You often hear writing advice that stipulates that you need conflict everywhere in a book. Writing gurus say you need it on every page, from start to finish, in every scene, nay, in every passage of dialogue, nay, in every word, nay, in every letter.
Pshaw, says I. Pshaw.
Sometimes a character just needs to stare at the ice floes and contemplate the meaning of life and other great imponderables, like how people serving coffee are called baristas and people serving alcohol are called bartenders, but what do you call them when they serve both coffee and alcohol? (I’ll give you a moment.)
Great novels have stretches where there’s not a hint of conflict and things are serene and beautifully written, and I’ll never urge a writer to rip these out to introduce a gun battle.
But make no mistake: conflict is essential. It’s a book’s oxygen. It gives it life.
UPDATED 5/16/19
Why you need conflict
In fact, let us count the ways that this conflict/oxygen metaphor is apropos:
- Your book needs conflict to survive. It doesn’t need it constantly, but a book without conflict is pretty much DOA. It’s not really a novel without conflict. It’s just some paper with words printed on it.
- If any stretch of your book goes too long without conflict, your reader will die of boredom.
- You can use a lot of conflict to create a bright flame of a book that is relentless and charged, or you can create a slow burn that is more muted but intense nonetheless. You can vary the degree of conflict within the same book to do the same thing.
With regard to this last point, some might say that thrillers and other genre novels tend to put a lot of conflict on the page, and the conflict comes fast and intense, whereas literary fiction tends to have less conflict.
As a very rough and general rule this may be so, but it’s not always the case. When you look at Ian McEwan’s books, especially Enduring Love, nearly every exchange and moment on the page is intensely filled with conflict. The characters are constantly in conflict with each other and with themselves, and it’s a very intense reading experience as a result.
And there are plenty of suspense novels where things build slowly and steadily and where the quiet moments contribute to the sense of dread.
The two types of conflict
There are two main types of conflict in a novel:
- There’s conflict that happens on the surface, demonstrated through the actions and thoughts of the characters.
- There’s conflict beneath the surface, which is implied and unsaid.
For instance, a gun battle or a hysterical argument happens on the surface, but a character who is freethinking in a 1984-style world, where thinking freely is highly hazardous to one’s personal safety, has conflict beneath the surface. Even when Winston Smith is not trying to avoid Big Brother, there is an implied conflict between his life and the rest of that world.
It is highly desirable to have both types of conflict present and accounted for.
Is there conflict that is acted out on the page? Is the protagonist somehow pitted against the world they inhabit, whether it’s a government, an office, or an entire society? Is there conflict between characters, which is expressed through actions and words, as well as hidden desires and thoughts that go unspoken? Does the character have competing interior desires and thus live in conflict with themselves?
(The correct answer to all these questions is “yes.”)
Keep up the conflict
It can sometimes feel a little icky to always be hitting the conflict button, but unless you are intentionally and specifically choosing to have a quiet moment, you should always look for ways to introduce some degree of conflict.
Why? Because a character totally at peace with their surroundings and the people they’re interacting with is completely boring. Sure, give them a quiet moment from time to time, but this moment should be a respite from conflict, or should set up a future conflict, rather than being a gaping void of conflict.
The best way to introduce conflict is to place obstacles in the way of your characters. Conflict happens when a character tries to surmount an obstacle (for instance, a character negotiating with a cop who has stopped and delayed them or an alcoholic trying to say no to a drink) or when two characters have conflicting motivations that create an obstacle (one character wants to break up and the other wants to stay together). Conflict is all about how characters try to overcome obstacles in order to get what they want.
Conflict and pacing
Conflict also impacts the flow of a novel. Much like music, novels have a rhythm. Once you hit the middle stretch of writing a novel, it can sometimes become difficult to keep the beat.
Whether they realize it or not, readers expect things to unfold at a certain speed. In the beginning of a novel, things can unfold slowly or quickly, but a basic rhythm is established at the outset. The reader internalizes this and sets their expectations based on how things unfold in the first fifty pages, with the expectation that the speed will gradually ramp up as you head for the end.
If you’re ever thinking to yourself, “Man, this is getting slow” or “Where is all this stuff coming from?” it probably means the author has lost the pace they had previously established.
If there is a very slow stretch in a novel, it’s often because there’s no conflict: things are just happening, the author is indulging in exposition that’s not woven into the plot, or events are transpiring that are unrelated to the big unanswered question that had been driving the action. When this happens, the reader isn’t sure why they should care.
