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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