Wednesday's Writer's Tip - Conflicts #MFRWauthor #BooksWeLove

The major characters in every story need both an inner conflict and an outer one. The outer one is often easier to come up with than the inner one. The outer conflict belongs to the plot and the inner one to the character or characters.
An outer conflict and be a phenomena of nature, one of society and one of people against people. These can be easier to design than the inner conflict. The outer one must be urgent. We've all seen these in stories. You have five days to solve this problem. In two weeks something drastic will happen. Time plays an important part of the outer conflict.

The inner conflict is different. This is some inherent part of a character's nature. This could be the temptation to step outside the rules of society to gain an object. This war could take place within the character. Can I do this and still regain the love or respect of another  of the characters he or she wants to impress.

Both the inner and the outer conflict must be of great importance to the characters and to the story. Weak or vague conflicts weaken the story. Conflicts too easily solved do the same thing. Readers want to see the characters struggle with their conflicts and to overcome them. A conflict that can't be conquered also leaves the reader wondering.

So design your character's conflicts both internal and external by making them hard to solve or overcome but always knowing that they must be solved.

Wednesday's Writer's Tip - Scenes

Back to The Techniques of a Selling Writer bu Dwight V. Swain. This book is so full of advice to writers I'm on my second copy.

Just what is a scene. Like a book, a scene has a beginning, a middle and an end. But there's also more to the scene. The scene helps develop conflict in the story. What it needs is a focus character, hero, heroine or villain. For the scene to work, the focus character needs a goal. This goal may be a segment of the final goal. Say the final goal is to win the love of the character's life or to find the murdreer, to defeat the aliens, or to win over the evil sorcerer. Each scene is a segment of one of these goals, but the scene takes the character step by step to the goal. The goal is what the focus character wants to achieve in this scene. Maybe to fina a clue to the murderer, maybe to get a first date, maybe to learn a particular spell, or find a way to trace the alien ship.

To bring the scene alive there needs to be conflict. Opposing forces always make for interesting reading. Without conflict, the scene falls flat. What is keeping the hero, heroine or villain from reaching the goal of this scene? Sometimes the conflicts aren't strong and if they aren't strong enough the scene falls flat. Bickering between two characters isn't real conflict. Conflict means a struggle. Making achieving the goal too easy for the focus character leaves the scene flat. So build the scene with conflict so the character is headed for disaster.

Disaster is the last part of a scene, When the character succeeds the story is over, even if they win a small concession, this can not solve their entire problem. There must be some kind of doubt that the character faces defeat in the overall scheme of the story. Maybe the focus character appears to win his goal but the opposing character isn't happy with what they have agreed to. This can be shown through the eyes of the opposing character rather than the focus character.

So build each scene as carefully as you build the entire book and if the character seems to win find a way to show the win is only a temporary step on the path to finding the entire goal of the story.

Writing Tip -- The basic conflict

We all know what conflicts are especially when it comes to characters. Sometimes the basic conflict in a story is a little different from the conflicts the characters face. We can use something like escaping an environment that smothers a person, or good vs evil. To develop a basic conflict in your story, you must give the protagonist or protagonists a chief motivating force. To me this is the why of the story. Why do they want to change their environment? What's wrong with it that makes them desire a different environment. There must be a tangible goal to reach. To me this is the what. Just what do they want. I've often gone through a rough draft of the story before I discover just what the goal is. To reach the final goal, there are often smaller goals to reach.

When writing the Warrior of Bast, Tira, the heroine, wants to go to Egypt. She is thinking archeologically. She realizes this is impossible for her at this time. Then she receives a chance to go, but not to the Egypt of the present, but the one of the past. Now her goal has shifted. Why would she want to go there? She must decide what she really wants and why she wants this particular goal. Even after she arrives there, the basic goal is muddy. She finally knows her goal is really wanting to belong and wanting someone to love and be loved by.

In the story the motivating force also changes as the character herself changes.

Conflicts

This is not conflicts in the sense of writing but deals with myself and the writing world. Once I belonged to four professional writing groups. When the time to renew one of them arrived, I decided not to renew. The reason was that I had no personal connection to the other members of the organization. All was done through a newsletter and a promotional item. When the promotional way was closed to those who chose the publishing path I had entered, I felt there was nothing in it for me. Two of my professional groups I have no problem with renewal. In fact on both I usually renew early since I have that option. One group supports a genre among the number I write and even when I sell in another genre people are quite free with congratulations. I am able to take part in any of the promotional projects I care to and have done in a number. The second of my keepers deals with my particular publishing path. Support is freely given. I have learned more about the publishing world than from any group I've ever belonged to. I have made friends and acquaintances. Many among them have bought my books and I have bought theirs. One thing I like about this group is that all the members are published or connected to publishing in some manner. Another thing is that they are published in every genre you can think of including poetry and non-fiction as well as fiction. There are sometimes scraps and sometimes heated discussions but all settles down in the end. The only criteria to membership is that the author must be published on a certain path. Some are published on more than one publishing path. I am one of them.
Now I've come to the third group. I've belonged for a very long time and have gained some benefits, mostly friends. One problem I have is my chosen paths of writing. To be a member of this group one must be actively seeking a career in a single genre of writing. I am writing in a number of genres. Actually, I'm pursuing
a career in writing fiction with an occasional excursion into non-fiction. The particular publishing path I chose ten plus years ago was not recognized by this group. I could have left then but I would have missed the many friends I have made over the years. Now this path is recognized and the reason I see for the recognition bothers me but I won't get into that. What really troubles me is that some people who were violently opposed to this publishing path now think it's wonderful.
Now my conflict is one of personality. I am a Cancer with six planets in that sign and that makes me very much this kind of person. What this means is I hate to see things broken without trying to fix them. I like to hold onto things far beyond their use. I tend to mother people and this is sort of what I've done in the last of the professional groups I belong to. I have mentored a number of new writers who have gone on to become published. I enjoy doing this as much as I do writing and if anyone knows me, I am completely obsessed and in love with writing and reading. At this point I am still conflicted about paying a lot of money for a group that mainly offers me friendship and little support. I will probably stay another year unless I get tossed out on my ear.