by How to Tell A Story- The Secrets of Writing Captivating Tale (mobi)
EQUAL BUT OPPOSITE
Conflict should be two forces in opposition, but they should be at least somewhat equal when seen from the point of view of the main character. In fact, the hero of a story is pretty much defined by the strength of the opposition she has to overcome. Strong opposition also increases the emotional potency of the narrative because the greater the conflict, the higher the stakes for all involved.
Imagine a football game: the New York Giants against Bristol Junior High School. Unless you are going to write a David and Goliath kind of story, it won't be a very interesting game, will it? The reason is that the conflict is not equal and thus the outcome is predictable. The Giants, one would imagine, would storm down the field and they would score, and then they would storm down the field and score again. There's not much Bristol Junior High could do that could stop them.
Seen from the perspective of someone on the Bristol team, however, you have a different kind of story with a high emotional content, one that isn't about winning, but about the intensity of the effort to win, the striving to be the best, to make your dreams a reality. The movies Hoosiers and Hoop Dreams both dealt wonderfully with this kind of story.
In your story, whatever is trying to stop your character from reaching her goal must be so formidable that all the way through the book readers wonder who's going to win the battle.
Stories are about characters trying to go in a specific direction and some force, some opposition, saying, "No, you can't do that."
One of the things Gary and I have noticed a lot in books by inexperienced writers is that as they write their books, they structure them so that at the beginnings of the narratives there are a couple of minor scenes, obviously building up to a big conflict—let's say there's going to be a big fight. But when readers get to that point, instead of the fight scene, they get, "The day after the fight, they went to . . ."
Don't be afraid of the big scene, the big fight, the big conflict, whatever it is. Think about the movie Witness. The cop, Harrison Ford, is forced to save the nonviolent Amish child from the clutches of desperate violent men determined to make sure the kid will not appear in court against them. Just how effective do you think this story would be without that final confrontation sequence in which viewers see and experience, in an almost cathartic way, the good guys being saved and the bad guys being vanquished?
Make sure your characters have goals that clash. The conflict is the best part of your book. That's what people read it for: to see those big scenes. It's the emotional payoff readers have been waiting for. To shortchange the readers is to leave them frustrated and annoyed. Almost certainly they will never read anything with your name attached to it again.
Some beginning writers, trying to echo their otherwise mature attitudes toward life, try to avoid conflict in narrative storytelling. Their characters act as the writers strive to act. In real life, confrontation can be very scary at least and dangerous at worse, so it makes sense if you're a bit afraid of it. But in narrative storytelling, you can't be afraid of conflict. It's the meat of drama.
THE TEMPERATURE GAUGE
One way to think about conflict in your scene is to imagine your scene has a temperature. It has a low temperature (not much conflict), a high temperature (intense conflict) or some grade in between. In other words, temperature is a way of describing the intensity of the scene's emotional power. In
general, you always want to maximize a story's emotional impact.
A low temperature means that Joe says to Harry, "Gee, Harry, I had a terrible day at work today," and Harry says, "No kidding? What happened?" There's no conflict here at all. Both Harry and Joe are going in the same direction.
Now, if Harry says, "I'm sick of all your whining and complaining. Don't you ever shut up?" he is clearly not interested in what Joe has to say, so you've raised the temperature a bit. There's a high degree of resistance, and the friction between these characters is clearly being established. Which version would you prefer to read more about?
You don't have to have a high temperature or a lot of conflict in every scene, but if you have several scenes in a row in which the temperature of the conflict is low, you're writing a dull book.
HOW TO BUILD CONFLICT
You want to put pressure on a scene, and there are a couple of ways you can do that.
Small Spaces
Conflict occurs because two different people with opposing goals are forced into a small space together. Imagine, for example, a log cabin in the mountains. A sudden winter storm forces two characters, Mr. Neatnick and Mr. Slob, to live together for a while. Neil Simon's play (and subsequent movie) The Odd Couple is exactly this kind of conflict and situation. The movie The Defiant Ones, with Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier, actually shackled together a racist white convict with an aggressive black convict as they struggle to make good their escape from prison in the 1950s Deep South.
The Defiant Ones, directed by Stanley Kramer with an Academy Award-winning screenplay by Harold Jacob Smith and Nathan E. Douglas (blacklisted screenwriter and actor Nedrick Young) is a powerful movie that pulls few punches and was highly praised when it was released, appearing as it did in 1958 during a period of civil rights protests, sit-ins, and other political demonstrations in the black community. The New York Film Critics voted the movie Best Picture of the Year, and Stanley Kramer, Best Director. The symbolism, particularly the ending, may seem dated now, but it's a swift and exciting action film. It manages to entertain while at the same time dramatically explore its provocative symbolism. It provokes discussion that is still relevant to current problems of race relations, particularly in its metaphor of society captured in the memorable image of the two bound convicts, one black, one white, forced to deal with each other and the problems that beset them both in order to survive.
