Tag: importance of conflict in stories

This is part three of our three-part series on why conflict is needed in narrative writing. The first post discussed why some young writers struggle with conflict and how conflict adds excitement to stories. The second post showed a connection between conflict, theme, and plot.

In this post, I’d like to address a concern many people have that learning all of this can somehow be confusing and really is too much for students to accomplish at the SEA level.

Let me start by asking a question:

What is the purpose of narrative writing instruction?

When most of us think about developing critical thinking skills we think about math and science. When they think about developing creative thinking skills, we think about visual arts and maybe even music. What many people don’t realize is that narrative writing covers both critical and creative thinking in meaningful ways.

When students have to come up with reasonable challenges and obstacles for their characters, describe how characters solve the main problem, and explain the impact of the experience on the character – that’s a lot of critical and creative thinking right there!

Having conflict in a story is both for the story and for the writer.

Ultimately, narrative writing is about sharing a point of view. Being able to express ideas in writing is a crucial skill that continues to benefit individuals throughout their lives.

So, it’s not just a narrative. It’s not just a problem for a fictional character in a fictional situation. Conflict is needed in a story to help develop critical and creative thinking.

The next time you’re working with your young writer on their stories, find out what they think, how they feel, and discuss with them how problems arise and are solved and what happens next. They’ll be learning far more than you might realize.

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This is the second post in our short series on conflict. In the first one, I looked at why young writers struggle with conflict and how conflict adds excitement to stories. In this one, I’m going to discuss the connection between conflict, characters, theme, and plot in more detail.

Conflict

Deciding on an appropriate conflict for narratives starts with the character and their goals. We want excitement and rising action, but the story is about a character and that excitement and rising action must involve them.

Conflict depends on what the character wants and what the situation is. By definition, a conflict is something which creates a problem for the character as they pursue their goal or something which interrupts the character’s life.

One way to look at it is to imagine the main character walking down a street. That street is their life. If all they do is walk down that street for no reason, then there’s no point to the story. The main questions are: Where are they going? And why? That’s how you define the main character’s goals.

After goals have been defined, the next step is to decide what would be an appropriate interruption to that within the context of the story. A good way to decide on that interruption is to think about how you want the conflict to affect the character.

Conflict in a narrative is there to stir emotion, cause characters to take action, and give reasons for the events in the story.

Theme

Nothing should be random or happen just because it’s fun. At least not in a narrative. We’ve discussed cause and effect before, so I won’t repeat that. Just know that there must always be a reason for actions and consequences too.

This is how theme makes a difference. Theme refers to the subject of the story. And when I say “subject” I mean the area of life being discussed, the moral or message that will help the character and reader become better people.

Is the story about friendship, love, courage, perseverance, good versus evil, honesty, the benefits of hard work, or another concept? Theme is what connects characters, conflict, and the plot.

You see, conflict in a story teaches the main characters lessons, and helps them learn more about life.

Climax

All the actions they take that create the rising action lead them to that lesson. The climax is how the lesson is reinforced, and that lesson is expressed in the resolution of the story. Characters are different because of the experiences they had.

So, for young writers who are struggling with conflict and need a different way of understanding how it works in a story, you can take the approach of working with theme as a basis for conflict.

1. What can characters learn?

2. How can they learn that lesson in this situation?

3. What challenges or obstacles will help them learn this?

4. What must they do to overcome that problem to learn this lesson?

5. How will learning this lesson change them?

This might seem like a lot to think about, but questions like these will guide young writers in making decisions that will improve the quality of their writing over time.

After practicing with these ideas, narratives will make a little more sense.

#NarrativeWriting

Narrative writing must have conflict.

When I first had to explain that concept about narrative writing, I didn’t really understand why it wasn’t obvious. But after the third, fourth, and fifth time I had to explain it, I realized there was an issue here. Why do young writers have such a challenge with conflict in narrative essays? The short answer is that they don’t fully understand what conflict is.

Here’s a slightly longer answer. Young writers have a limited understanding of conflict. To them, conflict is a fight or something exploding or anything involving pain and carnage. I blame it on the movies and computer games, but this isn’t really the issue that causes the problem they have with conflict. The main problem with young writers understanding conflict is that they think conflict is bad. In their short lives, conflict is something they want to avoid. Conflict is hurtful, painful, and not what makes life fulfilling or happy. In fact, it’s the opposite – conflict is a problem that makes life unhappy.

So, those who include conflict in their narrative have challenges reconciling the conflict in their climax and showing the value in the resolution. They can’t really see the connection between the conflict and their lessons learned. And others simply avoid conflict because it doesn’t make for a nice story. Why can’t characters have a good time camping or at the amusement part or during vacation? Isn’t that what we want in life?

The first step in dealing with this writing issue is getting young writers to see conflict as the driving force of the plot. Without conflict there will be no rising action. All the events of the story will happen on the same level and there will be no climax or falling action either. Ask them about the games they play. What if in their games winning was super easy. Everybody reaches the finish line at the same time. All you had to do was go pick up the prize and game over, you won. No objective? No quest? Nothing more to do? How long would they keep playing that game?

What makes a game fun, interesting, and exciting is that it’s not easy. If everybody could do it without any effort, then what’s the point? There must be something to aim for and challenges along the way. Players must develop skills to overcome their challenges and they get bragging rights for that. Even going on a water slide has these elements. You have to climb up to the top and the process of coming back down has twists and turns or it’s very high and at a steep angle.

Nothing truly fun and exciting is completely void of challenges. This is why conflict is necessary for a story. This is how it adds excitement and makes the story more fun for readers. It’s all about seeing how the character will overcome the challenges. Will they do what I would do in that situation? Would they choose something different? Will their actions be interesting to observe? These are the questions readers want answered.

In the next post, I’ll explain more about how conflict is connected to characters, theme, and plot.

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