One Portion of Conflict, Please! · 11:14am Oct 5th, 2015
Invisible Ink
Conflict of Interest: One Portion of Conflict, Please!
Time for a topic shift. I have a plan for a long-form post on Friday, so I’m going to try and cover all the groundwork before that’s ready to be published. The first thing I need to do is talk about what makes a conflict, and just how much can the concept be broken down to its simplest form.
Daily Writing Tips: 7 Types of Narrative Conflict
1. Person vs. Fate/God
2. Person vs. Self
3. Person vs. Person
4. Person vs. Society
5. Person vs. Nature
6. Person vs. Supernatural
7. Person vs. Technology
Are you spotting the theme, here?
I have found lots of different ways that people talk about conflicts, but I think they can all be boiled down to a variation on a structural format that I saw when I first researched this a few years ago, and sadly have never been able to find again since. A person wants something and something is in opposition to that desire.
Yep, that’s it. That’s your basic unit of conflict. Such a conflict can flare into life and be resolved in the space of a single sentence, or it can start with the first line of an epic and never truly be resolved. However, this level of simplification doesn’t actually tell us anything useful about how to understand or use conflicts.
At this point, it is sufficient to say that I consider the above concept universal. It is the basis of all conflicts – period.
Invisible Ink is meant to be about actually writing prose, so let’s take that basic concept and fashion it into a unit that is more useful to us:
Goal: The character wants something.
Motivation: Why the character wants the goal.
Obstacle: Something resisting attainment of the goal.
Action: What the character does to achieve the goal.
Result: What is the net effect of the character’s action.
Fallout: How the result of the action affect the character.
The underlying theory is that the result and fallout of one conflict should lead naturally onto the next goal, motivation, and obstacle – ideally producing a chain of conflicts and sub-conflicts that will run from the start of a story until the end.
A goal is a fairly transient thing, as far as structuring conflict goes. They don’t really matter – they don’t even have to make all that much sense. Mostly, it is the Obstacle that will change from one iteration of the conflict to the next, but it is the consistency and depth of a character’s motivation that I believe should be driving the finer points of you prose. Keep the motivation, more than the goal, in mind when theming a character’s actions and dialogue, and eventually the characters will begin writing themselves, leading to more immersive and rewarding experiences for your readers. Obstacles are more like the meat and potatoes of your plot-points, rather than the story you’re telling.
I vaguely remember the example used for that article, many years ago. It seems a good an example to show this looping as any:
Goal: John wants to get to the capital city.
Motivation: His beloved is being forced to marry another, and John must bring evidence of coercion to the High Priest before the ceremony.
Obstacle: A river stands between him and the capital, and the bridge is far too far upsteam to make it in time.
Action: John attempts to swim across the river.
Result: John makes it across, but is swept downstream.
Fallout: John is now dangerously cold and sopping wet.Goal: John wants to get to the capital city.
Motivation: His beloved is being forced to marry another, and John must bring evidence of coercion to the High Priest before the ceremony.
Obstacle: He’s cold and wet, and would probably die of hypothermia if he tried to continue on as he is.
Action: He searches the surrounding woodland for any signs of life or potential shelter.
Result: John finds a hut with a fireplace.
Fallout: Though the hut appeared to be deserted, it’s occupant is none too pleased to return home and find an intruder.
Now, that’s a pretty rough-and-ready example, but notice how the goal and motivations are the same – only the obstacle actually changes. Each obstacle/action leads to a result/fallout which sets up the next obstacle/action and so on. Occasionally, a fallout will change a character's motivation or overall goal, and these will generally signify powerful shifts in the progression of the story. For example, finding out that Alderaan has been totally blown away completely changes the goals of the characters in Star Wars.
Try going back over some of your favourite stories and framing the conflicts therein in the manner I’ve outlined here. Bear in mind that a story will likely have a plethora of conflicts running simultaneously; subplots, personal struggles, and intrusions of mundane external factors can all be sources of entirely independent conflicts of varying intensity. What matters is that once the ball is rolling, there should always be one conflict or another tying things together.
