Using Conflict Lists to Get Characters Going

I've got a student who writes well, but without any depth.  Her characters think about and do what's required for the narrative at that moment, but don't inhabit a wider world. To push her to give her characters more than one thing to think about at any one time, I devised a conflict list exercise.  

We started with a character, a student. Then we went through the list coming up with suitable conflicts....

Mind:  Worried that she will fail imminent exams.

Body:  Hungover from party.

Emotions: Worried that boyfriend may be cheating on her.

Family: Parents want her to do well and become a doctor - she doesn't want to be a doctor.

Relationship: Boyfriend may be cheating.

Friends: Advising her to confront boyfriend.

Physical environment - natural: Can't study in the sunshine.

Physical environment - man made: Her laptop has broken, losing her notes.

Individuals in society: Teachers not supportive.

Wider society: Bank demanding she pays off overdraft.  

Then we tried one for a would-be writer...

Mind:  Reading too much negative material about downfall of publishing.

Body:  Back ache from poor posture over computer.

Emotions: Lacking confidence that the novel is any good. 

Family: Unsupportive - why can't she get a job?

Relationship: Won't look after kids at the weekend so she can write.

Friends: Writing buddy has just landed mega publishing deal.

Physical environment - natural: Rainy days mean kids need entertaining at home.

Physical environment - man made: Uses same computer as kids.

Individuals in society: Publishers/agents reject her work. 

Wider society: Cost of living has gone up, needs to earn money soon. 

I'm not saying that every character has to have every type of conflict, but working through a conflict list will suggest areas that the character could be dealing with as the story happens. 

How Much Vomiting is Going Too Far?

AJ asked : When writing light hearted or romcom style fiction, how does one ensure the light hearted/fun element doesn't get drowned by the conflict/grimly high stakes? Or equally, the issues don't get undermined by frivolity.

In an early version of Another Woman's Husband, Becca the main character has her darkest moment and ends up getting drunk and vomiting in a car park. It's a humiliating experience for her. My editor vetoed it as being too sordid.

The same editor didn't turn a hair when, in Nice Girls Do, Anna after a very heavy night out is also sick. I think the difference is in the tone. I can't give an example of the Becca bit, because I dramatically changed the story line and lost the vomiting, but this is Anna...

"She tottered to the bathroom and washed as quickly as her poor coordination allowed. The skin on her face felt heavy and seemed to have dropped two inches. It was a curious mix of red overlying grey. She bunged some foundation on top. Dracula's bride stared back at her. She looked down and saw I survived Clare's hen party! emblazoned across her chest. She wasn't convinced."

There's quite a bit more but I think - hope, anyway - that the tone is quite perky. There's no question that Anna is going down to the darkest depths - she's hungover, yes, but is taking it in her stride. Becca, on the other hand, was upset and humiliated.

And I think that's partly where the answer lies. How does the character react to the grimness in question? Are they self-aware? Anna knows she had too much the night before and accepts her physical state the next morning. Becca was just miserable.

Marion Keyes has shown that you can go to some dark places within chick lit so long as the character, and the reader, doesn't have their noses rubbed in it. And of course, are we rooting for the characters? If so, we'll forgive them anything.

NEW!!! I've finally got round to organising some course dates....

How to WRITE a Novel: London 3rd May/Birmingham 7th May/

Oxford 8th May/Exeter 21st May/Bath 12th June

How to SELL a Novel: London 24th May/Exeter 4th June/

Bath 3rd July Details are on my website

Reality and Conflict

Last week I was interviewed for a magazine feature about the terrible incident a few years when my daughter was mugged and hit in the face by a baseball bat. It had been shocking at the time, but the overall experience had been pretty positive as she - and I - discovered that in a crisis she'd kept her head and had reacted both sensibly and bravely. A bad thing had happened, but it revealed she possessed some tremendous character traits and boosted her confidence.

I was desperately proud of the way she behaved during and after the incident and was very happy to talk to the magazine about it (and promote the current novel at the same time). About five minutes into the interview the journalist stopped. 'Your relationship with your daughter was good before?' Oh yes, I agreed. She sighed. It wasn't a good sign. She explained that she'd thought there had been serious problems between us, and the mugging had brought us together. Instead we were obviously a normal, affectionate family and normal people weren't news, unless really dreadful things happened to them. This didn't count.

So that was that. I didn't mind. After all, I could see that we were normal, and the mugging, while horrible at the time, hadn't been disastrous for us - if anything the opposite. There was no conflict for the journalist to write about, no triumph over disaster. What had seemed a big event in my life, and certainly in my daughter's, was not worth writing about.

Story telling is all about conflict and the bigger the conflict, the bigger the story. Then there's what's at stake. Again, the bigger the stakes, the bigger the story. Be bold with your conflicts. Make the stakes as high as you can. Make the dilemmas impossible to resolve. Make your fiction bigger and bolder, more complicated and more dramatic.

I'm glad my real life drama was too small for the magazine. Let's face it, in reality it's better that way.

NEW!!! I've finally got round to organising some course dates....

How to WRITE a Novel: London 3rd May/Birmingham 7th May/

Oxford 8th May/Exeter 21st May/Bath 12th June

How to SELL a Novel: London 24th May/Exeter 4th June/

Bath 3rd July Details are on my website

Ban Baddies from Your Writing

I'm re-reading Anne Tyler's The Accidental Tourist at the moment, and remembering why I love it so much. She's a terrific writer and I learn so much from her. One of the lessons from this book I've been trying hard to apply to my more recent novels is: no baddies.

