I used to think I was bad at writing conflict. I’m a pretty non-confrontational person in real life, tending towards letting things go than stirring up difficulty (for anyone), and when I wrote, I struggled with that age-old adage: “Put your characters in a tree and throw rocks at them.”
A part of me felt like the kind of conflicts that happen in fiction aren’t realistic–a character wants something, and all these made-up obstacles crop up in their way, and then how the heck do you even get them *out* of those situations? What was so wrong about a character wanting something and just…you know…doing it?
But I was talking to my counselor recently, and I realized that actually, I’m pretty good at solving problems. In fact, in my ordinary life, I’m constantly solving problems. Which is funny, because in my fiction–and certainly something I see in a lot of beginner fiction–is that it’s very easy for characters to just get what they want when they try to get it.
I thought this was a flaw in my own writing style, when in fact, it actually is just unrealistic.
If you look at an ordinary day, there is conflict everywhere. There is always something getting in the way. This morning, for example:
I wanted to take my oldest son out to the bus stop. SIMPLE THING, right? But I couldn’t, because my younger son was still asleep upstairs, and if he woke up and I wasn’t in the house when he woke up or came downstairs (our bus stop is right in front of our house, but that’s still too far), he would LOSE HIS MIND. But I can’t just wake him up, because he’s a grumpy bear first thing in the morning, so I need to make him a sippy cup of milk (it’s essentially his morning coffee). So I go into the kitchen to make him a “baba,” only to find that ALL the sippy cups are…dirty. Because I didn’t run the dishwasher last night. Of course. So THEN, I have to wash a sippy cup, which I start to do, only to find that our dish soap dispenser is EMPTY. So now I have to fill the soap dispenser in order to wash a sippy cup, in order to get my youngest his morning baba, in order to keep him happy so I can get my oldest out to the bus stop. <- Have I mentioned there’s a ticking clock on this, too?
This is all driven by a deep, innate desire for my oldest NOT to miss the bus, because I really want to get to my office to write, which is a part of my own sense of self and something that makes me deeply happy. <- Yearning.
And if he misses the bus, that’s going to throw off my whole morning routine and complicate getting his little brother to school and generally throw a wrench into the whole day, that might, with the way my brain works, mess up my ability to get much useful work done even IF I get into the office. <-Stakes!
All of these little things get in our way and complicate our attempt to achieve a goal, often a goal that really does matter to us on a deeper level.
TL;DR – Conflict is everywhere, even in ordinary, boring life. We’re not all stressed out for no reason, are we? If it helps, maybe instead of thinking “throw rocks at your character” (which seems odd and divorced from reality), think “stress your character out.” We all know how to do that, right? It’s the LITTLE things that get in the way and trip us up, and make us forget what we were trying to do in the first place. Then throw a deadline on it, and ramp up your character’s catastrophizing what will happen if they DON’T get the goal done, and BAM-! Baby, you got yourself a conflict-stew.