And try to think of all the different kinds of goals you can have. A character could just want five minute’s peace and quiet, or to help a friend with a simple but frustrating problem, but it could also be avoiding the pain of an expected outcome, or trying to save the entire universe from destruction.
One unit of conflict to describe them all.
-Scott ‘Inquisitor’ Mence
And so the RCL 2nd anniversary shenanigans end, cementing the addition of another story, A Canterlot Carol, to the list of RCL inductees that I just don't understand the appeal of. Let's all take a moment to at least pretend to be surprised by this. Still, The New Crop did pretty well, so I can't complain. I even picked a few votes for myself on a story I didn't expect to even get nominated.
Highball still makes me sad, though. It had a decent shot at winning, collected a pig pile of votes, yet somehow still lounges on a litter over 1k views. It's a travesty.
Anyway... I'm planning on expanding this on this start tomorrow, then bending it back around to the ins and outs of actually writing either Wednesday or Thursday. Then, on Friday or Monday, I hope to have a reasonably detailed conflict breakdown of a full story in order to demonstrate how conflicts interweave in a live narrative.
In other words, there is a plan in all this!
A Canterlot Carol is an excellently constructed story. Bad Horse wrote a breakdown of its plot construction here.
The things you say here about conflict aren't really new to me since they boil down to what I read in other books about writing (I think where I learned most about conflict was Story Engineering), but the refresher sure doesn't hurt.
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And therein lay the rub. From scene 2 until the end, the concept falls flat for me because scene 2 basically ended my interest. Everything after that is just glaze for the plot that has already been spoiled. The fact that the next scene does, in fact, tell the reader about Hearthwarming kind of neutered any suspense (although the scene itself was well-enough written) while I waited for some clever twist or misdirection that didn't come. And yes, if you're going to telegraph the emotional context of the piece that early, you'd better do something other than just hope no-one figured it out previously when it comes to the ending. So no, I don't consider that terribly good construction.
And that very repetition killed the story for me. It's like being talked down to. "Have you got it yet? Do I need to repeat it again?" I don't see how running the same theme all the way through the story and having the last scene be that theme reaffirmed for the fifth time would constitute an interesting ending. Nothing really changes – unless you weren't paying attention at the start, perhaps.
I don't see how doing the same thing five times counts as good construction. Seems awfully redundant and flat to me.
That and I don't find any of it remotely funny, but that, at least, is entirely subjective.
3445368 I'm afraid I appear to have missed the reference.
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It isn't supposed to have a twist ending; it isn't really that kind of story. The story has suspense in two forms:
1) What is the Zebra ambassador going to do?
2) What are Dotted Line's "plans" that he keeps referring to?
I suppose you could argue that the reveal that Dotted Line's "plans" are to, you know, spend all night working despite sending everyone else away to spend time with their families is a twist (and to be fair, it is - every scene with Dotted Line in it has him mentioning his plans, and misdirecting people away from his intentions, as the way he says it, it is obviously meant to imply to the character that Dotted Line himself is going to do something) but it, as with Celestia doing the same thing, primarily relies on irony for its impact, rather than being wholly unexpected.
But ultimately the story isn't really meant to be very suspenseful either; it is a very slice of life style piece which is meant to evoke emotions out of the audience, and give people warm fuzzies at the end.
If a piece has an emotional theme, then that theme should be evident from early on; indeed, it is generally important in all stories for the theme to be running throughout the piece. Even stories with twist endings like Bad Horse's Trust telegraph the theme very early, and the theme is outright told to us in the middle of the piece before it is shown to us at the end.
And indeed, this sort of telling/showing trick is actually a very powerful thing to do; doing it in the opposite order is generally bad, but having the theme of a piece be told earlier on, and then be shown by the ending, is actually strong because it actually shows us what the thing which we were told really means. It doesn't mean that we're even seeing something different; it means that we're seeing it much more powerfully, and getting the full emotional impact.
This trick is actually used very commonly in strong pieces. It can be done clunkily, but when done well, it can strongly reinforce the theme of a piece, and indeed, many stories are ultimately about living up to the moral which the character told at the beginning, because living something is much harder (but more fulfilling) than merely saying it.