Baddies are people who go around in black hats. We know they're baddies because everyone hisses and boos when they enter. Baddies are fine in panto, but they don't have a place in most novels because they're one dimensional. They are defined by their badness, but nobody in real life thinks they're bad. I expect even the most appalling murderers feel they have justification for their actions.

In fact, if we understand and sympathise with a character, we can cheerfully accept their justifications for doing dreadful things. In The Talented Mr Ripley, Tom Ripley murders Dickie Greenleaf, then Freddie, and we're happy because we've taken on Tom's world view that he really has no alternative but to bump them off.

But Anne Tyler doesn't have baddies at all. Instead she has ordinary people who are in conflict with each other. In The Accidental Tourist, Macon and Sarah are recovering from the death of their child. They are both grieving, in their own ways. The trouble is, those ways are in conflict with each other. Sarah is trying to cope by talking about Ethan, Macon is trying to cope by systematising his life and not talking. Neither of these approaches are wrong, they're just different and the difference leads to conflict.

When I started writing my opposing characters were a bit one dimensional: they were defined by their 'badness' alone. Now I try to make my opposing characters good people, just ones who want different things from my main character. There will still be conflict, but the characters will (I hope) be more real and understandable.

NEW!!! I've finally got round to organising some course dates....

How to WRITE a Novel: London 3rd May/Birmingham 7th May/

Oxford 8th May/Exeter 21st May/Bath 12th June

How to SELL a Novel: London 24th May/Exeter 4th June/

Bath 3rd July Details are on my website

Turn Up On My Doorstep If You Can

Think about a phone conversation in real life. You can easily hear one side of the conversation - yours - but the other side may be more muted. You can see the things around you, but you can't see the person who is speaking, or their surroundings. If you're using a landline you're trapped, only able to move the distance of the telephone cord.

So fictional telephone conversations immediately start with problems. They're usually static situations, and halve your scope for describing what's going on. There can be no nuances of facial expression, no grimacing, no scratching of heads, no running of hands through hair (this may of course be a good thing, but I'm sure you get the idea). No clothes, no surroundings, no nothing but one person in a room talking into a phone.

If I discover I've let a phone conversation slip into the first draft I always try to manoeuvre my characters so they meet face to face. Physically being in the same space heightens the conflict, whether it's the brush off call (how are they going to get rid of this unwanted visitor?) or the arrival of a loved one (how soon can they get them in their arms?).

There are going to be times when the phone call can't be changed to a face to face meeting, or is better as a call - for example, the conflict coming from a character's longing for closeness - and if they use a mobile, then at least you can have them moving so the scene isn't static. But in general, get them turning up on each other's doorsteps whenever possible.

Let's Have a Fight, Right Here, Right Now

In real life most of us avoid conflict, but our characters should embrace it. Without conflict there is no drama, and without drama the writing is dull. But because we get brought up to smooth over disagreements there's a tendency to smooth over them in our writing too, even the little conflicts that we hardly notice - who took the last of the milk, where's my pen?

Big mistake. No conflict = boring to read.

So, how to add conflict? First think about the levels of conflict.

Conflict in your head - eg doubts, uncertainty, anxieties, negative personality traits.

Conflict with your body - eg ill health, physical disabilities.

Conflict with your family - eg domineering parents, disobedient children

Conflict with friends - eg rows over actions

Conflict with lovers - eg adultery, desertion, betrayal

Conflict with institutions - eg the tax office, the law

Conflict with individuals in society - eg policeman, traffic warden, doctor

Conflict with the environment - eg floods, cold weather, drought (natural) war, concrete jungle (manmade)

Now think about your main character. Going through the list, how many conflicts could your character potentially have.

For example, just thinking about the school environment a teacher could have conflicts with the rest of the staff from the groundsman to the head teacher, the staffroom tea/coffee rota, the education authority, lack of funding, Ofsted inspection, the school inspectors, exam boards, lost exam papers, marking, the government, nits, mumps, swine flu, poor weather, lack of heating, then there are the students, who may be needy, demanding, physically or mentally abusive, sad, super bright, gifted, challenging, abused, in danger...and I haven't even started on friends, family, lovers and life outside school, let alone the potential for inner conflicts.

Now I'm not suggesting that all these conflicts will have a large place in your writing, but they should be there supplying the grit that will create a beautiful pearl. Make your characters struggle against life, make life hard for them in every way, large or small, you can come up with. Isn't that why characters like Scarlett O'Hara, James Bond and Jane Eyre still resonate today? We follow their struggles and relish seeing them triumph in the end.

The Spice of Conflict

Some years ago a friend got involved in a pet project and roped in lots of people to help. I was one of them. Things were fine for a while, then we had a blazing row and have never spoken since. I hadn't thought about it until another friend told me that she'd seen a book about the project.

I rushed out and bought a copy, immediately flicking through to find the bit with the row, dying to know her take on it. What would she say? Would she slag me off? Would she admit she was wrong? (Ha!) Would she present a version I didn't recognise? Would I be suing her for libel? Would she express regret that the friendship ended? I found the place.

"A helper left, never to be seen again."

Was that it? Apparently, yes. I scooted backwards, searching for another helper I knew who had also jumped ship after a row, who the author had verbally referred to as Miss Psycho along with colourful descriptions of her shortcomings. But however much I looked, there was no sign of Miss Psycho or her misdemeanours. Everything was lovely.

Tactful, yes. Interesting to read, no. The whole book was an exercise in tasteful blandness, all the rough edges smoothed over, no dissention in the ranks, no stitching up of personalities. Now, that's probably a good thing for the author personally, but it's not good for the readers. The book was self-published, and I'm not surprised. Avoiding confrontation and strong emotions we can do at home. We need the spice of conflict when we read.