Different Kinds of Conflict

Every story needs a conflict. This is a wisdom which quite some writers misunderstand. They take it as a rule saying that every story needs fights and action and explosions and things like that, which is plain wrong. ‘Conflict’ in this case can be any kind of hindrance between the main character and their goal. So this is a post about the different kinds of conflicts you can use in a story.

First of all, there’s personal and global conflicts. A global conflict would be a villain with an ice beam who can bring a new ice age to earth. Here, stakes are high and so is the probability that the conflict will involve action and fighting. A personal conflict can be to get to work in time when the busses are on strike and the roads are jammed. Both sorts of conflicts can have an antagonist, but can also work well without one. A global conflict can be about a natural disaster and a personal conflict can include someone who makes life hell for the protagonist.

Every story needs a conflict - it bears repeating. In a romance story, the conflict often comes from two people both courting a third one. In a mystery story, the conflict comes from the mystery as a such. In a horror story, the conflict comes from whatever makes it horror, be it a monster or something else. Sometimes, the horror lies within us, sometimes it’s an outside force. Sometimes, the biggest challenge is to find the out who did it, sometimes it’s to face the fear that the someone who did it might be the someone you love and want to protect. Sometimes, none of the people courting you is the person you want and you will have to find a way to get that person to notice you. Conflict can be unexpected.

Conflict is what drives the story, that is the point of it. In a story, something should happen and that means something will disturb the main character’s life. That disturbance can be small - such as the busses on strike - or huge - such as someone trying to freeze the world solid. This conflict demands that the main character should do something - this is very important. A main character is a main character, because they have agency. They want something (whether they get it and whether they should is a different matter) and they can’t get it easily. That is where conflict is born. Will person A choose suitor X or suitor Y? Will the detective find out who did Mr. Body in? (It was Miss Scarlet with the rope in the library, if you ask me…) Will our young couple escape the horrible monsters in the woods? That is the conflict and the end of the story is when it’s resolved.

Of course, in a longer story, such as a novel, you will not only have one conflict. You will have several threads in your story and all of those need their own conflict to work. Detective X will try to court person A while finding the murderer of Mr. Body and then they’ll have to escape with person A from the monsters who killed Mr. Body. Not really, such wild crossovers are rare. However, a detective often also has to deal with interpersonal conflicts, either some they’re involved in or some they just discover while searching for the truth. Romance stories on the other hand are often filled with additional conflicts coming from family members (such as ‘you’re not going out with someone like them!’ or ‘I’ll make a much better partner for them than you ever could!’) or from the world around the possible couple. A lot of stories deliver both on personal and on more global conflicts, because several plot threads also mean several conflicts and so there’s place for both.

The first thing you should ask yourself when you’re choosing a conflict for your story is what kind of story you’re writing. Is it on a small scale? Then you should choose a personal conflict for the main plot line, because that works much better than trying for something more global. Is the story on a large scale, though, a global conflict is more likely to serve you well for the main plot, because it comes with higher stakes. A short, fluffy, or funny story doesn’t need high stakes, but if you want something filled with action and thrills, low stakes won’t work in your favour. Global conflicts come with higher stakes, because the stakes matter to more people. Personal conflicts come with lower stakes, even though those might feel higher to the people involved than the global ones. However, global conflicts can look like personal ones and the other way around. It’s much easier to worry about the possible promotion at work than about the next president of the country - even though the president has much more power and can do much more horrible things.

In addition, in a story which is centred around a person, personal conflicts work much better, because they add to the story. If the story is centred around a whole group of characters, the main plot should have a more global conflict, while every character should have at least one plotline with a personal conflict. In that case, the higher stakes should be in the global conflict, because it influences all main characters while their personal conflicts only influence their own arcs. Even a reader who doesn’t care for character A will be invested in the plotline which influences the lives of all main characters (and, perhaps, a lot of other people, too).

Choosing the right kinds of conflict for your story is important, so it pays to think this through in advance and build your characters and plots on the conflicts you’ve chosen - or, if you start out with characters, to identify the best conflicts for these characters to get into. Again: the conflict doesn’t have to be anything action-oriented, but it has to be a problem the character has to work on in order to get what they want and/or need.