Actually, repetition is very important to reinforcing themes - if your story only brings up the theme once, it isn't really a theme at all, and if it only comes up at the end, and isn't run throughout the piece, it doesn't really work as a theme either.
The story uses the refrain of "I've got plans" at the close of each of the scenes in order to reinforce the importance of his task in his own mind, as well as to show how it goes with the theme of the meaning of Hearth Warming to Dotted Line. When he says it, he is actually happy that he is making other people happy. It is a thoughtful infliction of joy. And while he is miserable when he isolates himself in scene five, it is in the very end, when he sees himself as being a part of something greater, and lets the outside world in, and remembers that the Princess loves him just as much as he loves his own subordinates, that he is at his most chipper, which shows us the theme which is told in scene 3. Indeed, it is that emotional core which is at the very center of the piece - the fact that he is getting everyone out so he can do all their work themselves while they can be happy, is what he is doing, but understanding his motivation in it - and his place in the world, and view on what is going on - is pretty critical to understanding the purpose of the piece as a whole.
The thing is, it isn't until the end that Dotted Line fully embraces it:
He is thoughtful, and loving, but he isn't mindful enough of the love others have for him, nor does he share it with others - but at the end, seeing Celestia doing for him what he was doing for others makes him mindful of that love that others have for him, and he gets to share in a special moment with Celestia there that makes him very happy indeed. It was the fact that at the end he let the world in and let it actually be Hearth Warming for himself as well that is important, and thus, it isn't a mere reinforcement, but it is actually showing us the full meaning of what he told Mkali.
3445418 That last line sounded similar to "One ring to find them all [and in the darkness bind them]", which is the engraving on the one ring from the Lord of the Rings. The mastermind behind forging the rings was Sauron, who was a Maia.
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Sure, he misdirects other characters away from his intentions, but it doesn't misdirect me. Every time he mentioned it it seemed blatantly obvious that his plans were to get everyone home to spend time with their family because he didn't have any other plans. And... what irony, exactly?
Oh my God! Repetition is important for reinforcing themes? Holy crap, how did I not know this?
Of course I know that. I never said that repetition was inherently a bad thing, Captain Strawman; I only said that it 'killed this story for me'. Repetition is used as a narrative device – there has to be some point in it.
Poppycock. A story doesn't even have to 'bring up' the theme once for it to be perfectly valid one. Show, don't tell.
Correct, so when he does exactly what he's been doing the whole time come the end, why is it particularly interesting? If it hadn't been the running theme I could buy it, but it's just repetition.
This literally doesn't happen in the story. It's just not there.
An interpretation. I see it differently: he's just getting a chance to do something for Celestia, rather than regular ponies, and that raises the stakes.
Again, that's entirely conjecture. I have no idea where the 'place in the world' stuff is coming from, because it certainly doesn't seem to be in the story. I just re-read it and I have no idea what you're referring to. I mean, sure, it can be taken that way, I'm just not sure why it would.
Like I said, the problem for me is that the emotional complexities on display in scene two appear to be identical to those on display in scene six. I don't see that he 'rediscovers' anything so much as just gains more impetus.
I can't help but notice that you're back to your position of 'this is how I think it is, therefore this is how it is'. Just because you pulled a strawman on me last time doesn't mean I'm not going to call you out on it again. If you can't make posts without resorting this this kind of illogical argumentation, please don't reply again. I have no interest in sorting through your lies and misrepresentations on my own blog.
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Showing is bringing up a theme. Also, it is much easier to tell things than show them, which is precisely why this construct works - it is easy for someone to say they understand something, but much harder for them to actually understand it. That's what the ending of this piece is about - Dotted Line truly accepting it, rather than merely saying it and going through the motions. The contrast of a character's actions when they say something and when they actually do it is a powerful narrative device.
It ties it together. Every scene ends with it, but at the end, he's actually living the true meaning of
ChristmasHearth's Warming (or at least, his own perception of it).Er, yes, it does. When he starts out doing the paperwork, he's isolated in his office, alone, cold, while Luna's magnificant night is outside, and fireworks are going off that he keeps avoiding looking at, and he is crying. He's trying to get everything done, all by himself, and there's no one else in the castle (or so he thinks).