If there are places where things feel like they’re starting to wander, think about how you can introduce conflict or tie things back to the main plot arcs. Or, if you’re too relentless with the action and you’re worried you’re exhausting the reader, find a way to have a quieter scene that fills an important role in the narrative but doesn’t represent all-out conflict.
Conflict is everything
Ultimately, conflict is the reason we read novels. It forces characters to make decisions. It tests their strengths and weaknesses. It reveals how they think, how they react to pressure, and what makes them tick. Readers want to see whether the conflicts will be resolved and how the conflicts will be resolved, and they want to see who gets what they want, who wins, and how they win.
Remember, a man contentedly walking down the street is not a story. It only becomes a story when he is captured by space monkeys that force him to slap himself in the face over and over and say “I’m hitting myself.”
Now that is conflict.
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Art: Sea fight by Niels Simonsen
Mira says
Anon 2:29
Congrats on getting an exclusive with an agent. I think I’d at least give her the 3 weeks before you start chewing your nails off.
It can take awhile. She may need to show it to others in her company. Try and relax. And whatever you do, don’t ask her about it for awhile. These things take time.
Chris Bates says
Conflict doesn’t necessarily have to be argumentative or in-your-face. It can be a seemingly innocuous personal opinion… that snowballs.
Hypothetical example: “Hands down, love Stephenie Meyer’s turn of phrase.” Stephen King said.
Cut to a future scene in Chapter 8 where the respective bestselling authors gush about their mutual admiration over a glass of champagne. Next scene…? We’ve got close to nuthin’. A potential love story thread, perhaps? But it’s a struggle to create any further scenes with real bite. Oh, wait, there’s a knock on the door…
‘Hey, come on in, Writer’s Block. Wondered where you got to.’
Instead, King actually said: “Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn.”
BAMM … Just try holding back the scenes that will follow this pearl…
Meyer isn’t even present in the first salvo of conflict … but it’s still conflict. And the story now has some potential momentum. We want to know Meyer’s reaction, we want to know the fall-out that will inevitably follow throughout the reading and publishing world.
No guns. No action. No angst. Just a wayward remark.
sruble says
Great posts on Tuesday and today. I like how you think about things and the examples you give. Thanks.
p.s. I linked to them on my blog today.
p.p.s. 60 points so far in the NCAA contest. 🙂 I’m espn_sruble, since sruble was already taken.
Anonymous says
Thanks Mira
Anon 2:29
Jen C says
Rachel said…
Thanks, Nathan. This was a very timely post for me. I recently went to a workshop where Donald Maass talked about the importance of tension/conflict. Since then, I’ve been having an ongoing discussion with some of my fellow workshop attendees…should we have conflict on every page…should we ever give our characters a break?
I did the Maass workshop a couple of years ago, and loved it. Wish I could go again for my current novel.
I have a feeling that DM doesn’t really expect you to have conflict on EVERY page, even though that’s what he says. More likely he is just trying to convey the importance of having conflict drive the story.
Saying “conflict on every page” is much more effective than saying “conflict on almost every page” or “conflict on most pages, but not all pages”.
But then again, I could be wrong. (Although that rarely ever happens 😉 )
Word Veri: gistin. “Do you get my gist?” “Yeah, you were gistin’…” (OK, I’m really reaching now!)
Jen C says
PS Oh my, I’m really tanking in the Bransford Blog Challenge! I do not like this one bit. *off to bribe players to throw games*
Marilyn Peake says
One of my favorite novels in which conflict is anything but a gun battle is the Pulitzer Prize Winner, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Written from the point of view of an old man realizing his mortality and seeking to convey important information to his son before dying, it moves along slowly and beautifully, with conflict simply running like a thread throughout the pages. And talk about taking time out to enjoy the small things in life. The book has many statements like this one:
“I was struck by the way the light felt that afternoon. I have paid a good deal of attention to light, but no one could begin to do it justice. There was the feeling of a weight of light – pressing the damp out of the grass and pressing the smell of sour old sap out of the boards on the porch floor and burdening the trees a little as a late snow would do.”
Wow! And, even in pauses like this, Robinson packed in lots of meaning, as the novel had much to do with light and darkness, good and evil.
Nathan Bransford says
Ha – Marilyn we think alike. I was actually going to use GILEAD as an example of a book built around quiet conflict spaced out and usually beneath the surface. Still works in the right book.
