“Joseph!” she called again. Grabbing her jacket from behind the door to ward off the November chill, she shrugged into it as she jogged across the backyard. “Joseph Alon Tomah! What do you think you are doing?” she demanded, reaching the boy before he could react. She grabbed the handful of burning sweetgrass and dumped it quickly on the ground, stomping on it to obliterate the flames. She continued to stomp around the general vicinity, extinguishing the sparks that had escaped during the ritual.

“What are you trying to do?” she asked, anger etched in her voice. “Are you trying to burn down the entire city?”

“What would you know?” Joe snorted in response. For all of his twelve years, he stood like a man, convinced of his maturity and his right to do as he pleased.  (Winter, 2012)

Sometimes the protagonist is just plain stubborn, convinced the entire world is against him, and willing to fight back, tooth and nail, even if it means carelessly starting a fire where one shouldn’t. But what or who would your protagonist be without some conflict? What would your story be? Rather bland, I would think. To infuse your story with conflict, you have to know your character, know his/her/their challenges and what drives them, and know what types of conflict will spur them into action. You must find and define your protagonist’s conflict and you will have your story. Here are some tips on conflict development.

What keeps me rooted in the conflict process is to constantly remind myself of the five main kinds of conflict as the protagonist struggles through the story.

There’s the protagonist/ antagonist conflict, the main conflict that overshadows all else, but also lays the groundwork for other conflicts within.

There’s also a conflict in the climax scene where the height of the story is achieved and the protagonist must make some earth-shattering decision before moving forward (or backward).

There’s also the pacing, the rhythm of the story as a whole, and how events fall into place. It has nothing to do with how fast the story is told or how long the chapters are, but rather the speed at which the reader perceives the story to move forward. Rising conflict within each event adds to the tension that builds up the story’s forward-moving momentum.

There’s the character arc, how the protagonist’s proactive pursuit of a specific goal leads toward a life-changing event. This is an internal arc. Then there’s the external arc, the story arc, where the conflicts involve all the characters in the story. All these conflicts make for a compelling and engaging story.

And, finally, there’s the resolution. Yes, there’s even conflict within the resolution. Why? Because even though the story is unwinding its challenges, and unraveling its conflicts, there are still some unsettled matters which may, or may not, be fully resolved, but will at least provide some conflicting elements right to the very end.

Conflict, struggles, making the story vibrate with unsettled events, settings, and characters, this is all that makes the story one that readers will both enjoy and remember long after they finish reading it. Conflict is the key component of an interesting story.