"Johannes Cabal: The Detective" - An Analysis

Now that I finally chased that squirrel away and returned to sit down and read the last Johannes Cabal novel (“The Fall of the House Cabal”), I found myself returning to the second novel afterwards - “Johannes Cabal: The Detective”. First of all, I do like detective stories, and in addition, it’s the first book in which he has his soul and, thus, his conscience back.

I will state here and now that this post will be full of spoilers for the novel in question (and also spoil a bit of content of the first one, “Johannes Cabal: The Necromancer”). It would be a good idea to have read at least the first two novels, unless you don’t mind spoilers.

At the beginning of the novel, Johannes find himself in a very bad situation - he’s locked up in a cell and will be secretly executed whenever the government which caught him happens to find the time. As is to be expected (with his strongest trait being his cold-bloodedness), Johannes has considered all possible ways to get out of this and come to terms with the fact that his life is to be measured in hours and days, certainly no longer in months and years - let alone decades, despite him being only around thirty. This is, of course, an excellent hook and a great way to generate early conflict. What will the book be about? How he came to be in that cell? There’s a short description of what brought him there, so it’s unlikely. How he manages to cheat death (he is a necromancer, after all)? Or how he gets out of there with his life?

It turns out to be the latter - a sudden change in plans demands the help of a necromancer and with one in the cells (who can be disposed of afterwards), why risk telling anyone else? Johannes is, indeed, dragged from his cell in the dead of the night, only not for a quick and dirty execution, but to be bathed, shaved, and dressed regularly again. Then he’s offered his freedom for help in reanimating the local emperor, so said emperor can give a last speech before his long-expected death. Johannes is well aware that the promise of freedom is false, but he’s a man who happily makes backup plans for his backup plans, so there’s a chance for him to get away.

To cut this story a little shorter, Johannes gets away, although he has to fight a duel to do so - and it doesn’t look good for him. Yet, we find him boarding an airship a short time later, so he obviously did manage to make his escape. Disguised as a government employee on his way to a job out of the country, he boards the ship and settles for a calm trip - until Leonie Barrow, a character he meets under bad circumstances in the first book, boards the ship as well. This makes for a good mystery - last time we’ve seen him before him taking on another identity, he was about to be bested in the duel and, presumably, killed.

Leonie recognizes him and the only reason why she’s not handing him over to the captain is that she doesn’t believe in capital punishments - she will hand him over to the authorities of the next state they will touch down in instead. That alone would be a good conflict for the rest of the story - Johannes tricking his way out of this in some way and getting back home, to his house and dead fiancé -, but not for this book.

During the first night, a passenger apparently commits ‘suicide’ by jumping out of a window he shouldn’t even have been able to get open. Later that night, after following a strange dream and checking crawlspace at the bottom of the ship, Johannes is almost killed as well. The original murder/suicide wouldn’t have troubled Johannes much, but he takes personal interest in anyone who tries to push him out of an airship. This also brings him together with Leonie, who really wants to make practical use of the criminal psychology studies she did between their meetings.

Johannes finds a way to outsmart Leonie and get away as the ship touches down to be searched (result of a lost war), but she finds him again and then they find a dead spy. Still, Johannes isn’t going to return to the airship and he warns Leonie off as well, but she goes back. When he realizes how it all was really done, he wants to ignore it, but he can’t - his damn conscience. So he returns to the ship in mid-air, uncovers an intrigue, and gets almost killed for it (and saves the world in the short story added to the main novel). Johannes Cabal, a necromancer of some little infamy, has been turned into an unwilling hero.

Throughout all novels, from the first to the fifth and in the short stories which were published as well, the author is never shy of humiliating Johannes - which is an interesting way of getting the readers on the side of a man who, when all’s said and done, isn’t exactly what you’d call ‘sympathetic.’ Johannes is cold-blooded, ruthless, and has little qualms about killing, even after he got his soul back. Yet the fact that he’s often thrown into situations which for him are highly humiliating makes him a little more human, since we all can understand what that’s like.

