Imagine a novel without conflict. Nobody hates your protagonist, nobody drives you forward. There’s no war, no cancer, and certainly, no bad relationships. For good reason, this does not exist. The world of fiction, like our real world, must be fractured to be entertaining. Better yet, there must be frustration and hardships in order for the piece to move somebody.
What drives a character can bring the conflict. It doesn’t have to be about bullets in a gun, conflict can be simple. If your protagonist’s dreams, or desires have them wanting to be a politician but their family is from the ghetto, your conflict is built-in. Conflict can be derived from real-world circumstance. No one will question you if your character, white and living in Detroit, fears for his life or wellbeing on the wrong side of 8 mile.
As a writer you need to think of your character as a person. What do they want? Surely, your character, even if she’s just a “typical high school girl”, wants something in life. A romance novel would be uninteresting if it is simply about the kiss and tell. It has to have zest. Who is this character? Is she obsessed with cheerleading? Is Mean Girls her reason to live? Does she talk exactly like that annoying character from Glee? There’s other considerations too. Does she want to go to college? Does she want children? Your character is a person.
Desire is what gives a character, or person, the desire to battle conflict. A person with no stamina, or initiative will surely not press on if they’re denied entrance to their favourite college. Worse, a person whose entire family was killed, may not want to continue - unless they have a desire to change the world.
“There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.”
Conflict and desire are not just what makes a novel, or creative piece worth reading, it is what makes them real. Fiction, in its own sense, must be true. Of course your spaceship doesn’t have to be real, but the situations must be human in a sense. It is not possible to truly identify with a character or story that does not have a driving force. This sort of “story”, if you can call it that, would be stale.
Written by Shaylynn Hayes
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