Cass says
As always, I wasn’t dissappointed when I finally got home and read up on the NBLA Blog.
Great subject.
Thanks Nathan
Ink – blogger challenge – I Clive in Inside Man. That happend to be a favorite saying around work for quite a while.
wordver – foollbos – trying to tie it to fools and basketball but not having any luck
Cass says
okay – I typed too fast. I meant I loved Clive Owen in inside Man.
wordver – refist – everybody is readying their fists because of my fools and basketball comment?
Marilyn Peake says
Nathan,
That’s cool. I love that book!
Jen C says
Marilyn Peake said…
One of my favorite novels in which conflict is anything but a gun battle is the Pulitzer Prize Winner, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.
Marilyn, I’ve had that book sitting on my shelf for quite a while now, with my legions of unread novels. You have inspired me to make a start on it this weekend!
Ink says
Marilyn and Nathan,
That is too weird and spooky… I was reading Jen C’s comments just before Marilyn’s and I was thinking “I should really mention Gilead as a perfect example of a book driven beautifully by subtle tensions rather than overt conflicts”. And then I read the next post…
Very spooky. Sort of “get out of my head” spooky. Like I have weird doppelganger stories going through my mind now…
I shall have to watch basketball to regain equilibrium. March Madness or LeBron… March Madness or LeBron… I knew I should have invested in picture in picture.
auntiemwrites says
Just found this site and will be back. Happen to be repped by CB in NY but haven’t sold a book yet. Always more to learn.
In our house, Doc is a Dukie and I’m usually for UNC~
Jen says
Fantastic post, and I totally agree. There needs to be some downtime! If I read something that has intense conflict in every single word, I end the book feeling like I’ve been clubbed over the head after getting off a high-speed roller coaster full of loops and drops. Eek!
Again, fantastic post!
Melanie Avila says
Another great post. You’re hitting all the things I need to here while editing this week. Thanks!
Eric says
Go to Hell, Carolina, go to Hell!
Erika Robuck says
Thank you for this post. I hate books that don’t let up the pace. I hate movies that leave cringing the entire time. I need air.
Erika Robuck says
leave “me” cringing.
oops
like my editing sklz 2nite
Anonymous says
Nathan, my initial reaction was to ask where simple story telling went. I had in mind Brendan Behan, particularly Borstal Boy. But in fact this post had me re-evaluate not only my own piss poor fiction but my conclusions as to how some of my favorite stories were structured. In other words, every character re-read wanted something and had to tear down a wall to get there. Or at least try. No matter how big or small. Thank you sir.
lotusgirl says
Dons Duke sweatshirt in defiance. How’s that for a little conflict?
annerallen says
Thanks Nathan! Your blog is like a free writers conference for all of us out here.
Marilyn Peake says
Jen C –
Enjoy Gilead. The writing is absolutely beautiful.
Ink –
Whoa, that’s synchronicity. And Gilead really is a perfect example of a story with lots of underlying conflict told slowly and beautifully.
Jen C says
OMG. Seriously. What happened to all of my teams? I curse you, March Madness! *shakes fist*
At least my pick for the win is still there, but that’s not going to do me much good if all the others lose!!
Susanne says
Just say no to Duke. But I did pick them into the finals. Best coach out there.
deal or no deal? says
A little suspense goes a long way.
https://bookdealornodeal.blogspot.com/
Marilyn Peake says
Just thought of a book that shows conflict in a very unique way: A Dictionary of Maqiao, by Han Shaogong. In this wonderful book, conflict is shown through definitions of words and stories exemplifying each definition. The stories show both conflict and the power of evolving language in a fictitious rural village during the Cultural Revolution in China, including times when words held hidden, subversive meanings. Awesome book!
Richard Lewis says
Of all the so-called “rules of writing” or “elements of craft” I’d agree that this is the one beginning writers (and established writers) should pay most attention to. Like you say, it’s what makes a story a story. A character desperately wanting something with increasingly daunting obstacles in her way. But like a lot of writing, if not all of it, knowing this and putting it into practice are, well, two completely different things. I’m sure that you as an agent see this all the time.*
I’d distinguish between conflict and tension. A scene where a character reflectively ponders a moonlit lake in in a good mood can be a breather, developing character and atmosphere and other vital elements to a good story, but at the same time, without a single word or thought of conflict, it can start to build tension.