“In the next few hours I intend to lie and steal for no material gain. Then, I have little doubt, I shall kill some people for no better reason than that they dismay me with their activities and I have decided to prevent them ever doing anything similar again. In my experience, death is an excellent prophylactic measure.” This is what Johannes says to a man who was also on the airship and has turned out to be a professional con-man when meeting said man at the train station, shortly after Johannes has realized what happened on the airship and shortly before he follows his conscience and returns to the ship. This sentence might be the one to most precisely capture Johannes’ character, as it were. He’s prepared to commit all kinds of crimes if they further his plans, but he’s no regular criminal who only does it for material gain. This is why even having a conscience isn’t going to make him any less dangerous, cold-blooded, or ruthless. It merely means that he won’t just do the most logical thing any longer, no matter the consequences for other people.

There’s still a long way to go for Johannes Cabal until the moment he will sacrifice what he has been looking for during the books to help his brother, but the second novel is where we see what becomes of Johannes with his soul in residence again and how much it gradually changes him. The book is a great example of how to keep your character off-balance and show the way they change within the narrative.

Inspiration at the Wrong Time

For me, it’s regularly like this: I have absolutely no time to write a story and my mind brings up great ideas for new stories like no tomorrow. This happens to me when I have other things to do and most often while, like this month, I’m editing and have to stick to that to get something done.

Perhaps it’s really about that editing. I don’t like it much. I know I have to get the editing done, I have to proofread and to edit my stories before I put them out. No first draft is ever good enough to be seen by anyone else but the author. It’s the part about writing I like least, but it’s still a part of the package and I do it.

This month, I have for the first time tried out the Pomodoro Method for my editing, too, after it already worked great with my writing (making me write much faster than I usually do). It worked with the editing, making sure I got my work done a bit faster and with a bit more focus than I normally have as well. Yet, it didn’t stop me from thinking about new stories I could write the whole time. New stories for characters I’ve already written about, a new set of characters who might become regulars - too much stuff to think about while I was actually doing something else.

Don’t get me wrong - inspiration is something great and I love nothing more than exploring the ideas my mind brings up and figuring out how to turn one set of characters or one initial scene into a novel or novella. However, I’ve had a dearth of inspiration for a bit, then a problem with getting my pinned-down ideas made into first drafts, and now I’m working on my editing and at the same time my mind insists I should write something completely new. I love shiny, new things like the next person. Perhaps I love them more than the next person - I do have an ‘ooh, look, a squirrel’ problem.

Yet having all those ideas in my mind and not being able to really do something about them is horrible. It makes me feel even worse about editing than I already feel about that - and nobody needs that, believe me.

Inspiration often comes at the wrong time, though, because that is what it’s all about. To have inspiration, you need to do something, either something mind-numbing (hello, editing!) or something completely different from writing (which is why I like going for walks or consuming media which differs from my usual stories). Inspiration can happen out of the blue or it can shape up very slowly while you’re not looking. I’ve had cases in which the inspiration came without any warning and I had a half-finished story in my brain. Then there’ve been cases when I felt a story slowly building itself, thinking about this and that and then finding my subconscious had put it all together in a way that made sense.

Once I sit down to write, there’s still a lot of details to figure out, that’s when the discovery writer in me comes into play. Yet, without a general direction in which the story will go, nothing is happening. That is when the inspiration comes in - the general direction. The details come later, I can easily extract them from the basis I have - the question is mostly how to get from this scene I already have in mind to the next one. That’s when I fill up the gaps and make the story fit together as a whole.

Without inspiration, nothing happens, because I do need something to start from, some idea, some character, some scene. Even a single sentence which will be said in a story could be enough, provided it comes to my mind at the right time. Inspiration can be the greatest gift for every artist or other creative person.

Inspiration at the wrong time, however, makes me nervous. It makes my fingers itch to write something while I know that I do have to finish what I’m doing at the moment. It’s especially bad at the moment, since I haven’t really written all that much for about one and a half years, ever since my mother’s death and the changes this brought to my own life. Now, doing editing in a more efficient manner and just having found a way to make my writing more efficient, too, my inspiration is working overtime and pushing things at me like no tomorrow. It is a good sign, I hope, and I do make notes so I might get back to all those ideas, but it doesn’t make editing any easier for me.

