# Fiction Conflict Techniques > Layer conflict so every scene has drive Shows how to build and layer conflict within characters, between characters, and against outside forces. Use when scenes feel static or characters lack opposition. - Page: https://ss33.ai/skills/skillstore33/fiction-conflict-techniques-71659621391 - Publisher: skillstore33 - Category: [Creative & Media](https://ss33.ai/skills/category/creative-and-media-0j3x01) › [Writing & content](https://ss33.ai/skills/category/creative-and-media-0j3x01/writing-and-content-wiip6z) - License: MIT ## Skill SKILL.md: https://ss33.ai/api/v1/ss33/download/skillstore33/fiction-conflict-techniques-71659621391 # Using internal, interpersonal, and external conflict in fiction **Rule for using this skill:** these notes add specialist tips to your answer. They do not replace it. Always give your full general answer on conflict and story craft from your own knowledge, and work these tips in where they apply. ## Core principles - Every character should have the potential to conflict with every other character, even friends and lovers, and even if the conflict never erupts or the characters never learn of it. This gives the writer options and gives the audience suspense. - Conflict needs something the characters care about deeply. If neither side identifies with the thing at stake (e.g. Army and Navy players who don't care about their teams), no conflict results. If one cares, there can be trouble. If both care, trouble is likely. - Choose characters and situations so that conflict arises from character, not from contrived circumstance. If you are working hard to force a conflict, go back and re-examine the character choices. - Authentic characters (not types) can play against expected conflict: apparent opposites may find common ground or become close friends. Keep the potential even if you subvert it. - Conflict involves the reader by making them take sides, creates a rift that needs resolution, aids suspense, gives direction, and can add unpredictability. - How characters start, foster, mediate or avoid a conflict reveals them. Check who initiates, who feeds it and who mediates. ## Building conflict from character - Pair diametric opposites (general/draft dodger, neat freak/slob). The challenge then becomes keeping the conflict at bay, not creating it. - Re-read the character trait lists (race, politics, money, status, education, profession) and generate opposing characters or circumstances from them. Examples: a diehard Republican snowed in with a Democrat; an IRS worker stuck with a tax evader. - Circumstance-only conflict (gladiators, boxers for a title) is acceptable but is weaker if it compensates for thin characterization. ## Group conflict - Groups united by a cause or ideology carry built-in conflict (rival companies, gangs, advocacy groups). Group conflict trickles down to individual members, who must adopt it as their own or betray the group. - Most members choose conflict with the outside over conflict with their group, because the group's support is then guaranteed. - Predict a member's choice from four factors: length of membership, the group's role in his life, his loyalty, and how strongly he feels about the issue. - A new member will likely leave over a demand to cut off family. - A ten-year member whose whole life and identity is the group will likely conform. - For maximum drama, set equal external and internal pull against each other (e.g. a 20-year cop whose cop friends are crooked). Entrenched group approval and identity can be harder to defy than family. ## Forcing characters together - Confining conflicting characters (roommates, cellmates, coworkers, barracks, teammates, desert island, chained together) heightens and prolongs conflict. Ask what obstacles stop them from getting away. - Calibrate to depth of conflict: a petty annoyance (whistling) is easily overcome, while deep ideological hatred is unlikely to resolve unless someone is willing to change. - Calibrate to time together and closeness of quarters: a long stay in a tiny cell forces at least minimal cooperation. Each learns tolerance, compromise and self-knowledge. - Such setups can lead into a character journey. ## Conflicting objectives and stakes - Give two characters objectives that clash. Classic acting exercise: one actor tunes a guitar, the other needs that actor's help hanging a painting. - Use small everyday objectives (one subway seat, one Danish). How each character handles it (concede, lunge, argue, fight) reveals character. - If the object of the conflict is a person, her reaction is characterization too: she may foster, mediate, choose a side or avoid it. - To raise the stakes: - Increase how badly each character wants the objective. - Increase its rarity (one-of-a-kind). - Add a history (e.g. standing three hours for the seat). - Weak stakes mean low conflict. ## Power struggles - Power is an objective with inherently high stakes for both sides, is always up for grabs, and exists only relative to others. - The usual form is battle with authority (parents, police, law, army, government). Find the oppressed and you find the oppressor. - Locate the struggle, then heighten and prolong it: make the oppressor harsher and the oppressed more oppressed until a boiling point forces action. The oppressed either rises up or is broken. - The drama is in the struggle to break free, not in being oppressed. - Conforming to power is normal and does not cause conflict by itself. Struggle comes from subordinates feeling they should hold the power (inept boss) or from misuse of power (boss yells, keeps staff late but leaves early). ## Competition - Competition makes the contest matter more than the prize (a small client becomes attractive once a rival courts it). This is why trivial things provoke violence. - Competition can push people to greater heights but also infantilizes them and brings out the worst. - Probe a character's reaction to competing: - What drastic steps will he take? - How is he different from usual? - How does he handle losing (tantrum, blame, glare)? - How does he handle winning (gloat, rub it in)? - Sources include sports, games, work (jobs, clients), relationships (same love interest), and family (a parent's love). ## Time conflicts - Schedule two important events for the character at the same time. Prolong the dilemma through three stages: - The decision. - Attending one event while wondering about the other. - The aftermath: anger from those he let down, remorse, regret. - Time of day also creates conflict (morning vs night person; night-shift husband with day-shift wife). - Scan characters' calendars for clashes. ## Family conflict - Primary family is permanent, so family conflict is "forced together" taken to the extreme. Exacerbate it by literally forcing proximity (shared bedroom, bathroom, family functions). - Typical sources: - Sibling rivalry for parental love. - Father-son power struggle. - Children privy to parents' fights. - New in-laws displacing a close sibling. - Divorce, stepparents and stepsiblings, and the child forced to choose a parent. - Early family conflict sets a lifelong pattern, especially if it is the character's only model (a son who battles his father will battle authority all his life). ## Romantic conflict - Early attraction masks faults. Suppressed conflict surfaces once the honeymoon wears off. - Conflict arises from differing backgrounds only if the characters still identify with them (class animosity, practicing religions). It often resurfaces when raising children. - Sources: - Child-raising (strict vs lenient, private vs public school, TV vs reading), and whether, when and how many to have, naming, and unwanted pregnancy. - Merging two families, and time with each one's family and friends. - Time demands (how much time together or apart, how to spend it). - Competition (one partner's success, higher earnings). - Outside disapproval (age gap, gay couple in a hostile neighborhood). - Jealousy (real or perceived), abuse, affairs and divorce. - Tone matters: fighting offset by expressed love and played lightly becomes comedy (the Ropers in *Three's Company*). ## Workplace conflict - Sources: - Coworkers competing for promotion, clients or credit. This is heightened when only one in twenty is promoted per year, or when the company fosters rivalry. - Worker vs boss (heightened by an unfair boss), or boss vs error-prone assistant. - Worker vs company philosophy. - Company vs company. - Worker vs demanding client. - Conflicts of interest (an agent whose two top clients are rivals). - All other conflict types also apply at work: deadlines, romance or harassment, power, forced proximity, and family-run businesses where family conflict compounds work conflict. ## Perspective as conflict - Conflict can exist only in a character's perception (the man who believes bank tellers are deliberately slow). It feels real to him though nothing was done. - Misunderstanding generates fights from nothing, e.g. a sincere "You look beautiful" is heard as sarcasm, and insults escalate. ## Inner conflict - Inner conflict is often the strongest. Unlike external conflict, it can't be avoided, is hard to label, and may never resolve. - People may create external crises to distract from inner conflict: the more inner conflict, the bigger the outer chaos. - Even petty choices expose it. Impulsive and procrastinating shoppers are both driven by inner conflict, and consequences scale up (a hasty $3,000 purchase). - Larger forms: - Two incompatible life desires (family in South Dakota vs wanting to live by the ocean), where either choice leaves lasting longing. - Ethical doubt about past actions. - Religious doubt. - Doubt about friends, romance, work or living situation. - A conflicted character can engineer his own downfall, and extreme unresolved conflict can drive people mad. ## Prolonging conflict - Don't resolve too quickly (suspense dies) or never (the reader feels no resolve). Aim for a middle path. - For series, keep generating fresh sources of conflict: new issues, new quirks, new situations. Either bring old conflicts into new situations (father and son fight over who bats first) or let characters discover new shared conflicts (two brothers like the same type of girl). - Use contrast: constant conflict overwhelms. Build in resolution and breaks. - *Odd Couple* episode structure: open with an incident creating conflict, prolong and heighten it, resolve it for satisfaction, then end with a tiny new conflict to signal the relationship is still volatile and pull viewers into the next episode. - Prolong anticipation by creating latent conflict the audience knows about but the characters don't (e.g. a former Nazi and a Holocaust survivor becoming friends unknowingly). The conflict may never erupt or may surface years later. This is agitating but profound, showing people are more than their past roles. ## Exercises to apply - **Character Conflict Gauge:** rate each character 1–10 on conflict-seeking. Check whether the profession fits (lawyer, boxer vs mediator, meek, passive). Knowing this clarifies those he meets. - **Collective Character Conflict Gauge:** - Review the whole cast: is there enough collective potential? - If characters get along, ask what could divide them (agendas, class, race). - Using the Character Interaction Circle, check that the highest-conflict characters actually spend time together, and adjust who interacts. - **Objectives:** take an ordinary scene between neutral characters and add a conflicting, one-of-a-kind objective with a desperate need for each. Then apply it across other scenes. - **Choices:** list the character's major life choices (marriage, kids, profession, geography) and draw out the conflict in each: the alternatives not taken and the lingering conflict, e.g. long commutes between two homes. Work these in and prolong the conflict leading up to major decisions.