The opening to THE SEIGE OF KRISHANPUR is principally a setting of scene, but an ominous mood creeps in.
*By the way, agents have mentioned the increasing quality of queries. With so much of writing craft and workshops on the Net, are you seeing a similar increase in the overall quality of the stories you ask partials/fulls on?
Nathan Bransford says
richard-
Yeah, with the tightening marketplace I’m passing on things I might not have a few years back. I’m seeing really good stuff in my inbox, but it has to just be a 110% no brainer, “I’d walk through fire to represent this” type of situation before I can take it on.
Theophagous Monkey says
This was a very good post. Theo approves.
The conflict in a story or chapter can be internal to a character or external or, better yet, both. What’s difficult is finding the balance. You can’t just torment your characters and you can’t just let them skate. It’s not fair to them and it’s not fair to your readers. When my characters stop to reflect, I try to keep the clock ticking. The monster is always at the door. Knock Knock.
Regards,
Theo
Lady Glamis says
Great post, Nathan. I have read a lot of posts lately that talk about “lulls” in your story and how they’re needed. Your post has answered a lot of questions for me. Thanks!
Stacey says
Thanks for this post Nathan! I have needed to read this! In my current MS I was starting to think that there wasn’t enough conflict, realizing that internal conflict can be just as compelling, if not more so than external, and is just as important in my novel. Thank you!
Tally says
I can think of two great books without conflict:
Mr. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell.
They are odd books, but a very wonderfully painted description of two upper-middle class people in Kansas City of the 1920s-1940s.
But they are certainly the exception rather than the rule.
Emily Cross says
Nathan, Speaking of conflict : have you heard about Amazon being sued for Kindle infringement by discovery?
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/80320-amazon-sued-over-kindle-infringement.html
Scott says
I believe conflict exists on every page. What I mean is there is no reason for a character to be doing anything that doesn’t somehow relate to the central conflict of the narrative. It may be subtle, but the overall tension should aways be attendant.
In Nathan’s example of quiet reflection, a moment like that represents–most likely–a moment of internal conflict to be resolved, brought on by issues in the story. When characters are blowing off steam, as in the sing along on the boat in Jaws, they’re escaping from their conflict, and of course, the author is setting us up for a shock.
Any conversation seeks to work to a point, every action is another rung toward climbing towards what the character wants, even if it means knocking the character down a few of those rungs.
My rule: keep the line taut, and if you want to introduce slack, be sure to snap it back.
David Eric Tomlinson says
One of the things I struggle with on this topic is writing for agents vs. writing for readers.
When requesting partials, many agents ask only for the first 30 pages or so. In my novel, there is an underlying ‘tension’ in the first 45 or 50 pages, after which the ‘conflict’ shows up in spades – every chapter has some major obstacle that our hero must overcome, whether emotional, physical or moral.
I need that first few chapters to set everything in motion so that later everything begins to hum.
Nathan/Nathan’s Posse – what are your thoughts on this? Do you ever see writers submitting partials with chapters or sections removed to better hook the agent in the first 30 pages, and then those sections added back in when the full is delivered?
Sharon A. Lavy says
Some conflict is interesting and gripping and some is, well boring. And as a writer who is too close to my darlings I often need help to know the difference.
Jolie says
“I think of conflict sort of like a book’s oxygen”
So we could say that any portion of a novel without conflict is basically the novel holding its breath. And how long the novel can hold its breath without dying depends on the skill of the writer/the strength of the story. Or on how much oxygen the story was consuming before it ducked underwater. You’re not going to be able to hold your breath as long if you’ve just been sprinting.
I like this metaphor!
Vancouver Dame says
Nathan, I’d be interested in how you reply to David E. Tomlinson’s interesting question.
Is that acceptable – to pull an excerpt rather than the actual first 30 pages? Is there some contradiction in doing this, when you only accept the first actual 5 pages with a query?
How flexible are the guidelines for partial requests or the first 5 pages. I always thought it meant the actual pages as they appear in the story. Please clarify.
Melissa McInerney says
Great comments. Personally, I hate books that have too much conflict, especially angsy YA where the protagonist mopes and whines to the point of driving the reader mad. Internal conflict is the hardest thing to do right, tension without tedium.
On an unhappy note, my admittedly random method for picking Bball winners is sucking…
Nathan Bransford says
David and Vancouver Dame-
I personally think it’s misguided to try and pull together an excerpt that represents your “best” pages, and yes, people do this occasionally. I want to read the first 30 pages, period. I don’t want to read the “best” 30 pages. When I send them a manuscript, an editor is going to start at the beginning and read sequentially. I want that same experience, because I need to see what an editor is going to see.
