Writer's Workshop: Conflict is the Core

You know, it occurs to me. I've talked about conflict a lot on this blog: Equity and Inequity, Making Characters Matter, the Influence Character, How Characters are Blind, yadda yadda yadda. But you know what? I don't think I've actually defined what conflict is. I've said that specific line, that conflict is the central concept of stories, but I'm not sure I've actually demonstrated how to write conflict. So let's fix that, shall we?

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There's a great Extra Credits video about something called Incomparables. Basically, these are two things that you want to choose between, but you can't directly compare them. In a video game, for example, you might have your stats of Strength, Speed, Health, and so on. If I give you a choice between +Strength, +Speed, or +Health, which one should you choose? You can probably play the game pretty well no matter which one you choose; there's no right or wrong choice here. There's no conflict.

And yet you can have huge fights on online forums about which one is better. "Strength builds are the best! You need to be able to kill stuff, and killing stuff is the point of the game!" "But Speed lets you go first, and that can mean the difference between victory and defeat in the clutch!" "No, Health is the most important. You can be as strong or as fast as you like, but if you get KO'd in one hit, all your power and speed are so much flotsam." We've gotten into this crazy debate over something that doesn't really matter. But this isn't conflict either. This is an argument.

So what is conflict? Conflict is something deeper. Conflict is the fundamental disagreement that powers argument, it's the underlying vectors that cause the two sides of the argument to butt heads. Conflict is the core of the story, and it has one simple trait that you must understand: it is the interaction of two equal and opposite forces. If the two forces are unequal, then there's no conflict; the stronger force will simply plow the other one over in a second. If the two forces aren't opposite, then again, no conflict; the two forces can find some sort of compromise between their positions. No, it's only when they're equal and opposite that you get tension between them, and that tension breeds conflict.

Consider something like this: I want to run away, but I must stand and fight. This has the two equal and opposite forces of running away and standing strong. Cowardice and Bravery, Pursuit and Avoidance, whatever you want to call them, the point is, these two naturally conflict. If you wish to choose one, you must reject the other. That sounds pretty obvious, but we can pick more arcane relationships than that. For example, have you ever heard the phrase, "The ends justify the means?" Those are two ideas in conflict: the ends and the means. If you believe the ends are the most important ("We must defeat the bad guys at any cost!"), then you must reject the notion that the means are the most important ("Nothing is worth doing such a heinous act!"). There is no compromise here. Either the ends person flips, or the means person flips.

I mentioned this a little in the Workshop about the Influence Character, because they always have the opposite trait of the Main Character. In "Wonderbolts Academy," for example, Rainbow Dash is driven by her conscience: she wants to treat the other recruits with respect and fairness. But Lightning Dust challenges that with a temptation: the idea that they can only be the best by denigrating and hurting the others. There's a deep conflict to this. A character of good conscience can't just stand by with a tempting idea like that, and a tempting character can't stand the weakness of the conscientious character. Ultimately, at the end of the story, Rainbow Dash has to put up or shut up. But this doesn't have to be just the domain of the Main and Influence Characters. Any two characters that have these conflicting ideals will automatically disagree and butt heads. Here's kind of a silly example: does a tree deserve special treatment? Applejack says yes, Rarity says no. Mix these two together, and you get the opening scene to "Over a Barrel."

Remember, they have to be opposites. What happens if I take that character who wants to run and "challenge" him with the character who worries about the means? "No, you can't run! Cowardice is always wrong, no matter what." "But this isn't really cowardice! It's, uh, a tactical retreat." "What? It is so cowardice!" "No, it's not!" "Yeah-huh!" "Nuh-uh!" We've shifted from arguing the direct point (running vs. standing, means vs. end) to the material of the issue itself. This is how characters are blind. They get stuck on some other facet of the issue rather than what's really at stake. If your conflicting traits are really skew like this, then you don't really have a conflict. You might also get a compromise, like, "Well, what if I stay and work at the medic's tent, but don't get involved in the actual fighting?" "I guess that's okay. You are doing a good thing, after all." "Phew! Now I can still be a coward without doing something bad." Not what we wanted at all.

Your goal, then, in the story is to skew the characters' feelings to start with. I think the pilot shows exactly what I mean. Twilight is so darn busy worrying about whether she can get to the library and do her research in time that she completely neglects to see the real problem at stake here: the conflict between the other ponies' value of friendship and her own refusal to see that same value. As soon as she overcomes that central dichotomy by accepting the magic of friendship, the conflict is over, and she can finally defeat Night Mare Moon. But until then, she tries to skirt the issue with stuff like, "Well, sure, friendship is... whatever, but hey, look! Something else more important! Bye!" As long as the characters can keep up the smokescreen or argue about other stupid things, they can avoid the real conflict at the heart of it.

And this brings us back to the inequity and the changing character. The inequity of your story is the conflict on which the entire narrative hangs. Your changing character, be that the Main Character or the Influence Character, hangs on the same dimension. I talked about this in... Bookends, I think. Maybe "Therefore/But" and Turns. In any case, the resolution of the story always derives from that same change in one of the focal characters. The same problem Twilight has in "The Crystal Empire," that of struggling between self-glorification and self-sacrifice, is the same problem that needs to be overcome to achieve victory of King Sombra. Pinkie needs to hold steadfast against bad first impressions (from Rainbow, from Gilda, and from Twilight) in order for Rainbow Dash to see the true inner nature of things (both of Pinkie and of Gilda). See the parallelism?

I think I'm rambling at this point, so I'll summarize. Stories need a central idea of two equal and opposite forces at loggerheads with each other. It should be pretty obvious in nearly every page we read. You don't need to out and out say what the conflict is ("You know what your problem is? You just can't shut up and listen to authority."), but you should make it pulse in each action the characters take. At the very least, keep your eye on the relationship between the Main Character and the Influence Character, because they most closely embody that conflict. If you're totally stuck, or if the story seems to be meandering, bring the Influence Character back in and have them espouse their side of the conflict. By definition, that should get the Main Character's blood boiling. Boom! Instant tension. Do this correctly, and you'll never have a dull page in your story.