Perhaps “The Cases of Benjamin Farrens,” which I finally finished at the end of October (‘finally’ in this case meant after about 15 years and more, but I might do a post about that at some other time), is the reason why my inspiration is back like that. I’ve finally finished a story which has been around me since before I even moved out of my parents’ place. I’ve gotten some stuff written that month (including the first Sherley Holmes story) and gotten back into more concentrated writing (see ‘ooh, look, a squirrel’ on some days). Now my mind hands me more stuff to work on, ignoring that I have to get those things out into the world, too. For that, I need to edit and that is when I get most of my ideas. It’s mad.

I don’t want to complain about getting inspiration, because I like being inspired and I need inspiration to write, so I really can’t do without it. I would just appreciate it, if it came at times when I can really make use of it. Hopefully, it will stay when I’m done editing “John Stanton - Agent of the Crown Vol. 2” and help me write more - including a third volume of John’s adventures, because I already have notes on a first story for that one.

The Turning Point of "The Last Unicorn"

“The Last Unicorn” (1982, but not released in Germany until 1983) was the first movie I ever saw in a movie theatre, so, yes, the nostalgia is strong in this post. It’s, however, also a movie which I’ve seen several times afterwards (on TV, on DVD) and it never lost its magic for me. Perhaps because, unlike your regular Disney movie, it does have quite some adult themes while at the same time also delivering enough to keep a child happy and interested.

What I want to talk about here is the turning point of the final battle, which I feel is extremely well done in the movie. I will also talk about the movie, not the novel by Peter S. Beagle (which I read once as a teen, but do no longer own). However, from what I can remember, movie and novel are relatively close, although the novel can, of course, produce some more content than a 92-minute movie.

To make the turning point understandable, though, I need to give you a summary of the story, so this is where I’ll start.

The movie starts out with two hunters in a forest, the older one telling the younger one that they won’t find prey in it, because a unicorn lives there. He’s also sure that the unicorn is the last one and no others exist any longer. For the last unicorn this is ridiculous - just the fact that humans haven’t seen unicorns for a long time doesn’t mean there aren’t any others around. But then, the story is reinforced by a butterfly who tells her the story of the red bull (this, kids, was before energy drinks were invented) and its master King Haggard who captured all unicorns and is keeping them imprisoned somewhere.

The unicorn decides to leave her forest (I will use ‘she’ in this case, both because the unicorn is voiced by Mia Farrow and because it eventually is turned into a woman) and search the world for more unicorns. On her way, she is captured by Mommy Fortuna, an old witch who creates false legendary creatures for her carnival. She has two real exhibits - the unicorn and a harpy. This is where the unicorn meets Schmendrick - a luckless wizard whose magic is erratic at best. While they escape the carnival, we first get to see the unicorn fight, driving away the freed harpy. A third member joins the group when Molly Grue, member of a group of bandits, recognizes the unicorn for what she is.

Schmendrick, Molly, and the unicorn finally reach the lands of King Haggard and on their first night’s rest, they are confronted by the red bull. When it becomes apparent that the unicorn isn’t a match for the bull and in danger of sharing the others’ fate, Schmendrick (who is far more powerful than he thinks, but lacks confidence) lets his magic run free and it transforms the unicorn into a woman. At first, the unicorn fears to go mad in the mortal, human body, but she can be convinced that this is the best way to approach King Haggard and find out where the others are. King Haggard is weary of them, but agrees to let them stay as servants for him and his son, Prince Lir.

Prince Lir falls for the Lady Amalthea (the last unicorn) and in time, as she loses her unicorn side more and more, she starts to fall for him, too. King Haggard tells Amalthea that the unicorns are imprisoned in the ocean, driven in there by the red bull and kept in there by their fear of him. The bull must be vanquished for the unicorns to be freed - and the last unicorn becoming more and more human means that it must happen quickly. Finally, they find a way into the lair, but the way back is destroyed by King Haggard. To this day, I’m not sure when exactly Prince Lir followed them, but this is a fairy tale, so I give it some leeway.

