Internal Conflict

No story can be successful without conflict. There are no caveats, conditions, or exclusions to this rule. The rule is universal, which means it applies to every successful story ever written anywhere on Earth at any time in Human history.

For years, my critics told me my stories lacked sufficient conflict. Reviewers would write, “Your characters have it too easy.” This exasperated me because my stories had as much distress and opposition as any story I'd ever heard or read. My characters didn't have it easy!

But the criticisms kept coming, even after I imposed greater turmoil onto their poor literary souls.

After a great deal of my own suffering, I realized my critics weren't referring to insufficient conflict but rather to insufficient internal conflict.

Ohhhhhh. Thank you for being clear.

It turns out that it isn't conflict that makes every story, but internal conflict.

What is internal conflict?

Internal conflict occurs when a character suffers because of conflicting needs or requirements. For internal conflict to exist, there must be two or more "reasonable and necessary" objectives that oppose each other. The character can't complete both of them. She can't have it both ways.

Classical motives for motivating characters include fear, duty, need, desire, revenge, and expectation. But motives do not create internal conflict until more than one of them occurs that require characters to act in opposite directions.

Children escaping from prison doesn't create internal conflict.

Children escaping from prison who would prefer to remain in prison

creates internal conflict.

A story about two rocks wouldn't be very interesting. But a story about two rocks that began as one rock and then broke apart a thousand years ago, and against the wishes of the other rocks have been trying to find each other again ever since, is a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature.

Speaking of rocks, we recently upgraded our kitchen countertops to beautifully colored granite. That granite waited millions of years deep within the Earth's crust before it could be installed in our kitchen. Yes, we are that special.

Opposition alone doesn't create internal conflict.

This is one reason why action movies often have weak stories.

Little Red Riding Hood

Recall the 10th-century tale called Little Red Riding Hood. While being one of the oldest and most recognizable stories in Western literature, it's entirely lacking in internal conflict. The story doesn't answer reasonable questions, such as:

• Why does she go into the forest by herself?

• Why does grandmother live alone in a dangerous forest?

You may think this line of questioning is silly. But it demonstrates a purely event-driven story's vagueness—and I dare say hollowness. Perhaps a better story is the more recently published The Three Little Pigs (James Halliwell-Phillips, 1890), which describes how the first two pigs were lazy and built houses of weaker materials.

Internal conflict in fiction provides applications of the following struggles:

1. Laziness vs. security

2. Choices have consequences.

3. "Law of the Harvest" (reap what you sow)

4. Long-term needs vs. immediate satisfaction

Two stories in one

A successful tale is two stories: the external (the plot) and the internal (the real story). The external story is what happens. The internal story is why it's happening. It is what is going on inside the main character’s head. The latter may be a completely different story. Thus, a novel is really two novels.

This principle is well illustrated by Netflix TV series such as Broadchurch, Happy Valley, The Fall, The Haunting of Hill House, The Killing, and Maniac. In each case, there are external and internal stories. With every event or scene, there is another inside the characters' minds. The inner story brings richness and meaning to the outer story.

What happens when there is no inner conflict? The story becomes a grocery list of events:

Event 1

Event 2

Event 3

Such a situation would be catastrophic for any author. If you find yourself writing a story that feels shallow, it may be because it lacks internal conflict.

If a novel is really two novels, then you must consider the endings of two stories.

No one is safe

The acclaimed movie director Alfred Hitchcock is famous for showing something troublesome at the beginning of the movie, then backing off and letting the viewers worry about it for the rest of the film.

In the spirit of Hitchcock, do something emotionally terrible to one of your main characters early on. The readers will fret about him or her for the remainder of your story.

"Only trouble is interesting."

-- John Dufresne

More than two

Think of all the streaming TV series on Netflix and Amazon. In how many of those shows are there only two characters wanting their way? In fact, there are usually many more than just two. Recall the Star Wars series. What if there were only Luke Skywalker and Darth Vadar? How boring would that have been!

This presents a big problem for new authors. What is more difficult than developing a unique, fully realized, richly textured 3D character with deep internal conflict? How about four or five of them--all different from each other and all interesting? Yet, apparently, such is an important ingredient in full-length modern-day fiction writing.

No clichéd conflict

“Who will you save," the villain wheezes,

"your friend, or a dozen people

I’m holding captive who will die under my hand?”

This overused plot crutch is boring because it is “external conflict” posing as “inner conflict.”

And it’s cheap writing.

Trouble, disease, mistakes, upheaval, character flaws, hopelessness, and confrontation are not internal conflict until the solution to any of these creates new problems the characters must face.

But the loss must occur naturally. If the reader feels it is orchestrated, your story will be interpreted as a cheap manipulation.