White convict Johnny "Joker" Jackson (Tony Curtis) and black convict Noah Cullen (Sidney Poitier) escape from a southern chain gang, fleeing from Sheriff Max Muller (Theodore Bikel) and his bloodhounds. The convicts must face tremendous difficulties, including the two-foot-long chain that shackles them together, hostile townspeople, a lynch mob, a swamp, and their own mutual hatred, belligerence, and bigotry. As they flee across the country, the two find they can't run from each other and must come to terms with their situation.
The white bigot and the sensitive but angrily resentful black man fight, argue, and pick at one another. Yet when they have to cross a river, the heavy current almost drowns Cullen until Jackson drags him to safety. "Thanks for pulling me out," Cullen says. "I didn't pull you out. I stopped you from pulling me in," says Jackson.
By the time they manage to free themselves of their physical shackles, a metaphorical bond has been forged between them, keeping them still bound together, highlighted by the final sequence at the railway tracks as the sheriff and his posse close in.
The two men pursue a freight train to escape. Cullen is able to jump onto one of the moving cars. He locks hands with his white companion (a memorable image of black and white hands and arms locked together), but he cannot pull Jackson
up onto the moving train. So he sacrifices his own freedom and falls back off the train onto the ground.
In their final few moments of freedom, they share a cigarette, and Cullen sings the blues classic "Long Gone" as he cradles the weakened and injured Jackson while the sounds of the bloodhounds on their trail grow louder.
The Ticking Clock
Another way of putting pressure on a scene is with a time limit. Consider a movie such as 48 Hrs. What if someone said to the cop (Nick Nolte), "You can solve this crime and have this convict (Eddie Murphy) help you out, and you can keep him out of prison for several months if you like." Not very exciting. There's no pressure urging on the protagonists, nothing forcing them to act in a way that could get them into trouble and cause them to make mistakes because of haste and worry, thereby increasing the inherent drama and conflict of their situation.
But that's not how it happens. Someone says
to the cop, "You've got forty-eight hours." This use of a time constraint as pressure is a typical device in a story. One of the classic examples is the movie D.O.A. (Dead on Arrival). Here, the hero, Edmond O'Brien, has been given a slow-acting poison. In a wonderful twist, the victim of a murder also becomes the detective and has twenty-four hours to find out who killed him and why.
Nobody ever says to a hero, "Take your time, you got ten years." Conflict is intensified by the pressure of time.
Here's a scene by Frank Strunk from Jordon's Wager (Walker). Strunk, who now has several well-received novels to his credit, was a student writer Gary and I helped to get published. This was Strunk's first novel. It's set in Appalachia in the 1930s.
Jordon is trying to solve the murder of a young girl called Bitsy Trotter. As is the case with any story like this, he needs to acquire information from a variety of people. That's his goal in many scenes: get information. In this particular scene, he's going off to see an old woman by the name of Rachel, and his goal is to get Rachel to give him some information that will help him solve the murder.
The important thing to understand here is that conflict doesn't mean necessarily that two people are in complete opposition. They may be total enemies, or they may be pretty much in agreement, but there should be some area of conflict, distrust, or disagreement between them that has to be overcome:
The fat black cat with white front paws stopped washing its face and gave Jordon a heavy-lidded but thorough inspection. Then it turned to Rachel Blackwell and uttered a plaintive meow.
"It's all right, darling," the old woman said, "he ain't staying." Looking at Jordon, she said, "Princess don't care for strangers. Specially menfolks.'' After a moment she added, "Can't say I do neither." Her voice was like the rustle of winter wind through a dead oak.
She led Jordon toward some chairs in front of the smoldering fireplace. "Not there," she said, "that's mine. Here. Set over there."
As we analyze the building conflict in the scene we see that Rachel has thrown the first punch: "He ain't staying," she says, and adds, "Princess don't care for strangers. Specially menfolks. . . . Can't say I do neither."
Then she tells Jordan not to sit in her chair, being unwelcoming and territorial. The fight is on. However, Jordon is being restrained because he needs something from Rachel, and she's obviously resisting. What drives this scene now? We are forced to think about why she would resist and be instinctively hostile to Jordon. What is her involvement in all this? We like Jordon, so we are emotionally involved in seeing that he succeeds against these increasingly difficult odds—a desire to find the killer of a girl and an obstructive, obdurate old woman who seems to be an obstacle he must overcome along the way to reaching his goal of bringing a killer to justice.
What would happen if Jordon walked in and said, "I need some information," and Rachel said, "OK, here's the information"? There'd be no scene, no emotional involvement, no interest. If all the author was after was plot information he could do that, but narrative storytelling (fiction and nonfiction) is about the interaction of characters and their goals. It is the clash of these goals and the need to resolve the conflicts that arise from this clash—not just plot advancement—that make a story a page-turner.
So the conflict grows, the liquid in the cauldron bubbling more fiercely and gradually growing hotter as the temperature of the scene rises. Pay attention particularly to how Strunk develops the conflict in the scene and the choices he gives to his protagonist, Jordon:
Rachel threw some slack coal from a bucket into her fireplace and stirred it with a poker. Flames from the rescued fire cast a flickering light on her ancient face. What could have been a smile played at the shriveled and shrunken lips which covered the three or four snag-gled teeth she still had.