This time, the red bull no longer falls for the trick and recognizes the unicorn in Amalthea (which is a bit of a surprise, given she’s much less of one). During the escape, Schmendrick is forced to return her to her real form. The last unicorn flees from the red bull across the beach. For a while, it looks like all is lost (as it should - black moment and all). Finally, Lir (who is a full-fledged hero even before the unicorn turns up) tries to protect her by stepping into the way of the red bull - and gets killed. That is the turning point I’ve worked my way up to here.

Seeing Lir dead on the sand, the last unicorn’s stance changes. Instead of running away, she turns towards the bull - who, apparently, never has encountered resistance from the unicorns before. With a glowing horn (which we’ve seen before during the fight with the harpy), she drives it back, step by step, until the bull’s hoof lands in the ocean. Since the red bull is made of flames, there’s a hiss, even though the water doesn’t douse the flames. Driven further in, the bull turns around and walks into the ocean, just as the flood sets in. Carried to the land, the unicorns this time dare the last step and pour from the ocean onto the beach, running back into the world proper. As the first one jumps on the stone pathway leading to the castle, the castle crumbles to the sea, taking the sole occupant, King Haggard, with it (the animal occupants clearly get out, as the cat and the horses are later seen).

The last unicorn, though, stays back and brings Lir back to life. It’s only then she leaves - and she comes back to speak to Schmendrick a little later, telling him that she forgives him for making her a human and that she is a little afraid of going back, because now she’s not like the other unicorns any longer, having been human for a while. The movie ends with her returning back home to her forest, awaited eagerly by the animals she protected before and will protect again now.

You can read the turning point simply as the last unicorn growing stronger when the man she loves (this being only a short time after she’s turned back into a unicorn) dies trying to protect her. She doesn’t care about the death of humans before, yet the death of Prince Lir changes her stance. It’s a sign of her growth for me - in the meantime, she has acquired humanity, something she didn’t have before. She makes full use of her powers and hers are much stronger than those of the red bull (despite it being about twice her width and twice her height - the bull is massive).

The unicorn is always considered a very powerful legendary creature (and a bloodthirsty one to boot in the legends), symbolizing spring and fighting with the lion. They are powerful creatures, but clearly, within the story, not aware of how much power they have, otherwise another of the thousands of unicorns we see pouring from the sea would have stood up to the bull. It took a unicorn who was different to do this.

The movie has a great cast, but for me, Sir Christopher Lee (voicing King Haggard) stood out most when I first watched it - simply because he’s the only member of the original English cast who also voiced their German version (Sir Christopher was fluent in several languages, including German). Today, I’d say that Haggard might have had some form of depression, because he voices more than once than only the unicorns ever made him happy. Nevertheless, his cruelty in keeping them imprisoned in the ocean, knowing they were afraid of returning to land because of the red bull, makes it hard to feel sorry for him. He never shows regret for what he has done and is a classic villain who dies without redemption or regret.

The most persistent part of the movie in pop culture, though, is the title song “The Last Unicorn” by America which has been covered numerous times by other artists.

Now, as an adult, I watch the movie occasionally and with other eyes than the eight-year-old girl in that movie theatre which doesn’t even exist any longer. It holds a place in my heart for having been the first movie I ever saw on the big screen, but it also holds a place in my heart for its very strong visuals and multi-layered story.

Motivational Tools

I have recently realized that I need to motivate myself better for work. For me, writing is work of a sorts, since I’m publishing regularly and really selling my stuff. Writing isn’t just a hobby any longer, so I need to take things seriously.

While I’m a discovery writer on the whole, I’ve started doing some more detailed notes about my chapters recently, just a short description about what is supposed to happen in the chapter. It’s not always working out quite as expected, but I have been successful writing stories from those outlines myself, so it’s something I’m going to keep for the time being.