He's isolating himself and not allowing himself to feel the warmth and love because he thinks he has work to do, and can't let himself be swept up in such frivolities, despite the fact that he just sent everyone else away for exactly that reason - to share in the joy of others.
Uh, the scene shows it quite explicitly. After that point, he:
And then it ends with him working on the treaty, but he lights up the fireplace (a literal hearth's warming), actually looks out the window, makes himself a cup of tea, and watches the fireworks and smiles even as he does his work. He's no longer isolating himself from the world as he was in the earlier portion of the scene, but instead sharing in it with everyone else.
It isn't just that it is Celestia - it is that someone was trying to do the same thing for him as he was doing for everyone else, and he was reminded not only of showing love thing, but also to be mindful of the love he was being shown. He wasn't being mindful of that before - he wasn't appreciating it, and in fact was doing his best to not do so. But at the end, he realizes his actions towards others aren't enough - he needs to accept it himself.
That's the entire point of the piece. Dotted Line may say he knows the meaning of Hearth Warming, but he only really shows that he fully understands it at the end.
I'm trying to explain to you why people find it powerful; I'm not trying to argue with you. Understanding why A Canterlot Carol is a strong piece - and percieved as strong by people - helps you as a writer. Understanding the cleverness of the setup of Xenophilia helped me better understand self-inserts, and why they're appealing to people - it doesn't mean that the story is any better in my eyes, but having an appreciation for why people liked it so much helped me to understand its popularity and potentially harness that same idea if I should ever choose to do anything that might benefit from a reader self-insert.
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Which is why it's usually less interesting and not really encouraged. The problem with the construction is that it doesn't do anything to show that he doesn't understand it, but hints very early on that he does. I can see no delineation within the story between whether he doesn't understand or just doesn't have access.
But you didn't say he was isolated, you said he isolates himself, which is not the same at all. He doesn't intentionally go to a place where no-one else is – he goes to his office where the work gets done. What I will concede is that I completely missed that he was supposed to be crying because, even upon a careful re-read, the wording just didn't click that way. If you hadn't told me, I wouldn't have known.
You're still projecting your opinion as fact. Stop saying that it is and actually give an argument for why this is the case. It's hinted at very bluntly that he doesn't have anywhere to be in scene two. he says "I’ve sent everyone I possibly can away already, anyone with any family at all." Apparently, he's either excluding himself hypocritically or because he has none to go to, and I see no reason so assume he's being hypocritical. It make far more sense to me that he is dejected because he doesn't have anywhere to go.
But that's inconsistent with what's shown. He clearly did know it back in scene two, and he's really not doing anything different. What changes is that he gets a reminder that someone cares about him. And what does he do with that new information? Exactly what he did before, only happy about it rather than dejected. Now, if he's woken Celestia up and offered to write the report together, that might have implied that he'd learned the 'true spirit of Christmas'. As it is he just found a rationalisation for his fears and failings, which is kinda dark.
But you're not, are you. You're just saying X=Y, without any reference to how that comes about, and you seem to be continuously oblivious to this fact. Since your 'review' of 'Mare, you haven't actually explained anything – just asserted. This is my point.
And that's the double standard right there. See, in both cases, I've asked 'why?' while you've stated why you are correct. You didn't get a story and decided it didn't make sense without every asking why it might make sense to anyone else. You 'get' this one, but how no interest in why someone else might not. This is why I can't take you seriously. You only seem to be interested in confirmation bias – to the point where you don't even seem to be able to explain your reasoning for something.
Now, I can fully appreciate why people would find it appealing if they see it the way you're implying they do, but that does nothing to explain why they see it that way at all, so it doesn't actually help in the slightest. It just looks like people like it because they're making all sorts of assumptions that don't appear to flow from the story itself. So if you want to explain, great! But actually explain, not just state arbitrarily.
Essentially, I see a story about a stallion trying to make sure others get the most out of something he doesn't have, and he's so wrapped up in his position of denial that he passes up the once chance to actually have a proper Hearthwarming in favour of bowing to his self-destructive habits (a very common habit in real life, I might add). What makes it even darker is that he's convinced himself that doing so is a good thing. This thing should have the dark tag!