5 Ways To Add Conflict To Your Story

By georgelthomas on 24 May 2022 • ( 8 )

Hi everyone I hope you’re all having a fantastic day! Today, I will be talking about some of the ways you can add conflict to a story.

Conflict occurs when the characters of your story want or need something and someone or something gets in their way. It is the driving force behind just about every story, helping to nudge the plot forward. It’s also where the drama in a story comes from and it’s what helps to keep your readers turning pages. So, with that in mind, here are:

5 Ways To Add Conflict To Your Story

1 Opposing Personalities
Create characters with opposing personalities and put them together. Think about everything they might agree on and everything they definitely wouldn’t. Then think about how that might play out within your story.

2 Block Progress
Work out what your characters’ goals are. What is it they want in the end – or even just in a particular scene? When you know what they want, put things, people or other obstacles in their way to thwart their attempts at achieving their goals.

3 Use time
Have your character need to be at two places at the same time, such as an event or an appointment. It’s physically impossible so they must choose one. Or have them need to do something or meet someone before a timer runs out.

4 Go Internal
Give your character an internal conflict such as a secret they don’t want to get out, or romantic feelings toward someone they know they probably shouldn’t such as a best friend or a co-worker.

5 Use Conflicting Values
Give two or more characters some conflicting values, worldviews or belief systems. Many, many wars in this world are fought over people’s differences. For some reason, it’s a recurring theme in humanity’s history. People who have opinions that are diametrically opposed will inevitably argue about them at some point.

As always, thank you for spending your time with me today, it means a lot!

Until next time,

George