Without conflict or friction in your story, nothing interesting will happen. Today we focus on making sure two opposing forces run into each other in your story.
The Prompt
Put your character in a mundane, everyday situation. Then introduce a strong element of conflict.
Tips
- The conflict can be external (they’re driving to work and boom! A car crashes sideways into them, setting of a bizarre chain of events that matter because…)
- The conflict might be internal (They’re making coffee and reflecting on how difficult life has been since their mother got sick and because of that…)
- Make sure something happens, and that this story isn’t just your character thinking all the time.
- Keep adding different types of conflict, while trying to deal with the initial problem (e.g. the person whose car was rammed is now teetering on the edge of a cliff and has to climb out, all the while dealing with a crippling fear of heights caused by a childhood incident…)
Ok. Yes, yes. I’m behind. But, had to do this prompt. Conflict is my nemesis.
I planned to throw in conflict after conflict, but…I got caught in the character’s head. Internal conflict is Always where I end up.
Main character is a wife and mother with an overbearing husband who snaps in traffic and has to find a way out of the accident she caused.
For lack of a better idea I started out with coffee and a conflict between siblings about an inherited item, which turned out to be a cursed object. Family resentment over perceived favouritism and different styles of being in the world was a juicy foundation for conflict!
Ah yes, the everyday problems of all families… 😉
We’ve all inherited a cursed object or two, amirite?
One day I’m going to do a survey to see how many of our stories feature coffee… 😉
I’m guessing an increasing number as the month progresses, lol.
Love this premise.
Complete! Protagonist is going to work and sees his ex-girlfriend in a coffee shop in his building. Later on he holds the elevator for someone (turns out to be her again), which leads to an awkward elevator ride, which becomes more awkward when they’re going to the same floor, which becomes much more awkward when the elevator gets stuck between floors, which becomes downright scary when the elevator banks are targeted by terrorists.
Writing this felt a bit silly at times, but I have to admit that every time I forced myself to put more conflict in the story, I wrote much faster and with a lot of enthusiasm, over 1600 words in about 30 minutes which is way faster than I’ve ever written anything. Thank you for the thoughtful prompt!
That’s great! And a really interesting observation.
I love stories with elevators!
I don’t think my comment went through. So…I used a character from the story I’m currently plotting in my Kurztown series. Erik is just shopping when he runs into someone he’d really prefer not to see(that’s putting it mildly).
https://fallonbrownwrites.wordpress.com/2018/05/08/story-a-day-day-8-shopping/