I’ve been judging the romance contest entries again. I have found several errors that I keep seeing over and over again. Interested in knowing what they are? Well, I’m only going to cover one in this article: conflict. I’m not talking about your garden variety arguing, arguing, or fighting. That is not the type of conflict I am talking about. I speak of floods, deaths, commitments, fears, love, ambition. The list goes on. Without conflict, life could be easier, but it certainly wouldn’t be that interesting.

Obviously, conflict also motivates your characters. They have to have a plan of action, but then something gets in their way. Give your characters solid goals to work on throughout the book. An author simply cannot tell a story about this or that. Let’s face it, we can’t all be Seinfeld. But even on that show the characters are going to do something and then an event happened. The important thing to remember is that life does not happen by chance. Direct your characters in one direction and then throw a bucket of water on them.

There are three main types of conflict you can throw at your characters: situational, personal, and relationship conflict. Let’s discuss each one:

1. CIRCUMSTANCY. In what circumstances will your characters be involved? Are you going to throw them in the path of a hurricane? Involve them in a car accident? Perhaps your circumstances are personal in nature. Perhaps a grandfather dies and leaves the family farm to his granddaughter, but not without conditions. Maybe your character wants to leave town but can’t because someone is trying to stop him. These circumstances must disrupt the lives of your characters. It changes its course. Create urgency to the situation. It keeps the book moving and is usually where the book begins. Something happens that changes the life of your character and the conflict continues.

2. STAFF. Who does not have personal problems? Your characters should too. You must know your characters inside and out: their actions, emotions, dreams, past experiences, fears, likes and dislikes. You may not use all the details in the book, but after all, we are what we have experienced in our lives. You need to know what moves all your characters, what motivates them, and what baggage they carry that makes them who they are. You must discover what drives your characters. Fear, love, enthusiasm, greed or hatred?

In most of the entries I have judged, the characters wander, letting what happens to them be their lives. How often does that happen in real life? Your characters must have goals like us. For example: your character has a great presentation at work. You need to go to a meeting and persuade your clients to buy Brand X. If they sign with him, you will get a raise and you can buy your parents’ property at the hands of your greedy brother.

Excellent! Your character has goals: the presentation, get to work on time, do the presentation, get the raise, buy the house before his brother. So the author’s job is to put conflict in your way. For example, your boss forgot to tell you that the meeting has been moved up to tomorrow morning. It spills milk all over the presentation and then the power goes out before it can be reprinted. His annoying neighbor dropped her cell phone in the bathroom, so she comes to borrow hers and he can’t get rid of it. He goes out to his car and has a flat. He steals a car to get to the meeting because nothing and no one will stop him from stealing his parents’ property from under his brother.

Wow! Now you know what kind of character you really have. Do you see all that conflict? Do you see all the situations your character will need to make decisions about? The decisions they make will be affected by the character’s beliefs, emotional state, and past baggage. This is the bread and butter of writing. It’s all of this conflict that will get you down the road to your character’s epiphany. Yes, I said epiphany. Yes, I didn’t know what it was at first either. When your character gets through all the conflict, he will come to some kind of conclusion: an epiphany. In our story, the character will probably come to the conclusion that his brother was not worth killing.

The main conflict that I see missing from the contest entries that I have read is personal conflict. In our example, it’s what made the character so willing to steal to keep his brother’s property. It is that internal conflict that you find within yourself on certain issues. Your character needs it too. Use all five, and even the sixth, senses to help your character experience life.

3. RELATIONSHIP. Is there any person on this planet who doesn’t have a problem with at least one other person? Give your characters that kind of conflict too. Whether it’s a petty villain or the next door neighbor, there will always be a human conflict. In a romance there has to be a relationship conflict between the hero and the heroine that prevents them from reuniting.

This type of conflict includes: different values, different ambitions, money, egos, mental problems, prejudices, etc. Here are some more specific examples: He is a police officer and she has been charged with a crime. He is driven by loyalty to his family, but she wants him to leave the family business to live in Paris as an artist. He is consumed with revenge against the Ewing and she is an Ewing.

Relationship conflict doesn’t just happen in romances. Separate families, friends, business partners, and even countries.

So there you have it. Conflict. Those are pretty complicated webs that your characters are weaving, but it will be a fantastic story. Remember that with every scene you write, you must include at least one type of conflict that will move the story forward throughout the plot.

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