I know full well when I read a manuscript that the best pages are probably towards the end, in the climax. That doesn’t matter to me — I need to know how it begins.
And really, even in the slowest moving and longest of novels, 30 pages is enough to get SOMETHING going, even if it’s not the main plot. If nothing happens in 30 pages, something is wrong.
Anonymous says
Perhaps you have to buy into a novel’s main characters to perceive any tension/conflict in the plot. I am one of the minority (apparently) of people who could not BEAR Gilead (and I loved the author’s book Housekeeping). Yes, many pretty sentences. But the characters bored and aggravated me in every cell of my body, so I did not respond in any way to the “tension.” The only tension I felt was in the back of my neck…which I normally identify as hostility or Desire-to-Flee Response. It may be my natural aversion to religious themes or my disgust w/ writers who romanticize small-town bores from Iowa (I’m from Iowa). I would go to Jane Austen for a primer in the uses of conflict in more subtle, literary fiction, or relationship-bound plots.
Cutris says
Anyone who has been in space knows that there are no “space monkeys” who like Duke.
https://cutris.blogspot.com/2008/11/cutris-lands-on-moon.html
Mira says
Okay, I did it. I created my new blog: Come In Character.
This is a good thing, because it will let me blow off some of this energy, and stop bugging Nathan so much.
I hope you don’t mind, Nathan, but I’d like to announce it on the this week in publishing thread, too.
Anyone who might be interested, click on my profile for the blog.
And if noone comes, I’m sure I can endlessly entertain myself talking to myself. I seem to be good at that. 🙂
Mira says
Oh, I meant I’ll announce it, I’m not asking you to do it, Nathan.
That sounded a bit presumtious if I was asking you. I just meant I’d double post.
Joel Hoekstra says
Cadence wrote: “Next week I’m going to query you for my staggeringly beautiful and hauntingly lyrical novel about the Ninja Space Monkeys who are really Kaiser Soze. (I wish, because that would be genius!)”
Whoa! Slow down! Let’s think this through! It’s a well known fact that Space Monkeys move at the speed of Light, whereas Ninjas are known to move at the speed of Darkness. If you ever crossed a Ninja with a Space Monkey, I don’t think we can rest assured that the speed of Darkness and Light would simply cancel each other out. In fact, it’s much more likely that the very existence of such a creature would rip a hole in the fabric of space time and suck you in to a parallel universe where Kaiser Soze is a huge Duke fan!
I guess what I’m trying to say is: be careful what you wish for! (Or at least feel very, very conflicted about it!)
Speaking of feeling conflicted, I think a comparison between seasons 5 and 6 of the TV show “24” might prove useful in determining the proper balance between “conflict” and “catching-one’s-breath” in the pacing of the story. 24 is definitely the type of show that tries to have “conflict on every page” from episode to episode yet has to take breaks in the action to solidify character motivation from time to time. I thought season 5 was a superb balancing act, while season 6 meandered in the middle and got “stopped-in-its-tracks” a few times. What did you guys think? (or am I the only 24 addict in the room)?
Anonymous says
this notion of "conflict" informing every page, every book, etc. seems more appropriate for screenplays. novels are also driven by voice. although your blog is, generally, v good, I think you miss on this, steering people towards something smaller and more finite than the incredible possibilities offered by the novel form. I get that you're writing for people who are obsessed with what is commercial, what is marketable (what will catch your eye) but as I noveliest & reader, I find this narrowness of vision more than a little dismaying.
Nathan Bransford says
anon-
Really? Did you reach that conclusion after reading my comment about GILEAD? I thought I left open lots of room for the “slow burn” type of books that depend on voice and lyricism. Most writing advice errors on the side of more conflict. I’m well aware that there are quieter books that work really well.
abc says
I hate Duke like I hate Notre Dame. It isn’t rational, but it is seething. I should probably explore this in therapy. Damn rich, bratty kids.
Now when is your awesome wife going to bring me some egg nog? I don’t care if it is March.
P.S. Great post!
abc says
Also, Joel, 24 is too fascist for my taste. I gave up after season 4. Mad Men is perfect, by the way. Just thought I’d throw that in there. Love, ABC (who is in a silly mood. I blame pollen).