Thursday Technicalities: Internal Conflict

Introduction

With our discussions regarding publishing concluded for now, we’ll turn now to discussing some of the key elements of crafting fiction that you can use to improve your writing, both with a completed manuscript and with one you’re still writing. I’ve recently been working through Donald Maas’s Writing the Breakout Novel, and I’ve found that these areas are ones that can prove challenging but are going to really take your work to the next level.

So, I’m going to go through some of the sections I found to be most useful and important with my own take on them based on things I’ve seen work out well in fiction. Today’s topic is going to deal with conflict within the character, otherwise known as internal conflict. This is an important part of fiction and really brings characters to life, so it’s not something we can overlook as writers. Let’s get started!

What Is Internal Conflict?

Internal conflict is when the character is conflicted within themselves regarding any given situation or decision. This differs from the major conflict that drives your plot (at least in many cases) in that the conflict driving the plot is usually some sort of external conflict that puts pressure on the character and may even exacerbate their internal conflict. In some cases, the internal conflict may be the driving conflict in the story and may create the external conflict due to a character’s actions in response to the conflict internally.

On a more basic level, internal conflict is when a character wants two opposing things at the same time. This simpler definition usually makes it a little easier for us to think about what our characters’ internal conflicts might be. Regardless of what the internal conflict is and whether or not it is the result of external pressures or the leading cause of those external issues, this is a tool in writing that cannot be ignored if you want a character that feels real and alive.

Keys for Internal Conflict

First and foremost, an internal conflict for a character must include two fundamentally opposed desires. This sounds really straightforward, but here’s the thing… You have to figure out how and why your characters could or would want those opposing things. We as people have issues with this in our own lives all the time. For example, consider someone who wants to eventually have a family but also doesn’t want their freedom to hop from partner to partner taken away. Those are two opposing desires. They can’t have both, and they’re eventually going to have to decide which one matters more. We all run into these kinds of ultimatums, and we all eventually go with one or the other when it becomes apparent we can’t have both.

The second key is to make the two options mutually exclusive. We all feel conflicted about things from time to time, but if we can find a way to make both work, then we often do. Furthermore, the options facing a character need to be ones they strongly care about. For example, in my book Bane of Ashkarith, the male lead has a strong desire to uncover the truth and to share that truth–whatever it may be–with the world. But he also has a strong desire to stay alive, and the truth is likely to get him killed if he goes ahead with telling it. He can’t have it both ways. He either tells the truth or he doesn’t. And he has strong reasons and motivations to choose either option, so it isn’t a situation where he can simply decide one choice doesn’t matter that much and just go with the other. No, he has to fight through the internal conflict to make a decision on what to do.

What if my character is too black and white to really struggle in the obvious ways?

You want to ensure that you set your characters up with a similarly stark set of options that lead to internal conflict. Sometimes, however, you find a character that is simply too morally upright and black and white to struggle with some of the more common issues. I’ve run into this recently with my male lead in a novel I’m working on. S is a trainer for an intergalactic organization whose sole goal is to sow dissent, chaos, and evil throughout the galaxy. They are directly opposed to God and anything that could be considered good, though they don’t really care what form evil and darkness takes so long as it does in fact drown out what is good and right. S doesn’t agree with them or their standards, but his situation is such that he must play along.

At first glance, it doesn’t seem like S necessarily is conflicted between two choices. At the beginning of the novel, he’s offered a way out. In order to get out, he has to play the long game and be patient, but there’s no question in his mind or that of the individual who offered him an out that he’s going to take it. He isn’t conflicted about it, and he isn’t conflicted about waiting it out so he can get himself and the girl who offered her help out safely.

So at this point, I’m faced with an issue. S is the protector, the dominant/alpha male who makes sure everyone under his care is safe even if it costs him everything to achieve that. He doesn’t dither over whether he’s willing to make the sacrifice to protect Gwen or others directly under his care. He already knows he will. He also doesn’t question the choice to leave because he refuses to be a part of the organization’s wickedness any longer than absolutely necessary.

“Growing” the internal conflict

In this case, S is a character that starts out with no internal conflict in his mind and must end up “growing” one. The way I chose to handle this? As Gwen begins to change his outlook on the situation and his approach to those around him, he begins to feel responsible for helping and protecting not just Gwen, who is directly under his protection, but also the other trainees whose trainers hurt or even kill them. He comes to a point where he is no longer certain that he can in good conscience abandon it all to run and never look back. Instead, he has a turning point that leads to his internal conflict: leave or find a way to fight back for the freedom of those who, like him, never had the chance to speak up and walk away from the horrors inflicted on them.

Gwen herself is put into a similar position, but she comes to it much sooner and sees it far quicker than S does. Her nature is not the protector so much as it is the outspoken voice for what’s right. That gets her and S into plenty of trouble in a culture that despises the truth and anyone who stands for it, but she stands firm anyway. Her internal conflict then, takes on a slightly different flavor than S’s, but the nature of the two is still similar in that the conflict is not in-built but must instead develop as their viewpoints and goals gradually begin to shift.

What if I just can’t think of anything?

Sometimes, characters make it very difficult to figure out what their internal conflict is or to determine how to push them into one. This might happen because the character doesn’t know what they want or is generally a somewhat weak type of person. I ran into this with Sebastian, a character from an allegorical sci-fi novella I’m working on revising. He falls into the category of “I don’t really know what I want or what I believe”. His problem was that he didn’t believe the popular narrative and was suspicious of the government’s claims, but he didn’t know what he believed if not that. He develops through the book, but I still have the issue that he doesn’t seem to really have much of an internal conflict at the start.

The solution to this? Start thinking about what they really want. If push came to shove, what is it that they’d fight for? Maybe the push might have to be really extreme, but what is the one thing that they couldn’t bear to lose, not accomplish, or fail at? Now take that thing and figure out what the opposite of it is.

For example, with Sebastian, the one thing he really can’t stand to lose is Vivian, the female lead. The opposite of that, to my mind, would be to lose her or let go of her. That gives me an internal conflict right there if I can find a way to set it up through the story such that he wants (or at least has to seriously consider) both paths.

Something else that I also found for Sebastian is that he is fiercely loyal to those he cares about. He can’t stand to lose the people he cares about or to walk away from them. So another conflict I can give him is having to decide between fighting for the people he cares about or walking away. With this character, however, there is no question in his mind, at least in the first novella, on which one he will choose for either of these. So in order to create any kind of internal conflict with him, I have to force him into situations where he can’t choose what he wants to choose. I have to make it so that he does have to walk away from his loved ones or so that he has to give up Vivian.

Sometimes, characters are like this. There should be conflict, but it might not always be clearly caused by the character wanting two different things. Sometimes it might be caused by a character wanting one thing but knowing the opposite is best and choosing the one thing they don’t want to do. This is a trickier one to pull off, and I would recommend you make sure you have at least one main character whose conflict is driven by two opposing options that they want to pursue.

Conclusion

That’s it for this discussion, everyone! I hope this was helpful for you. Next week, we’ll be talking about points of decision. We’ll go over why you need them, how to build up to them, and how they play into your character’s arc as well as the story itself. Until next time, happy writing!