Rev up your story with conflict

Any good story needs two things: 1) a beginning, a middle and an end; and 2) conflict.

But what about that first one? Isn’t that actually three things? For the purposes of this argument, let’s treat a beginning, a middle and an end as one thing, that eternal writing bugaboo called “structure.”

That’s a salami to slice another day.

And, yes, a story needs characters, plot, dialogue, setting, theme, blood, sweat, tears, a handful of No. 2 lead pencils and a Big Chief tablet, ad infinitum. But, without conflict, your story’s up on blocks in the yard like a redneck Jedi’s landspeeder.

Conflict is the engine of your story. In fact, conflict is your story.

Whether you’re talking about journalism, marketing or fiction, there is no story without conflict. The news never begins with, “Nothing happened today,” there is no zit cream without zits, and the hero doesn’t begin his journey because everything’s hunky-dory at home.

Conflict is the reason there are a lot more sad love songs than happy ones. She loves you, and you know you should be glad, derp.

Speaking of love, conflict centers around one character’s needs, wants, hopes, dreams, desires and what stands in the way. The conflict might be over:

• The crown of Scotland (Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”)

• A pirate treasure (Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island”)

• The captain’s bat-shit crazy, and he’s going to kill us all (Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny”)

Tell me what you want, what you really, really want. If you can have it without overcoming a challenge or two, there’s no story — or, at least, a very brief and boring one.

“Frodo took the bus to Mordor, paid his 25 pence to ride the funicular to the top of Mount Doom and dropped in the ring, after which he returned home and enjoyed scones with clotted cream. The End.”

Conflict represents a struggle between opposing forces. Struggle implies more than just a difference of opinion. It means two forces actively battling each other. If Frodo really wants to melt that ring like a golden fondue, he’ll have to defeat all the Orcs that Sauron can throw at him.

Conflict puts your protagonist into action and moves the story forward, but it also highlights the motivations, values and weaknesses of your characters. It tells not just what they want but who they are.

As it turns out, there’s a lot of conflict about conflict, such as how many kinds there are. Let’s start with the classics, because that’s the kind of old-school curmudgeon I am. (Yes, you can replace the word “man” with “person,” “character,” “Congresshuman” or whatever you please.)

1) Man against man.

We usually think of this as hero vs. villain, mano a mano. Think of Holmes vs. Moriarty, Van Helsing vs. Dracula, Wallace vs. that penguin. This kind of conflict often highlights opposing belief systems or ways of life (or, in Dracula’s case, undeath).

2) Man against nature.

Nature itself stands between our hero and survival in books like “Hatchet” by Gary Paulson, “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer and darn near anything by Jack London. But nature can take on a less literal meaning in some conflicts, as we’ll see.

3) Man against self.

Here’s something most writers can relate to — self-doubt. This could be a moral struggle or some kind of mental illness, but either way, it’s an internal conflict. Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” is literally in a fight for his life over his own inner nature. Many coming-of-age stories, like Karen Harrington’s “Courage for Beginners,” have some kind of man- (or girl-) vs.-self angle.

Sounds like a lot of conflict. But, for some folks, it’s just not enough! With a little Googling, you’ll find lists that contain five, six and even seven kinds of conflict, such as:

• Character vs. the supernatural (like the aforementioned Dracula)

• Character vs. technology (see below)

• Character vs. society (what Blake Snyder would call Institutionalized)

• Character vs. fate (Macbeth and Frodo, for instance)

Many of these last four can fit somewhere under the proceeding three. Beings like androids can easily be thought of as other characters (man against man), while a swarm of nanobots can be viewed as a variation on nature.

Regardless of how you chop the conflict cabbage, most stories use some mix of these types, perhaps having a main plot of man against man and a man-vs.-self subplot.

In my story “A Shovelful of Winter,” I wanted to write about my childhood memories of winter and shoveling snow, which would suggest a man-against-nature conflict, but it didn’t seem like enough. So I added a plot involving some neighborhood bullies and even a little romantic interest (which is, by the way, another version of character-vs.-character conflict).

If you’re having trouble nailing down the conflict, ask yourself, “What are my characters’ motivations? What do they want, and who stands in their way?” That should guide you.

Need a little more help? You might try “The Conflict Thesaurus” by Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman. I haven’t read it myself, but it looks like a promising resource.