had a clear picture what was causing it. Radic didn’t have much agency and without a conflict to give that tension meaning, nothing came of the story. I wrote 1,452 words that went nowhere.

The second attempt at writing a story with Radic I wrote last fall. I had been wanting to revisit the character since I created him. This attempt also had tension, but the conflict I was focusing on was still poorly defined. This time I got up to 2,221 words plus some bits that that are like sketches. This draft introduced Ekrem as Radic’s valet, but he was only a foil for Radic. He didn’t have a lot of personality and I started wondering why he would work for a vampire. Ekrem here shows sympathy for Radic, but Radic’s focus was on other issues. I just couldn’t nail down what that was in my head or what the fox wanted.

Driving home after working on the story at a coffee shop, it hit me. What if Ekrem was in love with Radic, and Radic was in love with Ekrem? What if Radic had to hold back his curse as a vampire in order to make that work? That was an interesting conflict, and something for him to struggle with. Armed with this clear conflict, I sat down and wrote that out. At 1,171 words, it’s much shorter than my two previous attempts to write a story about Radic, but he also showed much more depth and emotion in this shorter piece than my previous attempts had contained. He had needs, he had wants, and he had the ability to destroy the person he loved always at his disposable. Only with a clear conflict was I able to do something with the character.

More and more, I’m finding knowing what my conflict is makes my stories much easier to write. In many of my older stories, I would start writing, looking for the conflict, and only when I found it, would the story take off. Even though in editing I tried to smooth out this seam, I think it’s obvious in some of my older writing that I started with an idea, and there is a visible point where I finally figured out where this story is going.

Even with having a defined conflict, there’s still room for improvisation. This month’s story, “The Tomb Guardian,” always was going to focus on someone who meets Anubis after dying protecting a tomb. I originally thought it would be an adult story, but just setting up the encounter and the conflict that entailed drove the story in a direction I didn’t anticipate. I took the initial scene and built from it on the fly, but that only worked because I had already committed in my head with what was pushing the story forward. Without this clear concept for the conflict, I wouldn’t have been able to write the piece.

I’m sure other writers work differently, but for me, without understanding the problem the characters are going to face when I start writing, I struggle to breathe life into my ideas.