Guess what? It’s time to hit on my favorite topic again. Conflict! I’ve already covered types of conflict such as man verses man, man verses nature, etc. This post is going to cover the idea of layering conflict. Life is not simple. Every day we play multiple roles in society and face many struggles. The same must be true for the characters in our books.
Levels of Conflict
Layering conflict doesn’t mean you just put more problems in your story. You have to add depth. We are going to divide conflict into three levels that should be present for your characters in every scene.
1. Internal Conflict
Internal conflict is the smallest yet most impactful conflict in the story. It’s what allows readers to relate to a character. A reader may not be a gangster in New York City but can connect with that character if they both struggle with the same type of insecurities.
Internal conflict is any psychological struggle within a person. The base of this issue stems from two conflicting forces: desires and fears. A character will want something but a fear will hold him back from getting it. There can also be two conflicting desires, and the character must pick which one to pursue. Likewise, there could be two fears, and the character must choose the lesser evil. Regardless of the decision, the character can’t have things both ways. The internal struggle to choose is what causes emotional upheaval.
2. External Conflict
This level of conflict is what makes a character seem real. Everyone has to deal with bad things happening to them, and we all understand that’s part of life. How a person reacts to these struggles defines them. A reader learns what kind of person a character is by how he reacts to these problems.
External conflict is all the little things that go wrong around the character. It’s bad things that happen to the character, but he can fix it or improve the situation through his actions. His coworker burnt the coffee? He can make a new pot. His sister forgot to return his chainsaw? He can go pick it up from her. Got rear ended in a car accident? He can work with insurance to fix it. All of these things can be infuriating, but he can make a plan of action and work around them.
3. Epic Conflict
The highest level of conflict is called epic conflict. Unlike internal and external conflict, there is only one epic conflict. This one problem is usually the central conflict you planned the entire story around. It’s not meant to be relatable or realistic. Epic conflict is the cool factor. It is most likely what your readers came for, even though they will be more impacted by the other two levels of conflict.
Epic conflict is an external conflict that affects the grand scheme of things. It’s the zombie apocalypse. The civil war. The serial killer. The point of this conflict is that the character cannot control it easily or at all. There is no plan of action that quickly solves it. The character has to learn to deal with it, or team up with others to try to resolve it.
This conflict has to challenge the character all the way to his breaking point. The climax of your story should be when the epic conflict and the internal conflict collide, forcing the character to finally choose to resolve his inner conflict. Only then can he have a fighting chance to fix—or even just influence—the epic conflict.
Application
Writers need these layers of conflict to make their plots more realistic, but all the conflicts also need to connect and push the story forward. As humans, we look for connection and meaning in everything. In real life, we don’t always find it. In fiction, we are drawn to plots that bring everything together. If a character has the external conflict of communication issues with his boss, it needs to relate to his internal conflict and the epic conflict. Don’t make the conflicts pointless—like a character’s internal conflict is social acceptance but he’s stranded on an island alone. The secret is to define the internal and epic conflicts, and then create ways to link them with external conflicts.
For example, let’s have a protagonist with abandonment issues (internal conflict) due to his parents’ neglect which left him physically disabled. The epic conflict is a world war. Now, how can we connect these two layers with an everyday external conflict? One way would be to put his nation in a state of emergency that requires the placement of orphaned children with credible adults. Our protagonist is selected to house two brothers. Suddenly, we have the epic conflict (war) pushing against the internal conflict (abandonment issues), leaving the man to care for kids he never intended to raise (external conflict). That’s just one example of an external conflict. You can create as many as you want if you connect them and they push the story toward its resolution.
Final Thoughts
All three levels of conflict must be in every book scene. They don’t have to each fill pages of space, but they should all be mentioned or hinted at in every section. This is how reality works. We all carry our internal conflicts through a day full of external conflicts that are shaped by an epic conflict. Now, our epic conflict might not be an alien invasion, but it could be the oppression of our nation’s government or something else on a national or global scale. The point is conflict layers are present every day. We must seek to replicate that in our stories if we want to write books that resonate with readers.
Thanks for reading!
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