Tuesday's Inspiration - A little conflict - Arthur Koestler #MFRWauthor

When I came across this quote by Mr. Koestler, I needed to think a bit about the meaning."In the hierarchy of bisociative processes that constitute art, the most powerful effects are derived from the intersections of conflicting fields."

There are some big words here so I spent a little time figuring what they meant before I turned to read the rest of the essay. Sometimes the conflict of opposites are between two individuals. Other times this conflict is internal. Society can provide the opposites between a character and the world he inhabits.

Conflict is what drives the plot of a story and if there is no point of conflict - no opposing forces the story becomes nothing more than a sketch.

After reading this quote and the essay by Mr. Koestler, I started to look at my characters to discover what their conflicts might be. Are they internal with the character drawn in two directions. How do they react and how to they come to grips with the forces driving them in two directions.

Is the conflict external? How does this drive the story and how does this play with the characters' natures.

I came to this conclusion. Without conflict there is no story.

Tuesday's Inspiration - Arthur Koestler - On Conflict

"Conflict always reveals a paradox in the human condition." These words by Arthur Koestler written years ago struck me on many levels. Conflict of some kind is the driving force in every fiction story. And even some that are non-fiction. Deciding which conflicts to use brings us to choices of which kind of conflicts to use to drive the story.

There are characters in conflict with society, with another character and with themself. To me finding which conflicts to use for my characters can be difficult. In my current WIP the hero has conflicts on several levels. He stands in opposition to the bad guys but there is also the conflict set up in the beginning of the story which sends him into conflict with his society.  This brings him to an inner conflict that rises from within. The odd thing is that I never looked at what the conflicts were in the story until I read the article where I found the quote by Arthur Koestler.

The other main characters in the story have their own conflicts and these conflicts impinge on the hero's conflicts though they aren't necessarily the same. But without conflicts from within and without the story would remain a series of incidents with little meaning.

What about you? Do you consciously decide on what conflict your characters will have before you begin or do some of them arise during the writing when you aren't aware there is a conflict? Just remember without conflict whether it is within the character, between two characters or from society without conflict the story goes nowhere. So think, On one hand but on the other hand and you have a recipe for conflict.