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| Roger Green, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
A woman sits at a kitchen table long after her coffee has gone cold.
The clock ticks.
The window shows a sky that can’t decide whether it’s morning or still night.
She stares at a letter she hasn’t opened.
Nothing happens — and yet everything is happening.
That tightness in the air, the hesitation before movement, the sense that something must give — this is conflict at work. Not loud. Not explosive. But alive.
For an aspiring fiction writer, understanding conflict is understanding motion itself. Without it, stories don’t move. They rest. They drift. They fade.
Where Stories Stall Without Conflict
Many early drafts begin with promise. The writing is careful. The setting vivid. The characters likable. But as pages accumulate, the narrative slows, as if wading through thick water.
Scenes repeat. Conversations circle. The story feels beautifully written — and strangely lifeless.
What’s missing is not description or voice.
It’s resistance.
Conflict is the force that pushes back against a character’s desire. Without that pressure, there is nothing to overcome, nothing to risk, nothing to lose. A story without conflict is a car idling in the driveway — polished, full of potential, going nowhere.
Conflict Is Want, Interrupted
At its core, conflict begins the moment a character wants something and the world refuses to cooperate.
Conflict doesn’t announce itself. It reveals itself through friction — in delays, complications, consequences.
A character reaches. Something pushes back.
That push is the engine.
The Quiet Power of Internal Conflict
Not all conflict wears armor or raises its voice.
Sometimes it looks like a man standing in a grocery aisle, holding two identical boxes, knowing the choice matters more than it should. Sometimes it sounds like a woman agreeing out loud while something inside her tightens and resists.
Internal conflict — the struggle between belief and desire, fear and hope, loyalty and self-preservation — is often where stories gain their deepest charge.
For an aspiring fiction writer, learning to show this tension means letting contradictions live on the page. Letting characters hesitate. Letting them choose badly. Letting them know the cost and step forward anyway.
External Conflict Gives Shape to the Story
If internal conflict is pressure, external conflict is terrain.
Storms arrive. Rivals appear. Systems resist change. Relationships strain under unspoken truths. These external forces force characters to act — not because they want to, but because inaction is no longer possible.
A locked gate matters because of who is standing on either side of it. A threat matters because of what the character stands to lose.
Conflict turns environment into obstacle and obstacle into meaning.
Escalation: How Conflict Builds Momentum
Conflict does not remain static. If it does, readers feel it immediately.
Early obstacles test resolve. Later ones demand sacrifice.
Escalation doesn’t mean bigger explosions — it means fewer exits. Each turn of the narrative narrows the path until the character must face the one thing they’ve been avoiding.
This narrowing is what creates momentum. Scenes stop existing on their own and begin leaning toward something inevitable.
Why Readers Lean Forward When Conflict Is Present
When conflict is active, readers lean in — not because they know what will happen, but because they sense something must.
Unresolved tension creates anticipation. Anticipation creates engagement.
Conflict transforms ordinary actions into charged moments. A conversation becomes a negotiation. Silence becomes a threat. Choice becomes consequence.
Conflict Reveals Character Under Pressure
A character described in comfort is theoretical.
A character placed under pressure becomes real.
Conflict strips away intention and reveals instinct. When things go wrong, characters show who they are — not through explanation, but through response.
For aspiring fiction writers, this is where character development stops being something you plan and starts being something you discover.
Conflict doesn’t decorate character. It exposes it.
The Risk of Avoiding Conflict
Many writers soften conflict without realizing it. They give characters easy outs. They resolve tension too quickly. They explain feelings that should be tested instead.
This often comes from empathy — not wanting characters to suffer.
But suffering is not the point. Meaning is.
Without conflict, growth feels unearned. Endings feel polite instead of powerful. Stories close without resonance.
Conflict is not cruelty. It is necessity.
Letting Conflict Breathe on the Page
Showing conflict means resisting the urge to summarize it.
Instead of saying they argued, let the argument unfold in pauses, interruptions, words chosen too carefully. Instead of explaining fear, let it surface in avoidance, delay, misdirection.
Conflict thrives in what isn’t said as much as what is.
For the aspiring writer, this means trusting the reader to notice tension — to feel the pull without being told where it comes from.
The Engine That Carries the Story Home
By the time a story reaches its end, conflict has done its work.
Something has shifted. A belief cracked. A truth surfaced. The character who began the journey no longer fits the life they had at the start.
The engine quiets, not because it failed, but because it arrived.
And the reader feels it — not as a lesson, but as a lived experience.
That is the power of conflict when it is allowed to drive.
Conclusion: Conflict Is Not Optional
For an aspiring fiction writer, conflict is not a technique to add later. It is the force that makes narrative possible.
If narrative is a road, conflict is the engine that carries the story forward, mile after meaningful mile.
References
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MasterClass — Writing Conflict: Types of Conflict in Literature
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Writers Digest — The Importance of Conflict in Storytelling
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Now Novel — How to Create Compelling Story Conflict
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Helping Writers Become Authors — Story Structure and Conflict
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Reedsy — Conflict in Fiction: Why It Matters
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