Her hair was dyed a dull black, and the dark shapeless dress she wore hung loosely on her tiny body. Tiny, Jordon thought, like Bitsy Trotter. Rachel pulled a shawl around her bony shoulders and settled herself into her own chair, a cane-bottom rocker.
"What is it you want?" she asked.
' 'To talk about Bitsy Trotter,'' Jordon replied.
"You've come to the wrong place."
"I thought you might be able to help me. I'm trying to find out who killed her. You did know the girl, didn't you?"
Rachel eyed him coldly for a moment before answering. ' 'What makes you think I did?"
"You don't live that far from the Trotters, through the woods. And I have information that you and Bitsy knew each other."
The cat arose from its throne across the room and made its way to Jordon, started rubbing against his shins. Why did cats always do that to him, he wondered. . . . Jordon was beginning to suspect that there was a secret network of some kind through which cats passed the message to one another: Berk Jordan hates to be rubbed against. . . make sure you do it. He didn't want to maybe rile the old woman up before he got started with her by pushing Princess away. So he let her rub. For the moment.
Rachel had not responded to his last comment, so he said,
' 'Did you know Bitsy Trotter?"
She stared at him with an expression he took to be distaste.
"I knowed her."
He's fighting to get information out of her, but she's still resisting, despite the fact that the cat has changed his mind about Jordon and that Jordon has decided to ignore his instinct to push the animal away:
' 'What can you tell me about her?"
"Nothing.'' She fixed her attention on the open fire.
"Can't or won't?"
"It's all the same, ain't it?"
"The law says different. In a court of lawyou'd have to tell."
Now we have it. Jordon has decided it's time for another tack. His first approach to this little battle had been, "Well, I'll be nice." But that hasn't worked, and so now he's resorted to, "The law says different." He's decided to use a threat, an indication that he has a stick and the determination to use it if he has to:
She looked at him and laughed. A dry cackle. "You believe that?" She studied him for a moment. "No sir," she said, "you don't look that dumb."
So much for the threat of a legal stick—or so it at first appears:
"You don't care what the law says?" Jordon asked.
"Do you?"
"I do, yes."
"Sure you do," she said in a voice heavy with sarcasm. "They's people out there right this minute fighting and stealing, gambling and whoring and selling whiskey. All against the law. And others, crooked as a barrel of fish hooks, swindling people out of their last scrip nickel." Her voice cut through the room's quietness, filled it with venom. "Others working men in little dog-hole mines till they're ready to drop over, then using fancy figuring to take back ever nickel they make just to keep a roof over their head and a little something in their families' bellies. You think all them people care about the law? You're supposed to be upholding it. Why ain't you out arresting some of them?"
Not a bad question, Jordon had to admit. He said, "Right now I'm trying to catch the murderer of a young girl."
"What they tell me, you're running for high sheriff, too,'' Rachel went on. "If you get elected, you going to arrest everybody that breaks the law?"
Jordon parried. "You know me, then?"
"Knowed you when you first stepped up on my porch. Know a lot more about you than you might think. Ain't a lot goes on in Stanton County I don't know about, mister."
"But you won't talk to me about Bitsy Trotter...."
What's happening here is that they are sparring, but despite herself, Rachel finds that Jordon is drawing information out of her, the temperature of the scene is beginning to cool, and they are slowly but surely starting to search for a middle ground—to do what in the East is called "save face."
Rachel says to him:
"You know folks say I'm a witch?"
"I've heard that."....
"How about you?" Rachel asked. "You think I'm a witch?" ...
Suddenly, she broke into a high,
piercing laugh. Sitting there in her cane-bottom rocker, stroking her black cat, her head thrown back, shrieking laughter pouring from her, she looked the part. Jordon figured, by God, I might have spoke too soon. Maybe I should have said yes.
She stiffled her laughter long enough to say, "But I remind you of a witch, huh? Is that what you're thinking?"
At this, Jordon began to laugh. "Now that you mention it...."
As they roared in laughter at themselves and each other, Princess jumped from Rachel's lap and went to the edge of the fireplace where she sat regarding them both with a look that might well have been contempt.
So now we've gone from no to yes. All that remains is for Jordon to give Rachel a reason to help him. Jordon says to her:
' 'Whatever you know about Bitsy might help me find out who killed her. But I reckon you'll have to be the judge of that."
They talk some more, and as Jordon is leaving Rachel says to him:
"They say you're a man who's got no love for the coal companies.... Is that so?"
"I reckon you could say that. I've never worked for them, except for three weeks once in the mines. Enough to convince me it wasn't for me."
And there it is! Their common ground, a mutual dislike of the mining companies, their practices, and how it enslaved the people of Appalachia. The conflict resolution begins. By the end of the scene, Rachel's thinking that maybe this Jordon guy ain't so bad, and maybe she will cooperate with him. As he leaves she says:
"If I was to think of something that might help you, I'll let you know."
What's happened here is that first they had a conflict— Jordon trying to get Rachel to cooperate against her better judgment. She resisted, until toward the end, as they talked about the coal companies, Rachel discovered she and Jordon had something in common, and though not completely trusting him, she nonetheless agrees to give him some, if not all, of what he wants.