That alone, however, didn’t really help with my output. When I started writing novels, I was able to put out the first two in one and a half months (I didn’t quite reach that rate again afterwards, admittedly). After the changes to my personal life, I have been working off my pile of stories written before mostly and I’m down to two more releases in the pipeline (“Alex Dorsey” and “John Stanton Vol. 2” which will be out next month). I do have enough stuff lined up, but getting to write the stories has proven much more difficult with my new daily schedule, which isn’t as free as it used to be.

Clearly, I now need motivation to write more and I found it in some more unlikely places. I’ve been doing a bullet journal (see this site for more details on the principle) for a couple of years now. I started in September 2014. It’s mostly been a way for me to keep an eye on my word count already, but also helped me keep an eye on my cycle and a few other things. After watching far too many bullet journal videos on YouTube, I decided to overhaul my own, adding a word tracker, changing the calendar style, having some more habit trackers running (I need to get out for walks more and then there’s the cleaning - not a big fan and lazy with it sometimes). I’m also changing to the new bullets (point instead of square).

Having a tracker where I put in my daily word count will definitely be a motivational thing  for me. I’ll also do a tracker for chapters done on release months (so four times a year). I’m also going to set myself a monthly goal of twenty chapters. They don’t all have to be from the same story - when I’m writing novellas, they definitely won’t be -, but I need to get twenty chapters in. That will help me remember that I do have a quota, even if it’s set by me, myself, and I. Twenty chapters will also not be too high a goal - with around thirty days a month that leaves me several days a month on which I don’t have to write, but can work on other things, such as new story ideas which need fleshing out in One-Note.

The bullet journal is completely customizable, since you merely work with a standard notebook and add whatever you need: trackers, calendars, monthly, weekly, and daily task lists. You can make it beautiful or just work with a pen and a notebook to keep track of your stuff. It has ways of keeping long-term tasks penned down (so your mind is free), can help you plan and pull through with projects, and offer you a space for notes. It’s not expensive to set up (I use a simple 3€ notebook and a fountain pen I’ve owned since my teens) and can be customized at any time (I’m changing in the middle of a notebook here).

The bullet journal is one side and helps a lot with the motivation to work on things, but I still could be sitting on a chapter, on and off, all day and still not get it done in the end, even though I know what’s happening (basic outline). It was another thing I tried out which proved extremely helpful there: the Pomodoro method.

For those of you who haven’t heard of it so far, the Pomodoro method is a way of balancing out time for concentrated work with breaks in between. The usual ‘Pomodoro’ (and I have no idea what tomatoes have to do with it) is 25 minutes of work followed by a 5-minute break. The app I have actually lets you set the times for work, long break (after 4 Pomodoros instead of a short one), and short break. The regular settings are 25 minutes of work, 15 minutes of long break, and 5 minutes of short break.

I tried it out on a Sunday, just thinking I might get one chapter of a story I’d almost finished (my big weakness, I have to fight hard to finish up) done that afternoon. After the first Pomodoro, I had written almost half the chapter. After the second one, I was missing a couple of hundred words, not much. So I decided to go on and in five Pomodoros I wrote the last two chapters of the story and finished it off. I’ve never written a chapter at that speed, but with the break looming, putting 25 minutes of typing in isn’t hard for me. And with the preparation of knowing where the chapter is going, it’s easy enough to write it out.

The day after, I went back to a story I started writing (the second one of my Benjamin Farrens trilogy), but didn’t get anywhere with after chapter one and put in three chapters in one day. That’s an extremely big word count for me (over 7,500 words) and I still had the evening off, which usually doesn’t happen when I write more than one chapter.

I’m definitely going to stick with the Pomodoro method for the foreseeable future, at least for days on which I’m not super-motivated, but know what I can work on.

The Pomodoro method might be something for you or not, but I can only urge you to try it out if you need a way to keep more focused during a specific task. Give it an hour or so, which would be two Pomodoros, just to see if it works for you. Also take a look at the bullet journal if you need to get more organized. It’s customizable and you can do whatever suits you best. Make it pretty (some journals on YouTube are real art) or just functional, whatever is helpful for you.