Escalate Conflict to Keep Readers Turning Pages

Draw readers in through physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual conflict.

- JANE K. CLELAND

Every great story depends on conflict to propel it forward. Conflict is found in your book's overarching concept-the big idea-expressed in a way that highlights the tug-of-war between opposing forces. The more profound the conflict, the more compelling the read. Conflicts can be transcendent, fueling the plot of a sweeping epic novel or memoir, or they can be of limited scope, telling an important story by focusing on a single example. Broadly, there are four categories of conflict:

• Physical-an altercation or a threatened attack
• Emotional-a feeling that drives the character to act, such as loneliness, love, or depression
• Spiritual a loss of faith, self-doubt, or shaken beliefs 
• Mental-an intellectual challenge or puzzle

Your story can focus on any one of these categories, some combination of them, or all of them.

Deciding whether a conflict is suitable for a certain story is a complex task. Not only do certain genres come with specific reader expectations, but the conflict has to be relatable.

All Conflicts Are Internal

On the face of it, it would seem that there are two kinds of conflicts: external and internal. However, it is people's reactions to an incident, not the incident itself, that generates a conflict. In other words, all conflicts are internal. If someone doesn't care about a situation, you don't have a conflict. This means, of course, that we need to understand what makes people care. Consider what other authors (see chart on next page) have observed about the anatomy of conflict, starting with one of America's founding fathers, Thomas Paine, who said, "The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."

Storytelling Requires Conflict

It's easy to mistake premise for conflict. Consider this: In Victorian England, a couple meets and falls in love.

Do you see the problem? There's no conflict.