I’ve got a story for you. There was this girl. She was really pretty. She liked to sing and hum a tune. She thought to herself, you know I’d like to be a singer. She told this to her family and they all agreed – she would be a lovely singer. So her mother put her in some singing lessons. They were a little difficult but her vocal coach was very patient and encouraging. So she kept at them, refined her voice, recorded a sample album with the help of some friends and decided to shop it around. She went down to her local radio station and they enjoyed the songs so much they put it up that weekend on their local hits segment. A talent scout heard the song, thought her singing was wonderful and reached out. He suggested she enter a singing competition and while she was nervous at first, she eventually agreed. After several nerve-wracking weeks of competition, she got first place, signed a recording contract and now tours the world following her passion. 

The end. 

Wasn’t that exciting?

No?

I don’t understand. Surely this was really engaging. It must be because I’ve stumbled across similar stories more often than I would expect. Alright, I know you that you know there’s an obvious issue with this little snippet. Maybe a few clever readers think this is an example of a Mary Sue. Don’t worry, we’ll get to that one day. However, I imagine most of you read the title of the blog and already know where I’m going with this. 

So it might all seem pretty basic. And you’d be right. This is a pretty basic lesson. Every story needs a conflict. This opening one lacks it. So there’s no reason for us to be attached to the protagonist. There’s really nothing to keep us reading through it. The whole drama and engagement with a work of fiction hinges on competing desires, wants and challenges.

Yet, this is something I’ve come across in other people’s writing more than I think I should. It’s a little more prevalent, I’ll admit, in short stories. Which I get. Short stories are challenging in many ways that longer novels are not. I think, sometimes, people get so bogged down in the minutiae of their themes, character motivations, world development and setting that the whole idea of a conflict just sort of slips their mind. 

And then they end up with a twenty page description of a giant space transport line, the formal teaching structure of a strange magic system based on herbology or a whole novel on collecting bulbous woodland perennials. 

I know I’ve mentioned that just about every rule can be broken in art however I’m not certain this is one of them. I’m really struggling to think of a successful story where there was simply no conflict. The need for a conflict to drive narrative is so fundamental to the storytelling process that it’s kind of hard to talk about its absence. It would be more like writing a journal than a story but even people’s personal journals still often deal with the writer’s personal conflicts they face either internally or with people they interacted with that day. 

More than anything, it’s kind of a fact of life. The act of living is, in part, one of navigating conflicts. Whether it be the storied histories of nations and governments fighting over resources with their neighbours or even just the competing interpersonal relationships between a couple trying to manage their and their partner’s shifting emotions and viewpoints.

And I sometimes wonder if, perhaps, some people trip themselves over worries about tropes and a “lack of creativity.” Perhaps this could be a whole other blog entry, but I know I’ve seen some people in discussing the media they consume rolling their eyes at yet another protagonist having personal issues with their spouse. “Why does this daytime television show always have to have their main characters in rocky marriages?!” The obvious answer is because it’s a show. A show is meant to entertain. Just like our stories are. We don’t have a lot of tales about loving couples who always see eye-to-eye or manage to compromise and have a healthy marriage because… frankly it’s boring. 

Not that you can’t, of course. A loving couple tackling other problems like an invasion of space bugs intent on destroying the world would work wonderfully. But that’s kind of got a baked in conflict for said loving couple to grapple. If I were to ever make a hard, fast and ubiquitous rule it would be this:

Every story needs a conflict. Stop writing stories without it.

Now, for me, creating conflict has always been pretty second nature so I want to be open to those who may struggle with creating some tension in their narrative. Thus, when you’re starting your project and you’re not entirely sure where to take it or whether you have a conflict in the first place, ask yourself these two questions:

What does my character want?

What’s stopping them from getting it?

It’s really that simple. When you know your character’s primary motivation you need to immediately come up with some thing or some things that are in place preventing that character from obtaining it. 

Jumping back to the opener, how would that story have looked if the protagonist’s parents didn’t want her singing? What if they were insistent on her being a doctor? Maybe she had to take her lessons in secret. Maybe she had to make sure she was never caught singing in the shower. And what if her vocal coach wasn’t good. Or even supportive. Maybe she had doubts that she could actually be a singer. Maybe she wanted to quit and only kept at it because some videos she posted online got some positive feedback. What if she lost that singing competition? Maybe one of the judges flat told her she would never amount to anything. Did this discourage her or push her to keep at it to prove him wrong?

So, I’ll end on repeating those two questions because they’re so important when it comes to writing successful narratives:

What does my character want? What is stopping them from getting it?